Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, hey, as Tina said, man, what a blessing it was last week to celebrate 26 baptisms.
[00:00:08] Amen.
[00:00:12] That is a really cool thing, and I am so thankful to God for that. And today, what a beautiful day for a little family picnic.
[00:00:22] This is so nice.
[00:00:25] And I will also tell you, we will not have any lettuce here, which, luckily, that's not part of my diet, so I don't know about that. That was easy one for me to cut out.
[00:00:38] But it's good to see you. And as Tina said, next week we'll be back to our normal services. 9, 30 and 11. But, you know, we give these three Sundays to give our family ministry a little bit of a break, but also just to have time where it's easy to make conversation and get to know each other as a church. Sometimes we're in and out going a million miles per hour. So make sure to talk with someone you don't know today. Build a relationship, introduce yourself, share a hot dog together. Not the same one, but you know what I'm saying.
[00:01:15] All right, let's pray.
[00:01:16] Father, we thank you so much for your blessing here to us today. We pray that you would, Father, as each of us are on a journey of faith with you, give us the strength and the endurance that we need in this season.
[00:01:31] Give it to us as a church. And, Lord, let us go forward into the good future that you have. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:01:43] Amen.
[00:01:45] Well, I don't know if you've ever started a journey and then you're like, I don't know if this is really worth it or if this is really going to work out.
[00:01:54] Some years ago, Allie and I, we went on vacation to Arizona. And Phoenix is surrounded by a bunch of mountains. And someone's like, you guys should go, you know, climb one of the mountains. It'll be a fun thing. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. So we went to one. It's called Camelback Mountain. And I, you know what? Yeah, it's really cool. It's a really beautiful hike. And so I was really excited about it. And I walked about 5ft out of the car, fell on the stairs, out of the parking lot, rolled my ankle and wasn't one of my more proud moments, you know, just hard to recover from that. And I was like, this. This seems like a really fun journey I want to take, but it isn't going to happen. My ankle's swollen, struggling, and needless to say, we didn't make it to the top that day.
[00:02:48] I think of Another time last year, Allie and I went to a road trip to North Carolina, and less than an hour in. Teddy, my youngest son, he's two, he threw up two times.
[00:03:01] Babe, can we just cancel? Can we go home? The car already stinks. We're not. We pushed through and we made it. But many times on a journey where, especially when you're trying to go somewhere important and you're trying to go in a new or healthy direction in your life, there's many times where you get to the point where you're like, is this journey worth it?
[00:03:25] And betrayed Jesus. He denied him three times. And then the gospel writer says, he said, the next day, I'm going fishing.
[00:03:34] Which meant, I'm done with this. I'm going back to my old life. He's like, you know, the journey, I just. I keep messing it up.
[00:03:43] And I don't know if any of us, sometimes in our journey with God, in our walk with God, we feel like I'm messing this thing up.
[00:03:52] It makes me want to maybe turn back, or maybe it's the difficulty or just the struggle of the season that does it. But today I want to talk to you about that, because in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews is a book in the New Testament. One of the interesting things about Hebrews is no one is certain who actually wrote it. It's one of the great mysteries of New Testament history.
[00:04:16] But the message of it is clear. He's writing to people who are thinking about turning back on their journey.
[00:04:25] They're struggling. They're facing maybe different kinds of struggles and persecutions.
[00:04:30] And they're like, is this worth it?
[00:04:33] Should we keep going?
[00:04:35] And the author of Hebrews is exhorting them to keep going forward and say, hey, keep fighting the good fight. Keep taking the next step. The journey is worth it, and God will help you in it. And we're gonna look today at Hebrews 10, verse 35.
[00:04:54] I'm gonna preach for, like, an hour today. Is that all right?
[00:04:57] You feel awakened?
[00:05:01] That wasn't encouraging.
[00:05:05] But here's what Hebrews 10:35 says. It says this. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.
[00:05:16] These people he's writing to, they're tempted to throw away their confidence.
[00:05:22] Is this worth it? Should we keep going?
[00:05:25] Can we sustain this journey?
[00:05:27] And he says, don't throw away your confidence. It has great reward. You have need of endurance.
[00:05:34] So when you've done the will of God, you may receive what is promised for yet a little while. And the coming one will come and 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 those who have faith and preserve their souls.
[00:05:55] Now, there's a lot in these verses, but ultimately what the author is saying, he's saying, hey, keep going on this journey God has for you.
[00:06:05] It will develop your soul in the way that God wants it to grow that difficult journeys. There we go.
[00:06:14] Let's hear a rev here.
[00:06:17] Nope. Oh, I was hoping for one.
[00:06:23] Anybody else? I was expecting it.
[00:06:25] But the author of Hebrews is saying, difficult journeys develop our souls in ways God wants us. And the first thing he says is, in this journey, don't throw away your confidence.
