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Welcome to Day 3 of our Look Through Hebrews, Chapter 6. We're going to look at
verses 9 to 12 today, and in fact, I'd like to start by reading those verses.
"Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things
in your case, things that accompany salvation.

God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and the love that you have shown
Him as you have helped His people and continue to help them. We want each of you
to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure.

We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and
patience inherit what has been promised. " Yesterday, in the picture of the land
and the fruitfulness of some land and the barrenness of some other land, we
began this discussion of fruitfulness, and he extends it today as he talks about
the diligence that brings about that fruitfulness that accompanies salvation.
The third key in my life, in your life, to experiencing hope, he makes it very
clear in verse 11, is to show diligence, show the same diligence until the very
end.

He says, "I want you to do this so that you can make your hope sure. " Now, I
want to be very clear here. Showing diligence doesn't create your hope.

That would make your hope depend on your work of diligence, and hope is
depending on Jesus's work of salvation. But it does make you more sure of your
hope. When he says make your hope sure here, he's not talking about making it
more sure than it would have been if you hadn't been diligent in terms of the
certainty of it happening.

It can't be any more sure than what happened on the cross. It can't be any more
sure than what happened in the resurrection, and the moment you and I trust in
that, the certainty of it happening, there's no more certainty of that. But in
my own heart, in your own heart, me having that certainty, me being sure, one of
the ways I make my hope sure, I know in a deeper and deeper way that it is a
certain hope in my own heart, is through my diligence.

In fact, as he talks about diligence, the writer of Hebrews gives them a couple
of things that empower our diligence. I need this, you need this, because we get
tired. We get weary.

God, we need strength for diligence. So how does that happen? He talks about the
encouragement of other believers, and he talks about the justice of God.

Those both empower your diligence. First, the encouragement of other believers.
He actually models this one.

He talks to them, and he says, "We speak like this, dear friends. " This is
about the most loving phrase in all the book of Hebrews, and there's a lot of
loving phrases here, but this one, the idea of loved ones, "Dear friends. " This
is the one time that he uses this.

He's really giving them a very harsh word about those who have been enlightened
and yet fall away, and there's no way to return them to repentance. He just
talked to them about ground that doesn't produce any fruit, but then he
immediately turns and says, "But that's not you. That's not you.

We're confident of better things for you, dear friends. " As we walk through the
book of Hebrews, the writers told them that there are some who are followers of
Jesus who are dull of hearing. There are some who ought to be teachers, but
they're still drinking milk.

There are some, he's just warned them, who are drinking in the rain without
producing any crops, but he doesn't want to leave them in a place of doubt. He
wants to strengthen their faith. He wants to strengthen their hope.

He wants them to have a full assurance of hope, as he says in verse 11, to make
it sure, and so he gives them encouragement. We are confident in your life of
the things that accompany salvation. You want to help people to be sure of hope
in their lives, then you share with them the confidence of what will happen in
their lives because of what Jesus has done in their lives.

He's not trying to scare them into hope. He's trying to let them be real about
this world and let them realize in the reality of this world there are some who
fall away, but then he immediately turns and says, "But in your life, because
you have salvation, you're going to have the things that accompany salvation.
And you and I, if you and I want to live in a place of hope, we need the
encouragement of other believers.

" That means you need to be around other believers in church. You need to be
around other believers in your small group, but it also means you need to be
around other believers who are encouraging, people who have learned the power of
encouragement. It's easy to be negative, very easy to be negative.

It's pretty lazy, actually, to be negative. It's so easy. It takes strength,
takes spiritual strength, takes spiritual energy to be encouraging, but God
gives that through his Spirit.

So you find those kinds of people in your life and you spend time around those
kinds of people because you and I, if we're going to be people of hope, we need
the encouragement of other believers. There's a second thing we need that he
talks about here. We need an understanding of the justice of God.

Notice he says immediately, "God isn't unjust. He's not going to forget your
work. " Now why does he say that as he is encouraging them to be diligent until
the very end?

Because many times the reason we lose diligence is we lose sight of the justice
of God. And we begin to look around and we think, "These people are being wicked
and it seems like they're making riches. They have this very pleasurable life.

