So Father, we pray that you would cause our love for you to increase and cause our vision of who you are to expand and to grow with our knowledge. Lord, we pray that you would help us to come to your word this morning with hearts that are teachable and hearts that are prepared by your spirit to receive and apply the truths it has for us. Lord, we pray that you would minister to us today in Jesus' name. Amen. In Calgary, Alberta, there's a skyscraper that has an observation deck. It's 626 feet off the ground. And what's amazing about this observation deck is that the floor of it is entirely made of glass. And so you walk out on this, I've never been there, but hypothetically, you can walk out on this observation deck and look through the glass and see nothing but 626 feet of air between you and the ground. It's interesting because last night I was googling images of it to try to get an idea what this place looks like and There's hundreds of pictures on the internet of people with terror in their faces. They're standing on this glass Looking down because their perception is that they're in a very dangerous position their perception and their emotions are such that where we are right now standing on this glass is not safe and But the reality is, the truth of the matter, is that they're very safe. Because that glass is over three and a half inches thick. And the likelihood of the glass breaking and them falling to their death is very small. And so their emotions and the way that they think and they perceive reality is not consistent with what is actually true regarding their safety. And really the way we feel is not always a good gauge of reality. Quite frequently our emotions are not the greatest way of knowing truth. Our emotions and our perceptions of reality can often be helpful in knowing truth, but they don't dictate truth and they're not always consistent with what is reality. And so one of the greatest battles in the Christian life is the battle to achieve and to maintain emotions and perceptions that are consistent with truth and reality. That's the battle we fight as we seek to experience the assurance of our salvation. I'd imagine probably most of the counseling we do as a church is in this very area of people questioning, wondering, am I truly a Christian? Can I know I'm a Christian? I feel like a Christian. I don't feel like a Christian. I prayed a prayer when I was 11. Now I don't feel like a Christian. And so there's this constant struggle in the lives of God's people wondering, Are my feelings true? Or is what the Word of God tells me is true? What's reality with relationship to my assurance? And I'd imagine probably many of us, if not all of us, who name the name of Christ, have had conversations like this in our mind. I think I'm saved, but I don't feel saved. I did trust in Jesus when I was 22, but when I did that, I felt different. And now those feelings are gone. Or God can't really love someone who talks to their husband the way I just did, so I must not be a Christian. Or quit having doubt because God's word tells you you're a Christian. And we have this self-talk that goes on where we're constantly battling to bring our emotions and our perceptions in relationship to our assurance back into check. We all have those questions and we have those conversations and those doubts. Because the reality is that if you're a Christian, your salvation is certain. If you're a true Christian, your salvation will for all eternity be secured in the hands of Christ. But our perception and our emotional response to that reality wavers from day to day. And this is an important thing for us to consider because there's a lot of people who ignore those thoughts, who ignore those emotions. And they live their lives as true believers, but they live their lives in this emotional distress where sometimes I have joy and sometimes I have a guilty conscience. But then there's other people who are not true Christians, who with absolute confidence live their entire lives convinced that they're Christians, when their emotional and perceptional response to reality is not consistent with reality. So one of the most important things for us to do is to develop a right perception and feeling about our assurance. And that's what the writer of Hebrews wants us to do. In Hebrews 6, verses 11 and 12, he wants all true Christians to experientially, emotionally know that they have comfort and assurance in their salvation. So if you'd follow along as I read Hebrews 6, verses 9 through 12, It says, but beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and your labor of love, which you have shown toward his name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope firm until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. We're going to look at the last two verses there, verses 11 and 12, under three points. We're going to see that diligence leads to assurance. Then we'll see assurance prevents laziness. And then finally, we'll see imitation prevents laziness. So let's begin by seeing how diligence leads to assurance. He tells us in verse one, and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope firm until the end. The first thing we noticed there is who he's talking about, or that he's talking about the way we get assurance. And he says, we desire that each one of you show the same diligence. And the word that he uses there for desire is a compound word. It's epithumeo. And in Greek, when you have a prefix epi, it intensifies the word that comes after it. And so it's a desire, but it's not just a desire or a passion. It's a very strong desire. It's an emotional passion that's driving what he's about to say. It's almost an all-consuming desire that these Christians, as well as us, have and feel and are assured of our salvation. But not just that we have this assurance, but that we all, each and every one of us has this assurance. Notice, he says, each one of you. And when he says each one of you, he's saying each one without distinction. It's his strong desire that all true Christians that he's writing to