Immanuel Sermon Audio
Hebrews (58:66)
All right, find the book of Hebrews. There are outlines. If you didn't pick one up, they're on the corners of this middle section here so you can grab one. Book of Hebrews. So shared with you some of those statistics a minute ago from eBay and Amazon. Just to make the point as if it needed to be made that we live in a consumer driven society. There are some very good things about that. Sometimes you just hear people talk about a consumer society is all negative and there's certainly plenty of negatives. There are a few good things that come along with that but you know there's a lot of dangers in that. One of the consequences of living in a consumeristic society and this in and of itself is not good or bad. It's just what it is. It's that we have a lot of choices in life and sometimes we just forget the avalanche of choices that we face every single day and some of them are really big choices. Some of them are really small choices but for most of human history people have not had these choices one way or the other on big things or little things. So I just want you to think through a few of these choices that we get to make. One and just go through several categories, schools. You have a lot of choices when it comes to schools in this country. You send your kiddos to public school. You can send your kiddos to a charter school. You can send your kiddos to a private school. You can keep your kiddos home and do homeschool if you want to do that. You can get on the internet and call it homeschool but do it through the internet. Lots of different options and lots of good options. No one's saying this one's good or this one's bad, there's just lots of different choices. If you've got young kiddos, you've got to make that decision and it continues when you go to college. If you're going to go to college or you're going to go to a state school or you're going to go to a private school or you're going to go to an online school, you've got lots of different choices. Are you going to go to a physical school and take online classes? All sorts of choices when it comes to school and all based on we're a consumer. We're consuming a product so people give us choices. You have choices on where you live and what you live in. When we go to Kenya, there's not a whole lot of variety. You just sort of drive up and down the road and you say, "Oh, that house looks like the last one and the last one and the one after it," and they all look pretty much the same. I mean, if you're going to live in a house, you live in a house. That's what you live in. You've got lots of choices. You can buy a home, you can rent an apartment, you can buy a house in Odessa if you want, or you can buy a house in Gardendale if you want, or you can live in the city or you can live in the country. If you don't like Odessa, you can leave Odessa, you don't like Texas. I don't know who wouldn't like Texas, but if you're weird like that, you can leave Texas. You can go somewhere else and you have a choice. You can live in a tiny house. I don't know about you, but some days, not all days, but some days I think a tiny house would be okay. Just hitch it up to the back of the car, go pull out in the woods and leave everybody and everything behind and just have a tiny house. And then I remember, "Oh, there would be six people in my family in the tiny house, so that's probably not going to work." But tiny house, you could have a tiny house, that's one of your options. What about cars? If you ever just stop to think about the choices you have when it comes to cars, you can buy a luxury car, you can buy cheap cars, you can buy American cars, you can buy foreign cars, you can buy whatever kind of car you want or buy a used car, new car, lots and lots and lots of different choices. You can even buy a three-wheel car. You've seen those cruising around town? My neighbor has one of those. It has one wheel in the back and two in the front and two people sit in it and my kids call it the Batmobile and they just cruise around like that. You can have a three-wheeler if you want to. This may seem a little bit strange, but what about choices when it comes to your spouse? Whether you've thought about it or not, you have more choices today than ever because of why? The internet. When I was in junior high, my church hired a guy and he was on staff at our church as the singles pastor and when we hired him, he was not married. A couple years later, he got married and when people asked him, "How did you meet your wife?" He said, "I met her in a chat room." Now, back in the early '90s, that was weird. People like, "What? You met a person on a chat room and got married?" Now if you say that today, "Oh, e-harmony, awesome, oh, you're dating website, great." People do that all the time, millions of people, so you've got a lot of choices there. What about food? You've got a lot of choices when it comes to food. If you've ever talked to missionaries, I'm not talking about missionaries from our church who go for a week or two, I'm talking about career missionaries who have been on the field for several years and not had a break home or a furlough home. Every missionary that I've ever talked to when they come home from a long stint of service overseas says, "I cried when I walked into the grocery store," because it was completely and totally overwhelming, the amount of food on the shelves. I went to the bread aisle and there was a hundred kinds of bread on the shelf. I just came from a place where people were happy to have any kind of bread. In here, you can pick, "Do you want gluten bread or non-gluten bread? Do you want wheat bread or white bread? Do you want it in a loaf? Do you want it in a slice? Do you want it? How do you want it? I mean, however you want it, they're going to sell it