So the Women's Ministry is hosting a film-worship event, not this Saturday, but next Saturday. And we are going to be watching a documentary on Corrie ten Boom. And it's just such a powerful story of God's sovereignty through difficulties, risks that she took through her faith and forgiveness. So we're going to have time in small groups to get to discuss the film and also get to know other sisters.

So everyone's welcome, college, singles, people that are married, and it would actually be a great opportunity to invite your unbelieving friends and family. So the deadline is being extended until tomorrow, so please sign up. Thank you. Also, as an important sign up, please sign up for our all-church picnic that's taking place on October 20th.

So today is the last day to sign up where we can guarantee T-shirts and different supplies and things like that. So please be sure to sign up. There's going to be a booth outside where you can sign up there or just go ahead and use the link that's provided for you on your app and on the program.

And again, it's just $10 for the whole day, which includes the lunch, the shirt, and all the activities. And we hope to come together as church sister really fellowship together that day. Also on October 19th, Saturday, there is an evangelism event that's taking place. And what that means is we're going to be gathering together just individuals near Huntington Beach to do open air teaching and sharing of the gospel.

So if you'd like to participate, it's being coordinated by the family ministry, but it's open to all. Please be sure to email June Yim directly and the email is there on the program for you. Just want to highlight one more thing, which is that for our band ministry, we have a car rally on November 2nd.

Our band ministry is our young adults ministry, and this is just an opportunity for us to get together and fellowship. So please use the link to sign up there. Okay. At this time, I'll invite Pastor Peter to come deliver the word of God. All right. If you can turn your Bibles with me to Hebrews chapter six, verses nine through 12.

Hebrews chapter six, verses nine through 12. Hebrews chapter six, verses nine through 12. Reading out of the NASV, "But beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way. For God is not unjust, so ask to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward his name in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.

And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Let's pray. Gracious Father, we have come corporately as a body, Lord God, to join our voices, join our time, our energy, Lord, to focus our attention on you and your word.

We pray, Father, for your Holy Spirit to guide and lead us. Soften our hearts that we may be molded. Open our ears, Lord, that we may be hearers. I pray that you would change us, Father God, according to your word, that we may be more than just hearers, but be doers of your word.

May Christ be exalted. May our vision for his glory be specified, that our love for you may grow as a result. So we pray for your blessing over this time. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, as you know, the previous week's passage was probably one of the harshest and the most clearest rebukes to the early church.

And I say it's one of them because it is not the most. I would say most people would argue that this is the second most clear and second strongest rebuke to the church. But the greater one is actually coming in chapter 10. So this is actually preparation. So if you've heard last week's sermon and you were kind of bothered by it, it's like, man, this is too strong.

Right? It was only a preparation. That's to get you ready for what he's about to say in chapter 10. Chapter 10, some of you guys may already know, is a text where Jonathan Edwards preaches this sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and it's based on the text in Hebrews chapter 10.

But the purpose of this rebuke wasn't simply to get them to question their salvation. That was not his ultimate goal. It is to make sure that the hope that they have in Christ is not based upon wishful thinking. We have a tendency, if we're not careful, that we can just kind of drift along and to just kind of, again, because of where we are in our generation, where Christianity is, where we live, that a lot of people come into the church and stay in the church, and yet they've never had a covenant relationship with Christ.

You know, those of you who are dating, or maybe a lot of you who've dated in the past, you know, we would all say that there are certain things that are deal breakers. Right? If you go on a first date and they show up with sweatpants, that's a deal breaker.

You know what I mean? They're not taking this seriously, or they wore slippers, or maybe he went out to eat, and if your lady, saying if he's unwilling to pay for the check, maybe that's a deal breaker. Right? So, there are certain things that you say, you know, he doesn't have a sense of humor, or he treats his mom bad, or something.

Right? You would look at that and say, these are deal breakers. But you can't bring in the deal breakers into a covenant relationship. You can't say that in the marriage context. You can't say, you know what, I'm married to my wife or husband, but here's my deal breaker. She burns my food too many times, or you know what I mean, or isn't sensitive to me, you know.

You can't do it. So, covenant relationship basically means, no matter what it is, it's meant to be permanent. But the challenge that we have in the church, when it is mixed with wheat and the tares, is that people enter into this covenant relationship with the same type of mentality.

Now, what is a deal breaker for a Christian? Is there anything that can happen in your life where if this happened, or if God doesn't provide this, or if I was in this kind of circumstance, or if I was tempted by this, I don't know if I would persevere in my faith.

Is there anything that you can think of that you say, this would be really difficult in this context to continue to follow Christ? Well, if you put anything in that box, if you answer that with anything, that contradicts a covenant relationship with God. Some people have entered into the church because they were born into it.

