1. "We are more than what we do. Our identity is more than our activities. Our business cards do not sum up our whole persons, whether you're an uncle, or a nurse, or a mountain climber, or a virgin, or a smoker. None of those is all of who you are."

2. "One of the most confusing changes that has overtaken Western countries in the last century with accelerating speed in the last decade has been the reduction of persons to what we do. Activity becomes identity."

3. "The Christian duty in our topsy-turvy age, as in every topsy-turvy age before ours—it's the nature of a fallen world, we go from one topsy-turvy age to another one, we go from one distortion of God's creation into another—the Christian duty is to speak and live in such a way that we give testimony to the truth."

4. "It was his future hope that dictated his current identity. That's the way it is with Christians."

5. "Memory is so much a part of how we live, how we experience our life. Memory is how we understand the significance of our actions today. So for you today, friend, remembering why you obeyed the Lord in the past may help you obey today."

6. "You have need for something that lasts longer than your furniture. We have all we need really eternally in Christ. And knowing that lets us accept loss in this life with joy. Because we realize what's being taken from us is nothing that we really need."

7. "God's gracious welcome to us cannot be taken from us, even by our death."

8. "Every day the world holds out false bargains to us. Every day we need to see through to the truth."

9. "You could almost reduce every book in the Bible into God saying to those who will follow him, 'Trust me. I'm doing this. Trust me.' God can always be trusted."

10. "Life in this fallen world is one long testing of the combination lock of your heart. Whatever would tempt you to think that Christ is not worth living for is attempting to deceive you right now."

Observation Questions

1. According to Hebrews 10:32-33, what kinds of sufferings did the recipients of this letter endure "after they were enlightened"?

2. In Hebrews 10:34, what two specific actions did these believers take that demonstrated their faith, and what reason does the text give for why they could act this way?

3. What does the writer command in Hebrews 10:35, and what motivation does he attach to this command?

4. According to Hebrews 10:36, what do the recipients "have need of," and what is the purpose or result of having it?

5. In Hebrews 10:37-38, what promise does the writer give about "the coming One," and what does he say about how "my righteous one" shall live?

6. In Hebrews 10:39, what contrast does the writer draw between two kinds of people, and which group does he identify himself and his readers with?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does the writer begin his exhortation by asking the readers to "recall the former days" (v. 32)? How does remembering past faithfulness serve the purpose of present endurance?

2. What does it mean that these believers "knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one" (v. 34)? How does this knowledge explain their ability to joyfully accept the loss of their earthly property?

3. The sermon emphasized that our identity as Christians is shaped by the future—by where we are headed. How does the promise in verses 37-38 (quoting Habakkuk 2) support the idea that future hope should determine present faithfulness?

4. What is the significance of the contrast between "shrinking back" and "having faith" in verses 38-39? What does "shrinking back" look like practically, and why does the writer say God's soul "has no pleasure" in such a person?

5. How does the shift from "you" (vv. 32-38) to "we" (v. 39) function in the writer's argument? What is he communicating to his readers by including himself in this final declaration?

Application Questions

1. The sermon described how remembering past evidences of God's grace can rekindle present faith. What is one specific instance from your own past where God helped you remain faithful through difficulty, and how might recalling that strengthen you in a current challenge?

2. The early Christians were willing to be "partners with those so treated" (v. 33)—publicly associating with believers who were suffering. Is there someone in your life or church community who is facing reproach or hardship for their faith? What would it look like for you to stand with them this week?

3. The believers in this passage "joyfully accepted the plundering of their property" because they had a better possession. What earthly possession, relationship, or comfort would be most difficult for you to lose? How does the promise of an "abiding" possession in Christ change your grip on that thing?

4. The sermon warned that discouragement, left unchecked, can lead to throwing away our confidence in Christ. What is one area of your Christian walk where you feel tempted to give up or "shrink back"? What practical step could you take this week to endure in that area?

5. The writer says we "have need of endurance" to do the will of God and receive what is promised (v. 36). Endurance is often developed in community. How can your small group or church family specifically help you persevere in following Christ during this season of your life?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Hebrews 11:1-16 — This passage immediately follows the sermon text and provides examples of Old Testament saints who lived by faith in God's promises, illustrating what it looks like to endure without receiving the promise in this life.

2. Habakkuk 2:1-4 — The original context of the quotation in Hebrews 10:37-38, showing how God called His people to wait faithfully for His deliverance even when circumstances seemed hopeless.

3. Romans 8:18-25 — Paul teaches that present sufferings are not worth comparing to future glory, and that Christians are called to wait with patience for the redemption that is promised.

