S25 || When Willful Sin Meets a Holy God || Hebrews 10:26-39 || Session 25

A line in Hebrews chapter 10 stops us cold: it’s a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We lean into that tension—grace that saves, holiness that disciplines—and ask what willful sin truly is when we already know the truth. With Hebrews as our guide, we unpack why returning to old systems or familiar comforts isn’t neutral; it quietly denies the sufficiency of Jesus’ once‑for‑all sacrifice.

We start with context. The original audience—Jewish believers—faced pressure to go back to temple sacrifices. The writer’s warning is blunt: no other sacrifice remains if you walk away from the only effective one. From there, we explore the vital difference between God’s wrath for His adversaries and His fatherly discipline for His children. Expect pruning that grows righteousness, not a pain‑free spirituality. If ongoing, deliberate sin sits easily on the conscience, the Spirit’s grief is the alarm we dare not mute. We illustrate “trampling the Son of God underfoot” with a picture of gratitude denied—a rescued debtor ignoring the king who paid it all—because indifference can be its own form of contempt.

The conversation turns practical. How do we care for people who claim faith yet persist in open rebellion? Pray with urgency. Confront with Scripture and clarity. And refuse to play judge and executioner—vengeance belongs to the One who knows perfectly. Holy fear is not for scaring the saved; it humbles the heart that’s grown casual with God. That kind of reverence restores worship, honesty, and obedience.

Finally, we remember the believing Hebrews’ past: public shame, prison, and seized property accepted with joy. Why joy? They held a better, lasting possession that outshined every loss. So, we urge courage—do not throw away your confidence. Endure for reward. Live by faith as if Christ might return any moment. The choice stands in bright contrast: persevere toward great reward or shrink back toward ruin. If this conversation stirred you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with one insight you’re taking into your week.

Chapters

• 0:00 Facing A God Who Knows
• 0:43 Hebrews 10 In Focus
• 2:26 What Willful Sin Really Means
• 5:21 No More Temple Sacrifices
• 7:16 Judgment, Discipline, And Rest
• 11:05 Trampling The Son Of God
• 15:05 Confronting Ongoing Sin
• 18:18 Leave Vengeance To God
• 20:16 Holy Fear And Healthy Reverence
• 23:10 Remember Past Endurance
• 26:05 Joy In Loss And Better Possessions
• 29:10 Do Not Throw Away Confidence
• 31:37 Live By Faith, Not Shrinking Back
• 35:28 Rewards Versus Destruction And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

The child has been given instructions from their parents, they will act differently depending on whether they think mom and dad are gonna find out what they're doing, or whether they find out mom and dad are never going to know about what they've done. And today we're gonna find a similar concept because God will always know what we're doing. The question then becomes what happens when we face him? That's the question today on reasoning through the Bible. We are in Hebrews chapter 10, and we've been learning about Jesus being a better sacrifice. He's a better priest, and he has instituted a better covenant. Today we're gonna find out what happens to the believer that goes on sinning after they've learned the knowledge of the truth. We're gonna jump in in Hebrews chapter 10, starting in verse 26. So if you have your Bible open there, Steve, can you read from verse 26 down to verse 31?

SPEAKER_00: 1:13

For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve, who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the spirit of grace. For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11

Well, Steve, sprinkled through that passage or some scary language. The last verse there, terrifying thing, talks about in verse 26, no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, terrifying expectations of judgment, consuming fire. What's the main thrust of what it's talking about? Is it saying, as some people would take this to be, verse 26, if we go on sinning willfully, so does that mean that if a Christian goes on sinning willfully, all those terrible judgments will happen to them?