to you that way. You've got tons and tons of choices. You go to the grocery store, go to the toothpaste style. We were at the grocery store the other night and, you know, you just buy the same toothpaste over and over. That's what you normally do. So we were there walking through as the last thing we were picking up toothpaste and they didn't have my toothpaste. So I had to pick one from all 500 of them. What do you pick? I don't know what you pick, which one's the best, which one's the cheapest, am I paying too much for this? Well, that may not taste good. Well, this one looks kind of cheapy, I mean choices, you've got choices, choices, choices. Television, cable, satellite, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, take your pick. All of the above, you've got choices, movies, you can go to the theater, the drive-in, the red box, Netflix, lots and lots and lots of different choices. What about churches? You've got a lot of choices, don't you? Big ones, small ones, traditional ones, contemporary ones, this denomination ones, non-denominations ones, lots and lots and lots of choices. About clothing. You've got a lot of choices when it comes to clothing. I know that we're used to it, we're kind of desensitized to it, but the next time you're at the mall, our mall, any mall, and you walk into a department store, just look at how much, how many, all of the clothes in that one room, it's unbelievable. And that's just one room and one mall and one relatively small city in the United States. And we are going to a place where people are happy to have your nasty worn out hand-me-downs. We're not going to take your nasty ones, but your hand-me-downs. They're happy to have them, take whatever they can get, but you've got a lot of choices. You can go to Dillard's, you can go to Walmart, you can get on eBay and buy somebody's use clothes if you want to do that. People do that, apparently. So that's an option. Get on Amazon. If I left anything out, you can probably buy it on Amazon or eBay, okay? You just have an awful lot of choices in life. And even in our society, I say these as not necessarily great things, we are so used to having choices, we want choices in every area of life. And we don't want people to limit our choices or our freedom to make a choice in any area of life. So we're at the point now where we're expanding the definition of who you can choose to marry. Right? That's somebody's choice. Who are you to tell them they can't choose that? We want choices when it comes to life and death. We want to have options, and you know exactly what I'm talking about. We want everything on our terms because it's all about us. Here's an interesting quote I read about choices is from a guy named G.K. Chesterton. This guy was best buddies with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, and they got together and talked about stuff all the time and hung out, and I'll be honest with you, they hung out and smoked cigars all the time. And this is what he said about choices. Every act is an act of self-sacrifice when you choose anything, you reject everything else. It's an interesting way to think about choosing. When you choose one thing, you are also not choosing a whole lot of other things. So the book of Hebrews, what does this have to do with Hebrews? All these choices. Book of Hebrews, I think, is best described as a book that presents you with a choice, and it lays out a couple of options, and the options are pretty simple, Jesus or no. And the author of Hebrews is writing this book to say to you and to argue to you, and to, if I can even use this, it's a little bit crass, but to sell you on the idea that Jesus is the best choice. You need to line up, sign up, fall in line with. You need to get on board with Jesus. It's the best option for you. You have a choice. Jesus or no Jesus? But the book of Hebrews, from beginning to end, and all its complexity and all the weird little things that you can find in the book of Hebrews, this one big idea is, you have a choice to make, and you should make the choice to follow Jesus. And so let's talk about the book of Hebrews. There's some things we don't know about the book. I did not put these on your outline. We don't know who wrote it. There's all sorts of speculation. We're not even going to talk about it, because I don't know who wrote it. If you're really curious about it, Google it, and you can find 8,000 answers about who wrote the book of Hebrews. The bottom line is we have no clue who wrote it. We don't know. We don't even know specifically who it was written to. And we don't know when it was written. By my reading through the book, there's only one thing that sort of timestamps the book of Hebrews. And if you turn to the very last chapter, there's one little note in Hebrews 1323 that says, "You should know that our brother Timothy has been released with whom I shall see you if he comes soon." So we do know that Timothy was known by the people who received this book. He was known by the person who wrote this book, and so you can date it somewhere around when Timothy was alive. That's a big window that we can't be too specific on. So a lot of things we don't know about the book. One of the reasons that Hebrews is called a general epistle. So when you read through Ephesians, you know this letter was written to the church in Ephesus. It had a specific audience. When you read 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy Titus, you know exactly who they were written to. It had a very specific audience. The general epistles are all the letters from Hebrews all the way up until we get to the book of Revelation. So Hebrews up through 3rd John, you say, "We don't know exactly who they were written to." It's just sort of a general audience, and so they're called general epistles. So