If you've ever wanted to have your ministry career flash before your eyes, that's just what happened in that. I'm so grateful to be back home. This church, this city has been a deep place of formation for my life, for Stephanie, for our children that were born here. And it's just so great to be able to look across the room this morning and see many of you that I know and have shared ministry life with over the years. And many of you I don't know, but to be able to come back and to be able to open God's Word and share the gospel with you today and encourage you, it's just a delight and a joy. I was ordained here three years ago, and that has stood as just a mark of what God has been doing in my life, and I believe what God has been doing here in this church as well. And so Santa Rosa Bible Church is just part of my ministry DNA, and it's great to be back here and open God's word with you this morning. When I told Josh that Stephanie and I and the kids were planning on coming here on vacation, Josh said, oh, that's great, you have to preach on Sunday. And I said, Josh, I'm on vacation. I do this every week. And he goes, no, no, no. If you want to hang out with me, you've got to preach, because I don't get time to do that unless you're here doing the work I need to do on Sunday morning. So Josh, thanks for letting me give you a vacation as well. If you would, open your Bible to Hebrews chapter 12. He also assigned me a text, which I think is unusual for a guest preacher to have to preach somebody else's series, but I'm just gonna do whatever these guys say, because I love them. So if you have your Bible, open it up to Hebrews chapter 12. I'm gonna be in verses 25 through 29. And if you would, this is just a habit that we have at my church in Michigan. If you would stand with me, As I read God's word for us, this isn't my word, this is God's word. Let's hear from him today. The Holy Spirit says, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth. Much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens. This phrase yet once more indicates the removal of things that have been shaken, that is things that have been made, in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, how grateful we are that you speak Through your spirit and through your word right now, you are speaking to each and every one of us, so Lord, we pray and ask that you would give us ears to hear, that you would give us eyes to see Christ this morning, and to be renewed and refreshed and engaged, Father, to follow and to worship you. May our lives be filled with the thankful worship of you because of what you've done for us. So Lord, help me now as I communicate what you have said here. Help my brothers and sisters here in this room. May each of us, Lord, receive from you today your grace and your word. And we ask your spirit would bless us now in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, you can be seated. Do you ever wonder if you're actually going to go to heaven? Do you ever lay awake at night, a little worried, perhaps anxious, concerned? Maybe it's been one of those weeks where you just are aware that there is There's sin in your life, there's ways that you've walked away from Jesus, there are ways that you have disobeyed the gospel and have not followed Christ and places in your heart and in your life and even in your relationships where things are out of step and out of alignment with Christ. And you wonder, what does this mean for me? Am I going to make it? And so that anxiety of your soul just rests there in your heart. In the final scene of the film, Saving Private Ryan, we get to this climactic point where Tom Hanks' unit has found him. They found Private Ryan and they're taking on a significant barrage by German forces. They've gone in search of Private Ryan to bring him home because he's the only brother left in his family. And so they get there and this unit that Tom Hanks is leading up holds off the Germans just long enough for him to be evacuated to escape with his life. But it's the rest of Tom Hanks' unit, Captain Miller, it's the rest of his unit that loses their life in fulfilling that one mission. And so as Ryan departs and Miller's character is there looking at him, he says to Private Ryan, he says, earn this, earn this. And the camera looks into Private Ryan's face, and as it does, his face transforms through ages, and he turns into the older man who's visiting the memorial ceremony in the Memorial Cemetery in Normandy that the film started with. There we realize that the older man that we saw at the very beginning was now the younger man, Private Ryan. As he was walking among the graves, he came and stood at a particular marker. You could sense he's full of emotion. There's one marker that stands out and his emotion at that marker is one of fondness and yet anxiousness. It's an emotion of doubt as he looks there and stares at that grave marker. His wife comes and stands alongside him and she looks at him and he looks at her and she seeks to comfort him and give him assurance. And he turns