SPEAKER_00: 2:45

The Greek word of willfully here is ecosos, and it means to voluntarily, intentionally do something. It refers to the sins committed willingly, those done designedly and deliberately in the face of better knowledge from the Greek dictionary that I use. So it's talking about something here that somebody is doing on purpose. They know that it is wrong to do it. They might deny, they might say that they don't think it's wrong, but they have been given the knowledge. In other words, by here, they're believers. They've been given the knowledge of truth, yet here they are, they're doing something willingly. Now, again, the context here is the Jewish believers who are being lured back into Judaism. This is being written at least a couple of decades after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So these are people that have been, some of them have been longtime believers, some of them maybe new believers, but they're being lured back into Judaism because of persecution. So I think the language here is very strong because the writer wants to get across to the people that going back under Judaism is something that is not to be seen as a light decision to make. And it would be a willful decision on their part to make it. And as you mentioned here, all of this language here, what is meant by it, I think the bottom line meant that worshiping God is something to be taken very solemn and very serious. It's not a trifle thing to do. And as God says in one of the commandments, I'm a jealous God, you shouldn't worship any other gods. I think it's the same type of thought here that God is a jealous God, and that going back to something else once you have become a believer, is something to not be trifled about. It's a serious decision that somebody should put some thought into about doing it before they actually do it.

SPEAKER_01: 5:00

As you well mentioned, Steve, context is always king. We always keep repeating that simply because it's too easy to wrench verses, especially in the book of Hebrews, wrench them from their moorings and use them in some other context. It is written to Hebrew believers in Jesus Christ. Therefore, when verse 26 says this again, if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. To a Hebrew Christian, they would have been brought up thinking, at least in that day, thinking that I go to the temple and sacrifice an animal when I sin. And what he's saying here is once you come to the knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ, you can't go to the temple again and sacrifice something and have it mean anything. That's what he's saying. Once you've come to a knowledge of the truth of Christ, then there no longer remains a ability to go to the temple and do animal sacrifices. It's really, really that simple, is what he's saying. If someone knows the truth about Christ and they go on just sinning willfully, then taking some animal down to the temple is that's not going to take away your sin. If they ignore Christ's one sacrifice and go on sinning willfully, they can't expect the animal to be of any effect at all. It also reminded of back in the Old Testament sacrificial system, the sin sacrifice was for unintentional sins. Numbers chapter 15, verses 27 to 31 specifically say that the sin sacrifice was for unintentional sin. The one that goes on sinning willfully was supposed to be put out of the camp, put out of the congregation. So if people had continued in willful sin, they were to be put out. And the sin sacrifice was for no effect. So that's the context of which the writer of the Hebrews is saying it. With that, Steve, I think there still is some very sobering, as you said, language here for us. Does God have a terrifying judgment that we should be concerned about at all?

SPEAKER_00: 7:19

Yeah, he does, because he does not tolerate sin and he's going to punish sin. Now, as we go through all of this, as we've talked about in all our previous sessions, the judgment that is talked about in Hebrews is a physical judgment here on earth. It has to do with the rest here on earth. It doesn't have to do with the heavenly rest. So it's never talking about someone's salvation. And a little bit of a clarifying part is that when we talk about these people being lured back under Judaism, what we're talking about is the complete Judaism of practicing all 613 of the laws along with all the oral tradition that went along with it. We're not saying that they were to separate themselves and from not being Jewish at all anymore. We saw Peter and the other apostles, they still went to the temple. Peter preached up to the temple, and the other apostles did too. They went up and worshiped God and prayed to God. What they didn't do was bring their sacrifices to the temple. That's what we're talking about here is the specific part of Judaism that deals with the sacrifices related to sin. Passover, for example. This is something that was done in commemoration of God bringing them out of Egypt. But once Jesus came, you saw the connection between Jesus and his sacrifice and the Passover that brought him out of Egypt. Jesus commemorated the new covenant at the Passover meal. John said, Here's the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. So Jesus is a Passover lamb in that regard of bringing about eternal life. So I could see the Jewish people still celebrating Passover as a commemorative meal and then highlighting the parts that deal with Jesus and bringing that up to date in that regard. So I just want to clarify when we say they're wanting to be brought back into Judaism, we're talking about the complete aspect of it of practicing all of the laws, including the sacrificial laws. So to make that clarification, now as an application to you and I, Glenn, as Gentiles, what would maybe be the equivalent of luring us back? Well, that would be luring us back into worldly ways. Everything to do with the world is against God. Once we have come out of that and we know the truth now, and we're believers in Jesus Christ, why is it that we would want to turn back and go back into living worldly ways? So for us as Gentiles, it's the lure of going back to worldly ways. For them as Jewish believers, it's going back into Judaism. In either case, it's not something to be taken lightly and something that God is not going to be pleased with.