4. 1 Peter 1:3-9 — Peter encourages believers who are suffering various trials by pointing them to their living hope and imperishable inheritance, showing how faith is refined through testing.

5. Philippians 1:19-26 — Paul reflects on his desire to depart and be with Christ, demonstrating how future hope with God shapes a Christian's perspective on life, death, and present service.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Our Identity Is More Than Our Actions: The Modern Reduction of Persons

II. The Christian Duty in a Topsy-Turvy Age: Speaking and Living Truth

III. The Future: We Are Passengers to God's Place (Hebrews 10:39)

IV. The Past: Recalling Former Faithfulness (Hebrews 10:32-34)

V. The Present: The Call to Endure (Hebrews 10:35-38)

VI. Both Past and Future Help Us Endure the Present

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Detailed Sermon Outline

We are more than what we do.

We are more than what we do. Our identity is more than our activities.

Our business cards do not sum up our whole persons, whether you're an an uncle, or a nurse, or a mountain climber, or a virgin, or a smoker. None of those is all of who you are.

One of the most confusing changes that has overtaken Western countries in the last century with accelerating speed in the last decade has been the reduction of persons to what we do. Activity becomes identity. Most significantly in our day, Sigmund Freud convinced many people around us that our sexual activity, or at least our desires, is our real personal identity. He has a sex-centered view of people, and he's convinced much of the world today that he is right in this and that the Bible is wrong.

The Bible, and I think most cultures, have understood that people are much more than the sum of their desires and actions. We have a real existence. We do. We are beings that desire and that act. There is a continuing person with a body, a mind, a soul that makes various decisions about what to do with their desires.

And chooses to act or not to act. We are not best and most accurately described by only looking at our actions or our desired actions, and certainly not by understanding our sexual desires as the most fundamental part of who we are, as important as they are. There's more to us than that. Freud's reduced simplified view of who we are fits well, however, with the materialist age that we live in. Materialist, not in the sense that they want a lot of cars and houses, but materialist in the sense that they believe that the only thing that's real is matter.

The spiritual, whether your soul or God, is not real, says the materialist. You and I are some elements, some matter, some chemicals, our component parts broken down into elements that comprise us would cost only a few dollars. That's it.

You'll notice that such a culture has a difficult time defining very important things like life or gender. Ethics become pagan again. Self-expression triumphs over self-restraint. Life together becomes quite challenging. Disagreement is cast as microaggression.

The Bible's teaching on sin is categorized as hate speech. If history continues, will Christianity be illegal more places in 50 years than it is today?

None of our cultural setting changes the truth of who God is, of how He's made us in His image. A child can close their eyes and imagine that they're invisible, but we can still see them. The Emperor can think of himself splendidly clad in his new clothes, but the little boy could see that he really had nothing on and that it was all a hoax. Friends, the Christian duty in our topsy-turvy age, as in every topsy-turvy age before ours, it's the nature of a fallen world, we go from one topsy-turvy age to another one. We go from one distortion of God's creation into another.

The Christian duty is to speak and live in such a way that we give testimony to the truth. To the world that God has made, to the world that is coming, that we can see and we believe in by faith in Christ even now. We speak of that world. We've been singing of that world movingly this morning already. We teach of that world from the Bible.

And we demonstrate What we mean by all these words we share and pray and sing on Sunday morning by how we live through the week. At least we're supposed to.

Our identity as Christians shapes our lives. But sometimes circumstances seem to call our bluff on what we say we believe. So let's say that you're not an American, but rather you're from Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania in Africa. Let's say that you've boarded an airplane to fly to Dubai to continue taking part in a Christian internship program. But let's say that authorities halt the flight board the plane and take you off.

Officers detain you, interrogate you, pressure you to renounce your faith. What do you do?

That would be a modern example of what the Christians were facing 2,000 years ago very often. And what this New Testament letters of Hebrews seems at least in part to have been written about. We're beginning in our study this morning the last section of Hebrews, the final three chapters of encouragement and instruction. So after the high Christology that we've enjoyed in the previous chapters throughout most of this year, we now switch to wisdom application. You'll find our passage beginning on page 1007 in the Bibles provided.

Our passage is Hebrews chapter 10, the last eight verses of the chapter, verses 32 2 to 39. While you're turning there, and you will be helped to turn there and put your eyes on that, to pay attention to it while we talk, while you're turning there, let me just remind you what this letter of Hebrews is. The writer has argued in the first ten chapters of the book that there is a strong contrast between the Judaism that some of these Jewish Christians were being tempted to turn back to and the truth that they found in Christ. So what this writer has done is basically a verbal comparison. He has, on the one hand, said, There are the Jewish priests at the temple in Jerusalem.