to his wife and he says, tell me I lived a good life. Tell me I'm a good man. Even in the later years of his life, the worry, the anxiousness, the concern of living up to the expectations of the captain who saves him troubles him. Did he do enough? Did he earn the life he had been rescued for? I think these questions are questions that at least I wrestle with at night. Probably questions that you in the dark night of your soul, in the silence of your heart, maybe wrestle with as well. Just in the back of our heads we wonder, have we done enough? Is there a way that we have earned what Jesus has done for us? What we long for is some kind of assurance, some kind of security, that when we come to our end, or better yet, when Christ returns again, we stand before his judgment seat, we hope for and desire that we will be counted among the faithful and the righteous. We long for the assurance in the here and now that heaven will be open for us. Now you here at Santa Rosa Bible Church are well-trained, you're well-taught, and you know that it's not a matter of what you do that earns you heaven, it's a matter of what Christ has done for us that brings us into heaven. But we still wrestle with the reality of being sinful, broken people in the midst of a world where we're trying to live, as Paul says, worthy of the gospel. It's one of the distinctive truths of Christianity. It's the doctrine of eternal security. This doctrine is that those who are justified or declared righteous by Christ will be kept for Christ to glorification. Paul says in Philippians chapter one, verse six, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Unlike every other religion in the world that offers no security, no assurance of true salvation until the end, Christians can live with faith and peace now knowing that we will be redeemed on the last day. The basis of our redemption is not that we earn it, unlike what Private Ryan was told, but we have been saved by the work of another. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is completely sufficient and completely effective to save everyone who trusts in Him. Jesus said, no one to whom the Father has given me will be lost. We have the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, as Paul says in Ephesians 1.14. Yet, our experience in this life, Our day-to-day experience can be one of trouble. It can be one of challenge. We long to experience the security of knowing that we will be in heaven and the peace that comes along with that, and yet that peace and that security can often feel fleeting. We battle our flesh. We live in a fallen world. You and I are still, even though we're in Christ, are prone to the temptations of Satan and sin. So I want to ask the question, how can we have confidence on this side of heaven that we will make it home? How can we be assured today in our everyday lives that we are truly saved? I think these questions are here before us in our text, in Hebrews 12. This passage looks at the doctrine of assurance of salvation, as I've said, from our side of heaven. The writer here, the preacher of Hebrews, wants to inspire us. He wants to direct us to endurance in the faith. That has been his whole goal. Don't give up on Christ. He is far greater, far better than anything else in this world. He is far better than the old systems of religion that you came from. He is far superior than anything coming ahead. Christ is all, don't give up, don't quit on Him, keep pressing on. And the Holy Spirit's message for us today is that eternal security, this assurance of our salvation is for those who don't refuse but who instead receive. Eternal security, assurance of our salvation is for those who don't refuse but receive. The preacher of Hebrews is calling us to continue walking in the faith. Don't abandon our hope and our confidence. Don't fall back into the ways of darkness and sin, but persevere on. So he calls us to not refuse Christ as we continue our Christian journey, but to receive continually what he has done. Now I wanna ask, what does this mean? What kind of refusal should we reject? And what kind of reception should we give? Or maybe again, I'll just ask it very simply, how can you and I have assurance of salvation from this side of heaven in our lives today? I wanna give you two keys here in this passage that I believe will contribute to your soul's peace, and when you don't have peace, direct you back, and will give you assurance in your heart of salvation if you're taking hold of these keys and walking with them. The first key is this, it is to reject refusing to obey the gospel. I know it's a double negative there. Reject refusing to obey the gospel. This is the essence of the command for us here in verse 25. The writer of Hebrews says, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking. I think, by the way, that's every preacher's favorite verse. Don't refuse him who is speaking. It doesn't refer to me, it refers to the one who speaks the word of salvation, Christ. It refers to Jesus and to his gospel. Don't refuse him who is