thing. Morning. As AC said, my name is Steven. We are going to be camped out in Hebrews 6 this morning. So if you have your Bible, you can turn there. But before we get started, I just kind of want to tell you a little bit about me, the guy that's standing up here sharing God's Word with you. Like I said, my name is Steven. I've been on staff over at Sovereign Hope Church on 3rd Street for about seven years. I grew up in Missoula. This August, I will have been married for 12 years. Grateful to my wife for putting up with me for that long. I have two little girls, a four-year-old and a one-year-old. We celebrated their birthdays this week. Actually, yesterday we had their joint birthday party. And I had copious, too much lemonade, strawberry lemonade. And one of the dirty little secrets I don't tell you about getting older is this thing called heartburn. All morning, I feel like my chest is moving into my throat. And so if I make some weird faces today, it's not because I'm emphasizing a point. It's very literally my chest is arriving at my throat, and I just have to deal with it. Hence the cup of water. Anyways, I became a believer around the age of 20. I went to the University of Montana, went to a college group by Sovereign Hope Church, and I was saved. God saved me at the age of 20. And kind of since then, trying to figure life out with my wife, wanted to get into ministry. And so for the last seven years, It took a while to figure that out. For the last seven years, my wife and I, I've been on staff at Sovereign Hope Church, working primarily with college students and doing other things at the church like preaching and teaching. So I'm really, really excited to be here with you. So grateful that you would have me during Shane's absence. Like I said, turn your Bibles to Hebrews 6. That's where we're going to be this morning. Before we get going, I just want to pray one more time and ask the Holy Spirit to be with us this morning. If you bow your heads with me, Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the gospel and for salvation. Lord, for new life. Lord Jesus, I pray this morning as we dive into a challenging text. Lord, as we encounter the hurdles of growth, maturity, and sanctification, Lord, I pray that you would be present with us. Holy Spirit, help us to see your word as beautiful and as good, and through the burdens, through the challenges, through the hard texts, Lord, be with us. Help us understand it. Give us peace. Give us comfort. Let us rest in your promises. We love you. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. One of the things I didn't tell you about me is that I love reading. I love specifically fantasy fiction. Since I was a little boy, I loved reading Chronicles of Narnia, things like Chronicles of Narnia. And to this day, one of my favorite things to do is read fiction, fantasy fiction specifically. And appropriately, at our college group, I use the Lord of the Rings as an illustration in every probably two or three lessons I do. And so I'm going to do that with you this morning because I wouldn't be teaching if I wasn't doing Lord of the Rings. If you've seen or read the story of Lord of the Rings, there are these two characters. Their names are Merry and Pippin. And they're two kind of comedic relief characters in the trilogy of the story. And they kind of tag along on this quest as kind of irreverent and immature and silly characters initially. And through this story, they are, along with the rest of the characters, faced with all these challenges and these struggles. They're taken as prisoners. They're put in really challenging situations. In many cases, those situations are brought upon them by themselves. And through this whole story, they're kind of just these comedic relief characters that Tolkien gave us to kind of alleviate some of the weight of the story of Lord of the Rings. But at the end of the story, The very end of the third book, this is one of the moments where I think the movies capture the moment better than the book does. And the last armies of men, they're fighting these orcs, are in this kind of circle, standing at the gates of Mordor, ready to take on the armies so that Frodo can accomplish his quest. They're very literally there to give themselves, give their lives, so that Frodo can complete his quest and defeat the ultimate evil of Sauron. And so you have the king standing there with his sword, and he gives this speech, and there's this capture of a slow motion move, and his long hair kind of sweeps, and he says, for Frodo, and then charges to certain death. And the first two characters to follow him are the smallest, most diminutive hobbits in the entire story, the weakest characters, most foolish characters, the characters that are meant to bring comedic relief. The first two to follow with their tiny little swords are Merry and Pippin. And it's a beautiful story of maturity and of growth and of challenges from outside and from within being overcome and growing into maturity, something better, something more. This is the same story that hundreds of shows and novels and movies capture, this redemption of an antagonist or of comedic relief characters. Change that is resisted until it is finally realized, until it is inevitable. We love these kinds of stories, these narratives that explore the idea of redemption and change. From a secular worldview, these stories kind of ask the question, do people change, or do people change and can people change? As Christians, we know the answer unequivocally. God's Word says, yes, people can change. That is the bedrock of the gospel. It's new life. The Bible gives words to this in that as the gospel