experience and know that they're true believers. And the reason that's important for us to notice is because when we go through periods of time when we lack assurance, The way that we often think about that is, well, you know, I may be saved. That may be true about me. But the way we think about that a lot of times is that assurance belongs to a class of Christianity that we won't attain to in this life. And so we think about like, OK, well, the super Christians have assurance. But I'm just some dude down here that struggles every day to wonder if God really loves me. And when we're lacking assurance, we think that assurance is not something we can attain. And so when he says, I desire that each one of you experiences this assurance, it's a reminder to us that whether you've been saved for two weeks, 22 years, or since before I was even born, we can have true assurance in the faith. But the other thing we have to notice is that when we talk about assurance, assurance really has both an objective element as well as a subjective element to it. What I mean by that is that the subjective element, the feelings that we have about assurance, are one thing. But there's also an objective element. That's where we deal with truth. Not feelings, but truth. And the reality is that our perception, the subjective element, should be rooted in the objective element. In other words, we can look at the sacrificial death of Jesus. We can look at the fact that when Christ died on the cross for sinners, If He died for us and our faith is in Christ, we are as secure as the saints in heaven. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God if that is objectively true about us. Also, we can look at objective tests of our assurance. We can, as we saw last week, he talks about the love that these Christians had for other Christians. And he says, based on that, I am confident, I'm persuaded, I'm certain that you are true Christians. And so the Bible is clear in places like Ephesians 2.10, James chapter 2, verses 14 through 17, that all true Christians will bear objective demonstrations, fruit of the reality that they're Christians. And we can go to those and we can have great certainty that if I'm bearing fruit like the Bible says, that objectively I am a Christian. But there's also a subjective element to our assurance. And it's the feelings and the emotions that accompany our assurance of salvation. and the feelings and emotions that cause us to feel like we're Christians should always be rooted in the objective elements of our assurance. We shouldn't base our assurance on the feelings that we have. We should base our assurance and the feelings that we have on the truths of God's Word. And the reason that's important, we'll come back and see this again, but for now we have to remember that He's addressing people, that He's convinced are true Christians. He's talking to people that he's persuaded are really believers. He already told them in verse 10 that he's confident, he's persuaded of better things concerning them, namely things that accompany genuine conversion. In other words, as he's writing this, he's persuaded that I'm talking to true Christians. But he also understands that although that's true about them, their perception of that, their emotional relationship to that is not always consistent. with who they are. And so he's saying, this is true about you. That's the objective reality, verses 9 and 10. But now he comes in verses 11 and 12 and says, let's bring your emotions in line with that. It's his intense desire that the salvation he is convinced that they have is a salvation that they understand, that they feel, that they relate to emotionally with great confidence. And so although he's persuaded of their salvation, he knows that we don't always feel like Christians. We don't always have this great emotional assurance of our spiritual reality. But we also have to notice in verse 11, he doesn't just want them to have assurance. He wants them to have full assurance. An assurance that's full to the brim. The imagery is one of a cup or a bucket that's filled to the brim with water. And that's how he wants our perception and our emotional relationship to assurance to be. He wants us to be full of this confidence that I'm Christ's and that Christ's mine and there's nothing that can separate us from God. And that's the kind of assurance he wants us to have. He wants us to be filled to the brim in the confidence or the faith in the Word of God and that the promises of God are theirs because of the work of Jesus. And so the other thing that he really does in verse 11 is he gives us a prescription a prescription to know and to realize this full assurance of hope. How would you expect him to tell us we get assurance? If this wasn't on the screen, if you didn't have your Bible, if in the bulletin we gave a survey, how do I get assurance as a Christian? I would imagine there'd be a number of different answers that we'd get. Where does assurance come from? Some people would probably think about getting assurance from the Holy Spirit, like the Holy Spirit's this fairy with this magical wand called assurance, and he goes around bopping people on the head, chanting, beepity boppity boo, you're a Christian and you should feel like it too. And there's people that would think about assurance that way. And there's certainly an element in which the Holy Spirit testifies to us that we are the children of God. But that's not what he tells us here. Maybe you'd answer the question, how do we get assurance? By saying we regularly examine the sin in our lives because sin robs us of our assurance. So the best way to have assurance is to keep repenting of sin. And there's certainly a biblical element of truth to that. But that's not what he says here. Maybe you'd say we could look to Jesus and his promises and stop looking at ourselves and our sin and our performance. And that the more we look to Jesus, the more we have assurance. And that's certainly biblically true. But again, that's not what he does here. Instead, he tells them that