The Wicket Gate

Introduction

Turn in your bibles to the book of Hebrews. We are going to be back in chapter 6, covering verses 9-12 this morning. Fearing our salvation is a pretty easy thing to do isn’t it? I feel confident in saying that no one had to teach you how to worry if you were going to heaven. That fear comes quite naturally to us. Further scripture gives us things like, 1 Corinthians 6:9 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” Further, we live in a world that is constantly assaulting our faith and certainly our assurance of salvation. We very often feel as the writer of Hebrews has already described, like a ship that has been drifted of course and being lost at sea is inevitable. What are we to do? Are we to be saved, or forever lost at sea?

I can’t take such realities away or pretend like they don’t exist but from our text this morning I can encourage you towards a persisting faith. The Apostle Peter makes certain in his epistle that we understand the reality of life on Earth and the spiritual battle that we constantly face.

1 Peter 5:8
ESV

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

All of these spiritual and worldly forces that are ever attacking us coupled with our own lingering sinfulness and these warning passages in scripture can leave us with overwhelming feelings. The main idea we will pull from our text this morning is that assurance of faith is possible and while our ultimate salvation is purely dependent on the sovereign work of God, our feelings (in connection with assurance) are always driven by our actions and responses. J.C. Ryle said this:

Hebrews Chapter 20: Diligent to the End (Hebrews 6:9–12)

“I bless God that our salvation in no wise depends on our own works.… But I never would have any believer for a moment forget that our sense of salvation depends much on the manner of our living.”

This is to say that our salvation comes from Christ, Amen, but experiencing the joy of our salvation comes from living a life of Godliness as a result of our relationship with Christ. They say actions speak louder than words and in many ways this is true. If we say we are a Christian, and we want to have the full assurance that we truly are a Christian, we must necessarily act like one. Those loud speaking actions, that persisting faith, will not only justify us as Christians before men, as James says, but they will give us the joy and the assurance we desperately need to maintain our hope to the end. Stand with me as we read our text this morning,

Hebrews 6:9–12
ESV

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation.

For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end,

so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Confidence in Love

This may be a disputed statement today but I don’t think it should be. The best and most effective way to discipline a child is to act swiftly and firmly, cutting to quick with stern and hard words and decisive action and then immediately following that with deep and tender love. I say that from experience of not having done that nearly as well as I should and often been too harsh and then not loving enough but that model is laid out so clearly for us in our texts over the past couple weeks.

The author of Hebrews has taken a very parental tone since the start of this larger section hasn’t he? Essentially calling his readers spiritual infants and telling his readers that they need to grow up and be more mature. He follows that with some very hard words about the dangers of their immaturity, namely the danger of apostasy. In context he is warning that the immature Christian who doesn’t grow up and mature and bear fruit is in real danger of apostasy, whose end is to be burned.

Not unlike a parent who sternly tells their child in the midst of some foolish or childish act, if you don’t grow up and quit that you are going to end up living on the streets. Usually when we do that it is a silly hyperbolic warning but for the writer of Hebrews, we can say he is dead serious.

After those harsh words though, he does for the reader something so wonderful and so encouraging and so instructive. He pulls us in close, takes us by the hand, tells us he love us, and assures us that he is confident of better things for us. “Though I speak in this way”, though my words may be harsh and difficult to hear, though they may sting and cause a bit of internal strife, in your case I am sure of better things.

What is so effective about his assurance here is that he grounds his confidence in love. Not love in action, we will get to that in just a second but first love as an identity. “Beloved” he says. This is the Greek “agapetos”, a deep, binding kind of love. Distinct and different from “phileo” or brotherly / friendship love, this is abiding forever love. This is the same love Paul mentions in

Colossians 3:12
ESV

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,

The authors confidence then, in better things for his readers, is grounded first in their identity as ones who are eternally loved. Loved by whom? Loved by the triune God, of course. How can any of us be sure of better things for us, things that belong to salvation? Let me pull you in close this morning and say that I can be sure of these things only because you are beloved by God. Our confidence must first and always come from our identity as chosen ones, holy and beloved of God. Though the word and life is often hard and harsh let me assure you this morning that in Christ you are beloved. And only because you are in Christ and loved by Christ am I confident of better things for any of you. These better things belonging to salvation are all principally from the love of Christ.

