Hebrews 10:23-31 – The Lord Will Judge His People

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 23 June 2019

Omitting greyed-out text should bring verbal presentation down to about 45 minutes.

Intro: Read text

• Our passage begins with two hortatory statements: 1) “Let us Hold on…” and 2) “Let us consider…” and then it gets into a compelling reason why we should hold on and take cognizance: “for... the Lord will judge His people.” Let’s begin with the first:

I. (v.23) Hold On/Hold Fast
Let’s hold onto the unrelenting confession of our hope, because the One who promised is faithful.

• When I was a boy, my father taught me to water-ski. I would begin by squatting in the water with my skis sticking halfway up out of the water, hanging on to the rope. Then my Dad would say, “Hang on!” and slam the boat throttle full forward, and boy did it take a lot of effort to hang on at first, with so much of my body dragging in the water – and water spraying every which-way around my skis into my eyes and mouth and nose – until the engine finally pulled me up on top of the water.

• You usually hear these words right before you experience some turbulence: “Hold on!”

• “Holding on” to the Gospel is a key step of obedience:

  • Hebrews 3:6 "Christ, on the other hand [is faithful] as Son over His administration, which administration we ourselves are, if indeed we hold on to the confirmed open practice and confident expression of THE hope until the end... 14 For we have become companions of the Anointed One if indeed we hold on to the beginning of our confirmed understanding until the end." (NAW)

  • 1 Corinthians 15:1 "Now, I am making known to you, brothers, the gospel: which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you have been standing, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold on to the particular message I preached to you..." (NAW)

• The Greek adjective ἀκλινῆ is translated “without wavering/unswervingly/unrelenting,” and it modifies the Greek word ὁμολογίαν (translated “confession”).

  • The Greek root of this adjective is kline, which means “bend,” and, by extension, physic­ally to “lie down on a couch and go to sleep,” or, in the sense of “bending the ear” (which is used often in the Bible), it means to listen to other people’s ideas and succumb to their influence and change course.

  • But here is the only place in the Bible where this word has an alpha prefix which negates the meaning, so it means “not bending,” “not lying down to rest,” and “not succumbing to influence to change course.”

• We should be “unrelenting” in the “confession of our hope.” “I have a friend in Jesus because He loves me!”¹

  • The things we say in agreement with God’s good news should not be on-again-off-again at different seasons of our life; it should not be said uncertainly, nor should it be spun one way in one set of circumstances and then spun another way in other circumstances to tone our religion down and make us more acceptable to whoever we are talking to at the time.

• Why should we be consistent in what we say? Because God is faithful²:

  • This is from the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:4 “As for God, his works are true, and all his ways are judgment: God is faithful, and there is no unrighteousness in him; just and holy is the Lord.” (Brenton³)

  • The covenant God made with Abraham is a focal point in the Bible of God being “the One who makes promises.⁴”

  • Our action should copy God’s character. If God sticks by His word, so should we, if our word is in conformity to His word.

  • So the first exhortation is to hold on to the unrelenting confession of our hope in Jesus. The second exhortation is….

II. (vs.24-25) Consider/Take cognizance
Let us also take cognizance of one another towards the provocation of love and of good works, 25 not forsaking the gathering together of our­selves (as the custom is with certain persons), but instead being encour­aging – and so much the more while you are seeing The Day getting close.

• The second hortatory⁵ “Let us consider/take cognizance of one another”

  • was used in the Greek Bible to describe people doing close observation (Ex. 33:8), spying out the land (Num. 32:8-9), a physical examination (1 Kings 3:21), being a spectator (Psalm 22:17), thinking about something you’ve read (Psalm 119:15&18), paying heed/giving attention to someone who is communicating (Isa. 5:12), realizing what is going on (Isa. 57:1), taking cognizance (Mt. 7:3), learning a lesson from what you’ve observed (Luke12:24), and seeing through a smokescreen (Luke 20:23).

  • So, “considering/taking cognizance” involves seeing a set of circumstances, thinking about those circumstances, and then acting accordingly.