Why God would you allow that to happen? " And then we look at believers, maybe
even our own life, and we think, "Those who are faithful to God, they seem to be
totally ignored. They seem to be sometimes even ground underfoot in this world.

What's going on here? " Well, we haven't seen the end of the story yet. And the
end of the story is the justice of God, that those who have been wicked in the
end will receive punishment for that.

And those who have been faithful to God in the end will receive blessings for
that. What we see in this world is not all that there is. And in the end, we are
going to see the justice of God.

So he says, "You want to be diligent and you got to rely on the justice of God
because it will bring everything to light in the end. " So to be diligent, I
need the encouragement of other believers. I need the justice of God, a
knowledge of that in my life.

Now, what does it mean? What does it mean to be diligent when we talk about
being diligent in the faith? Well, verse 12, he says, "I don't want you to
become lazy.

" So it's the opposite of laziness. It's the opposite of the laziness of just
expecting my faith to happen without me doing what God has asked me to do. And
in fact, as you read through the book of Hebrews, and this relates to what we
just talked about, there are two specific kinds of diligence, actions that I
take, ways that I don't get lazy in my life, that keep me focused on hope.

There is the diligence to spend time in God's Word, and there's the diligence to
spend time with God's people. Now, by the way, when you spend time with God's
Word, you're reminded of His justice. And when you spend time with God's people,
you are encouraged by other believers.

Same two things we just talked about. It's all through the book of Hebrews. If
I'm going to be a person of hope, I can't just let the word of the world pour
into my life day after day after day, watch this movie, watch this TV show, that
one was discouraging, oh, that one had a nice message.

I'm not going to get hope from those messages. Hope comes from God's Word, so
I've got to be diligent to spend time in God's Word. If I'm going to be a person
of hope in this world, I can't be out there all on my own.

It's that old picture of a ember from a fire. When you take it out from the
fire, it cools off. When you put it back into the fire, it warms up again.

My faith has to be warmed up by the faith of other people. That's how God has
designed us. Those are some actions of diligence.

So I would say to you, if you're without hope right now, the first two places to
check are am I spending time in God's Word on a daily basis? You're listening to
drive-time devotion, so you may be doing pretty well with that one. The other
place to check is am I spending time around God's people?

And you think, around God's people, they don't encourage me, they discourage me.
They're as imperfect as I am. Well, maybe there's some things you need to get
over in your life.

Get over the fact that other believers are just as imperfect as you are and
recognize that God can still use them in your life. Or maybe you need to get
around a different group of believers. I do agree.

There are groups of believers who, all of them somehow become discouraging.
Maybe you need to find a family that's an encouraging family of believers, a
church that's an encouraging family of believers. What we're saying here is that
in many ways, we're like one of those old hot air balloons where you had to keep
turning the fire on and warming it so that it would keep afloat.

If you let it get too cool, the balloon would gradually, gradually sink. And
that's what gets us, that gradually is what gets us. We think I'm living this
great life of faith and all of a sudden we wake up one day and we're on the
ground, we're grounded, and we wonder what happened.

Gradually, slowly, but surely we sank because we didn't keep warming up the air
in that balloon through God's word, through the encouragement of God's people.
And what we want to do is just shoot right back up into the air where we were.
No, it's gradual to go back up again.

As you spend time with God's word, as you spend time with God's people, you're
going to find your hope being refreshed and renewed day by day by day. Let's
pray right now that God will give us the diligence to do that. Our Father, when
I talk about diligence, when we talk about diligence, the truth is to be truly
diligent, we need your strength.

We need your strength to be diligent in the things of God. It's so easy to be
diligent in the other things of life, the things we need to do at work or the
things we need to do at home or the building things we need to do, the exercise
that we need to do. Because we could see more immediate results, but Lord, when
it comes to your word, when it comes to your people, sometimes the results
aren't so obvious to us.

So we need faith. We need your strength to help us to be diligent. And Lord, I
pray that for my life, for our lives this week.

Help us to spend time in your word, help us to spend time with your people, warm
up our hearts. And as you do that, I pray that you help us to see that our
hearts are beginning to soar with a new kind of hope based on those things. We
ask this in Jesus name, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about the need to wait on the promises of God when
it comes to experiencing the hope of God.