lots of things we don't know. Here's some things that we do know about the people who received the letter. One, they were spiritually dense, and I'm going to let you look these up on your own. We're not going to look these up right now. But in chapter 5, and I gave you these verses on your outline, chapter 5, he says, "You guys should know this by now, really. Get with the program." We've talked about this. You should know this. You shouldn't still be on this level. You should be up here on that level. So they were a little bit spiritually dense. Secondly, what do we know about them? They had served faithfully. They're commended for their service. They get a sort of a pat on the back in the book. Third, they experienced suffering, and they did it well. They had experienced serious suffering, and they suffered well. You can suffer poorly, and you can suffer well, and these guys suffered well. Fourth, they experienced discipline. We don't know how long this discipline took place. We don't know exactly what form it took. But it's mentioned in the book that you have experienced God's discipline. And the author of the book is bringing this up to encourage them. Not to like rub it in their face, ha ha, I told you you shouldn't do that, and now you got slapped around. But to say, God disciplines the people he loves. Don't look at this as if God is angry with you. He disciplines his children. You are his children. He loves you. So they did experience discipline. And then lastly, I mentioned this already, they did know Timothy, and the author knew Timothy, and there was sort of a connection there. So those are some things we do know. Here's the outline of the book. Really, really simple. Here's an introduction, after the introduction, the first big section talks about the person of Christ. Who is Jesus? And comparing him to different people, trying to make the case, Jesus is better than this guy. Jesus is better than this guy. Jesus is better than this guy. You need to pick Jesus. So the first section is the person of Christ. Second section in this main body is the work of Christ. What did he do? What did he accomplish when he died on the cross and rose three days later? And what he did, the point in this section, what Jesus did is better than what those guys did. It's way better. Don't pick those guys. Pick Jesus. Third section here in the body is the way of Christ. Or you could just call this the Christian life. What does it like to be a follower of Christ? In this last section, they're saying, look, it's better to be a follower of Christ than to not be a follower of Christ. And there's all the way through, there's this sort of comparison game. Jesus is better than these guys. What Jesus did is better than what those guys did. What it's like to follow Jesus is way better than what it's not like to follow Jesus. And this comparison runs all the way through the book. Now, those are some of the big questions we're going to talk about. Who is Jesus and what did he accomplish? Let me just say one disclaimer before we jump in. There's a lot of weird stuff in the book of Hebrews. There's a lot of things that are hard to understand and hard to wrap your mind around. And you know this by now because we're on book 58 out of 66. In this format, in this setting, we can't jump into all those debated, confusing, controversial things. So if you're studying through Hebrews and you're tracking along in this study and you come across something and you say, I have no idea what that means, don't worry. I probably don't know either. But if you really want to know, I'll try to help you find the answer and we'll figure it out together. But there's a lot of stuff in here that you can really get hung up on and just say, I don't understand that. That doesn't make sense. What's he talking about? How does that fit with what I've read in other places? And so what we're going to do is focus on the big ideas of the book. And I really think when you focus on some of these big ideas, we're going to talk about a lot of those details kind of fall into place and make a little more sense. So the first question we're going to talk about is who is Jesus? Who is he? And the first answer in the book of Hebrews is, Jesus is the Son of God. You're getting a little preview here in Hebrews 1 of what we're going to talk about in two weeks when we look at Psalm 2. So this Sunday is Psalm 1, the following Sunday is Psalm 2 and we're going to talk then about Jesus being the Son of God. So in Hebrews 1, the point over and over is Jesus is the Son. And so look at a few things in Hebrews 1, if you have your Bible open, Hebrews 1, 5. This is a quote from Psalm 2. To which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you? And the answer is to none of the angels. He does not call the angels son, Jesus is the son. Where again I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. That's straight out of 2 Samuel 7, which is the background of Psalm 2. So all these things are connected here. When he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let the angels worship him, jumping on to verse 8 of the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. He's calling him the Son. Look over, back up in chapter 1 verse 2, it says, in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. Over and over and over again it talks about Jesus is the Son. Here's a problem when we hear that. When most people hear Jesus is the Son and they read this line that says, today I have begotten you or you read in the gospels, he's the only begotten Son. We hear that and we think, so is how our brains work. It's like there was God and then it's like he had a son. The Son came second. First there was God and then all of a sudden later sometime the Son was there. And that's not what the Bible is talking about at all. God