• We already encountered this verb once earlier in Hebrews 3:1 “...nail down in your minds that the One so commissioned and the High Priest whom we acknowledge is the Messiah Jesus.” (NAW) But here in chapter 10, the object of our “consideration/cognizance” is “one another” - “keep an eye on one another”, take in information about one another and analyze what we notice about one another in order to take action.

• And what is the action towards which we are to use our powers of observation and analysis of one another? Toward the provocation⁶ of love and good deeds.

  • The Greek word παροξυσμὸν, translated “stir up/provoke/stimulate/spur on,” combines the Greek word for “sharp” with the word for “alongside,” creating the word picture of someone walking alongside you with a sharp stick and poking you from time to time to get you to do something or to go somewhere.

  • Most of the time in the Greek Bible, this word is used to describe somebody committing sins that irritate and provoke God to the point of Him getting angry and punishing.

  • But there are two instances in the Bible where a word from the same root occurs in a con­text that applies to what we’ve got here in Hebrews 10, and they’re both in the Proverbs:

    • Proverbs 6:3 “My son, do what I command thee, and deliver thyself; for on thy friend's account thou art come into the power of evil men: faint not, but stir up [παρόξυνε] even thy friend for whom thou art become surety.” (Brenton) In Proverbs 6:3, you have co-signed a friend’s loan and now it’s dawning on you that this was a bad idea because they probably will not be able to pay the whole loan back, and so you will probably have to make payments on their loan, but you are realizing that you don’t love them enough not to resent them if you have to pay their loan for them, so, in order to get yourself out of a bad situation, you beg them to take your name off their loan and find somebody else to co-sign for them. It may take several phone calls and texts. It may take going over to their house and banging on their door until they answer; it may take hiring a lawyer, but you figure out a way to get free of that unwanted responsi­bility as a co-signer. The second Proverb that uses this word is a little more general:

    • Proverbs 27:17 “Iron sharpens iron; and a man sharpens [παροξύνει] his friend's countenance." (Brenton) How can you sharpen a brother or sister in Christ toward love and good deeds?

      • Sometimes it involves sharpening an edge: helping them see the difference between right and wrong, helping them to see that God’s word draws a line on a certain topic, and that they’re on the wrong side of it.

      • Sometimes they know the right thing to do, but they don’t have enough spine to do it. They need somebody to put the steel into their backbone so that they exercise the courage to do God’s will and stand up against the opposition of the world and the flesh and the devil. You change them from being dull to sharp.⁷

    • In a good spy movie, the hero is an expert at noticing what’s going on in his environ­ment, predicting what is going on in the minds of his counterparts, and acting decis­ively in order to achieve his goals, right? That’s what God is calling you to do. Be that hero who has the goal of “love and good deeds” and who is becoming an expert in figuring out how to make love and good deeds happen – both in you and in the people around you.

    • By the way, don’t assume that this is somebody else’s business: v.23 it says that we are to “take cognizance of one another,” but it doesn’t say who it is that you are “stim­ulating to love and good deeds” – it could be yourself! I need to “stir up” God’s “love” within myself (and notice what my fellow church-member needs, and do a good deed for them) just as much as they need me to “stir them up to love and good deeds.”

  • Now, moving on to v. 24, the opposite of this kind of considerate “provocation toward love and good deeds” is presented: The opposite of considerateness is apathy. “Forsaking the assembly” means you don’t care about your brothers and sisters in Christ, so you don’t bother to spend time with them or observe how they are doing or consider what will spur them on toward love and good deeds.

    • This isn’t speaking of a legalistic form of church-going where if you miss once, you are considered a “bad Christian;” this is a forsaking/neglecting/giving up entirely – an abandonment of the church, not wanting to associate with the people of God – on an ongoing basis – as a “habit/custom.” This is churchlesness as a culture.

    • It is interesting to me that this Greek word for “gathering/assembling/meeting together” only occurs two other places in the Greek Bible, and both times it refers to the return of the Messiah to “gather” His people together (2 Mac. 2:7; 2 Thess. 2:1).