grabs a hold of a person's heart, they become a new creation, something new. But beyond that, beyond the moment of salvation, change, growth, is often a struggle. Growing, maturing, sanctifying is really hard. And often we feel as if we've hit a brick wall in our maturity, unable to break through a particular sin, hit a specific milestone in our life that we've expected to by now, a struggle that's weighing on us and bogging us down in a swamp of sin, or not even sin, but just weakness. This struggle is a reality for every Christian. I would imagine most of us in this room feel that way from time to time, or maybe all the time. This morning we're going to talk about that kind of change after God saved us. Sanctification and maturity. We're going to talk about how hard, what that looks like through the hard, through the suffering and struggle of life. We're going to talk about the struggles we have in changing, and yet the promise that God makes to his people. that through endurance, faith, and effort, God will pull us through those brick walls and lift us from those swamps. So we're going to see this big idea this morning. We're going to see this, that God promises maturity to his people even when we get in our own way. And our text this morning is gonna be Hebrews 6, as we said. We're gonna see kind of these two bigger, larger points, and it's gonna be this. Number one, there's a temptation to contented stagnation. I did do that on purpose. Temptation to stagnation. And two, certain promise of Jesus, or the certain promise of sanctification in Jesus. Before we get to our main text this morning, a warning, Hebrews is a really hard book to read. It's dense with a lot of theology, what they call high Christology, and it's hard to read and get through. It's one of those books that we get to and we read in our morning reading or our yearly reading plan and we kind of read it and we're like, okay, grab the things that made sense and then move on. This morning is no different. Hebrews 6 is a really challenging text. It's a really challenging text that theologians and pastors have argued over on the nature of salvation. But this morning, what I want to do is I want to zoom out a little bit, and I want to grab the entire chapter, and really the whole section of Hebrews, and see that this isn't a theological argument, but this is an encouragement in the midst of hard, suffering, struggling growth and maturity. So hopefully, as we reach the end of this, we don't get distracted by the theological arguments. It'll be a bit clearer, and the hope will be obvious and clear. So maturity, sanctification, they're constant themes in the New Testament. In Paul's writings, he constantly writes about maturity. He constantly writes about sanctification. If you have your Bibles, again, flip over to Colossians 1, verse 28. We're gonna be 28 and 29. It says, that he powerfully works within me. And then flip over to Ephesians 4, a little bit longer of a text. Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 16, he says this, and he, that's God, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. To mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, but rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Over and over and over again in the New Testament, God is communicating this idea that you're not done once you believe the gospel. You're not done when God grabs a hold of your heart and saves you and gives you new life at salvation. That there's this process that's going to last your whole life. It's called maturity. It's called sanctification. And it's going to be hard. It's going to be a struggle. Sometimes it's things outside of our control pressing in upon us, things provoking us, and sometimes it's just the flesh. It's the sin nature that is at war with the Spirit of God within us. Sometimes it's things like physical illness, mental illness, or dozens and dozens of other influences in our life. And that's the point, that's our first point this morning that we're going to see in Hebrews 6, that is this, the temptation to stagnation. This is the temptation to ignore, or to resist, or to even give up on God's call to maturity. Because sometimes when it's hard, when life is hard, and life is hard, there's a temptation to stop struggling, to stop fighting for righteousness, to stop fighting for holiness, to stop wrestling with our sin. And that's precisely what some of these early Christians were doing. Let's look at our first couple verses in Hebrews chapter 6. It says this in verse 1, And this we will do if God permits. There are basics to what it means to be a Christian. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says that the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus are of first importance to being a believer. And here we see something similar. We see kind of an elementary doctrines of Christ. We see a list of six things. We see a list of six truths. But I want to ask a question. As you read those, Is there anything distinctly Christian about those six things apart from what these Jewish Christians would have grown up in in Judaism? Because this book, it's written to the Hebrews, right? It's written to Jews, Jews that grew up in the Jewish faith, in Judaism, and have been converted by the gospel to be Christians. So notice, of those six things, are any of them distinctly Christian apart from Judaism? Well, you have First, repentance. Of course not. Repentance is vital to the law. Faith. Of course not. Faith is vital to the patriarchs and the law. Washing. Some translations say baptism here. It's a word that is only used twice and is used more specifically to talk about washings and cleansing