created sons in this world in part to help us understand the little bitty piece of what he's like. And what the Bible is saying is, if God has a son, the son is God. And if you think about it a little bit differently, this makes a lot of sense. If you have a dog at home and your dog's belly starts growing and your dog's going to have babies, what do you expect to come out of that dog? Dogs, little dogs. You're not looking for cats, you're not looking for rabbits, you're not looking for mice. And when they come out, they're real dogs. They're not like half dogs, they're not like less dog than the mama dog. They're dogs. If a human being has a baby, they have a human, a baby. It's not like half human. It's not like kind of a baby, but kind of something else, it's really a baby. And the idea when we say Jesus is the son is to say, he really is God. So sometimes Christians get confused about this. What's funny is that Muslims are not confused about it. Muslims understand it perfectly. And way back in the day, when it was very common for Muslims to be taking over areas of the world where Christians lived, they would take over these churches, they were beautiful churches. So they didn't want to tear them down, they just wanted to turn them into a mosque. You can't have a mosque with a bunch of crosses in it and pictures of Jesus and all that stuff. So they had to redecorate. And in all these old churches that they turned into mosques, they went in Islam. You can't put pictures of anything. They don't like pictures. They do little geographic geometric designs of different things. And they can write things. They can write verses from the Quran. And one of the things you see written in mosques that used to be churches all over the world is there is no God, but Allah, and he does not have a son. But they believe in Jesus. He's in the Quran. Isa, he's in there. Big time. He's a major player. They just say, let's be clear. He is a prophet. He is not God. And the way they phrase that is, there is only one God, his name is Allah, and he does not have a son. And they're directly reacting to the Christian idea that Jesus is the son. So that's the first thing in Hebrews. He's the son. And Hebrews says things like he's the heir of all things as the son. That's in chapter one. He's the one through whom God created everything. He wasn't created. He was the one that God the Father used to create everything. Hebrews one says, this is in the very first verses there. This is in verse three. He is the exact imprint of God. He is God. He's not less God. He is God. He's the son. Hebrews says he upholds the universe. That's a big job. A created being does not uphold the universe. But the son upholds the universe. He's superior to the angels. Okay? So he's the son. Who is Jesus? Second answer. Eternal. He's eternal. And I'm going to let you read for yourself and then you can bring your questions and your theories to me. But just go this week and look at Hebrews five, six and seven. Okay? Fun chapters. Some things in there are very, very plain and some things you'll come away scratching your head saying, I don't know what in the world is going on here. And there's a guy in Hebrews five, six and seven named Melchizedek. And there's only the third place in the Bible he shows up. He shows up once in the book of Genesis during the life of Abraham. He's mentioned almost impassing one time in the book of Psalms. And then he shows up here in the book of Hebrews. And lots of debate about who is Melchizedek and what does he do and all sorts of things. But here's the real point in Hebrews. I don't think you can argue this. The author of Hebrews is saying, look, there was this guy named Melchizedek. We don't know about his family, his background, his parents, his ancestors. We don't know anything about him. We just all of a sudden he pops into the story line and we don't know anything about if he had kids, if he had offspring, if he was married, if he was an uncle, if he had anybody coming after him, we know nothing after him. We know nothing before and we know nothing after him. And the point here in Hebrews five, six and seven is Jesus is a great high priest in this line, not of the Levites. We know all about them, where they came from, how they ended up. We know all about those guys, but of Melchizedek. And the point, very clearly in five, six and seven is, this guy, it's like Melchizedek has no beginning or end, he just sort of pops in here. We don't know anything about him. And the point is Jesus is a high priest like that, he's an eternal high priest. And so there's some verses in here, we'll look at a couple very briefly. Look at Hebrews six, twenty. So you can sort of get the flavor of this and then you can read these chapters on your own. Hebrews six, twenty says, Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever, he's eternal, high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Chapter seven, verse seventeen, it is witnessed of him, you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. If you look down below, that line in verse seventeen is a quote from Psalm one ten, told you Melchizedek was mentioned in Psalm. That is the chapter that he's mentioned in one hundred and ten. So you're a priest forever, just like Melchizedek. Chapter seven, backing up to verse three, says the same thing, Melchizedek, he's without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest forever. So you don't have to fully wrap your brain around this, but this is what the author of Hebrews is saying, seven three is really key, there's this guy Melchizedek, no genealogy, no ancestors, it's just sort of like he's there. And what he's saying is, not that Jesus is like Melchizedek, but he's saying Melchizedek is like Jesus, no beginning, no end, he's eternal, and he's a