      • Our “gathering together” as a church on the Lord’s Day is not primarily about us getting our social needs met;

      • it is primarily about expressing our identity as the Lord’s people.⁸

    • I remember picking up a hitchhiker in the Colorado mountains on a Sunday evening who said that he didn’t like going to church because he felt closer to God just being out in nature. That is a warped perspective. Sure, you can feel close to God in nature, but if you want nothing to do with the other people who also love God, you’re probably worship­ping the wrong God, because our God is personal and is all about good relationships.

    • God is love, and love can only exist where there is more than one person. So if you can’t stand being around other people who love Him much, you have missed out on one of the most important essentials of who God is. It’s not too late to apologize now to God for that and ask Him to help you grow in love for His people so that you can stand being around them for the rest of eternity in heaven.

    • And what better way to provoke love and good deeds than to spend time with people who need love and need good things done for them?! We shouldn’t forsake assembl­ing together as Christians; instead we should be encouraging/exhorting/literally “call­ing alongside” -

      • which can be to say an encouraging word to stir up/spur on/stimulate their courage,

      • or it can be “calling them down” for something, helping them see right and wrong more sharply.

      • Either way, the goal is Christ-like “love and good works.”

• Now, a new motivation is introduced as to why we should be diligent at “holding fast” to the hope of Jesus saving us and why we should be diligent at “taking cognizance” of how to provoke ourselves and others toward love and good deeds. We should “hold fast” and “take cogniz­ance” “all the more as we see The Day approaching.”

  • What is “The Day” that’s approaching? I went through the New Testament epistles in the New American Standard Bible searching for the phrase “the day,” and do you know what 70% of the time that phrase referred to? Yeah, the second coming of Christ and Judgment Day⁹.

  • When that phrase occurs in the Bible without any context limiting it to a specific other day, it is speaking of a day when God will visibly visit earth and hold mankind accountable for breaking His moral laws.

  • So, accountability to our God, who will evaluate us as a judge, is a motivation to hold fast and take cognizance. The next few verses play this out in more detail:

III. (vs. 26-31) For… the Lord Will Judge

v.26-27 For, if we keep sinning willingly after receiving the full-know­ledge of the truth, a sacrifice for sins is no longer left [available], instead there is a certain fearsome receiving of judgment and an intensity of fire about to devour those in opposition.

• Back in v. 18 we read that, if sin disappears (because it’s forgiven), the need for a sacrifice (to atone for sin) also disappears, because there is no longer a problem that needs fixing. Now we see in v.26 that the opportunity to keep getting sins forgiven will be yanked if we take God’s grace for granted – and indulge our desires to sin – and continue in sin, thinking that God will keep on forgiving and won’t mind. Grace won’t increase if we do that; instead, the opportunity for grace closes.

• Simply knowing what the truth is will not save you unless you act on it¹⁰.

• There are two phrases which seem to relate this damning, willful sin to a violation of the two hortatories in verses 23 and 24, namely:

  • the phrase in v.26 “receiving the knowledge of the truth” – which would indicate hearing the good news about God’s arrangement to save us from eternal death through the death of Jesus on the cross as a sacrifice to atone for our sin. To obey God, then, would be to believe this good news and trust Jesus to save you. On the other hand, to keep sinning willfully would be to stop “holding on” to this faith and stop “confessing” it to be true and stop “drawing near” to God through Jesus.

  • Likewise the passive verb at the end of v.26 “remains/is left” [ἀπολείπεται] has the same Greek root as the word in v.25 for “forsaking/giving up/neglecting/leaving out the gather­ing together of ourselves” [ἐγκαταλείποντες], which relates to the “consideration of how to provoke [ourselves and others] to love and good deeds.” On the other hand, willfully and continually rejecting association between yourself and God’s people is a sin which, at the very least, runs the risk of God refusing to provide forgiveness for.¹¹

    • The prophet Jonah put it this way: “Those who are paying regard to vanities of evil shall forsake their grace." (Jonah 2:8, NAW, cf. 2 Chronicles 15:2)

    • To put it another way, there are no other options once you have “renounced the one and only sacrifice for sin that does or can remove sin.” ~A.T. Robertson

• Our author goes on in v.27 to give a proof text for what he just asserted. It is a loose quote of Isaiah 26:11, and the original Hebrew, in context, can be rendered: “¹⁰ A wicked man may be graced, but NOT learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals wrongfully and will NOT see the majesty of Yahweh. ¹¹ Yahweh, Your hand is lifted up, but they will NOT see. Let them see the people's zeal and be ashamed. Also, let Your enemy's fire consume them. ¹² Yahweh, You will judge peace for us...” (NAW)

• Two things are certain on Judgment Day, and that is judgment and the fires of hell.

