The Benediction

A Benediction for Your Perseverance

It’s appropriate that this sermonic letter closes with a prayer to God for our perseverance.

This has been the grand theme of Hebrews - We have been challenged to pay closer attention to the Word of God lest we drift from it, we have been warned to hold fast our confession and not to harden our hearts in rebellion against God’s Word. We are to exhort one another so that we are not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We are to leave the elementary teachings of Christ and press on to maturity. We are to consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. We are to run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith!

Even when all of the forces in the world would come against us, we are to press on in perseverance.

Now the Benediction is important, because without the power of God at work in our hearts, there is no salvation and there can be no perseverance - because salvation from beginning to end is the work of God’s miraculous and wonderful grace.

Appealing to the God of Peace

Our author addresses God the Father as the God of peace. The same God who is called a consuming fire, is also called the God of peace.

Let me first say that in order to persevere in faith there has to be a beginning. The race must be run until the end, but in order to run the race you must mount up in the starting blocks and take off.

Now its very important to know that if you have not turned away from you sin in repentance and if you are not presently trusting in Jesus alone, who died on the cross as the only sacrifice that is sufficient to pay for your sin, then God is not at peace with you. You are his enemy. You are by nature a child of wrath, deserving of hell. That is about as plain as I can put it. God will punish all those who reject his Son and die as rebels. That is the most loving thing I can tell you if you are not living as a follower of Jesus.

The good news is that God is the God of peace and you can start running the race of the Christian life and no longer live as his enemy - because God has made a way for peace.

This benediction prayer invites us to understand how God the Father is the God of peace - let me touch on three ways:

God is the God of peace because he has initiated and enacted the Eternal Covenant (New Covenant).

This covenant is also called the Covenant of Grace, because it is the only arrangement that provides a way for rebels to be reconciled to God and restored once again in a peaceful relationship to him.

All the stipulations of this covenant are initiated by God the Father - Jesus didn’t invent the Gospel, the Father is the one who decreed the gospel.

All the stipulations of the covenant are fulfilled by our Lord Jesus. This eternal, everlasting Covenant that makes peace and reconciliation between God and man in no way depends upon humanity, but the entire contractual weight rests upon Jesus.

This covenant not only contains promises for us, but also promises made to Jesus by the Father. Jesus being the great shepherd of the sheep is promised a flock, and not only spiritual flock, but an eternal, literal, flock from redeemed humanity, raised from the dead at the Second Coming of our Lord.

The blood of Jesus, being the blood that ratifies this eternal covenant, secures not only the justification and forgiveness necessary for personal salvation, but also secures for Christ a Kingdom, and guaranteed both his resurrection from the dead and the resurrection of all those the father has given him. For the father, as a part of making this new covenant, has promised to give the Son, the great shepherd, this flock that has been purchased by His blood.

Why is this important? This is the basis of your eternal security and perseverance - that there is an eternal covenant that includes promises the Father has made to the Son that are ratified by his blood - We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ -Romans 5:1

Now to simply this a bit in a few statements:

You are a natural born enemy of God and are not at peace with him.

You cannot initiate reconciliation with God.

The God of Peace has initiated reconciliation and has established the terms of peace in an everlasting covenant

The terms of reconciliation are all fulfilled by Jesus - you can do nothing, offer nothing, can add nothing to these terms.

All those who have faith in Christ, are beneficiaries of the Covenant Promises that have been secured by the blood of Jesus.

The benefits include, forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God, the resurrection from the dead, a good shepherd, equipping for every good work, and sanctification.

This prayer is quite profound and the fact that God is a God of peace means that you are RICH, the rich recipients of the gracious acts of God in redemption.

God is also the God of Peace by employing Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, to destroy the works of the devil.

Rom. 16:20 - Paul writes emphatically - “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”

When Jesus died upon the cross Satan was decisively defeated, and his final defeat will fully and finally be realized at the Second Coming of our King Jesus.

Satan is still allowed to harass the saints, he roams around seeking to devour, he wants to ensnare you in sin, he will use the means he has in the world to threaten, harass, and persecute the church - this all by God’s providence, and it requires perseverance - but God is a God of peace and soon enough he will crush Satan under the feet of the church - so here is a sense that the work of Christ on the cross means that his people, the sheep of his pasture, will be the means in the future of crushing Satan - this I believe is by the advance of the gospel!