[00:06:41] Now, this isn't self confidence necessarily. He's saying, don't throw away your sense of self confidence. But if we read all the context of this book, it's a confidence in Christ and it's a confidence that affects our past, our present, and our future.
[00:06:59] See, the author of Hebrews has been saying that Christ is the ultimate sacrifice for our sins and that he cleanses our conscience.
[00:07:11] Now, if you think about this, sometimes in life, do you ever get stuck being traumatized by your own mistakes?
[00:07:24] Do you ever just struggle with dealing with your own failures, your own moments of shame, your own sense of man?
[00:07:36] I can't believe I did that, or I was that person, or I live that, or anything like that.
[00:07:42] And what the author of Hebrews is saying is we can have confidence that Jesus Christ absolutely has forgiven all of that church. One of the amazing things that God offers to us is freedom from the shame of our own sin.
[00:08:04] Freedom from we can stand before God and know I am free, forgiven. Not because I'm great and I've made up for all of this, but because Jesus Christ's sacrifice was so great. It covers it all.
[00:08:19] And when you're on a difficult journey, you cannot make it and carry the weight of shame and still keep going. You with me?
[00:08:29] When you're on a meaningful journey, you need to be free from the shame that life can bring us so we can move forward in what God has. Now, this confidence also has a sense of the present.
[00:08:44] The author of Hebrews says that Jesus Christ is the perfect high priest.
[00:08:50] Now here's what that means. That means he understands you at the deepest level.
[00:08:58] Not only does he understand, he understands your struggles, your pain, all of that. And he is compassionate and merciful and willing to help us in our time of need.
[00:09:12] So the author of Hebrew is saying, he's saying, look, don't throw away your confidence that Christ is really willing to help you today, that he is willing to understand, to meet, to sympathize in your needs in your life and to help you in it. And lastly, he says Christ is our better future, that none of our lives are just randomly happening, but Christ is moving it all towards his great purpose.
[00:09:43] And the author says, don't throw away that confidence.
[00:09:47] Don't throw away the confidence that Christ brings our life. He says it has great reward.
[00:09:55] Now, I think when we lose confidence in life, if you ever been in a situation where you don't feel confident, I think you can go one of two ways.
[00:10:05] You can either kind of try to overcompensate it and act really confident, even though you're like, I'm totally faking this right now.
[00:10:12] This is all bravado, but I'm doing it. And you can kind of become bigger than you really are.
[00:10:19] Or when you lack confidence, you can kind of just start to disappear.
[00:10:23] You with me. And you can just kind of try to fade away from the situation or the person. But both of those are losing your actual human size.
[00:10:38] You're either becoming too big or too small.
[00:10:41] And neither of those is really what you want. You with me on this because sometimes you become too big and it's just bravado and it's not really helpful to you or to anyone. And then sometimes we become too small and we need to be engaged and we need to be present.
[00:10:56] And there is a confidence that has great reward. There's a confidence that we all need to face the challenges of the life that God has for us. And the goal is to not be too big or too small, but to be human sized.
[00:11:12] And to say, I'm here, I'm present, but I'm not alone.
[00:11:18] God is with me.
[00:11:20] And God will help me where I can't figure it out, or I don't have the answers, or I'm not sure what to do. And God will be with me in every step of the journey. And then the author says that we need this confidence because this journey requires endurance.
[00:11:39] See, every journey God has requires endurance for us.
[00:11:45] Years ago, I read this book called the Cost of Discipleship.
[00:11:49] And it was by this man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I've always been fascinated by. And Bonhoeffer was a German pastor during World War II.
[00:11:58] And he was in the midst of all that was going on. And he came to America and was deciding, should he go back to Germany, should he stay put. And he Ended up going back to Germany and eventually being part of the resistance against Hitler. And he was sent to a concentration camp and killed.
[00:12:17] But he wrote a book. Yeah, his life story is a crazy story. He wrote a book called the Cost of Discipleship.
[00:12:25] And in the book, he talked about this idea of cheap grace.
[00:12:29] He says, we want God's forgiveness, we want God's mercy, and God certainly offers that freely.
[00:12:37] But we also have to realize that sometimes there is a cost and sacrifice to following him, that it's not easy, but it's worth it.
[00:12:46] And he said that we can't buy into a Christianity that's just cheap grace, where it's like there's no willingness to endure and to sacrifice and to do that kind of thing. You with me on this?
[00:13:02] And this is what the author of Hebrews is saying. He's saying we need endurance on the journey that God has for us. And maybe some of us, we're in the thick of it in our lives. We're going through challenging times. God's calling us forward in difficult times, and we need to.
[00:13:20] We need to lean into the endurance of this season. Because on the other side is a promise, is his blessing, is his future. I read a great book recently. It's called Gradually Then Suddenly by Mark Batterson.