rituals. Of course not. Laws and laws and laws in the Old Testament about cleansing, about washing. Laying on of hands. This is the giving of a blessing. The resurrection of the dead, of course the Jews believed in the coming of Christ in eternity, and judgment, again, vital to the Hebrew faith. So again, I say what is distinct, what is distinctly Christian about this list? All of these are regular practices, commonalities that stretched from their faith as a Jew to their faith as a Christian. And so for the author to write to Jewish Christians to move beyond things like repentance, to move beyond things like faith, I mean, we never move beyond these things, right? What he's saying is that these commonalities Early Christians were holding more tightly to the things that did not make them distinct as Christians, but the things that allowed them to blend in as early century Christians. We all know that early Christians faced a lot of persecution. And so it makes sense that they would hold fast to that which they have in common with the Jews that were persecuting them. It would make sense that they held fast to that which kept them in common with the Jews. The Romans accepted the Jews, right? The Jews weren't really being persecuted. They allowed the Jews to crucify Jesus. They didn't want to stick out. They didn't want to be unique. They didn't want to be distinct. They wanted to blend in. That's the first temptation that gets in the way of our maturity, and that is seeking comfort over Jesus. Oh, I have this. I thought somebody else was doing this, and I'm like, why isn't it going? My fault. There we go. I apologize. Moving. There we go. Seeking comfort over Jesus. That's why this is up here. Early Christians, they face persecution like you and I will never know. If we rewind a little bit and read Hebrews three, well, halfway through three, up through six, we're gonna see the author talking about this rest, this rest in the gospel, and he's gonna compare that with a race that's being run as a Christian, this hard struggle of a race that's being run, and he encourages these Jews to run the race with perseverance, with effort, and not to give up, because rest isn't now. as a Christian, rest is at eternity. And then he's going to conclude that thought with Jesus as our high priest, who, through that race, never disobeyed, but only obeyed. And after all of that, he arrives at our idea this morning of maturity at the end of chapter 5. He talks about moving from milk to meat. And he talks about that because these Jewish Christians were facing persecution, and they had this temptation to seek their comfort by blending in. by not being distinct, by not standing as a Christian publicly. And I would agree, it's a heck of a lot easier to stay safe on neutral ground where we can call ourselves Christians and practice the ceremonial religious things that no one's gonna disagree with. Like, there's a program in Missoula that our church is a part of called Family Promise. You guys familiar with that at all? It's a program that helps homeless families, transitioning families, get on their feet, and they house them. And it's specifically for families, moms and dads with kids. And our church serves at this thing, and that's one of those things, like, our church serves with, and people look into it, and they're like, that's awesome. That's great. Good for you. It's easy to be a Christian when no one's going to object to the things you're doing. No one in Missoula is going to object to serving, caring for, and loving the homeless in our community. And these are good. These are good gospel-driven activities. But what temptation do we have to only stand on our faith when it is aligned with the flows of culture? And then when it begins to resist the waves of culture, to shrink back. to only be a Christian publicly when there is no risk to seek our own comfort. It is a lot harder to be distinctly Christian when that means being countercultural. Conversations with co-workers, maybe the language is crass, maybe the conversation is crass. How do you react? How do you respond? What do you say? Are you distinctly Christian? Sometimes what's in the way of our maturity is our own heart that cares more for what the people around us think, or more appropriately, fears what the people around us think than what God does. We get stuck in this stagnant place of struggle when the fear of man takes over from the fear of God. The struggle you and I have to stand as distinctly Christians is something that the first century church wrestled with as well. It's funny sometimes, like, I hear politicians or leaders or even people in my family talk about the good old days, right? There was the good old days where people were responsible and they took responsibility for their actions. There was a morality that we all could agree on. We long for this day of the good old days. But one of the things the Bible is so super clear on, there was never, there's no such thing as the good old days. The good old days were two chapters in Genesis. And there will be good old days at the end of God's word, the end when Christ comes back. There's no such thing as good old days. The same things that we wrestle with today are the same things that these early Jewish Christians were wrestling with. What does it mean to stand distinctly as a Christian, to have courage, and to fear God over man? Let's look at the warning that God gives to these Christians that struggle in the maturity because of their fear. Hebrews 6 verses 4 through 6 says this. Now this is one of those hard texts, one of those challenging spots. where it's easy to get lost in the weeds, and I refuse to wander here. Who