Hebrews 3:14-19
All right, well, welcome everyone on this Sunday evening, capping off the Lord’s Day in the book of Hebrews. So if you have your Bibles, please turn to Hebrews in your copy of God’s Word, and tonight we’re looking at Hebrews 3:12-19, finishing up that very impactful chapter in Hebrews 3.
In Hebrews chapter 3, the pastor is really trying to get the attention of his congregation, of his church, because he is concerned about not only defection, but the influence of defection. So he’s concerned about the defection of some who want to return to a Christ-less Judaism.
So he’s obviously warning them, but he’s also concerned about the influence of those kind of defectors on the rest of the church; and so you find these warning passages throughout the book of Hebrews, and this is one of them.
To make his warning, he goes back to a biblical warning, which is David’s warning in Psalm 95, and quotes verbatim from the latter, the back half of Psalm 95 from the Septuagint translation, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which Greek-speaking Jews of the day used. And that’s what we find in Hebrews 3:7-11, is that Psalm 95:7-11 text.
He’s using that section to press the consciences of his people, to help them to think about the call to pay careful attention and to exhort one another daily lest any of them drift away in hardness of heart and because of the deceitfulness of sin.
David in Psalm 95 really has set a precedent that this pastor is following. David considers the call of the Spirit to be as continual and abiding as the person of the Spirit is. And this is how the warning section ends, starting here in chapter 3, verse 1, but going all the way through chapter 4, verses 12 and 13.
It ends with a focus on the living, active Word of God. It’s surgically sharp and piercing and penetrating, and it opens up the heart of every individual in the sight of God. And so he’s warning his people.
The warning to God’s people is a perennial warning. It’s always relevant, always pertinent. God always, basically, the message is that God always rewards faith, and God always punishes unbelief. And this is why, as in the days of Moses, so it was in the days of David. And as it is in the days of David, so it is in the days of the pastor of these Hebrew Christians in Rome.
And so it is for us today, since it is always called “today.” For us it’s called “today,” just as it was called “today” for David, for Moses, and for the Hebrew Christians in Rome.
So we saw when we looked last time, having looked at Psalm 95:7-11, which is in Hebrews 3:7-11, we looked at verses 12 and 13 last week, and that was the first of our three points, really, in an outline that covers verses 12 to 19.
But the first point is our daily duty. What is our daily duty? Our daily duty is mutual exhortation. Our daily duty is mutual exhortation. So it says in verses 12 to 13 of Hebrews 3, “See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart,” or it’s an, really, an evil heart of unbelief, an evil heart that’s sourced in unbelief.
“See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you or among you an evil heart of unbelief that falls away from the living God,” that is, that apostatizes from God. “But encourage one another, day after day, as long as it is still called ‘today’, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
So in this daily duty of mutual exhortation, we are always to pay attention, and we are always to be on the lookout for an evil heart, a heart that is sourced in unbelief. Remember we talked about the three aspects of the heart and the three aspects of the faith.
In an evil heart, the mind does not reason from faith. In an evil heart, the affections are not attuned to faith. The emotions do not respond to truth. The emotions don’t grow stronger in believing or because of believing. And that means that the will is not acting from faith, but acts in doubt and in unbelief.
So an evil heart of unbelief will inevitably, no matter what it appears like on the surface and for a time, an evil heart of unbelief inevitably will fall away from the living God. An evil heart of unbelief will apostatize from worshipping the one true God to take up some other form of idolatry.
So in Israel’s case, the idolatry was to return to Egypt and its idols. In David’s day, it would be for Israel to depart and turn to the gods of the surrounding nations, which was happening all the time. Baal worship was very popular and became even more prevalent in Israel after David went to be with the Lord.
These Hebrew Christians, the temptation and the idolatry for them would be to return to their old synagogues. Even though they’re using the Bible, even though they’re using Scripture, even though they’re following the traditions of Moses, if they depart from Christ and return to a Christ-less Judaism, it is no longer the true and living God. They’re actually departing, apostatizing, and entering into idolatry.
