November 23, 2025 - Hebrews 10-12

By his blood, we have a “new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (10:19), and now we can “draw near 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” (10:22). 

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1).  So begins chapter 11.  Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham, and all those others, went out and eventually “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (11:13), they knew that the promises were theirs.  And in Jesus, “the mediator of a new covenant” (12:24), we all have the promises fulfilled.  As Paul puts it in another place, “For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Cor 1:20).  We do not yet possess all that God has promised us, but one day, we will!  All is assured because of Jesus.

‘Tis by the faith of joys to come

We walk thro’ deserts dark as night;

Till we arrive at heav’n, our home,

Truth is our guide, and faith our light.

The want of sight she well supplies;

She makes the pearly gates appear;

Far into distant worlds she pries,

And brings eternal glories near.

Tho’ lions roar, and tempests blow,

And rocks and dangers fill the way,

With joy we tread the desert thro’

While faith inspires a heav’nly ray.   –Isaac Watts (1766)