is he talking about? He is talking about the Christians who like to sit on the sidelines. He's talking about people who call themselves Christians that like to blend in, be neutral, not rock the boat, do the things that people will affirm, and avoid God's call to do the things that people are going to persecute them for. Here is a warning to those Christians. People that receive the circumstantial, the practical graces of God, for them the blessing of being part of a community where they can suffer together, a church. And yet people who receive those blessings and stand on the sideline, refusing to stand as distinct disciples of Jesus, rather they're seeking their own comfort, avoiding all of the risk. Jesus speaks of this himself in Matthew chapter 7 verse 21 through 23. Says this, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. And that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, do we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name? Then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. The clarity of this point is made by how he follows it up with a metaphor. I love it when the Bible, when Jesus and when God's Word uses a metaphor or a parable to explain what they're saying. Let's look at verses 6 or 7 through 8 of Hebrews chapter 6. This is for land that is drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful for those whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed and its end is to be burned. So you have land, that is us, that is people, drinking the rain. Notice the rain falls on both lands, drinking the rain that falls on it. And the rain is the many blessings of God. Things like the church, we said. And it's also the common graces of God, those good things that God gives us in life that we don't deserve. And there's two ways to respond to that. You either grow with fruit, or you grow thorns and thistles. One of these produces a crop useful, fruit for the land, seeds to spread and multiply. Food for the hungry and the other produces thorns and thistles, worthless, cursed, and yet they both receive the blessings, the rain, the good gifts of God. Notice that this isn't a picture of a field that was once lush, teeming with life, growing fruit, and had lost its luminosity. It never produced the goodness that God intended. If we receive the blessing of God, the goodness of God, of the church, of the community of saints, of the grace, the kindness, and the love of God, and yet turn our backs on the maturity and the sanctification he calls us to. Or maybe not even turn our backs, but just sit and stand, blending in, refusing to move forward. The author's telling us we're like a field whose end, in verse 8, is to be burned. This is a warning to Christians that like to sit on the sideline. There's so much more to fear than what man thinks. There's so much more to fear than what man thinks. Than those bigots who would persecute you because of Jesus, who would enslave you, who would throw you in prison, or who would kill you. There's so much more to fear than the opinion of your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, your family even. There is a God who rules this universe and who will judge you. And you will stand judged by either your merit, where you will stand and Jesus will say, depart from me, I never knew you. Or you will stand hearing, well done, good and faithful servant. So I encourage you, take this warning for the weight that it is. Don't let a misplaced fear tempt you to become a reflection of a wasteland of thorns and thistles. Your maturity, the fruit you produce, is so much sweeter than the dim, dull, and lifeless comfort that this broken world has to offer. The first obstacle for our maturity is looking for comfort, for rest over Jesus. The second is this, the sluggish lure of a better tomorrow. This is you and I not taking our sanctification seriously, our maturity seriously. Let's look, being lazy, let's look at Hebrews 6 verse 9. He says, though we speak in this way, talking about that giant warning he just gave us, Yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. We feel sure of better things. In other words, the author is writing to these people, here's this massive warning. If you should avoid being a Christian publicly, if you should avoid persecution by avoiding maturity, I don't think that's you. I am sure of better things for you, things belonging to salvation, to justification, to life. He's telling them, I don't think that's you. I don't think that you are the ones who are deserving of being burned, the lifeless, thorn-ridden field. He believes in the authenticity of their faith, and they're striving to run the race towards gospel rest. Let's read verse six through 10. Oops. Chapter 6 verses 10 through 12. So that you may not be sluggish. but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promise. He encourages them. God will not overlook your faithfulness, the ways that you struggle to grow and to obey, to mature, the ways that you wrestle with your own heart. He's encouraging these faint-hearted with a word of encouragement in their struggle, knowing that even though there's going to be moments where, man, I feel like giving up, I feel like not pressing forward. I feel like giving in to your sin. That there's faith through patience and faith. There's a promise to be inherited. One of my, the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that we're gonna do, I'll do it tomorrow. Right? I'll do that tomorrow. I tell my wife that all the time about chores in the house. I'll do that tomorrow, or next day, or the next day. I know this better than anyone. Growing up, I am a notorious procrastinator growing