priest, and Melchizedek is just like that, so he's eternal. Third, this one is a big one in the book of Hebrews, Jesus is perfect. He's perfect. You know, a lot of the time, if somebody sat you down and said, what did Jesus do for sinners? What did he come to do? Be very specific with me. I think most of us would give the answer, well he died on the cross for our sins, right? If we threw you down there in the third-grade room and put you in front of those kids and said, tell them about Jesus, most of us would probably come up with something like, he died for our sins, died on the cross for our sins, we need to know that, that's true, right? It's also true that before he died on the cross for our sins, he lived a life of perfect obedience for us, for us, did he die for us, yes, did he live for us, yes, and I'll tell you when the light bulb went off for me on this, in Kentucky I was asked to be a part of a good Friday service, it's good Friday service, seven pastors invited, every pastor given one of the things that Jesus said while he was on the cross, said seven things, seven pastors, everybody gets one little statement and you got five minutes to preach on it and we all sort of took turns and we sang songs, good Friday service and I said, yeah I'll do that, I'll be a part of that and all the while I'm hoping in my brain, because this other guy is going to pick what you get, I'm hoping, man, the only one I really don't want is the one where he talks to his mom about moving in with John and he tells John to take care of his mom, that one's weird, I hope I don't get that one and what did I get, that one? So I start thinking about it, I'm like, what are you going to say, he's dying on the cross, that's the most important thing and he makes living arrangements for his mother, great, good Friday, fantastic, thank you for letting me preach on that passage and then I started thinking about it and I realized, okay this is the culmination of a life that was lived perfectly, life of perfect obedience, that includes the fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother, his entire life Jesus never did, said or thought anything that violated that commandment and in his dying moments he is still keeping the fifth commandment, he is honoring his mother and he's taking care of her because think about it, as he's hanging on the cross all of his siblings think he's a moonbat, think he's lost his mind and Mary is there supporting him which means the siblings think their mother is crazy, says John, I know that I have brothers, I know that I have sisters, but I want you to take care of my mom and mom John's going to take care of you, so bang the fifth commandment right down to the very end and when you have a full orbed picture of what sin is and what obedience is you understand he had to do that, if he didn't do that, if he didn't take care of his mother, honor his mother in his dying moments he's not fit to die on the cross for our sins, if he has sin he has to die for that sin, only if he is perfect and has no sin if he's a spotless lamb can he die for our sin and so you think about sin, what is it, it's anything you do or anything you say or anything you think that is disobedient to God, now that's all active things that you do, you also understand sin is anything that you should do but you don't, you should do it and you don't do it, that's sin, you should say it and you don't say it, that's sin, you should think it but you don't think it, that's sin, you should feel it in the way of emotions but you don't, that's sin, there's a positive sin of commission and there's a negative sin of omission, Jesus never committed any of those sins, commission or omission, indeed in word and thought and emotion, none of them, which is remarkable to think about and so when you look in your Bible in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15 and you read, 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, never sinned, not one time, never did said, thought or felt anything that went against God's commandments and always did said, thought and felt exactly what he should have done said, thought or felt in that situation, mind-blowing and we read that little sentence, that third one said, Jesus is perfect like, oh yeah, he's perfect, Jesus is perfect, Jesus is sinless, you just sort of pass over that till you stop and you think about the weight of what that statement means and what it carries, he is perfect, never sinning, sins of omission or commission, sins of deed, sins of word, sins of thought, sins of emotion, never, unbelievable in the book of Hebrews says, because he is perfect, he is fit to be our high priest. So that's who he is, the son of God, he's eternal and he's perfect. What did he do, two simple thoughts, number one he offered a permanent sacrifice and go ahead and put the second one up there, he offered an effective sacrifice. Permanent sacrifice meaning it was once for all time does not need to be repeated ever, it's done, permanent, it lasts forever, there's a long warranty on it, you don't need to worry about taking it back, it's permanent and it's effective. He actually did what he set out to do, that is to die for sins and so very quickly let's look at these verses, Hebrews 7 starting in 26 says it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens, he has no need like those high priests, do you see the comparison game here? This is the priest we have and here's these other guys, he has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily first for his own sins and then for those of the people since he did this once for all and that once for all means once for all time, once for all time when he offered himself up, okay, he did it once for all time, it's a permanent lasting sacrifice, it's also effective, look at chapter 10 