These priests are really servants who, because of their own sin, die. They can only offer sacrifices that have to be repeated because they weren't finally effective, so they keep offering them bulls and goats, which can only make people externally ceremonially clean. And on the other hand, there is the eternal sinless Son of God. Who gave Himself once and for all to make His people actually holy, presented Himself and His offering to His heavenly Father and sat down at the right hand of God as the Messiah to rule and to reign until He returns. Along the way, the writer has warned them of various dangers.

He warned them first back in chapter 2, verse 1, you can turn back there if you want a quick review, pay much closer attention. He says, you know, you'd listen to an angel, but you won't listen to the Son of God. Don't ignore the word that we have from Jesus, and don't just have a sentimental attachment to your idea of Him. Study. Understand who He is, what He's like, what He did.

And having heard that, there's still the danger of unbelief. You'll look over to chapter 3, verse 12, Believe. He says, Take care, brothers, lest there be in you an unclean heart an evil unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Your hearing needs to be more than ear hearing. It needs to be getting into your head and into your heart and stay there.

See this, especially there in chapter 3 and verse 14, For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Sounds a bit like our passage for this morning. So then having believed, there is the third danger. Of stopping. He warns them of this there in chapters 5, verse 12 and on in chapter 6.

Go on, he says. Look there in chapter 6, verse 11. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. And then we come to the fourth danger of not persevering in following God's will. And that's what we see over in chapter 10, the first 18 verses.

He summarizes what he's been teaching about Christ's unique sacrificial role. Christ is the true priest that all the Levitical priests just pointed toward. And so this last time we were in chapter 10, verses 19 to 31, the writer brought before their minds the fateful choice they had between having Christ and rejecting Him. Because with Christ come the privileges of drawing near to God, of holding fast the confession of our hope. We have the responsibility to love each other here in the assembly and give ourselves to stirring up each other, to love and good works.

On the other hand, though, there was the fearfulness that he held out to them of rejecting Christ, sinning when you've rejected the only Savior? If you look in the Bible, you see before Christ there was merciless judgment for the sinner. How much worse punishment for those, he argues, who've rejected Christ? Well, and then so what of all this? The conclusion of it all is the passage we're studying this morning, chapter 10, verses 32 to 39.

Why don't you follow along with me as I read?

But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction. And sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.

For yet a little while, and the coming One will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. Friend, I pray that as we study this passage, you'll be reminded of the one who is coming and what you've already done in the past in serving this Christ and that it will become clearer to you what you should do today and in the week to come. Let's start at the end of our passage.

Look at that last verse, verse 39, as it really points to the future.

We are passengers to God's place to be perfectly with Him. This is who we are. This is our identity. He says in verse 39, But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. The writer is about to illustrate this.

You can tell this is the beginning verse in many ways of chapter 11. He's about to illustrate this with all the examples he gives in that next chapter. Examples of people whose identities were determined by what they believed, by where they were going, by where they knew their destination was. These examples included those of Abraham, and Moses and others, many of whom he doesn't even name. He simply describes some extraordinary actions they did, by which it becomes clear which choice they had made, not to shrink back, but to have faith in God and His promises, and so continue on.

Wu Mujia, Wu Mujia was a pastor in China, who back in the 1950s was faced with this very choice, to continue to have faith or to shrink back before communist oppression. He decided to follow the examples of Abraham and Moses and Christ and trust God's promises, continue to steer his life toward the promises he had in Christ for his soul to be saved and to live forever with God. He decided to keep preaching Christ, though the authorities forbid it.

It was his future hope that dictated his current identity.

That's the way it is with Christians.

We are those who don't fall under God's judgment because we've shrunk back from following Christ due to the opposition that we face. Rather, we are those who have faith and preserve their souls. Verse 39 is a summary verse. You'll notice if you look back up in our passage, the author throughout our passage is addressing them, you, you, you, you, but here he changes in the last verse of the chapter to we. It's a hortatory method that all of us speakers know.

I can say, you, you, you, but then at the very end if I want to win you over, we.

It's a kind of climax. It's including me and it's saying, Let's all go this way. That's what the writer here is doing. He's saying, We, he ends with this encouragement. Verse 39, We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed.

