3. Therefore . . . Draw near

This transcript has been automatically generated

Do you remember a few years ago when those, um, first the good news, now for the bad news jokes were all the rage? The best one that I ever heard of was one that went like this, where Moses came down from Mount Horeb holding the commandments he’d just been given by God, and he gathered the children of Israel and said, just keep taking the tablets.

He said, right, first the good news. I managed to get them down to 10.

The people all clapped and cheered. Now for the bad news, he said. Adultery is still in.

Tonight’s sermon is a bit like that, in that there is both the good news and the bad news tonight. Actually, it’s a very important way to teach, isn’t it? To teach both the positive and the negative of something, both the negative and the positive of something. And often people don’t get the point of what you’re trying to say until you’ve made both clear. I mean, for example, Jesus said, I’m the way, the truth, and the life.

A positive statement. People say, yes, that’s very nice. But he also said, nobody comes to the Father but by me. The negative. Saying the same thing but in a negative way.

And people get up in arms about the exclusivity of the claims that Jesus makes.

So perhaps you’d take your Bible and turn to Hebrews chapter 10 tonight and the passage that Elspeth just read. And as we study that passage tonight, we’re gonna first of all see the positive I said last week that your biggest problem was your need to be forgiven.

And I pointed out that according to the writer of the letter to Hebrews, and actually much more importantly according to God, that there was forgiveness to be found in Jesus and only there. That there was no hope outside of him for that greatest problem. And that’s why there’s so much emphasis on the completeness of Christ. And I was saying last week that Hebrews shows us that in Jesus God has said all he needs to say, and that in Jesus God has done all he needs to do. And the verse that we reached last week, chapter 10, verse 18, is the end of a section that’s been going on for 6 chapters.

Where he’s been making that point of the, the finished work of what Jesus has done. And the passage that we’re looking at tonight, verses 19 to 25, act both as a kind of conclusion to all that he’s been saying about this finished work of Christ, and also a kind of introduction to what he’s going to go on to say to next. To put it simply, this is a passage of application. What to do about the truth that he’s been explaining. And as you look through the passage, you’ll see that 3 times he says, let us do something.

Verse 22, let us draw near. Verse 23, let us hold fast. Verse 24, let us consider how to stir one another up. Now, because this passage is a conclusion, there are lots of technical terms used in this passage, which he’s introduced and explained earlier in the past 6 chapters. And I don’t want us to get bogged down tonight by going into detail as to what he means with all of the phrases that he uses.

I want to stick to one main point tonight, to the one thing that the writer to the Hebrews is saying in this paragraph, and it’s this: he’s saying cling to Jesus. Because he is your only hope. Stick at being a Christian from now right till the very end of your lives. So that, if you like, is the positive of what he’s saying. But he’s also, at the same time as saying that, he’s making a negative point, if you like.

You see, to say the brilliant things that he’s saying about Jesus, to say those things another way around, is to show at the same time the end of the temple. Which is the focal point of Judaism.

Apparently there’s a sign on the entrance to a factory in Northern Ireland which reads, religion stops at these gates.

Christianity we allow in.

Takes a moment for the penny to drop on that one. Now, of course, it depends which side of the fence you’re on as to how you read that notice. But without any double entendre, the writer to Hebrews says religion stops here. You see, by saying, by showing that Jesus is all, he’s saying religion stops here. By saying religion stops here, he’s showing that the completeness, the total adequacy of Jesus, of what God has done in Jesus.

And this is very important because the readers of this letter, the readers of Hebrews, were in danger of slipping back into that Judaism, into that Jewish religion. And we saw last week, didn’t we, in verse 26 of chapter 10, where he’s talking about if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, then no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. We saw that that sin that he’s speaking about there is the sin of Hebrews, the sin of apostasy, of giving up on Jesus. And he’s saying there that if I give up on Jesus, then there’s no other shelter, no other refuge. If I step back from him, then there’s nowhere else to turn.

So in verses 19 to 25, he’s gonna say, stick at it. And in verses 26 following, which we won’t be looking at tonight, he says, and don’t slip from it. And these 3 let us phrases that we’re going to look at tonight, which are my 3 headings, he’s gonna say clearly what he means by sticking at being a Christian. And that is the main point then: stick at being a Christian from now till the end of your lives. So let’s look at these 3 headings then, and the first one is draw near, verse 22.

And in fact, this is what verses 19 to 22 are all about.