We today, we have professing Christians who are leaving sound churches to go to, can’t really call them churches, but they return to maybe Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy or some kind of a very weak, insipid form of Protestant teaching or evangelicalism. And they want to go to these communities to shape God and to shape Christ into their own image, do religion their own way, follow their own preferences.
People come to religious gatherings like churches for many reasons, not all of them because they really want to worship God, because they really want to deal with their sin, because they really want to worship Christ. People come to communities like this for all kinds of reasons, seeking connection or community or a sense of belonging or someone who will be kind to them and listen to them.
They have all kinds of reasons for going to these religious gatherings, but people want to connect, especially these days. We see it everywhere. People want to connect on their own terms. They want to do community in their own way and only with those whom they prefer.
And they belong to that community or that group only for as long or short a time as they want to. They don’t want to submit to God’s commands about worship. They want to do worship in their own way, be innovative. That’s everywhere.
Many people today want to treat church as a big therapy session. And if the pastor or the people around them are not healthy for them, but they put them into the category of toxic or harmful or narcissistic or whatever, they say, I need to put boundaries up and create boundaries in space and find safe spaces for me that I can take care of myself. And so they go find them in some other religious organization, sometimes called churches.
It’s the same problem though, really, essentially in every single generation, and it’s manifested in the religious forms and the circumstances of every time and every place. It’s a perennial danger. It’s always there that we are concerned for one another.
We’re concerned for everybody who comes into this building, this gathering of a local church. We’re concerned for everybody. We want to lovingly encourage and exhort one another, verse 13, “as long as it’s still called ‘today’, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
We saw last time, kind of at the end of our time, that Luther talked about us needing to widen our sense of what the deceitfulness of sin includes. He says the subtle danger of the deceitfulness of sin is that we often see our own righteousness and our own wisdom as paramount, and that’s a deceitful thing. That is very deceitful.
Luther said, “More than anything else, one’s own righteousness and wisdom deceive one and work against faith in Christ, since we love, and nothing more ardently, than our own feelings, judgment, purpose and will, especially when they seem to be good.”
So Luther identifies this aspect of sin’s deceitfulness. He says, quote, “It’s the very worst of all vices, the extreme antithesis of faith.” So that’s why we need to, in humility, but boldness, straightforwardness, lovingly, we need to encourage each other and exhort each other daily to keep believing, to keep believing from the heart, reasoning from faith, affected positively, our emotions stirred by the truth by which our will is compelled forward in faith. And we rejoice and we glory, as Luther said, in the righteousness of God alone, in the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.
So that was the first point. We’re to exhort one another daily, that daily duty of exhortation. Then there’s a second point, and here’s where we’re going to move forward into the text a little bit further and we’ll have two more points.
This is our second: our daily delight, our daily delight. And if you want to put a colon there, our daily delight, colon, full salvation. Our daily delight is full salvation.
He says in verse 14, “For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.” You can hear the conditional statement there, right? “We have become partakers of Christ if,” and there’s the condition, “if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.”
Notice the word partakers. You heard that at the very beginning in chapter 3, verse 1; he called us partakers, back there. Here it’s “partakers of Christ.” Back there in verse 1, it was “partakers of a heavenly calling.” And here in verse 14 he uses a perfect tense, and he says, “We have become partakers,” perfect tense.
But here the focus in this perfect tense and the way it’s used here is not on the start of that condition, but it’s on the resultant state of being. That is to say, we should translate this with the present tense. We are partakers of Christ. There’s an emphasis on the resultant state. It’s an emphasis on a current condition. We are partakers of Christ.
Same emphasis as in verse 1 is on their current condition, their present state. Right now they are partakers of a heavenly calling and right now this pastor is saying they are partakers of Christ.
But then he gives this caveat, and the caveat comes in this conditional sentence. If you look back at verse 6, you’ll see it verse 14 and verse 6 are really parallel to one another. So the pastor in verse 6 and verse 14, he’s using the same verb, katecho, katecho, it’s in the same form, kataschomen, the same exact verb, same verb form. And then it’s also the same exact if-then conditional statement, conditional structure.