Your parents were Christian, maybe your grandparents were Christian, and so you just naturally assumed. So, if you happened to be born in a Buddhist family, you probably would have gone to the temple. If you were born in an atheist family, maybe you would have been an atheist. So naturally, because you were born in a Christian home, you were raised in the church, the easiest path for you to go was to continue in your faith.

Even though the scripture says, broad is the way that leads to destruction, narrow is the way that leads to eternal life, and very few would be found on it, but for you, the easiest path for you was to just continue down the path that you were on. So being in the church for those people was the easy path.

It was the broad path. And many are on that, not because they are genuinely following Christ, but because that was the easiest path. Some have come to Christ because they were desperate at some point. There was some tragedy that happened, maybe you were sick and you cried out to God and you felt like God was there, or there were some Christians that came into your life that gave you support and said, "You know what?

I'm really so thankful for these Christians." And so in desperation, you cried out to God, and for that moment, you gave your life to Christ, but now the crisis is no longer there. There's no sense of urgency to go to Christ. So as a result, only when you have emergency, only when you are desperate do you need Christ.

In every other period of your life, whether he's there or not, whether you pray or not, whether you live in obedience or not, it's just not that important. And so you may find yourself drifting, but because there's nothing desperate in your life, you don't see an urgency to take heed of these warnings.

Some came to Christ because they were enamored with the church community. These people, they're such good people, especially in our society where community is breaking down, even the family structure, even at work. Everybody's just working in their cubicles, come home, they're on their phone. And so you find a community of people that you really click with, similar interests and hobbies.

And so maybe you came into church for those reasons. You were in college, you were lost, you found some campus ministry that you felt like you belonged to, and then that just continued on until some of these relationships begin to break down and people disappoint you, and then all of a sudden, you find yourself drifting away from God because your connection to Christ was all about connection to other friends.

And then there's some people who came into the church just to give it a try. Because what have you got to lose? You get to come to church filled with nice people. My kids get taught good morals, VBS, and they just gave it a try. But inwardly, there is no true faith.

And as a result of that, you'll jump through the minimum requirement that that community requires, but because there's no genuine faith, it never moves beyond the minimum. As long as my children are taken care of, my friendships are going well, and I feel a sense of purpose in life, that is enough.

When the Bible talks about picking up your cross, it's a foreign concept. It's just certain things that apostles, maybe pastors, maybe some missionaries do, and we admire them from a distance. You never fully understand what that means. And you never think that that applies to you directly, because the application of that just doesn't make sense to you, because you just wanted to give it a try.

What makes a church challenging in our generation is we have churches that are filled with people who have just kind of come in through optimism, through family. We have people who are desperate at one point, but no longer desperate today. We have some people who came in because they love the friends that they're hanging out with, and then just people who are just kind of sampling, tasting, hearing that, but they've never committed their life to Christ.

And so the warning that was given in chapter 6, verse 4 through 8, is to make sure that the wheat and the tares are separated. That the tares, when they hear these warnings, it's irrelevant to them, because they don't really believe. So whether it's promises of hope in Christ, or whether it's warning of condemnation, it is not relevant to them, because it's not real.

It's not real. So the only difference is how long is this guy's sermon going to last? How much time do I need to put in to get to what I want? But the actual content of the message and what it says is irrelevant to them, because they do not believe.

And those are the tares in the church, because the tares only care about the byproduct, and the substance isn't really Christ. But for those who are wheat, sometimes we get mixed in with the tares, the warning is really for them. The warning is for them to take heed and make sure that we do not just simply drift into oblivion.

That the consequence of just falling asleep is too dangerous for us not to be paying attention. And so in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, Apostle Paul says the same thing to the Corinthian church. Test yourself to see if you are in the faith. Now when he says test yourself to see if you're in the faith, is he saying look inside and see how you feel this morning?

Is he asking that? It's like when you sit and close your eyes, do you believe? Yeah, right there. I see it. I feel it right there. Is that what he is saying? Check yourself to see how you feel? He says test yourself to see if you are in the faith, meaning a community of believers.

Is your life consistent with the things that you profess? Are you in the faith? Examine yourself or do you not recognize this about yourself that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test. The reason why he's writing to this Corinthian church is because they were beginning to act like the rest of the world.

They were being divided. They were back fighting. They were trying to one up one another. And if Apostle Paul says anything that he didn't like, they didn't like, they would say, "Oh, maybe he's not speaking for God." Even though he was speaking directly the words of Christ. And so the warning is given in order for the drifting church to pay attention and to be anchored back to Christ.