I don’t know if you have any idea what a Jewish temple would have been like. It was basically a whole series of no entry signs, of barriers to entry. The kind of outer bit of the temple, the first bit, anybody could go in. But then the next bit, no Gentiles could go in, so that would be nearly all of us cut out. The next bit, no women could go into.

The next bit, only priests could go into. The next bit, only one person could go into, and at that only once a year. And that last barrier was into a special bit of the temple, the heart of the temple, called the Holy of Holies, or the sanctuary. It was the heart of Jewish worship. And just before that bit, the barrier, the no entry sign, there was a curtain that was 9 inches thick.

And behind that 9-inch thick curtain represented the very presence of God. The whole thing, the whole system of all these kind of barriers to entry, was like a massive visual aid, because every time you went to the temple as a Jew, which would be often, you’d realise clearly in front of your face it’s being declared to you the otherness of God. I can’t go in.

So it’s a funny thing to be shut out like that. About a year ago, I was taken to a gentlemen’s club in London. The whole thing was like stepping back in time. It’s absolutely amazing. And it seemed to me the whole thing was modelled very much on the temple.

Except, uh, in this case, the inner sanctum was the billiard room. You know, the first bit anybody could go in, including women, and, uh, the next bit men could go into, the next bit members only, and then there was the billiard room.

And the temple is very similar to that. No entry signs restricting who could go in all the way right into this middle bit. Where nobody could go into except one man once a year.

Imagine then that you’re a Jew and that you’re alive at the time of Jesus’ life, and you just happen to be in the temple on the day that Jesus dies. You’re vaguely aware of the events, what’s going on in the city, obviously not the exact details of what’s going on in Jesus’ being crucified and so on. It’s soon after 3 o’clock, you’re in the temple, and suddenly there is this horrendous noise. It must have been horrendous because there was a curtain 9 inches thick being ripped apart from the top to the bottom.

It’s what happened at the moment that Jesus died, and the writers of the Gospels include it to explain the significance of what was going on at the moment that Jesus died. Now just think, you’re in the middle of this massive visual aid saying, no entry, no entry, no entry, and the inner sanctum is suddenly opened up by this curtain being torn in half. It says in a massively clear way, doesn’t it, anybody can now go in, anybody can approach God. And therefore, also at the same time, the temple, this visual aid that you can’t go in is over. All those no entry signs become redundant.

See, at that moment, history changes. It can never be the same again.

Now look at verses 19 and 20, because that’s exactly what these 2 verses are describing. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened up for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and so on and so on. Let us draw near through his flesh. At the end of verse 20, he’s saying that’s the point of entry, that’s the way into that innermost part of the temple, into the place that represented the presence of God. That is the way into it, through that death of Jesus.

I mentioned earlier, didn’t I, about the, the one annual foray that the high priest could make into that middle bit, into the Holy of Holies. On that day, the Day of Atonement, everybody drew near. Draw near is a technical term, but only metaphorically, because it was only the priest who could actually go into that innermost part. Everybody else did in, in the fact that they were represented by him, but of course actually they didn’t go in. Now verse 22 says, let us draw near.

Not metaphorically, but really, let us draw near.

On that day, the high priest used to go through elaborate ceremonies of washing and cleansing himself. He used to be sprinkled with blood. He used to wash himself very thoroughly. As kind of picture language to show how he needed to be cleaned up to go inside. Look at verse— what verse 22 says: Let us draw near with a true heart, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, our bodies washed with pure water.

You see, we’re similarly cleaned up to be allowed in We’re— through Jesus’ death, we’re forgiven, as we saw last week. So the cleaning up that we get isn’t a kind of picture cleaning up like the high priest had. It’s a real cleaning up, an internal cleaning up by our sins being forgiven.

On that day, everybody stood outside waiting to see what would happen to the high priest. Would he re-emerge? Or would he be struck down by God in his anger? Would he manage to appease God, was the idea. Look at what this passage says about us.

We can draw near, verse 22, in full assurance of faith. Verse 19, we have confidence to enter. See, unlike the priest, we’re not wondering if the sacrifice would be acceptable. We’re not waiting to see if we can get away with it, because the torn curtain says that the sacrifice was acceptable to God.

Do you see how the picture language of the temple is changed to say we can go straight into God’s presence? We have access to that Holy of Holies, if you like. We have access into the very presence of God. And I don’t think this is a passage saying how brilliant it is we can come to God and pray Though it is brilliant that we can come to God and pray, and that may be one application of what he’s saying. The main point here is saying that there is nothing standing between me and the God of the universe.

