Steadfast Living in the Gospel

Turn to God’s Word, if you have a copy of the Scriptures, and open to Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13. I look down at my Bible, and beside it I have taken out the bulletin again. It will not help me to preach today. I meant to take out my notes. So it would be an interesting sermon if I were preaching from the bulletin. Let us not attempt it. Hebrews 13. I am going to read only the verses that pertain to our focus this morning.

Some years ago, I began to use this benediction at the Lord’s Table. I do not know all that was going on in my mind. It simply seemed, in my mind, fitting. And so this is the benediction I use nearly every time at the Lord’s Table. There are some occasions when I use another benediction, but nearly always I turn to Hebrews 13. Then, a couple of years after beginning this practice, I was reading through an order of public worship, a document from a denomination that encourages various forms of worship, and it said there, use this benediction at the Lord’s Table. I thought, well, others must think similarly. And so we are coming to this benediction providentially, not by any control of mine, as we sit at the Lord’s Table. So, Hebrews 13, verses 20 and 21.

Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Amen, indeed.

Let us pray. Lord, help us. Help us now as we come to Your Word. Oh, please. Please. We pray for a message from God. We pray for something that is entirely of God. Make the Word live. Make it come to us as a living Word. And so, give help. Give help to me and to all. Open up the way. Defeat the enemy. Extend the kingdom. We pray in our Savior’s name. Amen.

One of the most exhausting experiences of life is knowing what you should do and repeatedly finding a lack of strength within yourself to do it. It is exhausting to know the truth, but not have the ability to act on it. The Apostle Paul, having fully expressed the gospel of Christ in the book of Hebrews, has in the final chapters especially emphasized exhortation. And especially in Hebrews 13, there has been a layering of instructions for how those who believe the gospel are to live.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, and so on. Adding up and multiplying all these duties is not wrong. Although this list does not cover every area of the Christian life, when you consider them all together, you may feel overwhelmed and think, I must do all of this. If left at that point, it can lead to exhaustion. How will I ever accomplish all of this? Or the recognition that even with the best intentions and initial zeal, you quickly discover that you lack the strength to follow through. Before long, you are weary, you are discouraged, you are saying, I am not doing this, I am not doing that, I am failing.

Therefore, rather than ending with these various exhortations and calls to duty, the apostle ends with prayer and a blessing. In doing so, he implies and reveals that the fulfillment of these duties cannot be achieved apart from the grace and the supply of grace that come from the Lord.

He has already shown this to be important, as he previously asked for prayer on his behalf. When he says, “Pray for us,” he is revealing that it is not enough simply to know what to do. Paul knew what to do more often than not.

But he needed prayer, that he might follow through. And now, having asked for prayer, he now prays for them. It is a good practice to ask for prayer and to remember to pray for those who have asked, or been tasked with praying for you. You will pray for me, and I will pray for you. This is what he does.

The benediction here takes a form similar to the benedictions found in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, which some of you may recall from the beginning of this series. These benedictions express both a wish and a prayer, and a belief in what is being prayed for. In one sense, he is instructing them, but in another sense, he is genuinely and properly praying this upon them, desiring it for them. The benediction is so rich in meaning that even when I pronounce it, the statements are so theologically dense that they can pass over you without full understanding. There are two clear ways in which this text divides the benediction and reveals its structure. It moves in two distinct directions.

First, what God has done for us in Christ. That is verse 20. Second, what God must do in us. What God has done for us, and what God must do in us—this is the benediction. He does not state what God must do in us without first stating what God has done for us, because that is the foundation of everything.

Just as it has been throughout the entire epistle, in which he sets forth the gospel and all his exhortations to believe, to look to Christ, and not to turn back, he has now explained and laid out the gospel. Here is the gospel. Now here is your response to it. So he is laying out the truth and then saying, here is why and how God will accomplish this in you. It is because of the gospel—what He has accomplished through His Son.