And that we is even emphasized by the fact that it's first in order, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. We believe, and so our souls are preserved, are saved. Faith in God and His promises We believe. The writer had confidence in God and in God's work among them that they will endure in the faith. That's what then proceeds he, that's what he then proceeds to give all these amazing examples of in chapter 11.

Exactly that. Read that on your own this afternoon and be encouraged with the examples of so many others who have had this kind of faith. Read chapter 11 of Hebrews. This Sunday afternoon. Faith continuing through trials is what this passage is about.

It's really what the whole book of Hebrews has been about, isn't it? Faith continuing through trials. For us who may face the world's reproach and abuse for following Jesus in this city, what will it mean for us to persevere?

In Washington, D.C. What persecution do we endure? Do we have hope that Christ will return?

And until then, that God will supply everything we need to continue following Him with joy, even if it means losing goods, and family and life? Brothers and sisters, our hope has never been limited to what we see in this life here and now. That may be your experience, but that is not the Christian's way. That's a materialist way, but as Christians we've never believed the lie that all there is is what we can see with our eyes. And so we hear this letter to the Hebrews and we resolve not to shrink back, but to continue on our pilgrimage to our eternal home with God.

So as Christians, who we are, our identity is shaped by the future. It's where we know our final home is, where we're headed. That's why, by the way, churches can be such wonderful helps in social struggle. When society is falling apart and is teaching us that our very nature is to be at war with each other as oppressor and oppressed, Christians can know that's not the whole story. That's a sadly frequently recurring part of the story, but we can know that there is a greater story of the division between us and God, which division unites us sadly in sin.

But can unite us wonderfully in hope and in a local church like this and sharing in the same Spirit of God as we have that unity together. That's our identity. The writer begins our passage up in verse 32 though with the past. If he ends there with that future orientation, he starts up in verses 32-34 with the past, with what they'd already done. Look again at those verses.

Verse 32, But recall the former days, when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

Now that you there that's used throughout is in the plural. He's not just talking to an individual or them as individuals, he's talking to them as members of a church. Really this fits in with what we saw up in verse 24. You look up in verse 24 he talks about the good works that we labor to stir up in each other by these very meetings. Well I assume that I'm not the only one here today that has been on the receiving end of the good works of this congregation.

Thank you, dear congregation, for the many ways you have loved me and my family over the decades we've had the joy of being here. This community regularly exerts itself in order to surround those who are rejoicing in their wedding, or when you get a new job, or a new child is born. Well, our passage here is about that same kind of love only when it's refracted through the hard days. Of persecution and struggle. The author begins here in verse 32 with that but, that separating it from that very severe condemnation we were looking at last time in verses 30 and 31.

And the first word is actually the imperative verb, recall, remember. This is His basic command in verses 32 to 34. This is so often such an important command in Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 4:17, this is why Paul says he sent Timothy to the Corinthians, so they could remember what he had taught them and how he had lived it out. Another example would be Peter in the Gospels.

When he denies Jesus the third time and the cock crows and he hears it, then he remembered that Jesus had predicted he was going to do that. Or just right before then, when they're leaving the city, and he sees a withered fig tree, and Peter remembers that Jesus had said that would happen as a sign of Israel's unbelief, the rejection of the Messiah. Friends, memory is so much a part of how we live, how we experience life. Memory is how we understand the significance of our actions today. So for you today, friend, remembering why you obeyed the Lord in the past may help you obey today.

So some of you here are not Christians. We're very glad you're here. You're welcome anytime. Let me just talk to most of you here who I think are probably Christians. So most of you, most of you who've been Christians have been Christians for a while.

Some of you have been converted in the last year or two. That's wonderful. Great baptisms last Sunday. But there are many people sitting here who've known the Lord for years and years and years. Like lots of years.

Clon, how many years have you known the Lord? Roughly. 27. 27. Welton?

1. 1. Caleb? 15. I mean, and these are comparatively young people.

I could pick on some of us older people, we could say 40 years, 50 years. Friends, when you go on in the Lord, you know, it is possible that all your experience will not be uniform. And sometimes you'll find if you could look back and just recapture some of the zeal you had in your very early days of following Christ, it feels warmer and hotter than what you're currently experiencing. And that can actually be helpful to you in your current obedience. That's exactly what the writer here is instructing them to do.

He's instructing them to recall, to go back to those consecrated motives of a younger period in your life, and that may cause the fires to flame hotter again.

Remember afresh what Christ has sacrificed for you. Pray that you would, as Christ says to the Ephesian church, remember your first love.

Good hymns and songs help us to do that, don't they? We sing them. Sometimes we sing a new song and we like it. In my experience, that's a little rare.