That was the whole point. And you could clearly see that, that that was his intent. His intent was not to scare them. His intent was to make sure that their assurance of salvation is founded upon truth and not wishful thinking, not false narratives that our generation has created. That as long as my faith is better, as long as I'm acting as soon as, as long as I'm not doing these bad things, but is it founded upon truth?

In Hebrews chapter 6, 9, Paul, or I say Paul because I think it's Paul who wrote it, but the author of the book of Hebrews, right, makes what it seems like a U-turn. Because if you look at verse 8, it ends by saying, "But after everything has been given to you, if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned." It sounds a lot like John chapter 15, right?

If a tree does not bear any fruit, the axe is being laid to be cut down and to be burned. And basically he's saying the condemnation is waiting. In other words, if there is, if your faith is not real, right? So he ends this very difficult passage to the church with a stark warning that if your faith is not real, there will be no fruit.

And if you recognize there's no fruit, right, there is no salvation. But then after he says that in verse 9, "But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you." It almost sounds like he's doing a U-turn, right? After saying like, "You don't bear any fruit, there's only thorns and thistles, you're going to be burned up and judged, but of you particularly, we are confident that this is not you." And the things that accompany salvation, things we are speaking in this way, that we have seen evidence of this.

Now, he describes this more in detail in chapter 10. How they were being persecuted and how their other Christians were being dragged into jail and they were there ministering to them. And so he says, "At one point in your walk with God, there was genuine evidence. There was genuine evidence of your faith in the way that you walk." So the point of what he's trying to say is, "I've seen some of this." And so the reason why I'm telling you all of this is so that you would recognize that you are in the faith.

And so when you recognize that you really are in the faith, that you would begin to catch yourself from drifting and be anchored back to Christ. And that's why he writes what he writes. But again, the point of this is so that their assurance may be founded upon truth and not wishful thinking.

Again, in 1 John 5, 13, John does the exact same thing. He spends all four and a half, five chapters telling the recipients of that letter that if you say that you have fellowship with God and you live in darkness, you fool yourself. I don't care how many verses you memorized.

I don't care if you grew up in the church. I don't care how many things that you've experienced. I don't care how much money you paid to the church. I don't care how hard you serve. I don't care what kind of position you have. If you are living in darkness, you have no fellowship with God because God is light and there is no darkness in Him.

And so he spends four chapters basically just like a surgeon going in and he's dividing and saying, "These are what Christians are. These are what non-Christians are." But at the end conclusion of that, he says, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." In other words, if you find yourself, if you genuinely have this faith, this is what genuine faith, these are the fruits of genuine faith.

And these are the fruits of fake faith. And so for those of you who genuinely have this faith so that you may be certain that you have eternal life. So the point of this is not to get them to question their salvation, but to be assured of their salvation based upon truth.

And that's why he begins to turn his table, "Now that I've said everything that I've said to you, I want you to leave with this assurance." But again, this assurance is based upon something concrete. And he mentions three things here in this passage. One, he already mentioned about love.

They've already shown the greatest evidence of salvation is in the way that they practice love previously. Secondly, he says, he encourages them, he challenges them that because you've had that, now you need to persevere in hope. Not only did you have this evidence, but that you need to persevere in this evidence of this love.

And then he finishes it with a third evidence, which is faith. Where he tells them, "Now you have this evidence of love. Now you need to persevere and stop drifting. And then third, you need to look upon the people who have faith that have gone before you and to practice the faith that they practice so that you may endure to the end." So love, hope, and faith are the three things that he says are the evidence of genuine salvation.

So let's look at the first one that he says, love. Love is the first evidence that he mentions in Hebrews 6.10. "For God is not unjust, so as to forget your works and the love which you have shown toward his name in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints." You notice here that the first thing that he mentions here is love, but love for who?

Love for who? Love for his name, right? And how is love for his name manifested? For love for the brothers. And so love for God overflows to the love for the brothers. But here he mentions, he says, "The first evidence of someone being genuinely saved." His covenant relationship with God is that that love that God showed him is evidence in the way that he interacts with other people.

And that's why if you look at Jesus restoring Peter, after he denies him three times, before he ascends, remember he asked Peter, "Peter, do you genuinely love me?" And what does Peter say? "You know I love you." And when he confirms that love, what does Jesus say to him?

Then what? Then relax. Is that what he says? "Do you love me?" "Of course I love you." Then take it easy. Stop beating yourself on the head. Is that what he says? What does he say? "If you love me, then feed my sheep." If you love me, then love my sheep.

And he says that three separate times. If you love me, then feed my sheep. If you love me, then love my children. You know, you can love people without loving God. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Because everybody, as far as I know, practices some kind of love.