Now, we sometimes talk about living the gospel. Believers need to live the gospel. But there is a very real sense in which you cannot live the gospel. You cannot live the gospel. You can believe the gospel, and you can preach the gospel, but you cannot live it. The gospel, strictly speaking, is good news of what God has done for sinners. To say that I live the gospel in some way implies a sense of self-redemption, but that is not correct. We cannot do that. We cannot live the gospel. We cannot live good news. We believe it. And we preach it.

I understand what people mean when they talk about living the gospel. I understand there is a sense in which we embody Christ. But in that sense, we are living righteously. We are living in His footsteps. We are doing what is right. The same principle of obedience to the Father that governed the Lord Jesus Christ—His ear that was opened and His will that was given, that He would delight to do the Father’s will—is what God does in us. But as I say, strictly speaking, we do not live the gospel; we rest in it. And this benediction is bringing that home to our hearts. The gospel is something that has been done for us, and the benefits of it are worked out in us. And we receive it, we believe it, we enjoy it.

And what a wonderful thing it is. This morning, let us consider steadfast living in the gospel of Christ. Steadfast living in the gospel of Christ. These are the two main ideas: the origin of this gospel and the outworking of this gospel. The origin and the outworking. First, the origin, verse 20. And you will see that it begins with motivation. Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, and so on. The God of peace. Now this whole epistle has been addressed to a people who are unsettled.

Again, it is sometimes helpful to consider the perspective of those being addressed. They are unsettled. They are being persecuted. They are being threatened. They are feeling the pull of loyalty to their families. They are enduring pressure, the call to return to the old covenant practices of worship, and so on. They are experiencing all of this.

They are unsettled because the entire epistle is essentially a struggle in which the apostle, seeing and understanding all the tensions and all the forces pulling them away from Christ, is drawing them back with the gospel. He presents logical arguments. He makes clear statements. He emphasizes clear implications to their minds and consciences, in order to resist the pressures. The point is that they are unsettled—some of them are unsettled.

They do not feel peace because of inner turmoil. The gospel is being presented, and they remember again the peace they first found when they anchored their faith in Christ. They trusted in Christ and experienced that peace. They rejoiced in the glory of knowing that God had sent His Son, as He had promised, and that the Messiah had come. But now these other influences are pulling them away, and so there is inner conflict. Some of them have lost their peace. Paul then reminds them that God does not desire His people to live in a state of turmoil.

He is a God of peace. He is a God of peace. This should be the experience of His people. He is a God of peace in a fundamental and characteristic way. You can understand Him in terms of His nature. God is at peace within Himself. He has always been at peace, eternally. Peace exists because of the very nature of God. He brought creation into being out of chaos. Outside of God, there is chaos. In God, there is order and peace. He is the God of peace.

And His Son would come as the Prince of Peace. What His people are to enjoy is this peace. You can think of it characteristically, and you can also think of it covenantally, because as He communicates with humanity, He does so through covenant, making promises to convey the idea of peace so that they may experience peace.

The old covenant could never take away sins. This has been argued in this epistle. Since it could never take away sins, it could never establish true peace. But God never intended to leave people in that state. That was never His plan—to leave people with the feeling of being trapped in religious rituals, offering animals, seeing blood shed, repeating these acts throughout their lives, yet knowing deep down that these things cannot remove sin. The God of peace has a plan. The Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world. That is the plan.

Through this, He reveals the covenant of peace, the blessing of peace to His people, one in which He establishes all that is necessary. He is laying the foundation. He is taking responsibility. Here is the sinner. Here is Adam and all his descendants, cut off from God, separated from God, pushed away from God because of sin. Then God takes responsibility to establish the covenant of grace and peace.

This is the same gospel that is proclaimed. It is the gospel of peace that permeates the book of Hebrews. There is a powerful passage in Isaiah 54:10: “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” The covenant of His peace will not be removed. It is for His people. And peace, of course, is not merely the absence of trouble. It is a sense of wholeness, a sense of security.