So in these verses, verse 1, verse 6, verse 14, verse 14 is drawing back from verse 1 and drawing back from verse 6 and bringing them together, here. So he’s emphasizing the current condition of the Christians in his church, the present state of his people, most of them, anyway, and he encourages them and prods them onward with what in the Greek is third-class conditional, these third-class conditional statements that are in verse 6 and verse 14.
If you look at verse 6, we’ll state these kind of in the if-then form. In verse 6, it’s, “If we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope, then we are his house.” Verse 14, “If we hold fast the beginning or the start of our assurance of our confidence, if we hold that fast firm until the end, then we are partakers of Christ.” So what he’s trying to emphasize, here, is the confirmation that we are his house, the confirmation that we are partakers of Christ. The confirmation is in continuing to hold fast.
“Hold fast” to what? Our confidence, verse 6, which is Christ, right? “The boast of our hope.” What’s that? Christ. He is our boast. We boast in nothing but Christ. And then in verse 14, “hold fast” to what? “The beginning of our assurance,” the start of our confidence. Where did that start? Christ. Once again, Christ in whom we trusted when we first became Christians.
So what is it we’re to hold fast to? Christ, Christ, Christ. We’re to hold fast to him firm until the end. That’s what the pastor is emphasizing.
He uses the subjunctive mood, here, and this particular kind of conditional statement can one at the same time convey kind of varying levels of certainty about his confidence about them from the speaker’s perspective, so it ranges from an uncertain but potential to a more certain probability.
He knows there is a mix of people in his church, and so it’s a very appropriate way for a pastor to write to an entire congregation, knowing, as all pastors know, it’s a mixed group of people, consists of, we hope as pastors, most of us being saved, most of us truly knowing the Lord, truly saved people, but others who are professing Christ, but may in time prove to be, maybe self-deceived, maybe pretenders, maybe hypocrites or worse.
The London Baptist Confession in chapter 26, section 3 says, “The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error.” And then it cites as proof for that statement Revelation 2, Revelation 3, the seven letters to the seven churches from Christ himself, where Christ writes to reprove the ungodly and in some cases the unbelieving in the midst of those churches.
Very clear from those letters that there are some unbelieving who need to repent or else face his wrath. And then Christ also in those letters speaks comfort and encouragement to his real people in those churches. He tries to console them and comfort them.
They don’t want to submit to God’s commands about worship.” Travis Allen
And this is how the pastor, following his Lord, this is how the pastor writes to his own church. It’s how all true, faithful pastors and elders should think, preach, teach, speak, lead, govern. This is how pastors, this is how leaders should think and speak. And I’ll just commend it to you, too, as whether in leadership or not, as a Christian, you need to think this way because the stakes are eternal.
By conditional statements like these in verse 6 and verse 14, for the believing, by these conditional statements, we are shepherded onward to delight. Our hearts are delighted because we’re true partakers of a heavenly calling. We’re true partakers of Christ, and we are true partakers in the fullness of our salvation.
The more we partake of the calling, the more we partake of Christ, the more we delight in him. And so we experience the fullness of our salvation the more we are sanctified, the more we grow, the more we mature. And that’s what these conditional statements are for.
I’m going to spend a little more time a little bit later, I want to make our third point, then come back to this issue of conditional statements and their usefulness. I want to explain how they work, why it is that they’re in Scripture, the usefulness of conditional statements, and how they really do cause us to rejoice. But first, let’s finish our outline just to get through these verses, through chapter 3.
We talked about our daily duty. That’s the first point, which is mutual exhortation, and it’s so we partake of a daily delight. We need to mutually encourage one another and mutually exhort one another so that we all participate and partake of a daily delight as we increase in the fullness of our salvation.
And so it is our daily drive, third point, our daily drive as we look to the future, as we look to the future and the rest in our salvation. So number three, our daily drive, which is final glorification. Final glorification.
This last portion in verses 15 through 19, chapter 3 of Hebrews, it kind of shows the importance, here, of final glorification, which God refers to, here, as “my rest,” rest. And it’s emphasized by showing the loss of that rest due to unbelief. It’s such a significant thing to lose out on, to lose out on God’s rest.