  • Jesus and the prophets and apostles spoke often of these certainties¹², and they should be enough to make anyone nervous who stands opposed to Jesus!

  • All that remains is to “appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10) and then be “cast into the everlasting fire” (Mat. 18:8).

• So we must keep “holding on” to faith in Jesus and “facilitating” Godly love and works because there is no other option that will work to relieve our guilt, and if we don’t exercise this opportu­nity we have, we may loose it, and when judgment day comes, the loss will be final and horrible.

• The next two verses provide another argument from the lesser to the greater, highlighting the greatness of the punishment with which God will sentence those who do not hold onto their confession of faith and who do not put out effort toward love and good works:

v.28-29 If someone who has upset the law of Moses dies without mercy on the basis of two or three witnesses, 29 how much worse punishment do y’all suppose will be deserved by one who has trampled down the Son of God and who has decided that the blood of the covenant (by which he was made holy) is profane, and who has insulted the Spirit of Grace?

• The comparison is between the strictness of court sentences in human governments and the strictness of the sentences which Jesus will issue on Judgment Day.

  • In the Law of Moses, Numbers 35:30-31 says, “Whoever kills a man, thou shalt slay the murderer on the testimony of witnesses; and one witness shall not testify against a soul that he should die. And ye shall not accept ransoms for life from a murderer who is worthy of death, for he shall be surely put to death¹³”.

  • Even our government today is pretty hard on most of the same things that the Mosaic law was hard on: murder, drunk driving, sex offenders, and human trafficking – especially if it’s an open-and-shut case with plenty of witnesses. We “throw the book at” those kind of criminals – and they may even be put to death.

  • The point is that if our earthly magistrates issue harsh sentences against felons, we should take very seriously every offense against Jesus, because we are going to have to appear before Him on Judgment Day, and His authority is far greater than that of any earthly judge, and His ability to punish is far greater too!

• The three particular offenses to watch out for are listed in v. 29:

1. Trampled down/despised/shown utter disdain for the Son of God.

• At the time of writing, there were plenty of priests and Pharisees still alive who had taken part in the “kangaroo court” that sentenced Jesus to death, and there were also plenty of common folk still alive who had yelled, “Crucify Him” in Herod’s palace. The magnitude of this offense needed to be felt and repented over before it’s too late.

• Still today, there are those who’ve decided to live life their own way and who want nothing to do with a religion organized around a man that was crucified. Others deny that Jesus is God and deny that sin is even a big deal. The One who is God and who went to the amaz­ing lengths of taking on human flesh and suffering miserably for our sin finds such ridic­ulous ideas terrifically insulting, and He is not going to treat such attitudes leniently.

• Our only hope is to confess our offenses and honor Him for who He is and honor what He did on the cross for us by trusting Him to save us and by obeying Him with love and good deeds.

• The second offense is that he...

1. Regarded/counted/treated/decided that the blood of the covenant (by which he was made holy) is profane/unholy/unclean/common,

• The Greek verb in this sentence [ἡγησάμενος] connotes making this rash decision with an imperious sense of authority and even leading others into sharing this hor­ribly-misguided opinion that there was nothing special about the blood Jesus shed on the cross – that Jesus was just another criminal who deserved to die. This, of course, was the position of most of the Jewish leaders at the time this book was written.