Mother loves their children. You don't have to be a Christian to love your children. Husband loves their wives, and wives love their husbands. You don't have to be a Christian to love your wives and husbands. You can love your friends, your brothers, co-workers. You can practice all those kinds of love without being a Christian.

That is not unique to Christianity. The love that Jesus is referring to is a covenant love, agape love, where he calls us to practice the love that Christ practiced with us. And he said, "If you love one another as I have loved you, then the world will know that you are my disciples." But the love that he is referring to as a standard is his love toward us.

And while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Loving people that are difficult to love, loving people that you would not naturally love, this agape love that is not within us. It's not in us. To turn the other cheek, to love people that are our enemies, that we consider enemies, that is not in us.

And that's why he says, "The evidence that you've been loved by an alien love, that is not something that you experienced with your mom or dad. You didn't experience that with your friends because they loved you because you were their children. They loved you because you were brothers. They loved you because you were their friends.

But this agape love from God toward us is an alien love. And so the evidence that this alien love, that you are a recipient of this alien love, is that that alien love is evidenced in you. That's why he says in 1 John 4, 19, "We love because he first loved us." You can practice store gate love, family love.

You can practice heiress love, romantic love. You can practice filial love, friendship love. But you cannot practice agape love until you've been loved by Christ in that way. And that's why he says that's the greatest evidence. I think many of you saw this week, if you haven't, I don't know where you've been, the video of this young man who's 18 years old, whose older brother was shot by a police officer.

Some of you guys may have seen that. His name is Brant Jean, and his older brother, Botham Jeans, is the older man, his older brother who got shot by this off-duty police officer who was living in the same apartment complex. She lived in the fourth floor, and she got off the wrong floor in the elevator, and she went into her apartment, or she thought, on the third floor, and just door happened to be open when she walked in.

There was a tall, young black man, and she got threatened. She pulled out her gun and shot him to death. And so the trial went out, and she was indicted as guilty of second-degree murder. So she was given 10 years for her crime. Now, after the sentencing, the tradition is they would give one of the family members an opportunity to speak out, and basically, usually in those scenes, one of the family members, a mother, father, or brother would go on the stand and basically rebuke the killer for what they did.

"You took my brother's life, and so now I'm glad that they're taking your life." And in fact, the Bible has a very detailed description of this particular scene, and the whole reason why the cities of refuge were built. If somebody kills somebody by accident, the closest relative who is assigned to take vengeance upon the perpetrator is called the avenger of blood.

That's the actual name for that person, because they know that in order for that person's blood to be satisfied, the avenger of blood would come after them. But if it was an accident, the perpetrator would be given an opportunity to run to the city of refuge, and the cities of refuge, the mayor or the ruler of the six cities of refuge that was built in Israel, was basically run by the high priest.

So under the protection of the high priest, that person, after hearing their story and what is deemed to be an accident, they're brought in to protect them from the avenger of blood. This young man, 18-year-old, according to scripture, would have been that person, would have been the avenger of blood, and would have been rightfully been in a position to take vengeance upon that police officer.

And usually they do. They will come and say, "You took my brother. I can't believe you did that. I hope you rot in hell that they never bring you out of jail." But instead, he got on the stand, and he began to share the love of Christ. He says, "I forgive you.

I don't want you to go to jail. And if you're genuinely asking for forgiveness, our God will forgive you. And if after all of this, if you would just give your life to Christ." And then after that, he asked if he can hug her, and he came off the stand and did something that no one would have understood.

Why is he doing that? And he began to hug her in tears. I must have watched this video 10 times. It brought me to tears. Not simply because of this young man, but because of the picture. And I think his witness was so much more powerful than any sermon that I can possibly give.

Because we saw a living illustration of the power of the love of Christ. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.14, the love of Christ controls us. In the NIV, it says, "It compels us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died." What that young man did is not something that you and I can muster up.

It's not something that he had special blood in him. There's something different about that young man's genetics that is more forgiving than an average person. Only a person who has been deeply affected by the love of Christ, agape love of Christ, can overflow to share that love to other people.

And that's why Jesus says, "The greatest mark of a Christian is the practice of the love that they receive themselves." So that young man was compelled by the love of Christ to love that individual. First John 3.14 says, "We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

But he who does not love abides in death." You know what was so powerful about that? That after he did that and hugged, afterwards, the judge came off of where she was and in tears, there's a picture of the judge and the officer who was about to go to jail hugging, and both of them in tears.

She walked into her private chambers, grabbed her Bible and gave it to her. And as she was giving it to the officer going to jail, the judge said, "Ma'am, it's not because I am good. It's because I believe in Christ. None of us are worthy." Because of that young man's love and demonstrating that agape love for somebody that he had every right to take vengeance, that judge had the courage to be able to do what she did.