And so by seeing the significance of the loss, we’re pointed to the need to mutually encourage one another, take daily delight in our salvation, that we continue to look toward the future of this fulfillment of our hope in final glorification. That’s our daily drive.
So he returns to the point in verse 15 and repeats the Psalm 95.7 verses 8 quote, “While it is said, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me.’” Notice the us-versus-them, you and them.
The pastor encourages his people to live in contrast to the “they” who provoked God in the past. He wants them to hear God’s voice, not harden their hearts. And so to emphasize that, to draw the lessons out of Psalm 95, which he’s quoted in verses 7 through 11 of Hebrews 3, to draw this out, he asks and answers three rhetorical questions.
Notice, that’s verses 16 through 18. Let me just read those. Well, let me back up. “While it is said, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked me.’ For who provoked him?” Here’s the questions. “Who provoked him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? “And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?”
Who provoked him in verse 16? Who provoked him after hearing his voice? We know the answer, right? All those who were rescued out of Egypt. Okay, so we can except Moses and maybe Aaron, even though Aaron provoked him, Joshua and Caleb, they did not provoke God. They believed, right? They believed. Moses believed.
But everyone else that came out of Egypt, that entire generation, and we have the tally in Numbers, Numbers being kind of a reference to the two censuses. The first census before they went to the Promised Land, and then they sinned and disobeyed, and God laid them all out in the wilderness. So 602-some-thousand people, men, fighting age 20 and up. So we know a million-plus, two million children of Israel, women and children included, but 602,000 men of fighting age were laid waste in the wilderness.
Another census is at the end of Numbers before they go into the Promised Land. That other census, that generation is replaced with their children. So the pastor asked, “Who provoked him after hearing his voice?” The majority.
Man, that’s kind of scary, isn’t it? When Jesus says, “‘It’s few that find me. Many are called, few are chosen’”; man, how many are the few, and a handful of those people who came out of Egypt?
So the pastor’s asking, Church, which side do you stand on? Do you stand with Moses in the minority? Do you stand with that God-appointed leader or do you reject that for yourself?
He’s also saying, and especially to these Jews, he’s saying My fellow Hebrews, my fellow Christians, don’t think you can identify corporately with the Jewish community and be safe. Don’t think you can escape the persecution that’s coming, by, maybe you’re going to escape a temporal persecution by identifying with Christians and escape the imperial persecution that’s coming and Nero and all the problems.
Maybe you feel like you can escape that, but when you try to take refuge back with your Jewish community, you think you’ll be safe there? That didn’t help all those who came out of Egypt. And don’t think you can adhere to Moses, either. That didn’t help them either.
Don’t think you can adhere to Moses and claim him as your leader because it’s Moses who pointed to Christ. If you don’t follow the one to whom Moses pointed, you’re abandoning not only Christ, but Moses, too.”
So the real issue when hearing God’s Word, are you soft in your heart? Are you responsive, or are you hard-hearted, provoking him? That’s what the pastor is asking in that question.
Verse 17, he asked a second question: “With whom was God angry?” With whom was he angry? All the sinners who died in the wilderness. All the sinners who died in the wilderness evidenced God was angry with them.
And the pastor asked them, then, Church, are you God-fearers, not wanting to anger God, but striving to please God. What kind of a heart do you have toward God? What’s your posture? What’s your heart disposition? Is it, you don’t want to anger God, but you want to please him? Again, he’s saying in verse 17, God’s justice may take time, but never ever doubt this: God’s justice against sin is certain.
The term that’s used, there, in verse 17 for corpses, kind of a harrowing term. You know, we think about a corpse. That’s even kind of more vivid, you could say, than the word dead body. But corpse, it has this kind of feeling of, like a sense of rotting.
That’s the picture he’s trying to paint, here, because the term actually kind of usually refers to like a limb or a body part that’s been kind of lopped off and is laying on the side after battle. There’s cut-off limbs and body parts strewn across a battlefield, lying lifeless on the ground.