And I just want you to think for a moment what an amazing thing that is to say to an average Christian.

I mean, the, the average Christian, the average person, is just that. Average, aren’t we? And we have no great importance in the eyes of the world, do we? It’s one of life’s frustrations, isn’t it? And for example, some injustice gets done to us, some small thing, whatever it is, and we seem to have no access to the great ones who could put things right.

We feel sort of pushed around by low-grade bureaucrats and jobsworths. It’s possible to spend hours waiting in waiting rooms for the— awaiting the pleasure of some subordinate official. It’s part of life. But believers have access where it really counts. See, the humblest of people now have got a way into the very presence of God, to the throne room of heaven.

We have his ear. If you like. The instruction then to draw near in verse 22 is an instruction to, to come to God that way. Become a Christian believer, in other words. Come to God that way, through Jesus.

And anybody can, says this passage. The fact that anybody can now boldly go where only the high priest metaphorically went before. Well, that’s the most amazing fact in the universe. If it doesn’t seem it to you, it shows you don’t know God very well.

It’s a massive freeway being built where previously there were no entry signs.

Of course, the supreme irony of Victorian church buildings is that they started to put up the no entry signs again. And what Jesus abolished, Victorian architects put up again. Things like this screen establishing a new barrier to the Holy of Holies.

All the barriers are down. Anybody can enter. That’s the message here.

But also, to say the same thing, if you like, negatively, that means that the temple is ended.

Buildings are not God’s dwelling place. We don’t go to a building to meet God. We don’t go to a temple to be told no entry. The message now is entrance. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?

Because the man on the Clapham omnibus thinks that we come to church in order to, to keep it going. That’s the vicar’s job, isn’t it, after all, to keep religion going somehow? We don’t need religion though, do we? And all we need is the Lord Jesus, and then we have access into the very throne room of God. We’ve got all that religion ever tried to do.

If we’ve got him, then we can draw near according to this passage. A church in the New Testament is not about religion and ceremonies and services. It’s about Christians gathered around Christ. That’s the picture of the church in the New Testament. When Jesus was on earth and started to establish his church, he called 12 disciples to represent the new Israel and called them to be with him.

He looked at the people who were sitting around him in a room and says, this is the new family. He said, where 2 or 3 people gather in my name, there am I. There is the church. For us, that’s gonna mean gathered around his word, because we don’t have the physical Jesus here. But that’s the church.

That’s all we need, the Lord Jesus, because then we have access into God’s presence.

I don’t know whether you’ve been looking up at the skies this week in the evening. They’ve been fantastically clear, the night sky this week. And at the beginning of the week, there were brilliant crescent moons in the sky. Well, one crescent moon.

Now, when you see that crescent moon, you don’t say, there’s a part of the moon. You say, there’s the moon. And exactly the same way, when you see a part of the church, 2 or 3 gathered around Christ, around his word, you don’t say there’s a bit of the church. There is the church. Your RML group is the church.

Your fellowship group is the church. That was one of Martin Luther’s great discoveries in the Reformation, that wherever Christ gathers his people, there is the church. You don’t need any other paraphernalia, no religious paraphernalia to make it sound or look or smell like church. You just need the Lord Jesus, his work, and faith in it, because that’s how we may draw near.

Second thing, verse 23: hold fast.

As some people who like these kind of things see in these 3 let us phrases But the first one is, is talking about faith in verse 22. The second one is talking about hope in verse 23, and the fourth one is talking about love in verse 24. So we’ve got the famous threesome of the New Testament: faith, hope, and love. And it’s possible to see with not too much squeezing that chapter 11, which follows chapter 10, is about faith. Chapter 12 about hope, and chapter 13 about love.

It’s a bit neat, but maybe it helps to see the structure of Hebrews. I don’t know that it actually helps a great deal in understanding what he’s saying here in verse 23. Let’s read verse 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. The main point of this verse, it seems to me, is persevere, keep going.

That’s what hold fast means. That’s actually the gist of the whole book. Christ is enough. We, we’ve seen how, for example, in terms of access to God, he is all we need. So stick with him.

So picking a verse at random, look at the last verse of chapter 10. We are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but are those who have faith and keep their souls. See, this verse is saying Christians are people who don’t shrink back, who keep going, who have faith to the end. That’s the definition of a true Christian. Chapter 11 is a, a list of people from the Old Testament like that, who did persevere, who didn’t shrink back, who were Christian believers to the very end.