Takes me some time. But then we sing some older songs that we've sung before and we just have echoes of memories of other faithfulnesses of the Lord. Friends, God uses music to screw into our memories certain phrases that will exalt his grace and provision. The writer here mentions in verse 34 specifically, you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

So, friends, not only knowing that our current household possessions are passing, so next Saturday I'm supposed to go through my mom's house in Nashville and figure out what we want to keep. We moved my mom into an assisted living facility earlier this year. My sister and I are the two children. So we're supposed to look through this house. Friends, I'm 62.

I'm not really looking to keep anything right now. I'm in that other stage of life. I'm trying to get rid of stuff. So it's going to become very clear to me next Saturday as I spend like hours looking at things like these are passing. Yes, this may have been very important to me in 1971, but right now I just, I need to go eat and go home.

I mean, so, you know, this is not a, this thing, things are like that, friends. They're passing. Things of great sentiment can even have sometimes you realize only passing value. You have need for something that lasts longer than your furniture. We have all we need really eternally in Christ.

And knowing that lets us accept loss in this life with joy. Because we realize what's being taken from us is nothing that we really need. Pastor Wu that I mentioned a few minutes ago, was arrested on this date, August 28th, is the anniversary of his arrest back in 1955. He ended up being in prison for 23 years. His children grew up without him.

His wife during that time got cancer and died. He at any point could have walked free if he would just agree to denounce the faith and stop being a preacher of the Christian gospel.

When he was finally released in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping, when there was a sort of relaxing and a liberalizing, one writer who met him recalled that, quote, As he told me his story, there was no trace of bitterness about the past, only a recognition of God's goodness to him. In his own words in 1989, Pastor Wu recounting the deeds, or the decades rather, of his imprisonment wrote, I discovered my own weakness and my need of the Lord. I learned that God is wonderfully gracious. I came to know His love and now see that He was preparing me to take hold of the present opportunities to serve Him. Why, during the Cultural Revolution when the church was being severely persecuted and some Christians died, I was kept safe in prison.

God kept me safe so that I can serve Him today. Woo's attitude toward those who had betrayed him and caused him to be banished far from his loved ones was like Joseph's to his brothers who had sinned against him. When Joseph said, you, meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. I'm struck by verse 33 saying that they were willing to be partners with those who were publicly exposed to reproach and affliction. That's its own danger, isn't it?

I mean, it's one thing for you yourself to suffer affliction directly. That needs one kind of endurance. But then when somebody else does, somebody else is reproached publicly, your friend is canceled by this group or that group because of their Christian profession. Then what will you do? Will you openly befriend him?

When you are pulled off a plane in Zanzibar and your passport is confiscated and you are sentenced to be tried for apostasy in a couple of months and even your family has disowned you, will your friends? Do you think even your Christian friends will acknowledge you in public, will come to visit you in anything other than the darkest of nights?

These early Christians he's writing to here had been willing to do that. And that was good evidence of their affection of the Lord, even above their own earthly position or even safety. The writer wanted them to recall that. He had seen that in them. He knew that in them.

He thought, why would they They had done that if they didn't really have this hope.

Friends, a good way for you to spend this afternoon, read Hebrews 11 and then help each other to recall ways that you've seen someone else living a life of valuing Christ most. Sometimes Sibbes said, Our friends can read our evidences better than we can. That's why you get to know other people. That's why you're not just an independent atom, but you become a part of a community in a local church. You let people get to know you.

Because part of our job in getting to know each other is observing God's grace in each other's lives.

My non-Christian friend, Do you find yourself in the position this morning that you realize that that which is most important in your life is in the control of somebody else and can be taken from you?

What we Christians have come to realize, we've been enlightened to that, as we've been saved, the Holy Spirit has effectually taught us is that which is most important to us. Our very selves can be certainly safe forever with God because of Jesus Christ. There need be no fear. There can be unadulterated hope on the part of the Christian, because it's not based on our goodness, our justice, but it's based on the goodness and the righteousness of another that is given to us as a gift that we apprehend by faith, which even that faith, Ephesians 2, is itself a gift. What do we have that we've not received?

Friends, this is the wealth that we know and that you too can know if you'll turn from your sins and trust in Christ. If you want to know more about this, please talk to any one of the hundreds of Christians sitting around you this morning. There'll be pastors at every door on the way out. Talk to us if you want to know more about what it means for you to have a life where the most important things to you are not up for stake. They're not in danger, they're not imperiled.