speaking. In chapter 12 here, the writer, the preacher of Hebrews has been driving home the need for us to persevere in our faith. As he said, his point in verse one really lays out the whole. He says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The writer of Hebrews says, get your eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before him suffered. Consider Jesus, he goes on to say, so that you don't grow weary. Verse 12, he says, endure. You're facing hardship. You're facing what you would call discipline. Guess what? God is treating you as loved children. So keep pressing on. Or verse 12, he says, lift your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees, make straight paths for your feet. That is to say, keep on running, don't give up. And then he includes us all, he says, run together. The life of faith is a community project, so let's all make it. Let's make sure that no one gets left behind or stuck in a root of bitterness. Let's all go on together. And then he gets to the payoff here in chapter 12. He says, keep persevering in your faith because you didn't come to Mount Doom. You didn't come to a fearful, fiery volcano of wrath and fury and fear and death. No, no, you came, brothers and sisters, to a festival. You came to a celebration. Instead of that fiery mountain, you came to Mount Zion with innumerable angels all engaged in party mode. You came to be a part of the church of Christ. His citizens enrolled in heaven. And you got in because of Christ, the mediator of a better covenant. You are given entrance into heaven forever because Christ died and his blood offers the forgiveness of sin. It's so much better. So now he concludes, as we come to the end of chapter 12, he concludes that because Christ and his kingdom and sacrifice are so much superior, so much better, guess what? Don't refuse him and his message. Don't refuse his good news. Don't refuse his glorious grace, his gospel. Now here's why. We have to remember where we came from. We have to remember our biblical history. So he says go back to the beginning of the Bible, the stories of the Bible. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, let's just stop there. Think about the stories of the scriptures, our faith story. Israel's in slavery back in Egypt. They're crushed under the boot of the oppressive, murderous, maniacal Pharaoh. He's murdering their babies, oppressing them into forced labor, and this goes on for 400 years. And what does God do? He frees them. He does wonders and signs and brought the plagues on Egypt to demolish Pharaoh and demolish the gods of Egypt and show his superior power. God, by his might and his greatness, he delivers the people of Israel from Egypt. And he spoke to them as through a mediator, through Moses. He brought them out of Egypt, into the wilderness, to Mount Sinai. And there at Mount Sinai, he gave them his commands, his law. He gave them his promises. He would bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey. And he would bring them into the land and give that land to them. And there at Mount Sinai, as God gives them his law, proclaims his promises, his blessings, and his curses, and says, if you'll follow me, this'll be the good for you, but if you refuse me, this'll be what the consequences are. There at Mount Sinai, what do they do? His message of grace is there. They refused him. They refused his word. They didn't trust his promises. They disobeyed his law. Now the writer of Hebrews is saying if they were warned here on earth by Moses and rejected the word and didn't escape God's wrath, what do you think your story will be if you reject the better message? That was Israel's story on failure. What do you think your story will be if you reject the message from heaven through the Son of God? They got Moses, you get Jesus Christ. How do you think it will go for those who refuse the message from heaven? Friends, it won't go well. He says, for if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. And the Holy Spirit reminds us in verse 26. At that time his voice shook the earth. But now he has promised, yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. Now here's how much more serious this is. In the past, God spoke and the earth shook. The people of Israel at the Mount Sinai said, whoa, back away, don't get close to that God. But now, he promises, everything will shake, heaven and earth. Friends, this is a metaphor for final judgment. Make no mistake in how you live, friends. A day of final and total judgment is coming. God will bring all things to a conclusion on his divine timetable and he will judge the living and the dead. The day will come when the earth and the heavens will be shaken and a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth will be established. That day is fixed. And so he reminds us in verse 27, this phrase, yet once more, indicates the removal of things that are shaken, that is, the things that have been made, in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. The point is made. If you refuse Christ and his word, you're