Opening Illustration: Rachel and I have become more like each other over the years. On occasion, I notice my mannerisms have changed over the years. Gas Prices. “Alright, bye”. I have a teenager now, so I find opportunities to say things like: “No cap” and “Bet” and “Rizz”.  We all know the age-old advice: “You become who you surround yourself with.” Our environments influence us. Whether we realize or not, we are either allowing or denying external factors to influence and change us. That’s the power of culture – in a family, in an organization, or with friends. When we gathered as a church family last week, what did we see in God’s Word? We are holy and we are being made holy. Through Jesus, we are given a status of holiness before God. Through Jesus, while on earth, we are to move toward becoming holier – becoming more like Jesus. If that’s our objective and direction – and knowing that we are influenced by who surrounds us – that leaves us with this: Your holiness depends on being in the presence of God.  

If you are serious about becoming more like Jesus this year, you must spend time in the presence of God. If you don’t draw nearer to God, then you are drawing nearer to someone else. You can’t become more like Jesus if you don’t stay near Jesus. If you want become like Jesus you have to behold Jesus. Our passage in the Bible today shows us exactly what it means to be in the presence of Jesus and what it does to us when we stay there.  Let’s go ahead and open our Bibles to Hebrews 10. We are in our current Sermon Series: Hebrews.  We started going through the book of Hebrews last year and we are going to spend our time until Easter finishing what we started last year. The writer of Hebrews has repeated over and over again that Jesus is better than anything else in this life, so stay near to Him. And that’s what we see again today. Let’s read verses 19 – 25 with expectancy. Read Hebrews 10:19-25. Pray. 

Before we get too far down the road, I think it’s important to understand what it means to be in the presence of Jesus. If you never been in church, that would sound odd because you’d be thinking, “Is Jesus somewhere in the building?”. Being in the presence of Jesus is not a physical act. It’s not climbing a ladder to get to Jesus in heaven. Drawing near Jesus or being in the presence of Jesus is an invisible act of the heart. It’s spiritually directing your mind, your heart, and your soul toward God. It’s that posture of the heart that our holiness depends on. The writer of Hebrews is going to show us what that looks like. And here is where he starts: Get to know Jesus.

1) Get to know Jesus. (vs. 19-22) Verse 19 starts off with “And so”. That immediately lets us know that the verses we are reading today are connected with the verses we read last week. Last week, we saw what Jesus did for us. That He died, conquered death and sin, rose again and puts His righteousness around us so we can stand holy and blameless before God. Verse 19 says because of what Jesus did, here is what we can do. Look at verse 19: ¹⁹ And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. I love the imagery that verse 19 gives us. We can “boldly enter” the Holy of Holies. Illustration: My dad became a member of a social club so we could go to the pool when we lived in Florida. When I was young, we lived in Florida. The thing about being in Florida is that you have to access to a pool. We were quite poor and didn’t have access to a pool. There was a local social club that had a pool that we would drive by. We could see the pool, see the people with all their smiling faces, yet we were caught on the outside looking in. We didn’t have access.

One day, my dad found a way to join the social club. The club named after some horned animal – a moose or elk. And the day he joined, he came into the house putting his hands on his head like antlers and making elk sounds. To this day, I’m not sure what he had to endure to get in, but our summer changed. What was once inaccessible was now something we could come and go as we please. The writer of Hebrews is telling the people that received this letter, you can go into the presence of God freely and boldly. Now this would have been a major statement for those reading the letter for the first time. Remember these are Jews who saw Jesus as the Messiah. The writer of Hebrews is encouraging them to continue to press forward and don’t be tempted to fall back to the old sacrificial system. For these Jews, the Holy of Holies was only for the high priest one time a year. It was dangerous to be in the holy of holies. It could mean death. In a lot of ways, the people in the Old Testament didn’t want to be near God because His holiness could kill them. And now, they are being told they can not only enter, but boldly enter this place they were not allowed to go – this place they didn’t want to go.