So their corpses are kind of being portrayed not as individual bodies, but as severed limbs, as if they’re cut off from the body, which is Israel, and lopped off. The true body of Israel, which is at this point Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, that’s the body. And lopped off our 600,000-plus men lying to the side like cut-off limbs strewn about in the wilderness, like some smoldering battlefield.
This picture of lifeless limbs, it’s very similar to imagery that Jesus used in John 15:6, where he talks about fruitless branches. Remember that? He talks about these branches as being, they’re connected, but they’re superficially connected to the vine. They’re not truly vitally connected or attached to the vine.
So any branch that’s superficially connected to the vine is just taking substance and doing nothing with it. It’s just a consumer. It produces nothing. So it’s good for nothing but to be cut off, thrown away, gathered up in bunches, cast into the fire, and burned.
Why is that? Because sin provokes God’s anger. Justice then hunts down each and every victim. Because justice will have its day. It’s like a hunter patiently tracking down his prey; and this over forty years. Maybe the guys living in year 39 thought, I made it, I’m going to get in. And then he trips and falls, and that’s it for him. It’s like a hunter, not a hunter hunting game for food; this is the hunt of an executioner, like an assassin, a hit man.
So let none think he can escape his point in verse 17, whether in a wilderness as those in Numbers 14 or in David’s kingdom, those who were warned in Psalm 95. Don’t think you’re going to escape if you live in a massive city like the city of Rome, those in the congregation of the Hebrew Christians.
Don’t think you can escape by living in Northern Colorado or anywhere in the United States or in Iran or anywhere, for that matter, because God’s justice is everywhere. No matter where they are, God’s justice will find sinners.
And when I use the term sinners, I want to make clear I’m talking about those who are steeled in their sin. They are those with an evil heart sourced in unbelief. So by using the term sinners and God’s justice will hunt them down, find them, and execute, we’re not talking about believers, there. We’re talking about unbelievers. No matter where they are, God’s justice finds them.
Which says there’s a contrasting point to be made here, too, to remind us that on the other hand, God’s mercy and God’s grace, just as certain as his justice, God’s mercy and his grace, will find all of his people and will shepherd all of his believing people into his eternal rest.
Which brings us to verse 18. To whom did God curse with an oath? To whom did he say, this is really harrowing, imagine God, the eternal God, looking you in the eye and saying, no rest for you. Oh!
It’s the disobedient to whom God speaks; it’s the unbelieving. So the pastor asks, Are you obedient, church? Are you obedient, church member, or are you disobedient? Are you stubborn and stiff-necked, or are you soft, compliant, eager to obey him?
Those who are obedient by God’s grace, and it is by God’s grace that any is obedient, they enter into his rest, and the others will never enter, and God promises them that. In fact, he swears it with an oath.
All those who died outside the Promised Land who did not enter into his rest, that is the evidence that they provoked God, verse 16. That’s the evidence that they angered God, verse 17. That’s the evidence that they didn’t enter into his rest, verse 18, because none of their bodies made it there, but their corpses were strewn all across the wilderness.
So to hear his voice and yet provoke God through sin and disobedience results in death. It results in a forfeiture of rest. And the pastor wants his people to see, as he says in verse 19, “So we see that they were not able to enter.”
Interesting, using the word dynamai, there, inability. They don’t have the ability, they don’t have a regenerate nature. They’re not born again. They don’t have a new nature, so they actually can’t obey.
And yet it is a willful disobedience. It’s a willfulness that we’re not able to enter because of unbelief. Unbelief undermined them. And that is the major warning, here, which means, on the other hand, faith is the dividing line. Faith leads to eternal rest.
So we’re to see the contrasting point. This pastor wants his people to see the contrasting point. Unbelief: death. Believing: faith, which is also proven by softness, responsiveness, hearing his voice, obeying his word leads to life.
Rest is what Adam and Eve lost because they heard God and did not believe him, and they died and forfeited rest. Rest is what Israel lost because though they heard God, too, they didn’t believe him either, and they, too, died and thus forfeited rest, not entering into the Promised Land.
Rest is what these Hebrews will lose, too, if they follow the same pattern of unbelief, hearing God’s Word and yet spurning it, provoking God, angering him by their inevitable sin and their inevitable departure or apostasy from Christ.
