Holding Fast by Drawing Near

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

I’m probably aging myself here, but when I was in elementary school, we learned a rule to help us learn the correct way to spell these two homophones:

principle

principal

The first word means “a fundamental truth”. The second one is the person who is in charge of a school. And I was taught that the way to remember that is that the last three letters are “pal” because the principal is our pal. But that isn’t always the case is it?

So let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever had to go to the principal's office? Maybe even on a trip to Nogales to play volleyball, right Pam?

I can still remember when I was in Junior High School and I got called out of class one day to go to the principal’s office. My hands started to sweat and I suddenly felt sick. After all, I’d seen people get called to the principal's office, never to return again - or at least that is how I remembered it at the time. So I really wasn’t looking forward to my visit there.

By the way, I need to give you the whole story about Pam’s trip to the principal’s office in Nogales. The principal there was a good friend of mine - he was actually a groomsman in our wedding. So he was just pulling a prank and Pam really wasn’t in any trouble - at least that time.

I’ll finish the story of my trip to the principal a little later.

Tension

Unfortunately, a lot of us tend to picture God kind of like I thought of my school principal. We view God as a strict taskmaster who is just waiting to catch us doing something wrong so that He can punish us. And the problem with that is that it often keeps us from drawing near to God at those times in our lives when we need Him the most. So when we’ve succumbed to temptation or when we’ve committed the same sin one more time, instead of drawing near to God, our natural tendency is often to run from Him.

But the passage we will study today will help us understand better why and how we need to draw near to God in those situations.

Truth

Originally I planned to cover everything up through verse 10 of chapter 5 this morning, but the more I dug into the last three verses of chapter 4, the more I sensed that I didn’t want to take away from the crucial ideas and principles in that short section. So we’ll cover the first part of chapter 5 next week.

Since it is only three verses, will you go ahead and read the passage out loud with me:

Hebrews 4:14–16 ESV

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Here is the main idea we’re going to develop this morning:

Because of Jesus, God’s throne is a throne of grace

In the first century, when this letter was written, the phrase “throne of grace” was an oxymoron. In that culture, a throne was a forbidding place of sovereign authority and judgment. As we see in the book of Esther, if you approached a throne and the king did not hold out his scepter, you were toast. So certainly no one would draw near to seek sympathy or help, especially if they had done something wrong. Even today, if you try to enter the White House without an appointment, you risk being shot by snipers.

Now it is true that God’s throne is a place of judgment. And everyone who has not placed their faith in Jesus will one say stand before that throne and be condemned to eternal punishment. So, as we’ve seen throughout this letter, the author is trying to convince his readers that they don’t want to go back to their old Jewish religion, which offered no hope that anyone could avoid that judgment. Only through Jesus is God’s throne a throne of grace.

In this passage, there are two exhortations. Can you help me identify them?

The first one is found in verse 14:

…let us hold fast our confession...

The verb “hold fast” means “to cling to something tenaciously, with all one’s strength”. As Ryan pointed out a few weeks ago, the word “confession” is used here in Hebrews in the sense of our “profession” of our faith in Jesus. The author is exhorting his readers to hang on to their confession of Jesus as their Lord and Savior with everything they have. He is pleading with them to stick with their public profession that Jesus is greater than anything or anyone and that therefore He is worthy of their trust. He is begging them not go back to their old Jewish religion which depended on what they could do rather than what Jesus had already done for them.

I love what the great preacher Charles Spurgeon said about holding fast:

Shall we desert Him now that He has gone into heaven to represent us now that He has fought the fight, and won the victory on our behalf, and gone up to heaven as our Representative? God forbid!

But how are we to do that? That’s where the second exhortation comes in. We find that in verse 16:

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace...

The main way that we adhere to the first exhortation - to hold fast to our confession - is to observe the second exhortation - to draw near to the throne of grace. So we could say...

We hold fast by drawing near

The verb “draw near” is a compound word that literally means “to come facing forward”. And we are exhorted to do that “with confidence”. That phrase literally means “all speech” and the idea is that we can come before the throne of grace with the freedom to speak what is on our mind without fear. That obviously does not mean that we can be irreverent, but it does mean that we can be open and honest with God.

It is important to note that the verbs in both of these exhortations are present tense verbs, which means this is something we must do continually. It’s not something we just do once and forget it.