The next verse though he points them to their works as further assurance of their reality in Christ. “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.”

We know and have talked at length about the fruits of the spirit that necessarily accompany salvation. To quote Dr. Phillips, he says this,

Hebrews Confident of Better Things

Do you find hatred giving way to love and peace? Is envy being conquered by joy, insatiable craving by gentleness and self-control? These are things we can discern about our own lives and which gauge our spiritual condition.

So just from an internal perspective we should be able to evaluate our progress in those internal fruits of the spirit. But what about our external relationships? This is where the writer points us to in further assuring us of our union with Christ. Look at how much you have loved and cared for one another and ministered to one another, especially when things were difficult. Later in Hebrews he says this:

Hebrews 10:32–34
ESV

But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings,

sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.

For you had compassion on those in prison.

What we see here then is that because the father, in and through Christ, loves us, we love him and we prove our love to him by loving others. This goes completely against this silly notion that your spouse or your family can become an idol or loving your friends and caring for them can become an idol. Or that even a diligence to be involved in the life and ministry of the church is somehow less important than other things. Maybe this sounds crazy but the best way to love and serve God is to love your spouse and family serve them. To love your church family and serve them. To love your friends and serve them, and in that order if we are splitting hairs. If you are doing that, you can be assured that God is not overlooking your work.

What I think I am getting at is that you don’t have to jet set to Africa to minister to strangers there in order to prove yourself to God. Praise God that he does call people to do that but so often our assurance is shaken because we aren’t doing all these things but God’s word very simply tells us to love and serve the saints. Our assurance comes not from how much we do but how much we love. It is our overflow or outflow of love for one another by which we may be assured that we are in Christ.

This is really what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 13 right?

1 Corinthians 13:1–3
ESV

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Paul argues from the negative there but I will argue from the positive as our passage in this morning does. Because in Christ you have gained everything, love others as though you are loving Christ and by this you will surely know that his love is in you. This is the confidence you can have in love.

Earnestness in Eternal Glory

The heart and desire of the writer here is that we may live our lives in the joy of that full assurance of hope. Not that we be Christians who go through life cowering under the weight of eternal judgment or looking over our shoulders every day for the apostasy monster who is probably hiding behind every corner waiting to grab you and pull you down to hell.

That kind of attitude makes Christians who serve and love only out of fear and whose Christian walk can be defined best by the word grudgingly. We know these people, maybe you are these people but we want something more for us. We want the heart that Paul describes in Ephesians

Ephesians 1:18–19
ESV

having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might

“Have the full assurance” there in the text literally means “to fill up”. So we are earnest or diligent in the outworking of our faith so that we may be filled up with hope. That is exactly what Paul says there in Ephesians, diligence in faith gives us an ever increasing awareness of the riches of this glorious inheritance that we have been given and necessarily produces joy in our service to God and to one another.

Assurance of salvation and the joy that comes with that doesn’t require some magic formula or secret knowledge. It is available to you and my desire is that we all experience that increasing assurance of salvation. To receive it though, we must love and serve one another, love and serve the church, love and serve our God. We may be tempted to say, “Hey that’s law, don’t put law on me or tell me I must do something.” To that I say think about it not in the negative but in the positive.

A.W. Pink says this,

“What God rewards is only what He Himself has wrought in us: it is the Father’s recognition of the Spirit’s fruit.… It may look now as though God places little value on sincere obedience to Him, that in this world the man who lives for self gains more than he who lives for Christ; yet, in a soon-coming day it shall appear far otherwise.”