And I bet that I'm not the only one talking about that event today. I'll bet all throughout the Christian world that what that young man did was being talked about because it deeply affected me. It wasn't just talk. It wasn't just some theory that we talk about on Sunday.

We saw a live example of what the love of Christ does to people. And so that's why he says, "Even though I say all of these things, I am convinced that that's not you because I saw your love in the beginning. I saw your sacrifice. I saw how you loved the brethren.

But the point is to continue." In fact, one of the most powerful witnesses of the early church was love. It was love. It wasn't the courage, "I'm going to die for Jesus. I'm going to do this for Christ." It wasn't their talent. It wasn't because well-educated high officials came to Christ.

The early church was made up of people who at one point were enemies. Jews and Gentiles sitting together worshiping God. You had runaway slaves who could have been executed for running away, sitting with their former masters, calling each other brothers and sisters. We had Pharisees sitting and listening and being taught by a tax collector that they despised.

So no matter how much the sociologists and historians try to explain away the beginning of Christianity, the church just doesn't make sense. So that's why they believe even the people who are antagonistic to the Christian faith, something must have happened. They refuse to acknowledge the resurrection of Christ, but they can't explain the early church.

So their explanation is they must have believed, but they must have been deceived that Jesus didn't really resurrect, that he swooned and he fainted for a while, was a mass hypnotist, he had a twin brother, because that's the closest that they can explain why these enemies all of a sudden came into the same church and started calling each other brothers and sisters in Christ.

He says that the first evidence, the reason why he has confidence is because he says, "You had it." But it's the second point. It's not just love, but the second point that he's trying to get to is for them to continue in this, in hope. In Hebrews chapter 11, chapter 6, 11, "And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end." What you had in the beginning that you don't just rely on and say, "You know what?

I used to have that." So many Christians live the rest of their lives on what they experienced when they were back in college. Were like that. "Oh, I used to do that. Oh, I used to go feed. I used to go evangelize. I used to go to missions. And then I got old, had kids.

I just can't do that in my stage of life." And we have all kinds of excuses, and everything that we talked about is what it was like in the past. But every intent and purposes, we have drifted. We're no longer walking. We're no longer loving. We're no longer practicing the things that we profess to believe.

So he says, "In hope, persevering in hope to show the same diligence as first." That's why he says to the church of Ephesus, "You have all these great things, but you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you had fallen. Remember when you were there. Remember when you were passionate for God.

Remember the height from which you had fallen, and then repent." Repentance basically is to acknowledge where we are is not where we should be. To stop explaining it off as this is normal. This is not normal. What you and I experience in Christianity here is not normal. If somebody who wasn't a Christian, who wasn't raised in the church, read the Bible and saw the church, would they recognize this as the same thing?

We think what's happening in India, what's happening in North Korea, what's happening in the Middle East is strange. But that's normal because that's what's described in the Scripture. What we experience here is not normal. So remember the height from which we had fallen, and then repent, recognize that this is not where we ought to be.

And then redo the things that we did at first. And that's exactly what he is saying here, to show the same diligence, realizing the full assurance of hope until the end. In other words, that you have to have this assurance. This assurance has to be until the end. In chapter 10, verse 36, "For you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised." And that's why he's writing this, to persevere.

Don't just start well, you need to finish well. I remember, there's a lot of things that my dad said that I heard, but I didn't really listen. Because he was a pastor, so he knew the path that I was heading into better than anybody else in my life, because he knew me, and he was my dad.

But he was of the Presbyterian faith. I got saved at a parachurch, happened to be a lot more charismatic, and so I couldn't relate to his faith when I was younger. Because it wasn't as dynamic as it excited. To me, it's very boring. I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and they sang hymns and liturgical, and my dad would wear robes when he would preach, and it all sounded kind of legalistic to me.

The older I get, the more I remember things that he said, sometimes in passing. And I remember one of the things that he said to me that stuck with me, even though I didn't hear it, he told me, and I said, "Oh, okay, okay, okay." And one of the things that I remember him telling me was, "It's more important how you finish than how you start." You probably heard it many times before, too.

And I heard it like that, "It's more important how you finish than how you start." Of course it's more important how you finish than how you start. But the longer I live, the more that begins to weigh, is weightiness. Because it's easy to start, but it's much harder to finish.

It's easy to get excited about things in the beginning, in the marriage, even in church planting. It's always exciting in the beginning. We're planting a church, we're organizing things, we're doing things, but after about five years, ten years, you're not church planting anymore. You don't have this desire to evangelize.

It's passionate when you're in college, when you have the whole life ahead of you, but now that you're with children and you're tied up and you got a job and you got a schedule, you got to wake up, no matter how passionate you are, on Sunday you still have to wake up on Monday morning to go to work.