verse 4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, be very careful when you talk to people about the Old Testament and the sacrificial system that you don't say to them, they offered these sacrifices so their sins could be forgiven, false, those sacrifices did not forgive anyone their sins, never won, not one white lie ever was forgiven because a bull had its throat cut and the blood splattered on the altar, none of them, they pointed forward to the one sacrifice that would provide the forgiveness of sins, it says it right here, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, look down chapter 10 verse 11, it says every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice, he sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, when he offered himself as this offering, it did what he wanted it to do, it was effective, it sanctified those that he wanted it to sanctify, so it was a permanent sacrifice and an effective sacrifice, so on those two questions you are looking at your outline, who is Jesus, what did he do, I just want you to understand, you have got this choice running all the way through the book, okay, Jesus is the son, chapter 1, he is way better than angels, way better, you have got, well I settled for an angel, you can have the son, it is not even close, Jesus is eternal, yeah Melchizedek and Aaron and all these other priests they are okay, but Jesus is eternal, those are just guys, they lived, they died, that is it, Jesus is eternal, way better, he is perfect, he is not like these old high priests that before they offered a sacrifice for your sins had to offer sacrifice for their sins, that is not Jesus, he is perfect, Jesus is better, then you come down and say what did he do, well he offered a permanent and an effective sacrifice, it was way better than all those sacrifices that were offered in the Old Testament, it is not even close, why would you want to cling to that system when you can have Jesus, why would you want to cling to something that you do when you can have something that is actually permanent and effective and can save you, it is crazy, Jesus is better, so you have got this contrast all the way through the book and then a big theme in Hebrews, we are going to end with this, is dangers in the book and I am going to give you seven of them and I will just tell you this, a lot of people look at these dangers, they read these dangers, they are almost sort of like warnings and when you read these warnings sometimes you say come away thinking it sounds like from these warnings that you could be saved and then I am being warned you might end up not being saved and a lot of people kind of get spooked by the book of Hebrews because there is these passages that seem to sort of spit in the face of our favorite line once saved, always saved, okay, listen, the author of Hebrews believed once you are genuinely saved you will be genuinely saved, we just read that in Hebrews 10, right, by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, his sacrifice is effective for his people, it will do what he wanted it to do, it will accomplish what he wanted it to accomplish, these warnings in the book of Hebrews are there to be a little bit crass to just sort of kick you in the seat and to say let's go, don't be lazy, don't just sit around and think that because you have prayed a prayer, you have gone to a church service, you have made a commitment that you are in, that is not how it works and so this last section of the book that I told you earlier in that outline is the Christian life, the way of Christ and really all throughout this book the author is saying look come on follow him, follow him, this is better and when you are doing this this is how you know that you are truly a follower of Christ so here's seven dangers, okay, number one it's dangerous to ignore what God has done in Christ, Hebrews 21, therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it, pay careful attention to what you have heard, do not ignore the things that God has done for you in Christ, you must pay attention to it, that's on you, pay attention, don't ignore it, second danger is not to believe God, there's a danger that you would just not believe God, believe in Him or believe Him, Hebrews 3, 12 says take care brothers lest there be in any of you an evil comma, unbelieving heart leading you to follow away from the living God, do not have an evil and unbelieving heart, that's kind of hard, hard language when you're talking about non-Christians, somebody who doesn't believe to say their heart is evil, you don't necessarily have to tell them that the first thing you tell them about the Bible, you're evil but that's what the Bible says if you don't believe God your heart is evil, an unbelieving heart is an evil heart, this is danger that you would not believe God, number three there's a danger that you would stop growing, you stop pursuing Christ, Hebrews 5, 12 says though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God, you need milk not solid food, you have not grown in your faith, chapter 6 verse 1 we need to leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, I want you to be a baby Christian all your life, I want you to grow up and I want you to be mature chapter 6 verse 11 we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish, don't be lazy but be imitators of those who through faith impatience inherit the promises so there's a danger that you would stop growing, forth danger, don't persevere in holiness, it's dangerous, you can look at some of these verses just look with me at Hebrews 12, 14, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord, say man that sounds like you got to work your way into heaven like you got to reach a certain level of holiness to get into heaven, no, no, no, no, no, you just