In our remaining time, I want to first identify why we can hold fast by drawing near and then close by making this really practical by talking about how we do that.

WHY I CAN HOLD FAST BY DRAWING NEAR

Because of who Jesus is

The author gives us these two exhortations and then he tells us that the key to carrying them both out is to look at Jesus. And when we do that we discover that He is...

The great high priest

We are not nearly as familiar with the role of the high priest as the readers of this letter would have been. The high priest was the number one person in the Old Testament religious system. His chief job was to represent the people once a year before God on the Day of Atonement and make sacrifices to cover for their sin. He had to repeat that sacrifice year after year. And when he died, another person in the line of Aaron would take his place and do the same thing until he died.

That system was never meant to last forever. It pointed ahead to Jesus who was not just a high priest. He is the great high priest who sacrificed Himself on our behalf once for all. On the cross He made a complete and final atonement for our sins that never has to be repeated.

...who is seated at the right hand of the Father

The Old Testament high priests had to pass through the curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies in order to make their sacrifices. And they would have to stand the entire time they were there. They would never even think of sitting.

But Jesus did something far greater. At His resurrection the curtail in the Temple was torn in half from top to bottom to show that through Jesus, all men now have access to God. After His resurrection Jesus “passed through the heavens” and took a seat at the right hand of the Father, where He continually intercedes on behalf of those who have placed their faith in Him. He can sit, because His work of atoning for, or covering, our sins is complete.

What we’ve learned so far might make us think that Jesus is so far above us that He couldn’t possibly be concerned with the details of our lives. But the author reminds us that He is a high priest...

...who is both God and man

We’ve seen this idea expressed throughout the first part of Hebrews, but the author reminds us of this once again in verse 14 when he refers to Jesus as “Jesus, the Son of God”. Jesus is His human name and “Son of God” points to His deity. So at this point, we’re led to believe that since He is a man as well as God, Jesus might be able to identify with us to some degree. Then in verse 15, we see clearly that Jesus is a high priest...

...who knows what we’re going through

I think this is really the essence of this passage. Obviously the author does not know that it is improper to use a double negative, but the point he makes is clear nonetheless. Because He became a man and experienced everything that we do, Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.

Today, it has become a bit of a cliche to say “I feel your pain”. But that is exactly what Jesus does. The word translated “sympathize” is a compound word that means “to suffer along with”. Jesus is moved by our sorrow and our fears and our pain and our failures. He literally does feel our pain.

We can draw near to God because Jesus knows what it is like to be us. He knows what it is like to be hungry and thirsty. He knows what it is like to be mocked and maligned and betrayed by friends. He knows what it is like to face physical agony. And He knows what it is like to face the same temptations I face.

That means that when we come to the throne of grace and admit the things we’re afraid to admit to anyone else, we’re not going to face judgment and condemnation. Instead we’re going to hear “I understand that. I was tempted like that, too.” When we’re inclined to think that God can’t possibly understand what we’re going through, what we learn instead is that we can’t possibly understand what Jesus went through. He was tempted in ways we will never understand and yet never gave in to those temptations.

I hope you can now understand better why...

Because of Jesus, God’s throne is a throne of grace

Application

Let’s close our time by talking about...

HOW TO DRAW NEAR TO GOD WITH CONFIDENCE

Take my problems to God first

Satan’s basic strategy is to keep us from coming to God’s throne at all. He will use fear, shame, guilt or whatever lie will work to keep us from coming to the throne of grace. He wants us to believe the lie that God is unapproachable. And if that doesn’t work, he’ll attempt to get us to come timidly and fearfully into God’s presence.

And we can also put up our own roadblocks that keep us from God’s throne. We all need help. But I think we often sense that because of our sin we don’t really deserve help, and, as a result, we’re reluctant to take our problems to God. So we end up either denying that we have problems or we go looking for answers in all the wrong places.

The fact is that none of us deserve help. But when we take our problems to God first, we not only find help but we also receive what we need the most - mercy and grace:

mercy - not getting the punishment I deserve

grace - getting the blessing I don’t deserve

Instead of beating ourselves up over our sin or wallowing in despair over our problems, we need to go straight to the throne of grace. When we have problems, God should always be our first response, not our last resort.

Be honest

We saw earlier that the idea of approaching the throne with confidence means that we should be free to speak what is on our mind without fear of reprisal. So we should never be afraid to be honest with God. We should never allow our fear or our shame or our guilt to keep us from being candid with God about our fears, our temptations and our failures.