This, of course, is truly the motivation behind all that is said. Even in the gospel, there is a sense—though I know the glory of God is ultimately the chief end—in which this aspect of being the God of peace is a motivating principle within the gospel itself. Man cut off from God, man as an enemy, man separated, and God choosing, in the gospel, to communicate peace through the message of Christ and what He has accomplished for us. Note also in this benediction its message, as we consider its origin and its meaning: the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus.

In some ways, this is parenthetical. It is not the main focus of what is being said, but it cannot be separated from the whole. There is a central message in everything that is done: this is the God, the God of peace, who brought His Son, our Lord Jesus, from the dead. He is defined by what He has done. He reveals Himself as a God of peace through what He has done. God intervening, God sending His Son, the death of the Son, the resurrection of the Son—presented here with a note of triumph.

The God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus. One cannot say this without a sense of triumph permeating it. The God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus. It is as if to say, do not forget this detail. It carries a redemptive image, does it not?

Who brought again from the dead. It is like remembering your forefathers when they were in bondage in Egypt. They were as a dead nation, with no future hope, and all that had been promised to their ancestors seemed to be lost, in a hopeless situation that would never be fulfilled. And they cried out. And He brought them again from the dead, as it were.

And this has been the pattern of His people time and time again, showing how He brings from the dead, but ultimately it finds its most glorious fulfillment in the person of His Son. He truly dies and rises from the dead. He is brought again from the dead. This is the triumph of the people of God. This One, of course, who died and rose again, is our Lord, our Lord Jesus.

Do not forget that. Again, we can read this and think that it is merely a reference to our Lord Jesus. But is there not, at least in my mind, a clear connection to Pentecost? I thought, here are these Hebrews. As Peter stood before them, God hath made this Jesus both Lord and Christ.

You must see this. You must recognize this. You cannot be saved and deny this. This is God’s appointed Redeemer. He is the Messiah, and He is Lord. And these Hebrews who had come, like the 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, to see this, to understand this, are being reminded again: He is Lord because He was brought from the dead. There is none superior to Him. He is to be submitted to. He is to be recognized. He is to be worshipped.

He was brought from the dead, functioning as God’s definitive sign that He had accepted His death. Consider this: the veil of the temple was rent in two from top to bottom. There was a clear sign of acceptance in that moment. But the sign that confirms this even more fully was more public, more expressive, and more definitive than the tearing of the veil.

They tried, did they not? They did the same for both, I am sure. We are not told that the priest took down the veil and tried to sew it up again, but I am certain they attempted to find a way to repair it. And when Jesus rose from the dead, they tried to do the same.

How do we weave this together and make it seem as though it does not have the impact that it inevitably will have? These things were signs, and they were undeniable. The veil was torn, access was granted, God has accepted the sacrifice, and this was definitively shown in the fact that He rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds. So this is a sense of triumph for us, and this benediction is reminding us that this God of peace establishes peace and has shown us peace in the message that He brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus. Yes, we are to keep that always before us—the One who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. The benediction would have you revisit Calvary and revisit the empty tomb. In one sense, it is not the focus of the benediction, but he cannot reach where he ultimately wants to go without the message. The reason why we know that God is a God of peace is the same reason why we have such hope that He will work in us.

Oh, believer, go back there. That is what he is saying: this God of peace who brought our Lord Jesus again from the dead—remember Him. There, He died. That is what we are remembering. But He rose from the dead. So we have seen its motivation and its message. Note also its mediator. If you look at the text, it says, “that great shepherd of the sheep.” Now, when I read this, I thought to myself, wait a moment. I do not think there is any reference to shepherd anywhere in Hebrews. And sure enough, memory does not always keep me on the right track, but I just think about it. There has been no mention of Christ as a shepherd. There is no explicit reference to God shepherding His people. None of that.