this assurance comes from showing the same diligence. And depending on what translation you have, this may or may not come out very clear, but I think really one of the better translations with verse 11 is the New International Version. It's probably one of five times in the rest of the history of my life that you'll hear me say that. But I do think here it's a really good translation. The NIV says, we want each of you to show the same diligence to the very end so that what you hope for may be realized. or another translation says, we want each of you to show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end. And the words so that or so as are very important because they really capture the idea. They capture the mind of the writer of Hebrews because it's this showing of diligence is causal. It's what leads to having this assurance. And so right away, we have to ask the same assurances or the same diligence is what? He sees them achieving full assurance of hope by showing the same diligence. So what's the diligence he wants them to show? And it seems like the most likely thing that he's doing is he's actually pointing back to verse 10 to tell him what diligence he wants them to show. Because in verse 10, he says, for God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward his name and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. So in verse 10, he commends them for their love that they've demonstrated to other Christians in the way that it worked itself out. in acts of love and in acts of service to other Christians. And the primary focus there in verse 10 is on they've done that in the past. And it's that that gives them confidence of their salvation. And now as he wants them to have confidence of their salvation, he says the way that you get that is by showing the same diligence that you did in the past. In other words, the way he sees them getting assurance is by doing all the things that they used to do in showing love to other Christians. Tom Schreiner says, their diligence and virtue assures them that they belong to God, but it is also the means by which they realize their eschatological hope. I wonder, is that how any of us would have thought we get assurance? I don't think if we would have taken a poll, I don't think any of us would have said, the way we get assurance is by doing all the things we used to do in the past as Christians, loving other Christians. Probably none of us would have said that, but that's exactly what he tells us in Hebrews 6, 11. So what is this love for God or this love for other Christians, this love for God that works its way out in a love to other Christians? We have to remember that's the evidence of grace. Love for God, love for other Christians is the evidence that God has graciously come and given me a new heart. So he's not saying you go back and you earn the favor of God and as you earn the favor of God by loving him, then you get assurance. What he's saying is you receive assurance by demonstrating the fruit, by demonstrating the evidence that God has worked that in your life. So in 1 John 4 7-11, it says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him And this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. And so this love that we're called to demonstrate to other Christians is an evidence, first, that we've been loved by God, that Christ has died for us as the propitiation for our sins, and that he's changed us. And so it's a demonstration the fact that we have received grace. So what he's saying is it's what he's not saying is if you don't have assurance that's okay because if you can't make it fake it. He's not saying if you don't feel like a Christian do all the other things that other Christians are doing and look busy like other Christians and then the feeling will come. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is one of the ways that we know we're Christians is by going back and showing grace by demonstrating the change that's taken place in our lives. He's saying, one of the many God-ordained means of assuring Christians of their salvation is when we, in the strength that God supplies, do the things that God commands us to do, knowing that it's God who works in us to will and to do His good pleasure. Some of you know I was a fireman for a couple of years on a volunteer fire department. And the way you became a fireman on that fire department was kind of a popularity contest. You just hung out at the fire department, you filled out an application, and if your application made it through, then you just hung out for six weeks. helping around, doing grunt work, going to training, doing all these other things. And at the end of that six weeks, if they liked you, all the other firemen would vote on you. And then if you passed your vote, you became a fireman. Well, I passed my vote and I had been to a few trainings. They gave me a pager. They gave me a fireman's outfit, had a helmet with my name on it. And I was sitting there one night. It was like 10 o'clock at night. My pager goes off because there's a car fire. And I was just stoked. I was so excited. We get to go to our first real fire. And as I'm driving to the first fire, I'm thinking, I don't feel like a fireman. I'm probably the least qualified fireman in the whole world. I mean, I knew car fires could be dangerous, but I didn't know the first thing about really being a fireman. And so I didn't feel like a fireman. The reality was I was. That's what was objectively true, is that I was a fireman. But the feelings that I had were not consistent with that. And so how did the feelings come? It came from doing all the things that firemen do. fighting fires, cutting people out of car, giving people CPR, pulling cats out of trees. Not really. But it's as we do the things that are consistent with who we are, that our emotions then come back in line and attest to the reality of what is true. So God has ordained that one of the many ways for us to be assured of our salvation is by acting in the strength that He supplies and ministering to the needs of other