SPEAKER_01: 10:19

In our day, there's a teaching and it's almost a culture now in some Christian circles that says that God only does things that feel good to us, that he'll heal, he'll rain down money, he'll pay your bills, and that God only does things that feel good. And nothing could be further from the truth. God does things that develop our righteousness. If we're growing in righteousness, then he'll let us grow and prosper. If we are not, then he'll prune us, Christ said, so that we will grow in righteousness. So God does indeed, as these verses we just read, he does indeed have a judgment. And we should be very sobered and take that very seriously. The Christian, let me be perfectly clear, will not undergo God's wrath and will not undergo his great white throne judgment simply because our sin has been taken care of. Nevertheless, a Christian that goes on sinning willfully should be the most miserable person on earth. If a Christian can go and sin willfully and it not bother them, I'm not talking about one time fall and skin your knee, but if you're living in continual, ongoing, gross sin and it's not bothering you, that's the person that I would question their salvation, because a true Christian will bother them in willful sin. I'm reminded of the psalm that David wrote describing after he had been in sin after Bathsheba, he talked about his bones breaking. It was bothering him so much on the inside. The Holy Spirit will not leave you alone if you're sinning willfully and ongoingly. Therefore, this language here should be very sobering to us, terrifying expectation of judgment and fury of fire, which will consume the adversaries. That's true for his adversaries. But the Christian that goes on sinning willfully is not an adversary. The Christian that goes on sinning willfully will have a bothered conscience, and the Holy Spirit will not let them have peace. So when we read in the church, Steve, about God's judgment, what do we think of typically when we talk about his judgment inside the church?

SPEAKER_00: 12:38

Any type of judgment, we always think of the bad things that might happen, the very worst type of punishment. That's not really always true. What I mean by that is yes, God is going to judge sin and he's going to discipline us, but it's not a wrathful type of judgment that is reserved for non-believers and people that are blasphemers and just reject God outright. It's a type of a discipline where we have consequences to the decisions that we make. And as we've mentioned earlier in this session, it's all dealing with two things. One is our rest here on earth, the longevity of our life, what type of a life here on earth that we will have. The second one is our rewards in the afterlife, that the decisions that we make here have an effect on that. It says that all of our deeds, whether good or bad, are going to be judged at the Bima seat. So that means that even though we're Christians, there's still some bad decisions and deeds that we can do. Now, that goes back to the last session where in the new covenant it says that God will remember our sins no more. So think of that in that that has to do with salvation. Those sins are forgiven once and for all by Jesus Christ. And the deeds that we do here on earth will have ramifications possibly for our earthly life and then also for our afterlife related to the rewards that we might lose because of some of the decisions that we have made here on earth.

SPEAKER_01: 14:20

Verse 28 says, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Now, what that means is that if you're a Jewish person under the old Mosaic law and you just ignored it, you just say, I'm I'm not gonna obey the Mosaic law today. How much more severe it's gonna be if you just ignore Jesus? If you ignore Moses, all you need is two or three witnesses. What's gonna be even more severe when you just ignore Jesus? The language here is trampled underfoot, the Son of God. So, Steve, how is it that it uses that language here? Why would ignoring or rejecting Jesus be considered trampling him underfoot? And I've met a lot of people that say, hey, I'm not a Christian, but I'm not against Christianity. You want to do what you say, that's fine. I just I don't care. I'm I'm agnostic. This verse seems to think that that is trampling Jesus underfoot, and it is worse than violating the law of Moses.