And so he brings it into this closing benediction. Why does he do that? Why is it important to make mention of the fact that this one, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again, is the shepherd of the sheep? What does the shepherd do? There are at least a couple of things in mind. Consider who the shepherd is. The Jews viewed God as their shepherd. Psalm 23 says, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

There are other passages that explicitly show, or implicitly reveal, that He is the shepherd of His people. He leads them. He led them through the wilderness. He led them into the promised land. Some of the Lord’s servants are described in this way. There is a passage in Isaiah that shows how God is leading His people. You also have David, who is described as a shepherd, to show that this is the one who will lead His people. But the main point is about the Lord. The Jew is thinking not in terms of David or anyone else, but about God as a shepherd. Now, Paul is ascribing this shepherd role to Christ, to the Lord Jesus.

Your great hope is that God would be your shepherd and lead you. The entire theme of this book, of course, is leading toward the promised inheritance. Those who were promised this inheritance but had not yet attained it were looking for it and had not yet come into possession of it. He drives this theme of looking forward to that heavenly Canaan. Who will lead them there? Who will bring them there? Who is the shepherd who will safely bring them to that eternal place? It is the great shepherd of the sheep.

Oh, they were like Abraham, wandering about in search of a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. They were like him in this way. They had the faith of Abraham. They are looking for God to lead, God to guide, God to bring them into a future experience in which all the promises are more fully revealed and enjoyed. And who will bring them there?

The great shepherd of the sheep. The Lord Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. He is the one who mediates. He is called great, just as He was made to be distinguished from the high priest. You have the priests. You have the high priest. Paul says Jesus is our great high priest. He is distinguished from them. He is of a different order, a different priesthood. He excels them because the other priests perform work that can never truly deal with the problem, and the other priests eventually die and must be replaced. But this one offered Himself, and this one passed through death into life, and this one is therefore great. Not only is He our great high priest, but He is also the great shepherd of the sheep. Yes, there are other shepherds. Preachers are given this responsibility, and elders are spoken of as having a shepherding role.

He has told them to pray for their leaders, has He not? He has just said, “Pray for your under-shepherds.” Pray for them. But your under-shepherds will not lead you into the promised land. Your under-shepherds will not bring you finally into the Canaan above.

It is the great shepherd of the sheep. Oh, He mediates this for us. This is His entire responsibility, to mediate. He surpasses all other leaders, uniquely fulfilling the role to guide, to guard, to feed, to restore, and to bring the flock finally home. Again, our whole anticipation has been about this promised inheritance.

If you go back to Hebrews 9:15, just for a moment, Hebrews 9:15.

And here he speaks about the hope of the Old Testament saints. How are they to obtain the promise of eternal inheritance? For this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament, or the New Covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament, or the First Covenant, those who are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. He is saying that Jesus Christ was their hope. Their hope of eternal inheritance was through this mediator of the new covenant. But not only for them. For all. All who are in Him. He mediates. He brings us into our eternal inheritance. He secures it for us and will bring us finally into its experience. But also, its means. What is the means of all this?

Look again at verse 20. The God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect. The emphasis is on how this clause is key to the rest of the prayer he is about to request. It becomes the central argument. It serves as a summary statement for the entire book of Hebrews, in a sense. It emphasizes, in a concise way, what is contrasted with what he has been exposing: the temptation to return to the old covenant, which he has shown repeatedly is transitory and temporary. It was never intended to last forever. But here we have an everlasting covenant, or it could be translated as an eternal covenant. We have an eternal covenant. How is this eternal covenant secured? How are its benefits received? How am I to come into what it promises?

It is through the blood that the covenant was ratified. Yes, you remember at Sinai, Moses took blood to ratify that covenant. This reflects similar themes here, that the blood of Jesus Christ ratified the eternal covenant. It is the foundation upon which God makes His promises, and these promises depend on the blood. Blood must be shed. A life must be given. This brings in the whole idea of substitution, of Christ taking the place of sinners, of being the Lamb slain, of taking responsibility, of facing the problem of sin in His own person, and of willingly shedding His blood for the forgiveness of sins. It ratifies the covenant that declares, by this shedding of blood, sins may be removed and sinners reconciled to God.