And look in chapter 11, verse 1, how closely linked hope and faith are. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. In other words, what I’m saying is that it’s not so much, I’ve told you to have faith in verse 22, now let me in verse 23 tell you to hope, but rather you have access now to God through the death of Jesus Verse 22. Hold on to that. Persevere in that.

Don’t let go of that in verse 23. Keep going. Continue to be a Christian believer. Continue right to the very end. Continue right up until the day at the end of verse 25, the day when God steps in to wind everything up, the day when God calls everyone to account.

For the writer to the Hebrews, there’s no real distinction in his mind between being accepted into God’s presence and being in heaven, except in terms of timing. Other than the time delay, those 2 things are virtually the same.

So in verse 22, he’s telling us then to draw near, to become a Christian. It’s a fantastic privilege that we have now. But it’s invisible, isn’t it?

When the, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, everybody could see him drawing near, going into, having access to the presence of God. But now when you enter God’s presence by becoming a Christian, by using that new and living way, who can see it?

It’s not actually until that day, the day at the end of time, when things are going to be seen as they really are. Only then it’ll be clear that Jewish religion didn’t get me to God. Only then will it be clear that it was only the new and living way opened up in Jesus that did get me there. Of course, that makes it hard now that we can’t see that the living way, the new and living way, actually works. I was saying last week how the constant activity of priests, always being on his feet, always having another sacrifice to do, that looks more impressive, it looks more real.

So it’s much easier to keep believing in because you can see it, it seems to be doing something.

What do we actually have according to this verse to keep believing in? To keep foundational to our living? Well, look at what it says in verse 23. What we actually have is a promise and our hope in that promise. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope, for he who promised is faithful.

We have a promise, and that is our hope. Now, that same hope is described by the writer elsewhere in Hebrews as an anchor. Now, why does a ship need an anchor? Well, a ship needs an anchor to stop it drifting, especially when it gets rough.

Why do Christians need an anchor? Well, Christians need an anchor to stop them drifting, especially when it gets rough. And this verse is saying, persevere in being a Christian. Don’t drift from Jesus. And what is going to stop me from drifting?

Not looking at now, but looking at the future, looking at what God will do, what he’s promised to do, which he— for example, in chapter 9, verse 28, just a paragraph earlier— what he will do is to save those who are waiting eagerly for him. That’s the hope. That’s the anchor.

My parents prided themselves on never telling me a lie. It’s actually quite a difficult thing to do with children. I mean, for example, what do you say to your 3-year-old when they ask about Father Christmas? But anyway, they claimed that they never told me a lie. That meant that I grew up finding my parents completely trustworthy.

I knew that when they said something, they meant it. They would do it.

How brilliant though my parents are, they’re a tiny reflection of God, who is completely trustworthy about what he promises. And just as I as a child grew up with loads of security because I knew that what my parents said they would do So the Christian has loads of security because we know that what God says he will do, he will do. That’s our hope, that’s our anchor, that’s real security to stop us drifting from Christ, that future perspective.

For Jews, of course, their security was at the temple. Going there kept them going there. That was their home, if you liked.

For Christians, our anchor to keep us going is heaven. It’s invisible, but it’s certain. Keep your eyes on that, verse 23 says, and if you do, you’ll cling to Jesus for life to the end if you have your eyes set on the future.

So then, first of all, verse 22, let us draw near Not at the temple, but through Jesus. Become a believer. Cling to him.

Secondly, let us hold fast. Stay a believer to the end. Don’t give up. Hold fast, not to the temple, but to the finished work of Jesus. Thirdly, verse 24, let us consider.

Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works.

Why did the Jew come to the temple? Well, he came to perform certain rites, to offer sacrifices and so on, to do his religion. Well, of course, the Christian hasn’t got a temple. The way to God isn’t there, it’s in Jesus. Security isn’t there, it’s in the hope of heaven.

So it’s not surprising that the New Testament doesn’t have the Christian going to the temple to do his religion. Doesn’t need to. In fact, and this is a very interesting point, in fact, the word religion is only once used in the whole of the New Testament to describe what Christians do. And I want you to keep a hand in Hebrews 10 and turn on to see this in James chapter 1, just 2 pages on. James chapter 1, verse 27.

The only time that religion is used to describe what Christians do. James 1:27: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. What, according to James, is the religious Christian doing? The religious Christian.