And as we’re soon going to see, there’s a promise in chapter 4, verse 9, that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” And this is what the people of God, this is what all believers long for, is this rest into which they enter by faith, in which they remain by faith, and from which they will never depart because they long for that final glorification, that final glorification promised long ago, even as old as Genesis, that spoke of God entering into a rest on the seventh day. It’s a final Sabbath rest for the people of God.
Now, just with the time we have left, here, I want to go back to the nature of those conditional statements. We’ve made it through verse 19. Hooray, hooray! Now let’s go back. I want to talk about these conditional statements and explain them a little bit more and show you why, for the believing, for us who are believers, these conditional statements bring the utmost delight to our souls.
They’re how we experience the fullness of our salvation right here, right now. We who are justified, we who are being sanctified will one day be glorified. But our justification puts us into a state of progressive sanctification. And that progressive sanctification is spurred along by conditional statements like we find in verse 6 and verse 14.
So when we come across conditional statements, if-then: If this, then you are truly God’s people. If you obey, you’re truly God’s people. If you stay, if you hold fast, then you’re truly partakers of Christ. That’s what I mean by conditional statements.
Some people take these conditional statements in Scripture, like the one in verse 6, like the one in verse 14, some people take those as unwelcome threats, take them as coercion, as if the writer is using cheap fear tactics to scare his people into holding fast.
You ever felt that way as you read it? Oooh, if-then! What? What’s this? Works? I’ve got to maintain my salvation by works? Is that what’s going on here? We can be troubled. Some people aren’t just troubled; they go further and they are resentful. They’re resenting this. Some people believe that warnings for believers are kind of beneath God, and so they try to weaken these warnings and weaken these conditional statements, explain them away and ignore them, or outright reject the Bible’s conditional statements.
And so they construct a theology that elevates divine justification to such a high degree, higher than the Bible, but one, a degree that distorts and twists and perverts the doctrine of justification.
They want to do worship in their own way, be innovative. That’s everywhere. Travis Allen
They really prefer to preach the indicatives only of what God has done and then say, Just focus on what God has done, and if you command anybody’s conscience with an imperative statement or you provide a conditional, what you need to say in those imperative statements is, Well, no one can keep that perfectly. But praise God, Christ kept it perfectly. And therefore I don’t need to worry about not keeping it perfectly because Christ kept it perfectly.
And therefore, I can just relax and drink my whiskey and smoke my cigars and use foul language and do whatever I want to do, because I am in a state of grace, and to succumb to these commands and these imperatives and threats like a conditional statement is way beneath God.
And I don’t need to worry about those things because Christ has fulfilled it all for me, and he’s done it perfectly. I could never do it perfectly, so let’s not even bother. Let me just tell you, that’s wrong, okay? If you could hear in my scornful tone, that’s wrong.
There are others who take these conditional statements also as threats, but they have been taught in their discipleship or in their upbringing in certain churches, they’ve been taught to see God this way, as threatening, as kind of like a scolding God, like some kind of a stern and harsh father who makes frequent use of the strap and the switch to whip his children into obedience, and he has to use commands and threats and conditional statements.
So people like this, who’ve been taught this way, they heed the warning. They’re kind of like cowering in fear and kind of shrinking up as if they’re going to get smacked again. And they try even harder to hold fast. That’s how they take this. They believe their perseverance is entirely up to them.
Many from the first error I was pointing out can be found in the Calvinist camp. They’re antinomian in their thinking. Many in this camp who kind of cower before God are kind of in more of an Arminian camp, with a very weak view of God’s sovereignty, not understanding how meticulous God’s sovereignty is and how involved he is in caring for his people, and delighting to sanctify them, and promising from the very start that he will cause them to persevere to the very end.
And so they put immense pressure upon themselves, immense pressure upon their people, and their people come out really hating the law of God and really hating the God of the law. And many of them go out to just live however they want to because they can’t live under that crushing burden anymore. They demonstrate they really haven’t known God.
I could go on with other different kinds of errors how people react to conditional statements in the Bible, but let’s just talk about those who have learned and matured in their faith to the point that they do see these conditional statements for what they really are.