in grave danger. If you're banking and hoping in the passions and desires and substance of this world, You're banking on things that will not last. You are banking on things that will come under judgment. So again, here's the keys, friend. Don't refuse him. Don't refuse him. Do you wanna know how your soul can stand on solid ground here today, right now, that you can have assurance of salvation? You're a person that when you hear from Jesus and his word, you believe his word, You give thanks for his word. You begin applying and appropriating his word to your life. You go on trying to obey his word and walk in his word. Friends, this is one of the great ways we can have assurance or confidence in our salvation. When there is a posture of a heart to say what Jesus has said, I will seek to follow and obey and walk out in my life. It just indicates a new heart has been given. That you've been born again and made alive with Christ. And now your disposition isn't to sin, and it isn't to walk in the ways of this world, but it's to say every word of yours proves true. And so I'm in on this. I'm in on what you have to say, Jesus. Let's go. Let me give you an illustration. Imagine with me you get a message on your social media one day from a long lost relative. Somebody you didn't even know was part of your family. And they message you and they say, hey, you know, we're related, I don't know if you knew that, but I really wanna get to know you and I love you and I just wanna share with you and so I have an offer for you. An all-inclusive, everything paid for, flights, the whole deal, the meals, all of it that you could want, all-inclusive, you pay zero, trip to Hawaii for a month. And you're like, whoa, okay. And then you read the next message and this relative of yours says, furthermore, I've spoken to your boss. They're cool with it. Like you get all the, they're not even gonna charge you vacation time. Like you just go. They are so excited about this. They've approved it and there's nothing, absolutely nothing that should keep you from joining me on this trip to Hawaii. So your long lost relative says, just show up at the airport at the date. I'll be ready for you. And they ask, do you want to go? Now, you think about this message, and you think about this relative, and you go, you know, I'm not really sure. Stranger danger, maybe. I don't know if I really want to get to know them. And so you just politely type back and say, that's nice, but no, I refuse. No, thank you. A few days go by, and you get to thinking about it a little bit more. And you decide to go to the airport, just going to show up on a whim. Are you going to get to go to Hawaii? No, you refused. You told your relative, I don't want anything to do with your thing. I don't wanna be a part of your trip. You refused. And you missed out. Friends, here's the application for us today. When you hear the gospel message, when you read the scriptures yourself, if you want confidence in your heart, then believe that message. Obey that gospel. Trust Christ. Let his word change you. Walk with him. Don't refuse him who speaks. Or as he said earlier in this letter, pay closer attention. Tune up your ears to Jesus. And for some of you this morning, that would mean obeying the gospel of Jesus initially for the first time. Friends, there's good news for you. If you've been walking in your sin, if you've been walking in your own life, in your own rebellion, there is good news for you today that anybody can get in on this. It's a matter of just turning to Jesus, seeing that He has come and He has lived the perfect life that you should have lived in your place. He did it for you. and that he suffered and died on the cross, that he took the wrath of God, he took the penalty of our sin, he took it all upon himself for you and for me, laid down his life for us. And then on the third day, he was gloriously, powerfully raised from the dead for us and for our salvation. Friend, if you hear that good news, believe it with all your heart. Put your hope in that Christ who has given himself for you today. Turn from your wayward and wicked ways and embrace Jesus. Trust in him, repent of your sin, but don't refuse Jesus's way of salvation. And for those of us who have started down the path, we believed the gospel message initially, we've been born again, let's keep on running. Just to have peace in our hearts to say today, maybe a good day, maybe a bad day, but I wanna just follow Jesus. I believe there must be a conscious, consistent decision in our minds and in our hearts every day to follow Jesus. We will not succeed if we buy the lie that because grace covers it all, we can live however we like. Our disobedience is refusing the gospel. Friends, we weren't saved by cheap grace, but by a costly grace that suffered and died for us. So as followers of Jesus, we trust that he will save us by his work, and therefore, we obey his commands. Remember what Jesus declared in the Great Commission? Go make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded, So where we find