Going to church 4 times on a Sunday before 9 o’clock in the morning, praying 25 hours a day, he’s helping the needy and keeping godly.

The Jews said, come to the temple to do your religion. The New Testament said, don’t come to church, but go into the world to do your religion. Now come back to Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 24. Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. It’s a radical definition of what it means to be religious.

It means to love and to do good to my neighbour.

Do you remember that occasion in Mark, early in Mark, when Jesus on the Sabbath day is in the synagogue And as usual, the religious authorities are there to try and catch him out. And there’s a man there with a withered hand, and the question the religious authorities are asking is, is Jesus gonna do anything for this guy? Is he gonna do something that we could call work? And so we’d have him for breaking the Sabbath laws.

And Jesus turns to them and says, look, what’s the point of your law? What does all your religion lead you to do? To do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill. Because the religion that Jesus institutes is a religion centred not on the temple, not on church, but on doing good out in the real world. It absolutely takes your breath away, this, about how radical this is in terms of the Jewish temple.

You see, access to God is now not in the temple but through Jesus. My home and security, it’s not in the temple but in heaven. My religion, it’s not in the temple but out in the world. Actually, this is very radical as well in terms of us and church, isn’t it? And what do we need church for?

We can come to God on my own. I just need the work of Christ and faith in that. I can have security in heaven on my own. My religion isn’t in churchgoing, in services, in worship. It’s out in the world.

Church seems to be getting a big— pretty bad press in this sermon. So why do we go to church? Why do we meet together as Christians? Well, I thought it was time for a commercial break, so here it is.

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So why do we meet together?

I can come to God on my own, can sing on my own, can pray on my own, I can read the Bible on my own, can fall asleep to sermon tapes on my own.

Verse 24, verse 25, why do we meet together? Well, we meet together to do the one thing that we can’t do on our own, which is, I can’t encourage you on my own.

Draw near, verse 22, is an instruction to cling to Christ because there’s only access to God there. Verse 23 is an exhortation in hold fast. It’s an exhortation to stick at being a Christian to the very end.

Verse 24, consider, is an encouragement to work out ways of keeping one another at being Christian, at keeping each other sticking to Christ. Be a Christian, verse 22. Stay a Christian, verse 23. Do all you can to make sure that your fellow Christian stays a Christian. Verse 24: Let us consider, says the writer.

Implies hard thought required. If you’re a Christian, you come to church to stir me up, to encourage me to love and good works, to keep going to the end. How are you gonna do that? It’s sort of, uh, not natural, is it? Actually very challenging, isn’t it?

We come to church primarily to talk.

Maybe After 8 is more important than what we do in Sunday at 7. Maybe your Read, Mark, Learn or your fellowship group is a better model for church than Sunday at 7. Because that’s the place where we can talk and encourage one another, spur each other on.

And what do we actually talk about when we talk to each other? And how do you do it, well, in a way that doesn’t seem terribly intense? How can we practically talk and build one another up? I don’t know, but it seems to me it’s going to require a lot of thought for us to work out how we can do that. That’s why he says, let us consider.

You probably know that as a church here we have links with a number of church groups in Romania, and about once a year a group of people from here go over to Romania to meet with some of the Christian churches over there that we have links with. And there’s a group of 4 people from St. Helen’s over in Romania last weekend. One of the striking things that they said they encountered in the churches they visited was that in a number of the places that they went to, people arrived more than an hour before the service. It’s quite striking.

But the interesting thing was that when these people from St. Helen’s arrived at church for the church service time, they found that all these people who’d been there for an hour or more were all clustered around the church in small groups talking and praying.

Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t sing or we shouldn’t pray. We shouldn’t worship when we come to church. But it’s very interesting that somebody has recently done some research looking into the New Testament at what was— what the distinctive thing was that Christians got together in the New Testament to do. Why did they get together?

What was the distinctive thing about their meeting together? And it isn’t worship. We may well worship when we get together, but that isn’t the thing that marks it out. In the New Testament. According to this passage, that’s not the reason.

The reason for meeting together is to do all we can to keep each other Christian. And after all, that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Because it’s only there— to go back to last week’s sermon— it’s only there that I’ll find forgiveness, and so the answer to my greatest problem.

The Jews’ missionary message was come to the temple.

The Christian’s missionary message is, come to Jesus, cling to him to the very end.

Let’s pray.

Give us grace as a church, Father God, to work out ways to encourage one another to do that.

For Jesus’ sake. Amen.