This is something that will endure the test of time and continue into eternity. It remains a central theme when we are there, does it not? To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood. The songs of Revelation 5 express the same idea, singing of the One who shed His blood. This everlasting covenant is contrasted with the temporary nature of all that came before, and what it promises to us is something far more complete and far more glorious. We have already considered this.

Indeed, this entire book, if you reflect on it and ask yourself, what has Christ accomplished for us that the old covenant could not, and did not, accomplish? Then you will understand why the blood of the everlasting covenant matters. In summary, how is it that we enter with boldness into the throne of grace? By the blood of the everlasting covenant. How is it that we have access before God at all times? By the blood He shed, which ratified the covenant, so that God can say to the sinful, “You shall be My people, and I will be your God.” This undergirds the entire Emmanuel principle, the heart of the covenant, which declares that He is our God and we are His people.

And it is eternal, it is everlasting, it is unbreakable, and it remains in place now. We come to enjoy it, and it will be in place then, forever securing our place in His presence. It will never abandon us. We are, in some way, in the future, perhaps after ten thousand years of glory, but the covenant does not lose its meaning or significance. At that point, there would be no basis for us to be in the presence of God, and we would be banished into everlasting destruction. This is an eternal covenant.

This is our hope—glorious, how glorious it is. Christ’s work stands and secures us now and forever. So this is the origin of the gospel. But note also, before we close, the outworking of this gospel. Because in verse 21, it leads to this outworking.

Make you perfect in every good work to do His will. So there is what God has done for us, and now what God is going to do in us. Make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. So this outworking is the outworking of that which is perfect.

Make you perfect in every good work to do His will. Make you perfect. Does that mean you will be perfect here and now? Does your awareness of your lack of perfection indicate that you do not belong to Him, if the goal is that we would be made perfect? In several places in the New Testament, you find this language of perfect.

Sometimes it emphasizes a sense of maturity. And sometimes it emphasizes a sense of completion. What the apostle is seeking is a sense of ongoing work that will bring to completion what has already begun. Philippians 1, verse 6: “He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.”

Now you look at your life this morning and you say to yourself, I do not really feel like that. I do not feel as though there is much work being done in me. And yet here you are. Why are you here? Because if your flesh had its way, you would not be here. You would have abandoned this long ago, given up, stopped trying, said that enough is enough. You had many opportunities, and you may have even had thoughts about leaving, yet here you are this morning, and you are thinking, there is no work being done in me.

Yes, there is. He is doing a work. As we look at ourselves, this is a great task. If you begin to know your own heart, you may think, truly, this is a significant undertaking. If you consider the effort required to build dams along the Yangtze River, you see a project that took many years and involved a large investment. It is a massive undertaking.

And yet, it is nothing compared to the work of making me more like Jesus Christ. This is a true project. But He is doing it, and He is making us complete. This is the heart of the benediction: asking God to do what He cannot accomplish by exhortation alone. All the things He has called us to do, He now acknowledges that they require the God of peace, through His Son and through His work, to make you complete in every good work to do His will. Yes, steadfast living is commanded. But it is entirely dependent on divine help, and this is the encouragement of this benediction. It is telling your heart that you are not alone. That in the struggle, in the effort, in the disappointment, in the failure, and in the feeling that you will never succeed, God is present. God is sustaining you. God is working.

Bringing you to completion. He wants us to function as intended, to be in a state of renovation, renewed and repaired. And to what end? To make you perfect in every good work to do His will. That is the sphere: practical obedience. It is not only that He will make you feel His presence. I am not denying that, nor am I denying the need for that. But it is this promise, this encouragement, this benediction—that God will work to the end of actually enabling you to do His will.

So He has a target. You remember? The Lord Jesus, again, Psalm 40—I quoted it already. When Psalm 40 is quoted concerning the Messiah, that He delighted to do the Father’s will: “I delight to do Thy will, O my God.” Now, Paul in the benediction is praying and showing that you will be enabled more and more to do this, to be like Christ, to delight in doing the Father’s will.