Christians. Because as we do that, as we live and respond to the Holy Spirit that way, God promises the hope of our salvation will be confirmed through the demonstration of that grace. We don't think that way, do we? We think, I used to have full assurance of my salvation. We think, when I gave my life to the Lord, when God changed me, when I came to faith in Christ, however you want to put that, I was like way up here emotionally, and I was convinced that I was a Christian. But now as doubt and questions come in, I'm not so sure. And so the way we think is, well, I'm not going to serve I'm not gonna minister, I'm not gonna do the things that God calls me to do as a Christian until I feel like it. And actually the writer of Hebrews says you have that backwards. If the feelings aren't there but the objective reality is, the way that we bring our feelings back in line with that is by doing the things that God calls us to do as Christians. Because it's in doing that and experiencing his power to do the things that we are called to do that he assures us of our salvation. So that's point number one. Now let's look at how assurance prevents laziness. So having shown us how diligence leads to assurance, he then goes on to show us how assurance prevents laziness in the Christian life. Notice verse 11 and 12. He says, and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope, thanks, until the end, so that you do not become sluggish. And spiritual laziness is really the problem that he talks about sluggishness. And that's really the problem that introduced this section in Hebrews chapter six. If you remember, actually clear back in chapter five is where this section started. And in chapter five, verse 10, He talks about this guy Melchizedek and his intention in chapter 5 verse 10 was to go on and to tell these Christians about how Melchizedek and Jesus are alike and how Christ is a priest and a king like Melchizedek. But in the middle of that thought he realized the people I'm writing to are spiritually sluggish. Same word that he uses here. They become spiritually lazy. They're dull of hearing. And that expression dull of hearing is the same word as sluggish in chapter 6 verse 12. But when we looked at chapter 5, verse 11, we saw there were certain things he wanted to teach them that their ears and their spiritual constitution had become so slow and so lazy that they couldn't receive truth. They used to hear the word of God with eagerness and readiness, quick to apply its truth, but they became slow and lazy, like sap dripping off of a tree in January. Their response to God's word was like a sluggard. And here, more than focusing on the way they respond to the word, he's focusing on their love for God and their love for other Christians. They were no longer serving one another. They'd become slow and sluggish in loving other Christians, calling each other when they were sick, visiting each other when they were in prison or in the hospital. They stopped working hard at the Christian life. And the result was that they were no longer showing love for other Christians. And because of that, they had lost their assurance of salvation. So here's something we have to understand. As we talk about this, we're saved how? By grace. We're saved by grace. But the grace of God that saves us, although we're saved by grace alone, that grace is never alone. That grace always produces works. It always produces and enables and empowers a life to diligently demonstrate fruit. So listen to 1 Peter 1, verses 5 through 11. It says, but also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue. To virtue, knowledge. To knowledge, self-control. To self-control, perseverance. To perseverance, godliness. To godliness, brotherly kindness. And to brotherly kindness, love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will neither be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted to blindness and is forgotten. Notice the emphasis on assurance. He is forgotten that he was cleansed of his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your calling and your election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly to the everlasting kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. So in 1 Peter 1, 5, and 11, he talks about all these things that we're called to do as Christians. He talks about faith, how we receive salvation by grace through faith. And then he says, now add to that all these good works. He says, if you don't do that, the result will be you'll forget that you were cleansed of your sins. Philippians 2.12 says, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling." And what the writer is saying is that this spiritual sluggishness is a dangerous place to be. To not do all the things that we used to do in demonstrating grace is very dangerous. And then finally he shows us how imitation prevents laziness. Look again at verse 12. He goes on to say, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. The word but in verse 12 shows us he's contrasting that spiritual laziness, the not doing all the things that they had been called to do with another condition, with diligence. He's contrasting the two. And really the contrast is laziness and an enduring faith that's accompanied by assurance, by feeling like we're Christians. To help us develop assurance that leads to evidence of grace in our lives, he tells us, find men and women, he says, be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises of God. So we have to ask, what does it mean to imitate someone? To imitate someone is to observe the life that they live and to copy it. To see what other people are doing and to do the exact same thing. Some of you probably do this. If you're kids, you probably do this all the time. If you remember when you were a kid, you probably remember doing this. You're sitting on the school bus going to school and someone says, I don't feel good. And you go, I don't feel good. And then they say, stop it. And you say, stop it. And they say, quit copying me. And you say, quit copying. That's imitating. It's also annoying, but it's imitating. And in a non-annoying way, what he tells us to do in Hebrews 6 is find people that are living a life of faith. Find people that are living a life of perseverance and copy them, imitate them, follow them in the way that you live. And really, the idea of imitation is something that we see throughout the New Testament. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 1, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. So he says, in as much as you see me being like Jesus, be like me. Copy me. Follow me. Imitate the life that I live as I follow Christ. Also 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 15 and 16. For though you might have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel therefore I urge you imitate me Philippians 3 17 brothers join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us So in Philippians 3.7 he's saying not only imitate me but identify, mark out people in the congregation that are following Christ and pattern your life after them. Next week he'll go on to show us in chapter 6 verse 13 how we should follow Abraham, we should imitate Abraham in the Old Testament. Later in Hebrews chapter 11 he'll Give us this long list of Old Testament saints who are marked by faith. And they'll say, imitate their faith, copy their faith. Next week, we'll see Abraham as someone we should imitate. But what is it about those saints that he wants us to imitate? He tells us to mark out these saints and to imitate them. But what does he want us to copy in their lives? He says, imitate those who through faith and patience or endurance inherit the promises of God. So first thing I want to ask is what are the promises of God and what does it mean to imitate this faith and patience? God's made a lot of promises in scripture. And really all of them are true. But it seems like in Hebrews 6.12 the promises that he's focusing on are the future promises of God that relate to our salvation. There's not a focus on the promises that we're experiencing right now. Because we need, he says, endurance. We need patience. We need to press on and to imitate those people that have already experienced it. In other words, he's talking about the promises that come to us either when we die and are glorified or when Christ comes back and we're glorified. He's talking about all the promises that surround our glorification in heaven. He'll go on in chapter 10, verse 35 and 36. And say, therefore, don't cast away your confidence, which is your great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promises. There's the future promises. That's what he's talking about, the promises that are yet to be received. 2 Timothy 1.1 says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, according to the promises of life, that is in Christ Jesus. So one of the promises that he's talking about is eternal life. It's being with Christ for all eternity. Hebrews 9.15 says, and for this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant by means of his death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant that was those who are called might receive the promises of the eternal inheritance. So these promises that he's talking about are eternal life, they're forgiveness of sins, they're adoption into the family of God, they're all the blessings and all the benefits that'll come to us in the future because of the work of Jesus. Then we have to ask, what does it mean that we inherit these promises through faith and patience. Turn back to 2 Corinthians 1. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 20. It says, for all of the promises of God, find their yes in Him, in Christ. That is why it's through him that we utter our amen to the glory of God. And so to inherit the promises of God through enduring faith is to recognize, it's to see, it's to believe that all of the promises that are promised are received in Christ. They're received through faith in Jesus. And so what it means to receive these promises through faith, it means to look at Jesus to trust in Jesus, to trust in His life, to trust in His death, to trust in His resurrection, to trust in His word, knowing that it's there that we find the inheritance that's promised to us. It means that with all confidence in the work of Christ, that it's He that procures these promises for us, and that they're the reward of our faith in Him. And so we look to Jesus. And we continue to look to Jesus to deliver and to bring these promises about for us. That's really the same thing talked about in 1 Timothy 4, 8, where Paul could say, henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also to those who loved his appearing. So it seems best to take this faith and patience together because the idea is one of an enduring faith. It's a faith that from the moment of conversion all the way up until the return of Christ continues trusting in that, continues believing the promises, continues to look to Christ for all of our hope and eternal life. And he tells us that we should imitate people who do that. We should identify, we should be imitators of those who through faith and perseverance inherit the promises of God. That's one of the reasons I think we as Christians should read biographies of other Christians. Not because men are great, but because as we read about how God caused faith and perseverance to grow in the lives of Christians in the past through great difficulty, It enables us and it strengthens us and it causes our perspective to be focused so that we can follow them. So we can see their example through their biography and we can continue in perseverance and faith as well. A couple years ago I read David Brainerd's biography and he was a missionary to the Indians in the 1700s and his biography, as well as in his journal, There's a couple things you constantly see over and over and over again. I would say if you've read one of David Brainerd's journal entries, you've read them all, because here's what you read. Rode my horse 30 miles today, puking my guts out. In great weakness, preached the gospel to the heathen. Got on