“ And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. “ - Matt. 24:14

Satan is bound right now in this way - he is bound in such a way that he cannot stop the advance the gospel. He cannot keep one sheep promised to Jesus by the father from coming into the sheep fold - Jesus said, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37)

There is no adversary that has the power to keep you from persevering!

God is the God of peace by giving us a great shepherd

Psalm 23:1 - The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

The Christian is able to enjoy peace even in the midst of horrific trials and suffering because the Christian is under the protective care of Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me.” - Psalm 23:4

Now since you have a great shepherd, you do not need to live in fear. His perfect love casts out fear. If your life and feelings are governed by fear, then you need to learn to trust that you have a great shepherd who has a plan for your life, who will never leave you or turn his back on you, who is provident over all of your days, therefore you don’t have to scramble to seize control and try to micromanage your life and the lives of others - you can live in freedom. There are so many people who do so little for God because they are afraid - afraid to fail, afraid of looking foolish, afraid they aren’t good enough....fear...fear....fear - DO NOT BE AFRAID - we have a good shepherd and he is great!

Now we must learn to think of God in this way - he we have peace with God through Jesus, then we need to approach God and appeal to him as the God of peace!

Asking for the Power to Live in a Way that is Pleasing to God.

Why is this his prayer request for the church?

Perseverance in doing God’s will is impossible without divine preparation.

Pleasing God is the result of God working in you, through the accomplishment of Jesus

Remember what the flesh produces? - fear, insecurity, doubt, unbelief, hopelessness, anxiety, worry, guilt, and shame - all of these things war against God and Satan wants you to forget what Christ has accomplished on your behalf, he wants you to be paralyzed from living and loving courageously.

But through Christ and his accomplishments and his ministry we can do what is pleasing in God’s sight - we don’t have to be afraid, we don’t have to live in guilt and shame - we have been set free from sin’s curse and power and can live for God.

The Grand Purpose of Perseverance is to Glorify God

The purpose of your salvation, sanctification, and glorification is not primarily about you - it is to give glory to God, to make much of God, to show off the character of God, to reveal the truth about who God is to the world by the way you believe and live out those beliefs.

In every action, in every emotion you need to ask yourself am I acting this way, am I feeling this way with a motivation to glorify God or is this way of feeling and acting to glorify me, to make much of me.

Remember - the very heart of every sin is self-worship, self-glorification. You can boil down most of our personal problems, sin issues, marriage difficulties, church conflicts - its simply living for my glory rather than for the glory of God. Its the me monster - I feel, I need, I want, ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME- GIVE ME, GIVE ME GIVE ME, I NEEED I NEED I WANT I WANT, I FEEL, I FEEL - Your biggest problem, My biggest problem, and the greatest threat to perseverance is living to make much of ME - rather than making much of God.

So you can boil sanctification down to this - learning how to make less of self and more of Christ, there is freedom and and peace in repenting of self-worship and learning to glory in Jesus.

Let me give you a current example - Max Lucado - apologized last week for preaching sermon on biblical marriage back in 2004 because he offended the LGBTQ crowd - in his apology he actually asked Jesus to forgive him for preaching God’s Word - it was actually blasphemy and a complete exercise in self-worship and self-preservation - to invoke a confession to Jesus for preaching his Words as if Jesus is ok for us to be embarrased by him - NO, this was self worship, self preservation, self-glorification!

You will not persevere if you have no desire to glorify Christ - you will do the Lucado cave in. You will not be effective for the Kingdom if you do not grow in living to make much of Jesus. You wont break the bonds of habitual sin if you don’t grow in treasuring Jesus and living for His Glory!

Conclusion: Bear With My Word of Exhortation

What do we do with exhortation - we have been exhorted in this book to hold fast the confession of our hope with out wavering! We have been exhorted to grow and persevere, and to pursue holiness.

“I ask Christ for this one thing only, that He will enable me to endure all things courageously, and that He break me as a potter’s vessel or make me strong, as it pleases Him.”

ULRICH ZWINGLI