There's no circumstances that can take them away. That's what all the Christians around you actually experience. If you've wondered why Christianity started off with a guy getting crucified in public and has grown to be the largest religion in the world, for centuries, even thousands of years, understanding this might have something to do with it. Figure out what it is that Jesus promises to us and then begin to see, do you think those promises are true? We want to help you think about that.

We want to help you investigate that honestly for your own life. We Christians know it from our experience imperfectly but truly And there's Christian testimony of this for decades and centuries past. Not only do we have Pastor Wu from China, we have all the English martyrs. The Reformers show this in testimony after testimony. I read probably for the third or fourth time this summer J.C. Ryle's little book Five English Reformers.

If you've never read it, what a glorious series of short little 10-15 page biographies. Five English Reformers. By J.C. Ryle. He tells the story of Roland Taylor, who got within two miles of Hadley, the village where he had been the minister, where he was being taken to be burned alive for being a Protestant. And the sheriff of Suffolk asked him how he felt as he was approaching the place of his execution.

God be praised, Master Sheriff, was his reply. Never better. For now I am almost at home. I lack but just two styles to go over, and I am even at my father's house. God's gracious welcome to us cannot be taken from us, even by our death.

Paul reasoned in Philippians 1, My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better. He wrote to the Corinthians, We know that while we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord. Oh, brothers and sisters, as your pastor, I pray that we will have that same kind of joy that Roland Taylor had. Confident in what we have coming in Christ, pray that we will give all that we have in Christ's service today. And that's why he's writing like he does here.

Brothers and sisters, remember, recall what you've done in the past, what you've seen God do in the past with and through you, and that especially so that you can do the final point now, so that you can endure. And that's what verse Verses 35 to 38 are about that call to endure. So everything he's done, the future he's talked about throughout the book that he's going to point to in verse 39 and really in chapter 11, and now these past events, past faithfulnesses, past duties that he's recalled to their minds and exhorted them to recall still more, all of that summoning of future hopes and past faithfulnesses have been to encourage, to fuel, to instruct present endurance. That's his point. That's why the book is written.

That's why this passage is written, where we find our duty in the present. You can see that in the very first word, Therefore, in verse 35. Therefore he's grabbing everything he's just said about recalling their past obedience is to mind, and he's exhorting them on the basis of all of these things, therefore Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while and the coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

In these verses, the writer is urging them to endure in their faith, to keep believing. That's why he mentions the great reward there in verse 35, or what is promised in in verse 36. So despite their current trials and temptations, they are to keep believing in Christ's promised return. He cites here Habakkuk 2. And along with the assurance from the Lord in Habakkuk that my righteous one shall live by faith, if you and I are not going to shrink back and be destroyed, but we're going to endure in righteousness despite opposition, then we must live in expectation of Christ's return.

That's the only way we will be sufficiently faithful. That's what he's saying here in verses 35-36 and that he's supporting from this combination of a couple of places, maybe in the Old Testament there. Friends, discouragement, if left unchecked, could cause us to throw away our confidence in Christ and shrink back from following Him. And he warns that could result in your being, as he says here in verse 39, destroyed. And friends, a few of you have asked me about that word destroyed this week.

It does not simply mean that death would be a cessation of your consciousness after your existence. No, our authors just said up in chapter 9 that it is appointed for man once to die, and after that comes judgment. Death does not extinguish people. People survive. Everybody survives beyond death.

The physical death, it's very real that we Christians don't debate at all. We don't deny that. We're not Christian scientists. That are not like scientists who are Christians, but the group in Boston, Christian scientists, Mary Baker Eddy, science that helps to keep the scriptures. We're not those people.

We don't deny the reality of the material. We understand there's death. We got that. But there is life beyond death, as he's just assumed there up in 9:27. Revelation chapter 20 verse 10 speaks of the lake of fire, where those whose names are not written in the book of life are thrown.

And it describes a place where they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Friends, this is a fate both real and terrible. And it is a fate we deserve. And yet it is a fate which Christ has borne for all of us who will ever turn and trust in Him. So you and I endure in order to receive the promise, as we see in verse 36.

But don't misunderstand that our endurance never earns this reward, this promise. Oh no, that's way above our pay grade. No, that promise has been earned by Jesus Christ. Christ. No, but we access it, we obtain it by enduring.

The promise comes to us only by faith in Jesus Christ. Friends, that promise is what you need here today. Forgiveness for your sins, new life in Christ, the filling of the Holy Spirit in your life. He knows you, he made you, he's ordained all of your days. The number of all of our days is determined.