hold your spot there on that verse, flip back over to the left you go back to Hebrews 10 verse 14 says by a single offering Jesus has perfected for all time those who are being made holy, those who are being sanctified, if you are truly a follower of Jesus and you've trusted in this sacrifice that he offered once for all it's effective and it's permanent then you are being sanctified, you're being made holy and Hebrews 12, 14 says strive for the holiness that if you don't have it you're not going to see God, you're not going to be saved, if you're not striving for holiness it's a sign that you've never trusted in Christ to begin with, doesn't matter what kind of prayer you pray, doesn't matter what kind of cards you sign, doesn't matter how wet you got from your head to your toes up in a baptistry like that, it doesn't matter, if you're not striving for holiness you don't know him and you're not going to see him, so there's a danger that you wouldn't persevere in holiness, one, two, three, four, five, there's a danger that you would lose faith, Hebrews 12, two tells us to look to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith, keep your eyes fixed on him, Hebrews 10, 34 says you had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew yourselves that you had a better possession than an abiding one, say well I didn't read the word faith in there, it's in there, they joyfully accepted their homes being robbed because they knew that really wasn't their home, they had faith that their home was in heaven and that's where their treasure was, so when things went bad here they said it's okay, it's not my home, I have faith that I have another home, a better home, so there's a danger that you would lose faith, there's a danger that you would reject God's discipline instead of repenting at his discipline that you would harden your heart towards him, Hebrews 12, verse 10 says they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness, in the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it, when you experience God's discipline you allow it to train you, you don't harden your heart towards God for that, and then lastly there's a danger that you would refuse all of these warnings in the book, and Hebrews 12, verse 25 says see to it, see, excuse me, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking, do not refuse God, he's speaking to you, don't harden your heart towards him, listen to him, don't refuse this warning, now listen, you go back and you read all those verses, and if that's all you read in the Bible, is those verses on that warning list, that's all you knew, you might come away saying man it sounds like do these things you're in, do these things you're out, like I could be in for a while and then I could lose it and I could be out, it's not what those things are, these are dangers that you need to watch for in your life as a Christian, you say okay I've prayed a prayer, I've repented of my sins, I love Jesus, how can I have assurance that I'm really saved, and then I'm going to go to heaven someday, American church tells you well did you accept him, did you invite him in your heart, then you're saved, that's just not biblical, the book of Hebrews says you want to have assurance that you're saved, watch out for these dangers, don't do these things, stay away from them, do the opposite, don't ignore what God has done for you, don't stop believing God, don't stop growing in holiness, persevere in holiness, don't lose faith, don't reject his discipline, don't harden your heart toward his word, do all of those things and you have assurance, you know I am being sanctified, I am one of his children, his sacrifice is permanent and effective and it's lasting for me and it will save me and you have confidence and you have hope that you will see God and that you will live forever, so there you go, that's the book of Hebrews and like I said lots and lots of little things we could dive into, little debates we could enter into, who wrote the book, what does this particular verse mean, what does that verse mean, but this is the big idea, the big idea is you got this choice, you know Jesus you can have these other guys, but Jesus is way better, you can have what Jesus did for you or you can have what those guys say they can do for you, Jesus what he can do is way better, you can be a follower of Christ and live this way or you can not and you can live that way but I'm telling you following Christ is much much better and you can have assurance and you can know when you look at your life for these things and you examine yourself that God knows you, that he loves you, that you're one of his children and that you will be saved in the end, so we're going to pray that God would keep us from these dangers and help us to make the obvious choice in trusting Jesus and following him, so let's pray, Father we love you, we're grateful for your word and for the book of Hebrews and for the things in this book that are tricky, we pray for wisdom and also pray for humility that when we don't know we would just admit that we don't know, but the big ideas and the central ideas to this book are very very plain, the author of this book wants us to know who Jesus is and wants us to understand what Jesus did for us and wants us to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ and those are pretty simple things and so as we've talked about who Jesus is and what he accomplished and what it means to follow him, I pray that you would press these things on our heart, that we would take them seriously, that we would not harden our hearts and ignore these warnings but that we would listen to them and we would examine our lives, Father we thank you for Jesus and for the hope and the life and the eternity that we have through him, we pray in his name, amen.