The mature understand what God intends by a conditional statements like these in verse 6 and verse 14. They understand what he’s doing, and they begin to recognize how godly pastors and mature Christians use these conditional statements.
And really what happens in these conditional statements is God uses these to cause us to wake up and take notice, be warned, heed the statement, and pursue sanctification. This is one way that God preserves his people, is through putting in Scripture conditional statements like these.
We need to learn to appreciate these statements deeply and not pull away from them, not react negatively, but actually consider them, be thoughtful, prayerful, study them and see the goodness of God in them, the love of God in the conditional statement to cause us, his saints, to persevere, faithful to the end, because we see, even in the warnings, we see promises. That’s what the believing does. The believing sees promises and the warnings and finds hope in the conditions.
Let me show you what I mean and give you a little list. If you like to jot little lists, here’s an opportunity. Seven points, seven ways that you can learn to appreciate the conditionals, seven ways that you can even learn to love these warnings, to persevere to the end, so you see them not as a harsh taskmaster, but you see them as the gentle hand of the fatherly discipline that shepherds his people into his kingdom by means of statements like this.
Most deeply, conditionals that warn us to persevere, that is, if we hold fast, then we are true believers. If we hold fast, we are truly partakers of Christ, something akin to that.
Conditional statements, number one, they keep teaching us the fear of the Lord, don’t they? Number one, conditional statements keep teaching us the fear of the Lord, not to trifle with God, but to heed his Word, to take him seriously, to know that he’s not playing, but he is serious. He’s kind, but he’s serious.
Paul said, “Note the kindness and the severity of the Lord.” Both things are true of him. So we need to take obedience seriously out of this foundation of the fear of the Lord. There’s just this fountain of, like Jesus in John 4 said, “a fountain of living water.” It just produces more and more satisfaction of your thirst. Okay, so fear of the Lord, number one.
After instilling the fear of the Lord in us, number two, conditional statements train us in godly character. Conditional statements train us in godly character. They discipline us in the graces of patience and endurance, as we are made strong in our weakness, as we’re made courageous in what could be our cowardice, bold amidst great opposition, as we learn to hold fast day by day in all the highs and the lows of life. So conditional statements, number two, they train us in godly character. Built off the fear of the Lord, we’re trained in godly character.
Number three, conditional statements drive us to the blessings that we want most, anyway. Strong confidence? I mean, look at verse 6, “We are his house if we hold fast our confidence, the boast of our hope.” Verse 14, “If we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.” Who doesn’t want that? What believer doesn’t want that?
So they drive us to the blessing that we want most anyway: strong confidence, a valid cause for boasting, a rejoicing and a living, never-failing hope that is productive and fruitful and transformative. Which one of us doesn’t want strong, confident boasting in God’s power because we see it at work in our lives? No Christian I know wants to eschew those things.
Add verse 14 and we get a fourth point: Conditional statements always take us back to the gospel, the beginning of our assurance. That’s what it’s talking about, the beginning of our assurance. So we always look to the perfect, completed work of Christ, the objectivity of his substitutionary atonement.
We look not to a righteousness of our own, confident in our own works, but we look to the all-surpassing beauty of the righteousness of Jesus Christ and the active and the passive obedience of Christ for us.
So according to verse 14, a fourth one, his conditional statements always take us back to the gospel. We can only fulfill the condition if we believe the gospel, if we hold fast to the gospel. So we have to wrestle every time we come to these conditional statements, have to wrestle with our faith and trust in the gospel. Do we really rest there, or are we trying to grow in our own merit?
Let me make this really personal, relational. Number five, conditional statements always put Christ before our eyes, to see him, increasingly appreciating who he is. Conditional statements always put Christ before our eyes so we know who he is, what he’s done for us, what he continues to do for us. And that’s really the book of Hebrews, to talk about Christ’s continuing ministry to us in his high-priestly ministry.