Consider also Jeremiah 31:34

Jeremiah 31:34
ESV

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

So what we see then is that in the grace of God he doesn’t remember any of our sins, he forgets those but from Hebrews we see all of our good works, those he does remember. Every act of service you do for your family, friends and church, every ounce of love and compassion you show to others, every sacrifice you make for someone else’s good is forever etched into the mind of God, these things he remembers. And there is soon coming a day when you will stand before him and I trust we will see the full extent to which God used our fruit and works for his glory such that we may all say, “Oh Lord, if I had known you were doing all that with a wretch like me perhaps I would have been more earnest in my efforts.”

He is doing far more through you and is not only transforming you and caring for you but is transforming and caring for others through you. God is loving others, calling others, saving others, through you. What a joy it is then to serve him and have our hope filled up until the end. So in that respect, we don’t see the law as a burden but a delight that affords us not condemnation but rather the means by which we can serve God, love others and ultimately assure ourselves that we are his and he is ours.

Imitating Endurance

Finally the author begins a point that he won’t fully finish until chapter 11 when details the “hall of faith”. His point is that our diligence is a defense against sluggishness and that we have such a great company of biblical support for us on overcoming the temptations of life and persevering to the end. So often we feel like we are alone in our struggles but this simply isn’t true. It is such a comforting and wonderful thing to realize that you are not the first person to ever plod your way to glory. In reality you are standing on the shoulders of countless men and woman who have faced all of life and whose anchors held firm to the end.

Know and imitate the endurance and faithfulness of the biblical giants in scripture. Know your history, church, and imitate those men and women who did it, who ran the race and finished well. Why do you think you have to reinvent the wheel when the models are there for you? This one may sting but almost certainly the reason why you aren’t imitating those faithful saints before you is because you have become sluggish and lazy.

In chapter 13 we will have affirmed to us once again that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. While this certainly speaks to the immutability of Christ it also tells us that faith in Christ, and obedience to him is also the same from generation to generation. Sure our present generation faces some slightly different challenges but then again, there is nothing new under the sun. I read this in a commentary and I honestly can’t say it any better so I am just going to read this to you.

If you have long been a student of the Bible, then you know the fellowship you have with its heroes. You find yourself struggling to leave behind the pleasures and treasures of this sinful world and then as a result encounter the reproach of God’s people. Then you realize that this is just what Moses endured, and you enter into fellowship with him. You engage in lonely service, unnoticed by those around you, and you recall young David’s experience tending his father Jesse’s flocks in the fields. You find yourself surrounded by a pagan culture, struggling to be useful in the world while not becoming of it, and you think of Daniel. You read his account in the Bible, and your heart draws close to him with thanks for the example that he set. You come to a trial of some sort; perhaps it is a thorn in the flesh. You cry out to God time and again, and he tells you, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Then you realize that you are sharing the very experience of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.

Our God has not left alone or without support and guidance. He sees and knows your every situation and has a word and an example for you to keep you going, to keep you fighting to keep you persevering. So don’t become sluggish and neglect these examples and fail to imitate them. You don’t have to forge a new path when there are already trails to glory worn out for you. This is what Paul means when he says,

Philippians 3:10–11
ESV

that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,

that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul wanted to make it his chief ambition to walk the same path that Christ walked so that he would arrive at the same end as Christ. So to walk on the heels of saints is to ensure that your path will end in glory, to inherit the promises. We then must be imitators of the faithful saints who have come before us not for our sake only but also for the sake of all those who would come after.

Conclusion

Maybe our calling is that simple then, diligently walk the path in faith that others have walked, imitating them in love, obedience and service, so that we keep the road to glory well-worn for all those who come after to see it clearly. What better or more important calling is there than to continue what Christ started for us, going ahead of us and showing those walking behind the way to glory.

When you look at it that way, maybe you are a little more averse to becoming sluggish in your call. When you realize that together we are keeping the road paved to glory, perhaps you can keep going. Maybe persisting faith looks like keeping your heart and mind on that final destination and loving those in your life enough to just keep showing them where you are going. It’s really not complicated, but it does take diligence and persistence, one step at a time. That is the faith and patience that will surely inherit the promises. Amen.