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

I think there's a couple of things that we can draw out here, Glenn, as we go through this. Let's go back to who this is written to. It's written to Hebrew Christians, and he's talking about going under the full practice of Judaism, as we explained earlier, that they're then trampling the Son of God underfoot, therefore meeting the sacrificial blood that he gave, which the writer of Hebrews has made clear over and over, is sufficient, that he takes into the actual heavenly sanctuary that if they go back under the Judaic system and go back into sacrifices for sinful things that they've done, that they're nullifying the blood of Jesus Christ, that they're trampling it underfoot. It's something that they shouldn't do. Again, he's trying to give them the full ramifications and meaning of them going back under Judaism. Now, the other aspect is the people that deny that Jesus is God altogether. That might be people that aren't believers at all, and it might be other types of sects that claim to be Christian, but yet they deny that Jesus Christ is God. Well, they are saying that his blood and his sacrifice, the same thing. It wasn't sufficient to be that satisfactory sacrifice. So I think it all comes together, meaning that if you deny that Jesus Christ is God, that he is the Messiah, in the case of Jewish believers as well, that you're also denying the sufficiency of the sacrifice that he made. He didn't really truly pay our sin debt. His blood isn't sufficient for that. Therefore, you have to question that the person you're saying you're believing in while denying that he is God, you're trampling him underfoot. Now, I know that's kind of a long-winded explanation, but it's one in which I'm trying to get across the same severity of what the writer is getting across to these Hebrew believers. He's using Hebrew scriptures to get across to them that something that they would understand. I'm trying to convey that same message as well. What about you, Glenn? What have you gotten out of these verses?

SPEAKER_01: 17:44

What I think of with this, I was trying to think of an illustration and I could bring it home. Everything you said, I agree with. Let's use this little illustration to drive home this idea. Let's say that you or I were very poor. Maybe we're sick, we're destitute, and we're in debt. We we owed someone a lot of money that we couldn't pay. And because we're sick, we we can't work. A rich nobleman, maybe a king, comes along and pays our debt for us and provides a doctor and gets us healed up. Not only that, he provides a house to live in, gives us a new set of fine clothes, food to eat. We're now set up like that and living large in a nice home with nice food. Well, one day the nobleman comes because we hadn't seen him, and he comes in to our home. We say, Well, I've got something to do out in the back. And we don't even come in and thank him. Well, that would be rude. That would be insulting. We should at least come out and thank him. We should have gone to him first and thanked him. But now when he shows up and we just ignore him, you did all this for me, and I'm not even gonna give you the time of day. I don't even come in and say thank you. Well, that is trampling underfoot. And that's equivalent to what it's talking about here. Jesus paid our sin debt. We were hopeless and helpless. And he picks us up, gives us a new set of righteous garments, it's a place to live, frees our sin debt for all time. And if we just ignore that by going on and sinning willfully and not loving him, then that is trampling him underfoot. That I think is a sense of what he's saying here. If we take the king and tell him he's not even worthy of our time and attention, we're trampling him underfoot. And in this case, the king is King Jesus. He paid our sin debt and gave us the earth to live on, gave us food to eat. Ignoring or rejecting Jesus is trampling him underfoot. Look at the end of verse 29. It also talks about insulting the spirit of grace, ignoring Jesus or saying that there's another way to God will outrage the Holy Spirit. Steve, what do we then do with people that we meet? Because we've seen people that are like this, they'll get saved, they'll be church members. But they go on living in ongoing, gross, continual sin. What do we do with people like that? How should we think of them?

SPEAKER_00: 20:09

We need to pray for them, first of all. We also need to be bold enough to confront them. We need to be insistent to the Holy Spirit, that as you mentioned a while ago, if they're a true believer, they're indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit should be convicting them. If they're living in willful sin, which is practicing sin, as you mentioned, this is something that they're doing on a day-to-day basis, willfully, knowing that it's something that they shouldn't be doing or it's not right to do. They're suppressing the Holy Spirit because that's actually what they would be doing. That's what it's saying here as well. They're insulting the Holy Spirit, they're insulting him. So we should help the Holy Spirit from the aspect of being bold enough to confront them. We should tell them, what you're doing is not right. You need to reconsider what you're doing. And here's the biblical reasons why. So it's something that they need to think about, they need to be confronted about, and it's something that they need to be prayed over in order to get them back on the right track.

SPEAKER_01: 21:18

Verse 30 in this sequence says, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And that reminds me of another question. Why is it that we need to let God take vengeance instead of taking vengeance on our own? What's the risk of me trying to be the righteous judge?

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

Because we know that God will be righteous in it. We might go and take vengeance on somebody who we think is guilty, but they're actually not guilty. So God is the person that knows truth, the absolute truth, and he's the person that can righteously take vengeance. We shouldn't do it ourselves. We should leave that up to God.