And all this so we love him more fully, so we cherish his friendship more deeply, so we appreciate all his ministries to us: his prophetic ministry, his priestly ministry, his kingly ministry to us. We love him more fully, cherish his friendship more deeply, so we can thank him more knowledgeably, more intelligently, so we can worship him more fervently, obey him more eagerly, heartily, zealously because of him, because of a relationship with him. Conditional statements put Christ before our eyes, and this is a relational, personal blessing.
So when we fear the Lord, mature in godly character, enjoy the blessings of our salvation, remember the gospel of Jesus Christ, and fix our eyes on Jesus, we find two more closely related but opposite benefits that emerge. One is negative; one is positive. I’ll cover the negative one first.
By conditional statements in Scripture, like we see in verse 6, verse 11, number six, unbelievers prove to be unbelieving. Unbelievers prove to be unbelieving. And you say, Why would we rejoice in that? Why would that be something good?
Well, unbelievers can’t fulfill the condition. They find themselves frustrated in holding fast, because what undermines their ability to hold fast is: they don’t believe. And so they have an evil heart, and their evil heart and all their sin has not been dealt with. And so their grip is loosened and weakened very quickly.
They don’t fear the Lord. They don’t learn to enjoy the blessings of a salvation that they don’t possess. They don’t remember and hold fast to a gospel that they’ve never believed and embraced. They don’t fix their eyes on a Jesus that they don’t know personally and they leave the fellowship.
And you say, How do we rejoice in that? Well, it’s most certainly a blessing for the believing, even though it’s a painful blessing and a sad blessing, something we sorrow in. But when the unbelieving stay in a church, they compromise the integrity of the church, don’t they?
They erode the unity of the church. They let sin grow and fester in the church. They degrade its purity, just as leaven leavens a loaf. Believers are affected by unbelievers who remain as false professors within a church. “They went out from us,” why? “because they were not of us to begin with.”
And it is a blessing, even though it is painful to see it happen. It’s painful. It hurts my heart and sometimes to tears every time I see it happen. But it is a blessing in the end to have an integral, unified, pure fellowship of saints.
Finally, the opposite is a very positive blessing, number seven: In conditional statements, the believing learn to spot the promises that God sets forth, spot the promises in the conditional statement. We love every warning that trains our senses to hold fast to the promises until we reach our final salvation.
This is how believers take conditional statements, not as barriers to assurance, but as contributing to a most confident assurance. We see these as inducements to pursue God’s promises to grab them, to hold them fast. For when, in verse 6, when we continue to hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope, we strengthen our assurance that we are his house, that we are the temple of the living God.
And verse 14, when we continue to hold fast the start of our assurance, the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, we grow strong in knowledge of the truth. It assures us of the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of Christ’s love for us, that we’re truly partakers of Christ.
So who would despise that? Who would not want that? Who would consider such benefits to be insignificant, unimportant gifts of these conditional statements of Scripture like we find in verse 6 and verse 14, and we’re going to find further in Hebrews? Only unbelievers resent those, with hardened hearts, only those who, let’s say they’re believers, but they’re ignorant and they don’t understand.
Well, now you have seven points that you can help believers understand why conditional statements in Scripture are so good. All true believers, we love to fear the Lord. We love to mature in godliness. We love to enjoy the blessings of the fullness of our salvation in the gospel of Christ.
We love to fix our eyes on Jesus. There’s nothing in our vision that is more beautiful to behold than Jesus Christ to any of us. We love to heed his warnings, and we love to rejoice in his good promises. That’s what these are for. And I just want to encourage you with that. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for this faithful pastor in the writer of Hebrews who exhorts his congregation and calls them to join in his exhortation. But he, even as he warns, he gives great encouragement to the believing, even as he lays down conditions. The believing take it to heart, and you shepherd us toward heaven. We see Christ is more precious to us. We see, God, your greatness in your majesty. Your power is set before us in such clarity and such glory that we don’t want to look away, ever.
And so we pray, Father, that you would use what this pastor has done for his church, that you use it to great effect in our church as well, that you encourage all of us as long as it is called today, that we would join in this ministry of a mutual exhortation one to another, as long as it is called today, lest we become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, lest we miss out on the promises. And help us to see Christ, trust in his gospel, and hold fast to him. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.