It's more important how you finish than how you start. And that's basically what he is saying. You started well, but you've drifted. You have need of endurance to continue. Hebrews chapter 12, "To fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Even Christ, he endured the cross.

He didn't love the cross. He endured the cross. Why did he endure the cross? Because there was hope of joy on the other side. The reason why we persevere through what we persevere is because the hope that we have on the other side. It's not because we enjoy hardship.

In fact, loving people that are hard to love, I mean, it forces you to be sanctified. It tears you apart inside. But there's joy on the other side. And so he says to persevere in hope, you have love, but you need to continue in hope. Galatians 6, 7, "Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not lose hope." Paul writes to the second Timothy, chapter 4, verse 8, and he's sitting in prison writing that letter too, just like many of us are studying through and some of you guys are memorizing through the book of Philippians.

He's sitting in prison and in Philippians, the first time he's in jail, he's writing this letter of joy in the midst of suffering. I've learned the secret of being content in every and all situation. He's the one sitting in prison, chained to a Roman guard, encouraging the people sitting outside to rejoice.

And I guess I say rejoice. But by the time he writes second Timothy, there's a different tone because even in the early church, they felt fatigue. After only about 10 years, 10 to 12 years since Philippians and second Timothy is being written, after second Timothy, he doesn't come out, he gets beheaded, and that's the last letter he writes.

And in this last letter, we can see that the fatigue has come into the church and many of the prominent leaders, we're not talking about churchgoers, prominent leaders were beginning to backslide and go back home. Second Timothy 4a, "For Demas, having loved the present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

Trescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia." Now there's a debate as to whether Titus is one of the people he's mentioning that's backslid. And most commentaries are unwilling to say that Titus backslid because Titus is such a prominent figure in the New Testament. But there is no good argument that I've seen in the commentaries that maybe Titus also did backslide.

We don't know that for sure. But what we do know is that the early church leaders, many of these prominent men who are risking their lives sharing the gospel in the beginning of Paul's ministry, by the time Paul's sitting in prison, is abandoning their faith and going back home.

They were backsliding. And so by the time he writes Second Timothy, the tone is very different than Philippians. Main theme in Second Timothy is, "Timothy, don't let this happen to you." That's what he said. That's the last thing that he says before he dies. What a discouraging letter to write.

"Timothy, don't let this happen to you." Can you imagine how disappointed he must have been that after everything? It happened in the beginning. We typically think, you know, we put the hard work in the beginning and glory and then we go to Christ. But it didn't happen that way.

The glory was in the beginning. And then he kind of fizzled out at the end. I mean, we have his letter, so now we talk about all of his ministry. But if you were sitting where he was, he was probably very discouraged. His friends were abandoning him. People were going and saying, "Timothy, don't let this happen to you." According to church history, Church of Ephesus is where Paul spent the most time.

He had the most affection probably for this church because he had connection. Even before he went to prison in Rome, he spent all night talking with the elders of Ephesus, warning them about false teachers that are coming. The very last letter that he writes to Timothy is to prepare him to go back to Ephesus to fight these false teachers.

But according to church history, Church of Ephesus actually falls. The Judaizers come in, they overtake this church, and they actually disappear early on. They don't make it. That's the reality. And that's why he says, "Persevere." Not only do we have love, but this love must continue based upon this hope.

Let me ask you. If you're driving, I'm assuming most of you are driving, right? Or at least 70-80% of you are driving. If you catch yourself falling asleep, at what point would you pull over? And some of you guys, you're like, "No, I'm going to fight this." Some of you guys who are younger, and you don't really realize how dangerous that is.

Because all you need to do is fall asleep one time. Not five times, one time. If you actually fall asleep one time, it could mean death. Your car could just flip over, it could go to the side, you could crash into somebody. This is not something that you want to mess around with.

I've fallen asleep enough when I was young, I don't mess with that. Drinking Coke and talking to myself doesn't work. I just pull over, even if it's a five-minute nap, I'll take a nap when I recalibrate my mind, and then I can get back on the road. And every year of my life, that distance that I can travel without falling asleep is shortening.

If I go to LA, I know at some point I might have to pull over. But you can't, because if you fall asleep, you're going to die. You're not going to get a flat tire, you're not going to get a ticket, you're going to die. See, he's talking to people who at one point were passionate for God, but they've been drifting back, and they're not denying Christ, they just wanted to stay somewhere between Judaism and Christianity.

So they wouldn't be persecuted by their people, nor do they want to reject Christ. And so the author is saying, "You can't do that. Either you are with Christ-gathering, or you are against Christ-gathering. There is no middle ground. What you started, you must persevere." 1 John 3, 2-3, "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.

