Well, Monday we celebrated the glorious depths of Hebrews chapter 10 verses 19 to 20. We now have confidence to enter the holy places. We go right into the presence of God by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.

And that means, according to verse 22, we should now draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. It's an incredible invitation. And Pastor John said on Monday's episode, "We can't repeat these claims too often, that all of our communion with God is done by direct access to him, an access that Christ purchased for us through his torn body, torn like the temple curtain top to bottom." Thus, we pray directly to God.

Christ is our mediator, our only mediator. Our prayers don't require angels or priests or saints or even Mary or Hail Marys. For your prayers to be heard, you don't have to be on your knees or inside of a cathedral or at a temple or near a holy shrine or even standing at a holy place in the Holy Land.

We need none of that to draw near to God. The entire book of Hebrews is given to us to celebrate this new access that we've been given to God through Christ. And there the phrase "draw near" is used over and over. "Draw near" is actually one Greek word, and that word appears seven times throughout the book of Hebrews in chapters 4, 7, 10, and 11.

It's a profound word, as Pastor John explains in this 1997 sermon clip. This word "draw near" is a favorite word in Hebrews. In fact, I would argue that almost, maybe not quite, the main point of the writing of the book of Hebrews is this word. To help you draw near to God without being consumed by His wrath as a sinner and without being hindered by an evil conscience and a sense of unworthiness.

So to answer the question "draw near to what?" we could look at, he uses the word seven times. Let's just look at one or two of the others. One is chapter 4, verse 16, where he says, "Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace." So that's what he's talking about here.

Throne of grace. God's throne. Or go to chapter 7, verse 25, where he says, "He is able to save for all time those who draw near to God through Him." So we're drawing near to God, drawing near to the throne of grace, and if you go to chapter 11, go ahead, to verse 6, it says, "He who draws near to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him." So we've got three ways of saying it now.

Draw near to a throne of grace, draw near to God, draw near to a rewarder. And if you come back to the text then and say, "Yes, but is that what is meant here?" Wouldn't it be confirmed by looking at verse 19, where it says that we have confidence to enter the holy of holies, or the holy place.

You know the image, if you've been here for a few weeks, you know that the image of the tabernacle in the Old Testament, with its court, and then its inner sanctuary, and then its most holy place, where God met once a year with the high priest and the glory came down.

That's the word here. We have access to, and we're to come boldly into that holy place to meet with God. So the answer to the first question, "Draw near to whom?" is God. God, the gracious King on His throne, God, the bountiful rewarder with His hands full of blessing, "Draw near, draw near to me," He says.

Here's the second question. Which direction do you head when you're doing this? Do you go west, east, north, south, altar, knees, to an enemy to get reconciled? The answer is, you don't move a muscle. You don't move the muscle of your tongue. This is a spiritual act, not a physical one.

When He says, "Draw near to God, draw near to throne, draw near to rewarder," it is something you can do standing rock solid. It is something you can do flat on your back in a hospital bed. And it is something that you can do sitting in a church on a Sunday morning at 11, 12, listening to a sermon.

And I plead with you right now in the name of Jesus to do it. You do not have to wait until this sermon is over to go home and get on your knees or to get in a quiet place somewhere after this church service to do this. This is something that I commend for the doing of right now.

By in your heart, mind, will, saying, eyes open, eyes closed, "God, I come. I draw near. I want to listen to the rest of this sermon in your presence. I want a hand on my shoulder. I want a hand of blessing on my head. I want support under my back.

I want the priest at your right hand cleansing my heart. I don't want to go through the rest of this service right now distant from you like I felt when I walked into this room." You don't need to bow one millimeter to do that. Beware lest you think coming to God is coming to church.

Beware lest you think coming to God is coming to an altar. Beware lest you think it's going to small group tonight. It might be all of those and it might not be. It is a spiritual act of the heart without a motion of a muscle. When I think about this and meditate on this central command in Hebrews, repeated eight times, seven times, I was struck this week how this is the center of the gospel.

This is the New Testament. This is Christianity. Just think about this for a moment. If you ask, "What is the heart of Christianity? What's the essential message?" If somebody at work this week says, "Now, you're one of those born-again type, Baptist type, Christian type, evangelical type people. What's that?" If you wanted to start at the center, what would you say?

Take a few verses. Take 1 Peter 3, 18. "Christ bore our sins in His body on the tree that He might bring us to God." Is that drawing near? That's the gospel. Or take Ephesians 2, 18. "Through Him, by one Spirit, we have access to God." That's the gospel.

Or take Romans 5, 10. "We exult in God through Jesus Christ, through whom we have now the reconciliation." Home with God. No longer estranged or enemies. Or take the prodigal son. Almost everybody knows the story of the prodigal son, but not everybody remembers the context of the story of the prodigal son.

In Luke 15, which begins with Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, the bad people, and the Pharisees saying, "Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus says, "Let me tell you a story." There was a woman who lost a coin. There was a man, a shepherd, who lost a sheep.

There was a father who lost a son. And when he took his inheritance and became a dissolute, and got tired of eating pig food in the world, he remembered there was food. "Oh, everyone who thirsts, come." And he headed home. And this father, old and dignified, pulled up his robes between his legs when he saw this dirty, rascal, no-good, inheritance-wasting son coming home and ran into his arms.

And kissed him, and put a robe on him, and a ring on his finger, and killed the fatted calf, and threw a party, and said, "My son, who was dead, is alive!" That's why I'm eating with tax collectors and sinners. That's the meaning of my ministry. That's why I came to open a way home to the Father.

Draw near. Would you agree with me? I wonder, are we at the center of the gospel here? Draw near to God by the blood. Draw near to God through the flesh. Draw near to me. The whole point of Christianity is to look upon a lost world moving in the opposite direction toward destruction, and to stop them and say, "God has made a way home!" Yeah, God has made a way home for us through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The whole point of the gospel is that. So good. This clip is from a sermon titled, "Let Us Draw Near to God," a Palm Sunday sermon preached on March 23, 1997. And I know some of you out there are listening to this with a very finely-tuned discernment. And I love that you are.

And you're saying to yourself, "Wait a minute. Coming to God is not the gospel. Drawing near to God is not the good news. I draw near to God." As the fruit of the gospel. And if you're saying that, you are exactly right. Because while the promise of salvation is part of the gospel, in those texts that Pastor John just read to you, the promise of salvation is part of the gospel.

The actual experience of salvation, in particular, when we get saved, when we draw near to God, is not the gospel. That's not the gospel itself. It's the application of the gospel. For more on that difference, which is subtle but super important, see John Piper's book, "God is the Gospel," in places like the bottom of page 31 and the top of page 32.

That's the section that comes to mind here. While there are many Christians who live right now in a democracy, maybe more than ever, Christians live inside republics, to be more accurate. We vote on our representatives. And for them, for us in free societies, are we required to vote? Is voting a Christian duty?

Would it be negligent for a Christian, a citizen of a republic, to refrain from voting? Or is that neighbor neglect? We get this question a lot, especially in the last six years, and we finally get to it on Friday, when we're rejoined in studio with Pastor John. We'll see you then.