Philippians 2:13, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Yes.

So all the things—the love, the brotherly love, the hospitality, standing by those who suffer, and maintaining fidelity in marriage, and so on—these are all by the Lord’s help. He will make you complete in every good work to do His will. You go back to verse 6, and you see that the Lord is my helper. The Lord is my helper. Of course, the context and the application there are somewhat different, but the sense of the Lord being our helper is clearly present here.

He will make you perfect in every good work to do His will. There is also the outworking, that which is pleasing. Not only that which is perfect, but that which is pleasing. Of course, there are overlapping ideas here. That which is perfect, making us perfect in every good work, is also tied to that which is well-pleasing in the Lord’s sight.

It brings delight to Him. It is not merely, do this. It is not merely, I will force you to do this, and He does not care. He takes delight in it. So as you are experiencing the ongoing spiritual renovation of your life, what we call sanctification—dying to sin and living to righteousness—as you go through this, the Lord delights in it. He delights in it. When you come and bow your knee and cry, “God, help me to be holy today,” He responds, “Yes, that is exactly what I want to help you to do today.” That is where you will receive His aid. That is where He pours out His grace.

I was reading Proverbs 31 again recently, and every time I read that passage, I am always struck by a thought that I wish more people would recognize. Because when you read Proverbs 31, especially if you are a man, you may think, “I will read it, but it is not really for me. It is for the woman.” And the woman may think, “It is about me.” Yet more and more, since I first saw this for myself and reflected on it, it becomes clearer. In the forefront of my mind, it is truly a chapter for the church. It is the bride. It is the bride of Christ living as she ought to live. Of course, there is a direct application to the ideal of what a woman might be and how she supports her household and everything else. But it is ultimately about the church. It is about the function of the church.

“And her children rise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.” I think of this as Christ praising His people as they work out what He has worked in them. Diligence in His affairs, living for His glory—this is well pleasing. And it is all through Jesus Christ, is it not? Through Jesus Christ, by means of Christ. We do not merely imitate Christ.

It is by His help, by abiding in Him, by saying, Lord, I cannot do this without You. That is what you have said. Without Me, ye can do nothing. And you embrace it, and you accept it, and you realize that God resists the proud. Let me rephrase that: God resists the self-sufficient, but He gives grace to the humble. Those who say, I cannot do it, Lord—He comes in and says, I know. I am here. Let Me help you. Oh, there is so much more that could be said. What a prayer this is.

To whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. The question arises: is this directed to the immediate antecedent, Jesus Christ? Or is it directed to the God of peace? I would suggest that, in all likelihood, it is closing with glory to the God of peace. But, of course, Jesus Christ is worthy of glory just as much.

We give praise to Him. Of course we do. We give glory to Him because of what God has done for us and what God is going to do in us. We praise Him. You can come to this table today and say, there is no more glorious reality than these two things: what God has done for me and what God is doing in me. Oh, that we would live sensing the warmth of this benediction as it embraces all our needs. The Lord is putting His arms around us.

You are a sinner. I know what you need. Here is what I will do for you. You still have that fallen nature, even though you are redeemed. So here is what I will do in you. He is taking the responsibility. This does not mean that there is no synergy in which we respond and we obey. Of course there is. But it does lift some of the weight, does it not? You are not on your own.

The Lord is with you. He is not ending this great epistle by simply saying, “Try harder.” He is saying, “I will equip you. And I will carry you at the last, right into the very immediate presence of that great shepherd of your soul, where you will inherit what has always been laid up for the elect, abiding in His presence and enjoying the sweet fellowship of the Lamb. God is working in you.”

This also includes the circumstances you are struggling with this morning. He does not work in us detached from what is happening outside of us. He is in control of that as well. In fact, what is happening is that as He is working in you, He is also bringing certain things into your life that are key to what He is working in you, so that His strength may be made perfect in your weakness. Leave this place this morning knowing this: He will carry you through to the end. How can I ever abandon Him? Because that is the essential point. Never abandon Christ.