that part of our hearts saying to ourselves, no, to God, we're finding ourselves at a place where we're in dangerous ground. Let's not reject him who speaks, but let's say no, instead, yes to Jesus. To say to our hearts, I'm not gonna refuse Jesus and what he commands and declares. Instead, I'm going to believe and obey him. Now I wanna be clear, this doesn't mean that we're gonna be perfect and that if we sin, we have no hope. But what happens is when we do sin, we come back to Jesus again. We repent, we confess our sin again. We return to Christ once again in humble faith and say help me just walk with you again today. Help me trust you again. Help me know that you have cleansed us from all our sins. So friends, this first key is to refuse to reject Jesus and his gospel. He is far better. His gospel is far superior. When you walk in obedience to him, that is a sign, that is evidence for your heart that you're gonna make it home. It's not a pride-filled assurance, but a confidence that you believe the gospel and are walking in it by God's grace. It's the first key to having the assurance of salvation in our hearts. It's a good sign, it's a positive sign for anyone who does not refuse to obey the gospel. But there's more than just not refusing the message. The second key here is a receiving as well. And so this is the second key. To receive his kingdom with gratitude. Refuse to reject the gospel and instead receive his kingdom with gratitude. Look with me at verse 28. He lays out a second command. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And thus, let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. Now here the writer of Hebrews, he believes the best about the people that he's speaking to. He is confident that we will believe the gospel. He is confident that we will fix our eyes on Jesus. He is confident that we will not refuse Jesus's superior, better word. And so because of that, because he knows our faith in Christ and our acceptance of his grace in the gospel, he is confident that we won't be on the shaken side of the judgment. Instead, he's confident that we will receive the kingdom that cannot be shaken. The reason for that confidence, he states, is he sees a receiving heart in us. Now what is a receiving heart? It's a heart that's open and embraces what God has done. Again, if your heart is resisting Christ, that's a danger sign. But if your heart is saying, okay God, here's what you say and I'm gonna seek to align my life with you, good news. A receiving heart specifically is a heart that receives an unshakable kingdom. All the kingdoms of this world are fragile. If you haven't figured that out yet in 2025, let me just remind you of that. All the kingdoms of this world are fragile. Human history has proved that there is no king, there is no kingdom that will stand for eternity. Even our beloved country will be a footnote in the story of human history. The day is coming where the world will be shaken to the core. And yet for the believer, for the Christian, guess what? This world is not our home. We are not ultimately citizens of this kingdom and this world. The earthly kingdom is not our forever kingdom. We have a far better, a far greater kingdom ahead for us. We are waiting, as the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 11, for a far better city, one that cannot be shaken, the eternal kingdom of God. So let me say it this way, friends. If your hope is in Christ, your future, whatever today is, your future is incredibly bright. If you continue to press on, in faith, run the race, you will receive an eternal, glorious, forever kingdom. So let me speak that good news over us this morning. Those who are in Christ are receiving, it's a gift, a kingdom that cannot be shaken. no matter what. And so, because that's the case, he gives us a second key. Let us be grateful, I'm sorry, yes, verse 28. Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. That's the key. Receive it with gratitude. Since all this is true, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. That's the posture of our hearts. Gratitude or thankfulness is the heart and the core attitude of someone who receives something that they know they don't deserve. This attitude is what demonstrates or identifies what we believe about the gospel. Now think about your attitude in regards to receiving two different things. What do you do? How do you respond to someone who gives you a lavish, unexpected, undeserved gift? Most I think sensible human beings would be very, very thankful for that. There'd be gladness in that. Thank you so much. How kind you are. I appreciate this. What a thoughtful gift. Okay, but think about this. What do you do when you get in your bank account from the direct deposit your wages for your work that week? Nothing, right? You don't send a thank you note to your boss and say thank you for paying me once again, right? You go on your way doing your thing because you earned that income. Why do we often treat God's grace like a paycheck? He just, direct deposit please, thank you. We