The important thing is not their number, but their quality. And not in the physical sense, but the spiritual sense. How do we live these days he gives us? Do we live as those people who endure in having hope in Christ? Friends, it is hard even for a preacher to exaggerate the importance of endurance.

Every day the world holds out false bargains to us. Every day we need to see through to the truth.

It was Jim Elliott who put it, He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. If you want me to repeat that, instead just walk around the block and see that on the pillar into our parking lot right there. We put it there for a reason so that people walking their dogs on Capitol Hill would be provoked in their minds. As they read a little strange epigram. But friends, of course, without endurance you can't really do the will of God.

Many of us here have had the joy of being parents. When you first begin parenting, you realize, Whoa, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. That's right. The Christian life is like that, following Christ. That's why we preach sermons like this one.

Not that are long, that's not a reference to their length. It's a reference to what we have in them about the seriousness of following Christ. Passages like this we study in the Bible, holding out God as He's revealed Himself to us both in His promises and in His warnings. And the local church is one of the main means that God has given us to help us persevere in following Christ. The writer turns to another time when the people of God were troubled and wanting to deliver.

That's why he quotes from Habakkuk chapter 2, Only this time applying what had been true for them of the first coming of the Messiah and their longing for deliverance and living in light of God's promises for that, he applies it now to the time when the Messiah had come. And so Christians are now hearing these words being held out for the second coming of the Messiah, the return of Christ. That's the promise in verse 37, For yet a little while, the coming one will come and will not delay.

Until He comes, endurance is necessary. Friends, the essence of our faith as Christians is to wait for God to fulfill His promises. Do you realize since the very first man and woman, it's been this, God speaks words, and then He looks at us. Do we believe His words? Do we act on His words?

Our first parents did not believe His words. They acted as if what He was saying was not true. But He tells us what the future will be. He warns us and He promises, and then it's our responsibility to live today in the light of the future that God tells us is coming. And friend, again, if you're here and you're not a Christian, this is why our lives will sometimes look so strange to you.

This is why we get freaked out by things you don't understand what the big deal is. And we get overjoyed by things you think are very small. And we're not bothered at all by stuff that you're terrified by. Because we're making different kinds of choices. We have different kinds of values.

It's not an entirely separate set, but many things you value, we value too. But it's not an exactly overlapping set. There are definitely some differences and you want to look and find out what those things are. Our lives should be provoking you to wonder about those things. And to see what's going on in them.

Christians are those who live by faith, as Habakkuk says here in the quoted verse, verse 38, But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. My righteous one, there, that's not Jesus, that's us, whoever's going to be living by faith in God's promises, that's who he's talking about there. We can live by faith because of our confidence in Christ. He causes us to trust God's promises.

Does the promise of Christ's return fill you with hope or with dread?

Have you ever noticed how many of the books of the Bible have this basic message, God to people, trust me. Just go through book after book, Genesis, that's very much Genesis, from Adam to Abraham, or you go to Exodus, through Moses to the people, or you keep going through the Bible. That's the story of Ruth. You know, when Naomi keeps complaining and Ruth keeps, and God keeps providing even through Ruth while Naomi's complaining. Or the story of Job, while he experiences these trials, or Isaiah as the people of Jerusalem are terrified of the coming great army and they're relying on all kinds of things other than the Lord, when the Lord just says, Trust me.

I'll take care of it. Or Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Romans that were studying on Wednesday nights or the book of Revelation. You could almost reduce every book in the Bible into God saying to those who will follow him, Trust me. I'm doing this. Trust me.

God can always be trusted. And we need to know this. That's why he writes here in verse 36 that you have need of endurance. We're called to endure until the returning one returns, until the coming one comes. Of course it has to be said that endurance is not one of God's more popular spiritual gifts.

I'm old enough to have lived through the 1970s and I can tell you that the Christian community, at least in America, was wracked by controversy over spiritual gifts.

But every spiritual gift that was talked about was like speaking in tongues, predicting the future, demonic deliverance, or healing. Nobody was talking about the spiritual gift of enduring suffering. Nobody ever prayed for that, oh Lord, give me the gift of patience. No, that wasn't high up there in Kenneth Hagin's teaching. I mean, there just wasn't much about that gift.

We all want the active gifts. We want to be preaching or leading and praying or singing or doing or giving. But friends, there's also God's passive gifts that He gives to His children when it's time for us to suffer with patience and to endure with meekness. That is a spiritual gift. It glorifies the Lord.

Brother and sister, I wonder what's tempting you to throw away your confidence. Today. A small besetting sin that's making promises to you, whispering them. A crisis of faith, a growing doubt unaddressed. A crushing life circumstance.