SPEAKER_01: 22:02

I'm reminded of the story of David, who was running from King Saul. And David was innocent and he had been falsely accused by Saul. And Saul was trying to take his life and actually did try to take his life on a number of occasions. And if Saul would have caught David, would have killed him. But yet David had several occasions he could have taken Saul's life, but he did not. He always said, the Lord is the one that should take vengeance here and not me. I'm reminded of that because that's the idea here. We will get wronged in life just by being human and walking around on the earth. But especially as Christians, there's going to be people that falsely accuse us. We need to let God take care of these things, let him take care of it in his own way. God is the wise one, he's the one that can move their heart. We don't need to make matters worse by taking our own vengeance. The following verse, verse 31, why is it fearful to fall into the hands of a living God? This goes back to what we were saying a while ago. Some people say God only does things that feel good. Well, this is a cold prickly. Why is it that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God?

SPEAKER_00: 23:16

Another aspect of people that are willfully sinning, I'm talking about Christians, ones who are believers that are willfully sinning, is that they get too comfortable, I think, with God. They think that, oh, God will overlook this because I have salvation and my sins are forgiven. Therefore, everything that I'm doing is going to be forgiven as well. Well, that's a place, a position where you have become comfortable with a living God. We should worship and honor God. Yes, we can now boldly go to his throne and with confidence all of the things that Hebrew is talking about here in order to petition him, but we are also to worship him. We are to be in awe of him, and we are to be thankful for what he has done. Therefore, we should be respectful. And if we're willfully sinning against him, grieving the Holy Spirit in the process, then we have become too comfortable in our sin. And I think that is when this verse 31 comes into play. It's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God. If you're not terrified because of the willful sin that you're doing, then you need to rethink your position that you have in Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01: 24:37

This section that we read while ago has very strong language in it, and it's very sobering. We should all take this very seriously. God is all-powerful, he is all-knowing, and he is perfectly righteous, which means he will not put up with mine and your feeble excuses. All people have done wrong. I've done wrong, you've done wrong. When we face a holy and pure and all-powerful God, then an answer has to be made. So, Steve, how can we then have peace with God? Is there no hope?

SPEAKER_00: 25:09

No, there is hope. And we're to look forward to the hope as it talked about in our last verses that we went through in the session before, that we have this hope and confidence. We have first John that tells us if we are faithful in confessing our sins to God, that He is faithful to forgive those sins. So even as we are believers and as we do things that miss the mark, that we do sins against God, that whenever we're convicted of them, if we're faithful to confess those, he is faithful to forgive those. Now, that again doesn't have to deal with our salvation, but it does have to do with our quality of life here on earth, and it has to do with our rewards that we're going to have in the afterlife. Jesus, whenever he was talking to his disciples, he said at one point, those of you that are completely clean, only your feet need to be washed. Now he made a caveat. He said, now that not all of you are clean, meaning Judas, because Judas was an actual believer. But the point being there is just that we are talking about is that once we have salvation, we're completely clean as a body, so to speak, but we're going to have the sins of this world get on our feet from time to time. We're going to need to have that cleanse. That's outlined in 1 John, where we go and faithfully confess our sins so that we can continually be cleaned in that aspect.

SPEAKER_01: 26:42

The last part of chapter 10 goes back to giving advice to the Hebrew Christians about how they had lived in the past. So, Steve, can you start at verse 32 and read down to verse 39?

SPEAKER_00: 26:55

But remember the former days when after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while he who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

SPEAKER_01: 28:01

In this section, the writer is encouraging the readers to remember what happened to them in the past. All Christians should remember what God has done for us in the past. If we view the trials that we've gone through already in life and look at how God brought us through, it's a faith-building exercise and it's reassuring now. If we remember all the times where we were frightened or we were upset or we had difficult circumstances, God got us through those. He'll get us through what we're in now. It's a comforting thing to know that God is loving us and he may lead us through the valley of the shadow of death, but he will always get us through to the other side. And we can take benefit from that. The audience for the book of Hebrews were again Jewish Christians. And when these Jewish Christians had accepted Christ, they got persecuted by the other Jewish community. Verse 32 is talking about the days after they were saved. It says, quote, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of suffering. And then the next verse says they were, quote, made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations. So, Steve, how do you think those persecutions happened? And then, secondly, how common has that been throughout church history?