Let’s face it, God already knows everything about us so it just doesn’t make any sense at all to play games with Him. Just have an honest conversation with Him.

Wait on God’s help

In verse 16, we see that the purpose of God’s grace is to provide the help that we need. But unfortunately there is a tendency on our part to miss that help when it comes. That can occur in two ways:

We can miss God’s help because it comes in a different form than we expect. Remember here that the purpose of drawing near to the throne of grace is to help us hold fast to our confession. It is not necessarily for our comfort or convenience. That means that God’s help won’t always be to take away some temptation or deliver us from some trial.

Sometimes God wants us to take some concrete action to deal with our temptation. Perhaps you are struggling with some kind of addiction - to drugs, or alcohol or gambling or pornography. While God is certainly capable of taking away that desire in our lives, often He wants us to take some action like join a support group or find an accountability partner who can help us deal with that temptation.

And sometimes God wants to use some trial in our lives to help us grow in our walk with Him or to be able to minister to someone else who is going through a similar trial. So He doesn’t just remove that from our life. Probably the best biblical example of that is Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”. Paul prayed three times for God to take it away, but God’s response was, “My grace is sufficient for you.” We’re never told what that thorn in the flesh was or why God didn’t remove it, but we can be assured it was for Paul’s good.

We can also miss God’s help because it comes at a time that is different than what we’re expecting. The phrase “in time of need” in verse 16 literally means “well timed”. In our culture, we would say “in the nick of time”. The idea here is that God will provide the help we need at exactly the right time - not too soon and not too late. God will give us the help we need, but not until we truly need it.

That means that when God is not moving as rapidly as I’d like, I need to just hold fast to Him and rejoice that He loves me and cares for me and that He is for me and that He will work at the right time according to His timetable and not mine.

Action

This morning we all come here with different needs that God wants to meet as we draw near to the throne of grace.

For all of us our biggest need is for our sins to be forgiven so that we can have a relationship with a holy God. And the only way to accomplish that is by putting our faith in our great high priest, Jesus. If you’ve never done that, then you can’t hold fast to your confession because you don’t have one. But you can remedy that very easily this morning by doing the things we’ve talked about:

Take your sin to God. Be honest about it. Agree with God that because you have rebelled against Him and His ways that you have sinned and that there is nothing you can do to cover that sin.

Put your faith in Jesus alone and trust that His death and resurrection is adequate to cover your sins and make it possible for you to have a relationship with God.

Ask Jesus to guide your life and commit to following His ways.

You can do this right now wherever you are. You don’t need any fancy words or to pray a certain prayer. Just have a conversation with God and tell Him what you want to do. And then let us know you’ve done that so we can help you take your next steps in your walk with Jesus.

From everything I know, it is likely that most of you have already made that commitment. But maybe you’re struggling with some temptation in your life that you just keep giving in to over and over. Or maybe you’re going through some trial or difficulty in your life right now. For some of you, those problems have become so overbearing that you’re ready to give up your faith.

My encouragement to you this morning is don’t give up! Jesus loves you. He not only knows what you’re going through, He has been through far worse Himself. He loves you, He is for you, He wants to pour out mercy and grace into your life. But you have to draw near to the throne of grace by applying the principles we’ve talked about today, knowing that...

Because of Jesus, God’s throne is a throne of grace

Inspiration

I told you earlier that I’d tell you the rest of the story of my trip to the principal’s office. I nervously made my way to Mr. McKellar’s office. He invited me to step in and take a seat. My math teacher, Mrs. Torgerson, was there as well and I quickly began to think about what I might have done in her class that could have gotten me in trouble and while nothing came to mind, I still was waiting for the boom to be lowered.

But then to my surprise and relief, I was told the reason I had been called to the office was because I was going to receive some kind of math award at the end of the school year. The fact that I won a math award still amazes me to this day. Talk about an act of mercy and grace! Unfortunately, I had worried and fretted for no reason at all because I had let my own unfounded, inaccurate picture of what it meant to go to the principal’s office fill my mind.

My prayer for you is that you won’t do the same with God. As we see clearly in this passage, the very worse thing you can ever do when you’re having problems in your life is to run from God. Instead you need to run toward Him and draw near to Him, knowing that He loves you and is for you and wants the very best for your life.