up. God has been kind in many ways to grow me out of that. In some ways, not. But my favorite quote, one of my favorite quotes from a book by J.C. Ryle, he wrote this. I could put that up there and be helpful. Tomorrow is the devil's day, but today is God's. Satan does not care how spiritual your intentions are or how holy your resolutions, if they are only determined to be done tomorrow. I think the greatest way that our sluggishness manifests itself is procrastination. Whether that's due to media, whether that's due to the fast-paced world of work and life that we live in, We struggle to do our sanctification and maturity today. This is the temptation you will have as you press on towards maturity. Not taking your holiness and your sanctification seriously today. It's so easy to say, I'll do it tomorrow. Let me get to the end of this project at work or this really, really big deal. Let me get this job. Let me interview. Get through the interview, get the job, get a better salary, get financially stable, and then I'll start dealing with some of these things that need to be dealt with. Maybe it's, let me wait until the end of the school year. End of the school year, the kids are home, maybe a little bit more family to work with. And then in the middle of that, you're like, let me wait until the kids get to school and get out of the house, and then I'll deal with it. Tomorrow is always tomorrow. to stories like Mary and Pippin, when it's not us. Sorry. We love stories like Mary and Pippin, when it's not us. When we like to think the best of ourselves, like identify with that growth. But when things get hard, either when we face suffering, or it's just our soul and our flesh, our flesh is at war with our soul, pulling us towards sin, how quickly we forget the dazzling beauty of a life changed by the gospel, and the hard work he calls us to in sanctification. See, maturity tomorrow is an empty ideal, forever out of reach, because tomorrow is always going to be tomorrow. You know how many times I've said with my—in the last four years, I have a four-year-old— in the last four years, how many times I've said about diet and exercise, I'll get to it tomorrow. I'll start counting calories and eating better on Monday. I'll get to the gym next week. Before you know it, before you realize it, six months, a year later, and you're the same out-of-shape balding middle-aged man you swore you'd never be. See, just like exercise and health, maturity doesn't happen overnight. As disgusted as we may be with ourselves sometimes and our sin, as fed up as we are with our sin, as much as we just want to be done with the temptations, it lingers, and it weighs, and it hurts, and it seems impossible to see through. Which is why we are reminded that God is not overlooking the hard and burdensome work of fighting our sin. Which is why we're reminded of that earnestness and that joy in salvation. If you find yourself frustrated because you haven't made progress, you haven't grown in the ways you've expected, you haven't read all the books you'd hoped to, You haven't stayed on top of your Bible reading plan that you swore you would this year. You haven't dealt with that sin habit that's destroying you. You're stuck in a rut, and you don't know how to get out. Be reminded what faithfulness and patience are working towards. A promise. Because giving up, giving in to stop running the race, That's a dead and lifeless field full of thorns and thistles. But again, my hope is that that's not you. If you have the gospel, if you have Jesus, there are better things promised. James says, Another word about sanctification and maturity. Where? In the face of trial, and struggle, and pain. To take a break, to let the suffering rule you, to say, I'll do that another day. But faithful, steadfast pursuit of holiness, especially in the face of trials, there is a beautiful promise. Look again at verse 12. so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. A promised inheritance, promise of life eternal, promise of acceptance and affirmation, not by your coworkers, your friends or family, but by God himself. A promise that's reliable. It's hard to believe sometimes in that promise. It's hard to really, really trust that it's worth it, isn't it? It's really hard to trust in the midst of our wrestling with our sin that it's really worth it to fight. And that's our final point this morning. The certain promise of Jesus. Let's read the rest of chapter six. for when god made a promise to abraham since he had no one greater by whom to swear he swore by himself saying surely i will bless you and multiply you and thus abraham having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves and in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. Did it again, sorry. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. That's a lot of words for the author to point a bunch of Jews back to Abraham. and how God delivered on his promise to Abraham, and how God is God and he cannot lie, about how God is God and he will do what he said he will do. Abraham and Sarah were 75 and 65, respectively, when God made this promise to him. He was gonna bless the world through them, that through him, the heir, Jesus, the Messiah, would be a blessing to the world, to the earth, to redeem his people. 