SPEAKER_00: 29:25

Well, the persecutions happened by the Jewish leadership at the very beginning, sending out warrants for those who were going out and becoming believers in Jesus Christ. Saul was one of those who went out and persecuted them. Whenever the apostles were teaching in the temple, they brought them in and they told them, stop teaching that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead. This persecution had more than just telling them to stop or telling them that you shouldn't worship. There were actually ramifications that were associated with it. The writer of Hebrews tells them, remember back to those days whenever you first became believers and whenever this persecution came along. You stayed steady through that. You stayed steady through all of those times of losing property and friendships and family and other things. Therefore, don't go back now. Remember those times before and what you've come through. God got you through that. He's going to get you through anything else that's going to happen in the future.

SPEAKER_01: 30:29

He says specifically here in verse 34 that their property was taken. Well, that put them in a destitute situation, especially if they were then put out of the community. So these Jewish Christians were in a really bad spot. And if we look across church history, it's very common over the centuries for Christians to be persecuted. Missionaries lose their lives every year. In our nation, in our country, then Christians tend to get accepted as long as they blend in with the culture. But as long as you start trying to live the Christian life on a daily basis, then now you start seeing friendships broken. You start seeing people persecute you. And the world is not going to accept the Christian simply because the world doesn't agree with Jesus Christ. The Christians should always be expected to be rejected by certain people in society as these Jewish Christians were in the first century. At the beginning of verse 34, some of them were arrested and imprisoned. You mentioned the Apostle Paul. He was going around city to city, arresting them and throwing them in jail. When a person's property is taken, they're thrown in jail. This would make them financially destitute. These Christians, it says, quote, accepted joyfully the seizure of their property. So that I find to be just tremendous is that not only were they persecuted, not only were they put out of the community, not only were they often thrown in prison and financially destroyed, but it says they accepted joyfully these things. How could that happen, Steve? It says at the end of verse 34 quote, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one, that's how they could do it. They knew that the benefits of Christ outweighed the pleasures of the world. Earthly possessions will turn to dust. Heavenly possessions are eternal. I find that to be the real way to get through these persecutions. Are they not? If we keep our eyes on the horizon and look to Christ, then we can endure all things.

SPEAKER_00: 32:43

Paul says that whenever we become a believer in Jesus Christ, that we are a new person. And he also says, we now have a citizenship that is not here on earth. That is the way that we should think, that we're ultimately bound for something greater than what we have today. That is what the writer of Hebrews is reminding them of. You joyfully gave up your property, knowing that you got better possessions on the other side. We can't take all the possessions that we have here on earth with us, and we won't take them with us. But yet we will have better things on the other side. And in verse 35, he therefore tells them don't throw away your confidence. You went through this one time before, and maybe even multiple times. Don't turn back and throw all that away. Persevere. Keep going on and remember those times. Those times will get you through what you're being lured back into now. Keep pressing on to the future and keep looking to the other side. Keep looking to the rewards that you're going to get on the other side.

SPEAKER_01: 33:57

Verse 37 there says, Jesus is going to return, and the language it uses there is in a very little while. Now, a very little while could be for any given Christian, they could go see Jesus any minute. His second coming has been in a little while since the first century. And we've been in the last days since the first century. Every Christian in every age has felt that Jesus will return soon. But we should live on a daily basis, as if he might come any minute. That's the parables that Jesus taught in the gospels, that when he leaves his servants doing things, they should be doing it until he returns. And it says in verse 38 that we should live by faith. That's the real key is that while we're waiting on Christ, we should live by faith. Trust what God is telling us, live by his commands, and not shrink back from having faith in the Lord. He takes no pleasure in those that shrink back. Very strong language in this chapter. Steve, this is quite tremendous language.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

And there's a contrast that he makes there as well. In 35, he says, when you persevere with confidence that there's going to be a great reward that's going to be received from that. And there in verse 39, he says, when you shrink back, it's shrinking back to destruction. So I think that is a great contrast between the two things persevere to get a great reward, or shrink back for destruction.

SPEAKER_01: 35:28

And that brings us to the end of Hebrews chapter 10. Tremendous, tremendous chapter. Next time we're going to get into the hall of faith and see many faithful actions in Hebrews chapter 11.

SPEAKER_00: 35:41

Thank you so much for watching and listening. And as always, may God bless you.