[00:13:38] And if you are kind of interested in, like, endurance or you need a shot of encouragement in your Christian life, it's a really easy and good read. And it's all about that. It's about how God moves in our life very gradually. Nothing's happening, nothing's happening, nothing's happening. And then suddenly things are happening.
[00:13:59] But you have to stay locked in in the gradual. Amen. You got to stay locked in. When every day it's like, is this working?
[00:14:06] I'm praying, is God listening?
[00:14:09] I'm trying to love this person. They're still a jerk. Does this make any difference?
[00:14:15] I'm trying to seek him, but I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. And it's gradual and gradual and gradual. But then suddenly in our lives, God breaks through, but you have to be in it in the gradual. You with me? And this is what the author of Hebrews is saying. We need endurance. And church. We're in a season. We need endurance. Amen.
[00:14:41] Where we're going is worth it. Amen.
[00:14:44] But this is not an easy journey. We got a lot more setup, takedown ahead of us.
[00:14:51] We gotta keep grinding it out. We've gotta keep doing the best with what God's given us, and it will be worth it.
[00:14:59] But we've also gotta be willing to enter into the endurance. You with me on this church?
[00:15:05] And then the author ultimately says, he says, and God grows our soul in huge ways through all of this.
[00:15:15] God develops us into people of great faith and people of strong faith.
[00:15:21] And I was thinking about this, and the great C.S. lewis, he wrote, he said that the spiritual life is even greater than the physical life. And he says, as God grows us at the soul level, he said, it's like a statue coming to life.
[00:15:40] And just imagine how transforming it is for an inanimate statue to come to life. Remember that movie Pinocchio?
[00:15:49] Kind of like that. Is that still around?
[00:15:53] But this whole idea that in the same way it says, big of a transformation, when our souls begin to develop in the way that God wants them to as a statue is to come into life. And what the author of Hebrews is saying, he's saying, look, this journey that God has you on, it may be hard and it probably will be.
[00:16:15] It will shake your confidence at times.
[00:16:18] It will require endurance, but if you stay on, will produce a greater life of God in you than you've ever experienced.
[00:16:33] And how many of us know that's true?
[00:16:35] How many of us have. In this room, I was gonna say in God's room out here, how many of us have walked through difficult days where we're like, I'm not sure how I'm gonna get to lunch.
[00:16:51] I'm not sure how I'm gonna get to the end of this day.
[00:16:55] And by the grace of God, he gave you the endurance that you needed.
[00:17:00] And maybe this went on for weeks, maybe it went on for months, maybe it went on for years. But now, today, you sit here as a person of deep developed faith.
[00:17:14] You sit here as a person of a quality of soul that you didn't have before. Can I get an amen on this? And I know many of your stories, and I know you've done this, and I know you've walked through this. And what the author of Hebrews saying, he's saying, this is part of what God is doing in us in this thing called life.
[00:17:36] He is growing our soul from a statue to something real.
[00:17:42] And he's using the difficult and the challenge and the journey that we're on.
[00:17:48] And he says to us, keep going.
[00:17:53] Don't throw away your confidence.
[00:17:56] Keep showing up.
[00:17:58] Keep enduring.
[00:17:59] And today, maybe some of us, man, you're on the right path. And you're like, I'm on the right path. It should be easy.
[00:18:06] The author of Hebrews says, wrong.
[00:18:09] You're on the right path. It requires endurance.
[00:18:12] Church, we're on the right path. It's not easy. You with me?
[00:18:17] It requires endurance, but at the end is the soul and the people that God wants us to be. You with me on this church?
[00:18:29] And one thing I love about this church is that you always say yes to hard things that glorify God.
[00:18:39] You have always said yes to say, we're gonna take the difficult road that honors God.
[00:18:47] We could have just sat there nice and comfortable at South Abbey and had a little, you know, beautiful pavilion for our cookout. But we felt God calling us to the next step and the next step and the next step and church. We gotta keep saying yes to that journey as a church and as people, and it will be worth it. You with me on this? Let's pray, Father.
[00:19:15] I thank you, Lord, that you are a God who is building something holy and good in each of our souls and our lives here today.
[00:19:27] I pray, Father, for the journey that we're on as a church, that you would continue to give us strength, to give us confidence, to bless our way forward, Lord, through this season.
[00:19:42] And I pray for each of us as individuals, Lord, as we face the challenges and the calling and all that's ahead of each of us, that your grace would be upon each person, each family, each marriage, each friendship here.
[00:19:59] And I pray you would be glorified.
[00:20:01] Thank you for the joy of knowing you. Thank you for the confidence that Christ offers to us. And may we receive it with. With open hearts today. We ask this in Jesus great name. Amen.