my horse, spent much time in prayer. Puked my guts out when I got back, but received strength from the Lord. You see that same thing over and over and over again every day. I mean like you read his biography or you read Brainerd's journal and you see that over and over again. Great weakness, great lack of faith. God encouraged me, God strengthened me, God kept me going. And so as you read and then later David Brainerd actually contact, he actually died of tuberculosis at the age of 29. But as you read about a faithful man of God, like David Brainerd, you come away thinking, here's a guy that embraced the future promises of God. He spent 29 short years looking, laboring towards the salvation of people and the growth of the future kingdom of God. That was his life and he gave it for it. And as you read about that, what happens in your heart? It gives us faith. It gives us perseverance. It causes us to say, there's the footprints of a man that followed God to his death. And as we see that, we imitate it, and we follow him in that direction. Here's a way to think about that. Let's say you were climbing a mountain in the middle of a terrible blizzard. And you had been told, and you were absolutely convinced that on the other side of this mountain was a beautiful mountain lodge with a fireplace, with warmth, with safety, and with a lot of food ready to be eaten. And so you set out on this journey to cross this mountain to this lodge with all these other people. But as you start going down the path, you lose everybody else. They get ahead of you. And as the snow's blowing and you can't see the mountain in front of you, you're not even sure where you're going, you're getting tired, you're getting lazy, you're ready to just lay down in the snow. But before you do, you look down and you see a footprint. And so what do you do? You recognize that's a footprint of someone who's gone before me, pressing on to the other side of the mountain to the safety of that cabin. So sometimes it's all you can do to put your foot in the footprint before you and to follow that person who's gone to safety already and to persevere as you follow their footsteps. And that's what the writer of Hebrews wants us to do as we see the faith and the perseverance of other Christians. To imitate it, to follow it as they persevered in faith. And so the picture he's painting for us is a salvation in which the way we're assured of our salvation is because of the evidence of grace that we have. And that assurance leads us to work even harder at making our calling and election sure. And we look at the great saints who have gone before us and as we see them, we see a model for us to follow, but not just a model for us to follow. We see people that have inherited the promises of God. And as we see that, it builds our faith. And so it's this perpetual circle where I may lack assurance, but I continue doing the things that God calls me to do. And when I don't have the strength to do that, I look and I see men who have gone before and I follow their example. And in that, God strengthens my faith. And then I'm greater faith. I can do greater works, which is greater evidence of the grace in my life. And it's this constant, continual growing circle in which we grow in our assurance for salvation. We have to remember the context of the original audience of the book of Hebrews and what they were living in. They weren't sitting in comfortable padded chairs in the safety of Worland, Wyoming. They were enduring one of the greatest persecutions in the history of the Christian church. Some of them would later give their lives for following Christ. Many of them were robbed of their personal possessions. All of them were publicly shamed for following Christ. And it's in the midst of that kind of a life that they had become lazy. And the result of their laziness was that they lost their assurance of their salvation. They lost their confidence. And so he tells them, I want you to have assurance. I want you to know that you're Christians. Because assurance produces diligence. And diligence leads to greater faith and perseverance. And greater faith and greater perseverance fuels assurance, which in turn grows up into good works. And so there's this continuing cycle where there's faith, and there's perseverance, which leads to good works. And the good works leads to greater assurance, which leads to greater faith. And it's just this continued growing cycle. And so if you're finding yourself here today struggling with assurance of salvation, Recognizing that the word of God is true. It says that if my faith is in Christ, then I am a Christian. That if Christ died on the cross for sinners and my confidence is in him, then I'm a Christian. If that's where objectively you find yourself, but subjectively you find yourself somewhere totally different. God's word calls you to go on demonstrating the grace of God that you've demonstrated in the past. To go on demonstrating a love for other Christians. A love for God. a willingness to serve the body of Christ, because it's in doing that that God builds our assurance. And if you don't always have the strength and the faith to do that, God's word calls us to identify men who have gone before us and done that, and to begin following in their footsteps. So as we look at God's word, may we continue to demonstrate the grace of God to the full assurance of hope, firm to the end. May we avoid being sluggish, but rather imitate men like Charles Spurgeon, who had such great assurance that he could say, I would grab onto a corn stalk and swing over the mouth of the fires of hell, look down in the face of the devil and sing, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would cause us to feel our assurance. Lord, we are strengthened to serve you greater. to greater faith when we know and we feel like we're safe in your hand. And we pray that you would give that to us. Give each and every one of us greater strength to do your will so that in doing your will, there may be evidence that we are yours. And we pray this in your name. Amen.