This access to God was unthinkable before Jesus. Now, in Jesus, the access is knowable and available. And then the writer of Hebrews continues to show this truth. ²⁰ By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. ²¹ And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, ²² let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. For the original recipients of the letter, they are being told they can boldly enter the presence of God and they don’t have to be afraid of what’s going to happen because Jesus has gone before them. We can boldly enter into the presence of God with fully vulnerable hearts. That is an incredible truth! For those who know Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord, you can boldly and confidently and vulnerably enter into the presence of God. Our God is a personal God. Everything in these verses is designed to give us knowledge about God. You may be thinking, “That’s great, but what does that have to do with being close to God?”

The knowledge gained in these verses is what fuels the passion to stay close to Jesus. When you look at what you are given by Jesus, it stokes the fire to be with Jesus. Knowledge and nearness go hand in hand. When you learn about Jesus, you want to be with Jesus. When you are with Jesus, you learn more about Jesus.  The more you know, the more you go. The more you go, the more you know. What do you think would happen if you started praying daily, “God, I want to know more of you. Will you reveal Yourself to me?” Do you think God would answer that prayer? If one of my children walked up to me and said, “Dad, I want to learn more about you. Will you tell me a story about your high school football days?” What do you think I’m going to do?! I’m not just telling them a story, I’m pulling out my old game films and start popping the popcorn! How much more does God delight in our desire to know more about Him! And the knowledge about Him is endless. My kids would tire of my stories, but we will never tire of God’s glory. God can’t wait for you to know Him more. Do you see the importance of knowing God? If your holiness depends on being in the presence of God, it starts with knowledge about God. But it doesn’t stay there. When we sit at the feet of Jesus, things in our life start to move and change. Which brings us to an important aspect of being in the presence of God: Notice the unusual in your spiritual life.

2) Notice the unusual in your spiritual life. (vs. 23) Verse 23 struck me in a way I wasn’t expecting this week. Take a look at the verse: ²³ Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. I think most Christians would say they are holding tight to the hope of Jesus. If you went around asking, “What are you holding onto to get through this life?” “Jesus” would be a common answer. And I think it would be an honest answer – that most Christians are doing what verse 23 says to do – hold tightly without wavering. But as I thought about this verse, and as I reflected on my own life, I started to ask the question, “How close to the source of hope am I holding on?” I think most Christians are holding tightly onto an EXTENSION of the hope of Jesus. I think most Christians are holding tightly to a hope that is miles away from the source. It’s how we’ve been conditioned as a society. We’ve learned to be satisfied with imitations of the real thing. I read this quote this week: In 1956, two psychologists, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, would conclude that television's representation of celebrities was carefully constructed to create an "illusion of intimacy" —to make viewers believe that they actually were developing a relationship with the famous people on TV. Certain techniques…  produced this effect: recourse to small talk, the use of first names, and close-ups, among others, acted to close the gap between the audience and the guests, engendering the sense in the viewer of being "part of a circle of friends." – Tim Wu.

We’ve been conditioned for the past 80 years to accept intimacy at a distance. You can begin to put the vastness of this reality together when you look at the arrival of the internet, social media, and recently, artificial intelligence. We’ve learned to be satisfied with the superficiality of strangers over the intricacies of our families. And all that has translated to our relationship with God. We’ve become content experiencing God through other people. We are holding tightly to the hope that someone else is holding onto that someone else is holding onto that is holding onto Jesus. What the writer of Hebrews is doing is calling us to run into the holy of holies with confidence and vulnerability and latch on to Jesus Himself. It’s time for God’s children to stop starving while sitting at the Father’s table.  Here’s what I have started to do and I would love for you to do the same: Stop living in the shallows. Nothing unusual happens in the shallows. Snorkeling in Aruba. Nothing happened when we were floating along the shore. But the amount of activity was incomparable when we were taken hundreds of yards off shore to snorkel. When you are satisfied with the spiritual shallows – with the extension of the real thing – nothing unusual happens. Quote: “The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.” – A. W. Tozer.