Life in this fallen world is one long testing of the combination lock of your heart. Yes, yes, I know she likes this and this, what if I do this? That's what the evil one wants. He wants to see you loosed from your attachment you claim to Christ. And many different combinations of circumstances come in the space of a lifetime.

Whatever would tempt you to think that Christ is not worth living for is attempting to deceive you right now. For others of you here, I wonder if you feel that you've, right now, you appreciate that the preacher is preaching a sermon on endurance, but you're frankly, you don't want to say it, it's a little embarrassing, but you're kind of in easier days of discipleship right now. I mean, things are just not that hard. You know, things are pretty good, actually. You really can't think of a big problem you have.

For you, I just want you to know, I love you. And just we can talk next month. The way life is in a fallen world, the Lord is very kind to give His children seasons when there's more evident ease and prosperity, but those tend not to be the dominating experience of the Christian in a fallen world. And that's why we always need to hear about endurance. So even if you're in one of those times where Discipleship may seem easier to you.

I'm just curious, is there any area of your Christian obedience that you could describe well by the word endurance?

Find that area, share about that with somebody else, pray about it, keep your eye on it.

Living by faith will involve you in struggle in this world. And if you're not feeling that right now, Time will take care of that. Part of what it means to live in this fallen world with fallen hearts though redeemed. So we encourage those who are discouraged by helping recall to their mind past faithfulnesses. It's a good skill we could all get better at.

But we do that in order to meet the present need to endure. So that's the sermon, future, past, and present. Got it?

Future is our hope in Christ. Past is the way we've seen that in our lives. Present is what we need to do with the hope we get from that right now. We need to endure. That's what the Hebrews letter is about.

That's what this passage is about. And we should now conclude. Just a warning. Again, visitors, the members of this dear church know that when the pastor says we should conclude, he's a very sincere man.

But it's not always the most accurate representation of what's about to occur. He likes Beethoven's music and his multiple conclusions are sometimes represented in his own sermonic style.

The basic message is both the past and the future are to help us with the present. Both the past and the future are to help us with the present. So who we are, those who believe in Jesus Christ, has been shown in what we've done in the past and should be shown by what we do even today. We endure. We should show our identity as those awaiting the future return of the coming one, again, Jesus Christ.

We live differently because we know that Jesus Christ is returning, so we recall our past and endure our present trials in hope of Christ's future coming. In fact, that is what Sharif is doing right now. That is his name and John Folmer said I could share it publicly. Sharif is our brother in Zanzibar. And as best I can tell, for about a week now, Sharif's plans to spend another year in John Folmer's internship program and the evangelical Christian Church of Dubai have been interrupted.

He has been given a God-ordained opportunity to witness to the police in his home nation about the truth of Jesus Christ.

The sheriff kept him. He slept on a tiled floor in a cold room one night. He'd been woken up during the night. His apartment has been searched. They kept asking him, he said, to give up.

In his apartment they found Bibles and Christianity Explained articles. They said that he could go free if he would just cooperate with them and allow them to video him explaining that Christianity is a trap, that it's wrong. They handed him a script to read on camera. I explained, said Sharif, that their script misunderstands what Christianity teaches. He said, no.

That he would rather keep sleeping in the cold room than betray his faith and his God, whom Sharif added, created the earth.

So Sharif said one Arab guy started reading one of the Christianity Explained articles, and after they had stayed there and kept him up all night, they left, taking some of the articles with them. They have since charged him with apostasy. And blaspheming Islam. So the last I've heard, and I got an email from John yesterday about this, Sharif is still stuck in Zanzibar awaiting trial in November. They've taken his passport away from him.

His family, all Muslims, have disowned him. But while he's there, Sharif's been meeting freely with his friends, hosting meetings, In Zanzibar it's illegal for more than ten people to meet in a home, and he's had more than ten people who want to meet with him. So he asked the local Anglican bishop if he could use a room in one of the church buildings, and they've been allowed. So now he can host up to 30 Muslim friends to study the Bible there legally. One friend, he says, has already been powerfully converted.

Pray that Sharif's identity will keep being shaped by the future coming one's return, as he's encouraged by past faithfulnesses to remain faithful today.

And my Christian brother and sister, pray that for me too.

And pray that for yourself.

Lord, God, the world teaches us that it's easier to talk than to live. We pray that yout would teach us the truth of the hope that we have in Christ. Help us to believe the words that we sing. Make the realities of youf and youn existence clearer and clearer to us every day.

Help us to endure. We pray in hope. In Jesus' name, Amen.