But know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself just as He is pure." Third and finally, "Faith in Christ," Hebrews 6-12, "so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Through faith and patience inherit the promises.

And obviously this leads into chapter 11. If you know Hebrews chapter 11, we call that the chapter of what? Chapter of faith. Because the whole chapter is faith. By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. You know, if there's one chapter that I believe as a whole that is misapplied in all of the Bible, it's probably this chapter.

There's a lot of verses. There's a lot of words that are misapplied. But this whole chapter is misapplied. Because typically I hear people quoting Hebrews chapter 11 saying, "It's by faith, not by works." It's by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. But you know, if you see it in the context of the point of chapter 11 is, for 10 chapters the author is arguing, you claim to have faith, but you keep drifting back to your old life.

If you have genuine faith, anchor yourself to Christ. And then chapter 11, he says, "By faith Abel did this. By faith Enoch did this. By faith Noah did this. By faith Abraham did this. By faith Sarah did this." So basically what he's saying is, true faith is the foundation upon the courage that they had to live for Christ.

The reason why they were able to abandon all of this past is because they believed in God and then they went out. Even though they wandered in the desert and they died and they never entered into the physical promised land, they believed that there was a spiritual promised land that was coming.

If they were looking for rest, they could have just easily have gone home, but it is because of this faith that caused them to live in courage. So the way that a lot of people quote chapter 11 is completely the opposite of the meaning of why chapter 11 is there.

Chapter 11 is to challenge the wheat that have been drifting to make sure that your faith is genuine. That's exactly what it says in John chapter 15, 4-5. As Jesus is leaving the disciples, he says, "Abide in me and I in you, as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine.

So neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." The word abide here is just another word for anchor. The word abide here is another word that Hebrews uses for anchor.

If you're not anchored in Christ, you cannot bear fruit. It doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter how much experience you have, it doesn't matter your past experiences, your giftedness, it doesn't matter how much money you can give. He says you cannot bear fruit. You cannot bear fruit.

This word abide is not just a word that we should just kind of pass by, because in the New Testament, there are certain words that you can't translate with one word. Like the word love, right? We use the word love. I love my pet, I love my children, I love boba, I love soccer, I love driving, I love God.

We use the same word. So it's important that we understand the specific nuance of this word in the New Testament. It's agape, phileo, storge. Well this word abide, basically what Christ is saying is your whole Christian life is contingent upon this word abide, because if you don't abide, you can't bear fruit.

So if you're not abiding, you can evangelize, you will not bear fruit. You can preach, you cannot bear fruit. You can work hard and give, you cannot bear fruit. You can be trained in seminary, you cannot bear fruit. You can have a PhD in theology, you cannot bear fruit.

You can be the smartest guy, most talented guy, you cannot bear fruit. And bearing fruit isn't just talking about sanctification. He says if you do not bear fruit, what happens? Axe is laid on the ground, chopped to be burned. In other words, there is no salvation without abiding. So abiding is the key that links us to justification, sanctification, and glorification.

So how important is this word? It's central. It's central. That's why the word in Greek, "meno," in your different translations is translated differently. Some of your translations says abide. Some of your translations says remain. Some of your translations will say continue. And it uses different word because all of those words, the meaning is contained in that one word.

So it doesn't just mean one thing. It has to be understood comprehensively because it's a very important word. So let me just summarize the meaning of this word because the word anchor here in Hebrews is used in a similar way. Like if you're not anchored in Christ, you may lead to apostasy.

You cannot bear fruit. You cannot live out your salvation. So this word, "meno," let me summarize in three ways. It means to remain or to continue. It means to rest in Christ. And it means to rely upon Christ. It means to remain, rest, and rely. And that's exactly what the author of Hebrews has been trying to convey to them.

Hebrews chapter 2, 1, "Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it." You must be anchored and continue. And then you must rest in Christ. Our rest is not founded upon our works but upon the completed work of Christ. Hebrews 4, 1, "Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it." Let us rest.

And then Hebrews 4, 16, "Let us rely. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Okay. I have one more sermon to give. Not that I'm going anywhere, but I'm taking a break.

And I've been thinking about, you know, if next Sunday was my last sermon that I ever give, right? Don't get me wrong, that's not the intention, right? But you know, as a preacher, we get taught that all the time from previous generation and generation that's gone before us, you know, preach every sermon like it's your last sermon.

It sounds good on paper, but it's hard to do because I got to come back next week. You know, if I pour my heart out today, what am I going to do? I got to save some for next week, right? But since I'm going to be taking a break for a while, I've been thinking like, "What would I want to convey to the church if it was my last sermon?" And I'm still thinking.