treat his kindness like our salary or our wages that we've earned and that we're entitled to some way or another. Friends, if we saw God's grace as this undeserved gift, that it's nothing that we could earn or acquire on our own, wouldn't we be full of gratitude? So what is God's grace to you? Is it true mercy? Is it gift? Or is it paycheck? And here's the point. Saved sinners live in perpetual gratitude. Gratitude or thankfulness is the right and holy response of our lives to God for his grace and mercy on us. So how should someone live in light of the kindness of God and his grace to them? With gratitude to God for everything. There is nothing that we don't have that he has not given to us. Gratitude is how we are to rightly worship God. Look what he says, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. I like how the NIV translates the order of thought here from the Greek a little bit clearly than I think the ESV does. He says, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. That's the positive part that he believes about us. Let us be thankful. As this kingdom is coming for all of those who believe and have hoped in Christ, let's receive it with thanksgiving and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. True gratitude is humility. By gratitude we worship God acceptably. Again, we don't deserve God's grace, we don't deserve his salvation, and when we see and know who God is, as verse 29 declares, our God is a consuming fire, when we see and know who God is, we will be humbled that he has saved, he has averted his wrath from us, and his fire from us, and he's placed it on his son. Instead of wrath, friends, what we get in Christ is a kingdom that cannot be shaken. We are recipients of the joy of eternal life, the heavenly city, glory, perfection, the inheritance of the saints, the presence of God. Everything good and beautiful and holy and true is coming to God's people in Christ. So how are we living today? Entitled? Banking on our own work? or with gratitude, with holy, acceptable worship to him, reverence and awe. How great is our God we sang this morning. Amen. Now how can we be sure that all of this is ours? Well you know it's a gift and we receive it with gratitude as a gift. You want assurance of salvation in your heart, just look to the posture of your heart towards God. Are you thankful? Are you glad? Is there, like I could have gotten fire from this consuming God. I could have gotten doom. And what do I get? Life, joy, hope. I get everything beautiful. Our lives are lived then to serve, to honor, to thank, to worship, and to revere him as God because your life is not your own friends. It belongs to Christ. So do you lay awake at night in the dark hours of the morning with that churning of your soul? Does that question of the devil really sit in the back of your mind? Have I earned it? Have I done enough? Am I a good person? Friends, it's not wrong to want peace. with God. It's not wrong to want assurance of salvation in your heart and confidence in your future with Christ. But that assurance, that security, it's for those who don't refuse his gospel but instead receive with gratitude the kingdom that he gives us in Christ. So what's the trajectory of your life looking like right now? Rejection? refusal, putting up walls against Jesus, saying, no, I've got it figured out. Or is there a well, and maybe for some of you it's just a small spring that's starting to bubble up, but is there a well of gratitude that you are drawing from saying, thank you, Jesus, because I have none of this figured out, but you have everything for me. And so I'm just gonna walk with you and worship you in all things. Our devotion, our thanksgiving, our lives should be lived as worship to him. So let me say it again one more time. Friends, we don't earn our salvation, but because we have been given such a great gift, we press on in faith. We press on in obedience and gratitude and awe and reverence because God has been so kind to us. And we keep pressing on. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your grace. that we are enrolled as citizens of an eternal, unshakable kingdom. Not because of what we have done, but only because of what Christ has done for us. And so Lord, we pray and ask that we would have with our hearts today, not a stubbornness, not an arrogance or an entitlement, but we would have a humility to say all is grace. And Lord, that we would not refuse your word, but day by day, we would with hope, with awe, and with gratitude, offer you acceptable worship, offer you our lives. We thank you, Lord, for your grace. Give us this assurance. And where we lack it, Lord, Bring us back to you in repentance and faith so that we might know your smile and your joy again, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. We are a gathering of sinners saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. We exist to glorify God by making, maturing, and multiplying followers of Jesus Christ, who will know Him and make Him known. For more information visit us at srbible.org.