75 and 65. It took 25 years for that promise to be delivered. They were a hundred. Abraham was a hundred. Could you imagine being 99 on the cusp of a century old to have he promised having your first child? Ridiculous. Some would say impossible. Yet at the age of 100, Abraham became father to a son named Isaac. God delivered on a seemingly impossible promise. And God made this impossible promise intentionally. What does that teach us about God? Well, look at 6, 17, and 18 once more. So when God desired to show, more convincingly, to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have the strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. Again, a big section of text to point a bunch of Jews to Abraham to say God will deliver even when it seems it is impossible. Even when it feels impossible. When it seems like that sin is never ending. when it seems like that suffering has no end, when it feels like the flesh is too strong and fighting is too hard, when it feels like it's inevitable, it's just a part of who I am. But standing faithfully on the gospel as a distinct follower of Jesus, we can know for sure when God promises that He will mature us. We know that to be true. 1 Thessalonians, the end of 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, he says—well, I'll just turn there really quick. Come on. There we go. He says this in verse 22, 23. See, the promise isn't just eternity that you get rest. That after running the race, you get to rest. The promise is that your maturity, your sanctification, your growth, God is going to do it. The Holy Spirit within you is going to wrestle with you against that sin. And not only is there this beautiful rest, but there's this beautiful struggle. There's this beautiful struggle that you participate in with God, with the Holy Spirit. And here's the thing, Abraham and Sarah had to wait 25 years, right? We don't have to wait. That's the secret. We don't have to wait to know that God delivers. Look at Hebrews Verse 19 and 20. God delivered on his promise 2,000 years ago. when he nailed Jesus to the cross for our sin, when he raised him from the dead, defeating that sin, when he appeared to hundreds of people on this earth, proving he is who he said he was. Jesus's death, resurrection, and ascension earned us an inheritance that cannot be taken away, something worth fighting and struggling for. Jesus endured temptation in the desert, the ridicule and derision and mockery of his own people as he endured a shoddy frame job. Our two roadblocks to our maturity that this text kind of points us to, comfort and really fear that leads us to seek our own comfort over Jesus, and to a laziness that would say, I'll do it tomorrow. A laziness that doesn't want to fight anymore. These two temptations must be wrestled with, not in our own strength, not because I can do it. Disney tells you you can do it, so you can do it. To close, I want to point out something about Abraham and Sarah. I don't have this up here, but go to verse 13 and 15, 13 through 15 of chapter 6. For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by him to swear, he swore by himself, saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply you. Here's the verse I want to key in on. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. Now, I'm not like a scholar, but I don't think Abraham and Sarah patiently waited, did they? They definitely did not. They definitely did not. Because they didn't believe in God, they both together chose for Abraham to have a child by a servant in their household. Committing adultery to have a child to fulfill a promise that God gave them. That's not patiently waiting. I mean, at least not my definition of patiently waiting. Let's turn now over to Hebrews 11. Again, it's not going to be up there. Turn to Hebrews 11. We're going to read verse 8 through 12. I saw that your children's ministry is memorizing Hebrews 11. We should all memorize Hebrews 11. Verse 8, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out into a place that he was to receive as his inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went out to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man and him as good as dead were born of descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. Even those that the Bible holds up, that God holds up as our patriarchs. Guys like Abraham and David and Solomon and Paul, as A.C. read. All of us wrestle and fail wrestling. You and I are no Abraham. We are no Paul. We are no David. Even those we look up to in this life fail. The gift of the gospel is faith counted as righteousness. So no matter how many times you've said, I'll do it tomorrow, no matter how many times you've actually said in your heart, I'm done wrestling. I'm done fighting. I can't deal with this anymore. No matter how many times you've chosen to sit on the sidelines as a Christian, avoiding the public discomfort of being distinctly Christian, There is repentance and there is faith. There's hope in faith that Jesus brings. That what might be known about our lives is patiently waiting and not our disobedience. So that when confronted with our refusal or avoidance to mature, we might be reminded of that same earnestness that we had when we first saw Jesus as beautiful. when the Holy Spirit first grabbed our hearts. And we might pursue our holiness with the same vigor and life that drew us to the cross in the first place. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we are, Lord, we're humbled by a deep and challenging text full of theology and truth. Lord, I pray that as we as we encounter hard things in your word, that you'd bring us to our knees before the cross. Lord, that you give us a humility to see not just where we sin, but to see how we react when we see our sin. Lord, I pray that you would help each one of us in this room to wrestle with our maturity faithfully, to wrestle with it in faith, Lord, we know none of this is possible without you, and yet we also know that you will surely do it. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.