I'm thinking through all of these things. But to be honest, I don't know if it would be any different than what he's saying here. I don't know if it's any different because our primary problem in where you and I are is this. We don't have the government knocking down the door, you know, scaring us with guns and threatening your jobs because you're here.

Our children are in nice air-conditioned rooms with being fed donuts with people that love them and care for them. Then after today, it's not, "Can we eat?" But, "What are we going to eat? Where are we going to eat? Who are we going to eat?" You know, that's our biggest struggle.

And so, when the Bible tells us that we're in spiritual warfare, the spiritual warfare that you and I are in is realizing that we're in spiritual warfare, that we can just drift because we were raised in the church and at one point we made a commitment and because my friends are all here and because out of habit and just drift like this until the day we die and then the reality hits us when we meet Christ.

So when I pray for our church, and I've been praying this since the beginning of our church, and it's the same prayer that I pray even now every day when I pray for our church, that God would open our eyes, that we would see the reality of where you and I are.

Because the path to hell in Orange County Christianity is a luxury boat. It's a luxury boat. We don't sense any danger. There is no urgency. There's no desperation. So because of that, it affects our faith. I know that because I struggle with it. Every time I go out of the country, I come back.

I sense a spiritual oppression here. And it's not an oppression of fighting and darkness. It's just lukewarmness. People who are drifting and not realizing the danger that they're in. My prayer is that we would gear up for the next stage of our church. You and I have been given more opportunities and more access to God than any Christian could have possibly imagined in their wildest dreams.

To wake up in the middle of the night and hear the best sermons online. We read the Bible, but we want translation. I mean, there were periods in church history where just by translating into our language, people got killed. Now we're wrestling with which version of this translation that we should be using.

The problem isn't the Bible itself. The problem that we have is people not being interested in the Bible. Where all throughout history, the greatest problem was access to the Bible. Now we have this access, unthinkable access to the Bible, and we're not interested. But can you imagine with all the resources that God has given you and me, our youth, our finances, just the fact that you speak English, you can travel the world and communicate with more than half the world just because you speak English.

And if you speak Chinese on top of English, that's another 30% to add to that. So 70% of the world will speak either Mandarin or English. I don't know what the other language is. If you speak Korean, maybe 1%, I don't know. But the privilege that we have, U.S.

citizenship, because of our passport, the access that we have to majority of the world that we can get into. Our problem in our generation is not access, is not finance, is not talent, is not opportunity, is not training, because we have more of that than any Christian human being has ever had in history, every single one of us in this room.

Our problem is our lack of our own will. We're so distracted with trivial things in our lives that there is no room for God. We say we do on Sunday, but when you have a bucket and 95% of that is filled with things that don't matter in eternity and we bring a tiny little cup to God on Sunday and wondering why we're not overflowing in his spirit, that's our greatest challenge.

So my prayer is, the purpose of the sabbatical is so that I can gear up for that for the next stage. My hope is that we would do the same, that God has given us resources that we've never had in our church history. We have people that are coming, people who are already here, and to really be good stewards of what God has given us.

Every hardship that you've experienced as a Christian is a tool that God sanctified you, that God can use for whatever else that he has in store. Whatever training you've gotten, whatever sermons you've heard, whatever mission work you've had, whatever paycheck that you're getting, if you're in health, whatever situation that you're in, every single one of those things, if we can imagine if we can mobilize all of that and then if God gives us a heart for the world, what we can do.

But what we lack is heart. What we lack is faith. Hopefully that we can restore that and gear up for the next stage of our church. And my prayer is that every single one of us in this room would experience what it feels like to be a non-Christian who doesn't know Christ, who doesn't have hope, that you would remember what it was like before you met Christ, so that you can live your life as an ambassador for these people.

We have someone who's interceding for us for eternity. So we need to intercede for those who do not have Christ. We see Christ through the Word. They will see Christ through us. So let's stop making excuses of our busyness, of our tiredness, of our hurt, whatever situation that we're in.

Let's mobilize. Amen? Let's mobilize. Let's take some time to take a step back, mobilize ourselves, encourage, consider how to stimulate one another toward loving good deeds, and let's make an impact in our generation. And my hope and prayer is that we can bring as many people to Christ before our generation is over.

Amen? Let's pray. Father, Lord, we pray for revival. Revive us. Revive our church. Revive the churches. Revive the generation. Let your glory be so evident in us and through us and around us that non-Christian family members, friends, strangers will at least know that we believe in this hope in Jesus Christ.

I pray that for our inheritance that you would give us the lost. Help us to live with eternal perspective. Lord, help us. Help us bring your children to yourself. If we've been drifting, bring us back. Strengthen us, Lord God, that we may honor and glorify you with our lives.

Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us. (soft music)