For some of you, getting out of the shallows means you start tackling your doubt. You email me and ask for a book recommendation that helps you fight your doubt. For some of you, getting out of the shallows means you change your physical posture during worship. I know there are several men in our church that want to start raising their hands, but they are afraid. That might be the first step where you put aside your fear and start worshipping with your hands held high. Yeah, it will surprise your wife, but it’s time to get out of the shallows. For some of you, getting out of the shallows means you start being honest with yourself in your prayer life. You go to God and admit what He already knows. Whatever area of your spiritual life is staying in the kiddie pool, it’s time to get out. That doesn’t mean you jump in the deep end, but it does mean you get in the right pool.

When you are in the depths of the presence of God, you will notice the unusual in your spiritual life. When you long for God – and not an extension of God – He begins to do the unusual in your life. You begin to hit the off button a lot more. You begin to grab the joy hidden throughout the day. You begin to see the vibrancy in the day’s rhythms. You begin to long for depth that can only be found in relationships. You will start seeing the movements of God that you couldn’t see before. When we are in the presence of God, we will notice the spiritually unusual and it’s amazing! Stop living in the shallows. Swim to the depths and watch the unusual begin to happen. And that only happens when we are holding tightly to the source of hope. When one person begins to live this way, it’s beautiful. When two people begin to live this way, it’s contagious. And that’s the final piece we see about being in the presence of God: Being in the presence of God is contagious. 

3) Being in the presence of God is contagious. (vs. 24-25) If there was any hint that being in the presence of God was an individual act, the writer of Hebrews makes it clear that is not the case. Look at verses 24 and 25: ²⁴ Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. ²⁵ And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. There are two clear admonitions in these verses.

1. Community is required. 
   • That’s what verse 25 is about
   • I want to remind you about something you know:
     • Christian community is messy.
     • God didn’t design Christian community to be a smooth experience.
       • God gave each of us our own personalities and giftings and talents.
       • That means, at times, the Christian community will feel more like sandpaper.
   • What happens, so often, is that when Christians feel the sandpaper, they chose to walk away rather than engage biblically.
   • God gave us the sandpaper so that we can help other each not stay the way we are – to work out the roughness.
   • If I ever start spewing out heresy in the sermons, run. Run away fast.
   • But please, don’t run because you are uncomfortable.
2. We are to motivate each other to take action.
   • Being in the presence of God doesn’t cause us to sit on our hands.
   • Being in the presence of God creates acts of love toward each other and toward the world.
   • Help each other stay in the presence of God.
     • Illustration: The only reason I ran my half marathon recently was because of my brother.
       • He ran the same race last year and he couldn’t stop talking about it.
       • He experienced something that was marvelous and he wanted me to be a part of it.
       • His relentlessness of getting me to join in paid off.
       • And there I was, at 3:45am in the morning, running circles in a parking lot…
     • That’s how it’s supposed to be with us and the presence of God.
     • The greatest motivation you can give to a fellow believer is the fire for God inside of you.

What would it look like to talk with someone else about your daily experiences with God? Think about it, what if that became a regular topic of conversation? Now, that means you would be taking your holiness seriously. That means you would be growing in your knowledge of God. That means you got out of the spiritual kiddie pool. What if you told other people about being in the presence of God? “Hey kids, I was spending some time with God today and I was reminded that there are thousands of angels that are worshipping Him right now as we speak.” “Hey wife, I was in the presence of God this morning and He revealed to me that my main goal as a husband is to help you cross the finish line. How can I do better in that?” “Hey husband, I was on my face before God this morning and I wanted to let you know that I respect the position that God has put you in for our family.”  Can you imagine what would happen in your life, in your family, and in this church if we all got serious about our holiness and being in the presence of God? It would be contagious. 

I want to close with one question: Are you living like your holiness depends on being in the presence of God? You could argue that the Bible is summarized in Jeremiah 31:33: “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” If that’s true, and it is, then we need to take a page from Psalm 42:1-2: “As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him?” When can you go and stand before Him? Right now. Later today. Tomorrow. Some of you need to come into the presence of God for the first time today. It’s time. During the next song, you come and talk with me. After the service, come and talk with me. I’ll tell you what it means to begin a relationship with God. And we’ll be there together in the presence of God. I can’t wait for what’s ahead. Let’s all hold tight to the hope of Jesus. Let’s all live in the presence of God. Let’s pray.

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