• Yet this was the blood that makes holy. The word “make holy/sanctify” is used in various ways in the Bible, and I believe that the sense here is not in the sense of savingly made holy but in the sense of corporate special relationship to God and the blessings that trickle down indirectly from it – which the Old Testament Jewish nation enjoyed, and which family members of New Testament Christians enjoy today¹⁴ – along with unsaved folks who associate with the church. There is generous access to God’s word, people praying for you, and the pleasantness of being around people who are unselfishly loving,

• but if you soak all that in and still refuse to accept that Jesus shed His blood to pay for your sins against God, and you think your specialness with God is something you earned or deserved, if you are aren’t sure about all this Jesus stuff in the Bible and so you aren’t willing to confess faith in Him, then you are going to face an extremely angry God on Judgment Day. He gave His own son up to be tortured to death in order to provide a way to forgive you, but you made light of all His loving effort and you acted like maybe He didn’t really go to that much trouble. When you insult such generosity, don’t expect to get any grace; you will be made to pay the maximum penalty for your own sin. The third and final offense is that he...

1. Insulted/outraged/treated despitefully the Spirit of Grace.

• This is an allusion to the prophecy in Zechariah 12:10 where God promised to “pour the spirit of grace and compassion upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” after the Baby­lonian exile. And indeed the Holy Spirit did many things to grace that community leading up to the birth of Jesus and then in the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in tongues of fire and powerful gospel preaching in every language. The Jews of that day who refused to go the direction God’s Spirit was leading and put their faith in Jesus, but who instead took the scriptures which the Holy Spirit had inspired and twisted them to point away from Jesus toward human rabbis and kings grievously insulted the third person of the Trinity, and that outrage will not be glossed over on Judgment Day.

• Again, today we face the danger of doing the same thing: taking for granted the blessings of knowing truth, the blessings of recognizing sin and repenting of it, the blessings of a physical-spiritual connection with Jesus in heaven through His Spirit dwelling in our bodies, and the blessings of supernatural gifts and fruits (like love) that come from the Holy Spirit operating in us. When we are tempted to think we arrived at truth because we are smart, when we are tempted to think we are setting the standard of what a good person ought to be, when we are tempted to forget that we are slaves bound to the will of our master Jesus, and we start doing our own will, and when we start thinking that our gifts and abilities to do good were the results of our own efforts, we need to repent and humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God again and follow the leading of The Spirit that He made to dwell within us and who gives us Grace (James 4:3-6). Otherwise we will face the wrath of a deeply offended God on Judgment Day.

vs.30-31 for we know the One who said, “Vengeance belongs to me; I myself will render payback,” [says the Lord,] and again, “The Lord will judge His people.” 31 To fall into the hands of the Living God is fearsome!

• In 1 Chronicles 21, when King David “fell into the hands of God” and was punished for disobeying God’s command not to see how big an army he had, God sent a plague that killed 70,000 citizens in the space of a couple days. That would be like wiping out every man, woman and child in Manhattan, Ogden, and Wamego – nothing but dead rotting bodies for miles and miles. That would be scary!

• Here in Hebrews 10:30, another passage from the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 is quoted. The context of this quote is a warning from Moses to the people of Israel that if they worship idols and disobey the living God, God will bring judgment upon them. Moses prophecied a judgment that is very much like what happened some thousand years later when the Assyrians and Chaldeans wiped out the land of Israel – and very much like what happened again just a few years after the book of Hebrews was written when the Romans wiped out the nation of Israel once again: “And the Lord saw, and was jealous; and was provoked by ... his sons and daughters, 20 and said, I will turn away my face from them, and will show what shall happen to them in the last days; for it is a perverse generation, sons in whom is no faith. 21 They have provoked me to jealousy with that which is not God, they have exasperated me with their idols; and I will provoke them to jealousy with them that are no nation, I will anger them with a nation void of understanding. 22 For a fire has been kindled out of my wrath, it shall burn to hell below; it shall devour the land, and the fruits of it; it shall set on fire the foundations of the mountains. 23 I will gather evils upon them, and will fight with my weapons against them. 24 They shall be consumed with hunger and the devouring of birds, and there shall be irremediable destruction: I will send forth against them the teeth of wild beasts, with the rage of serpents creeping on the ground. 25 Without, the sword shall bereave them of children, and terror shall issue out of the secret chambers; the young man shall perish with the virgin, the suckling with him who has grown old. 26 I said, I will scatter them, and I will cause their memorial to cease from among men... 34 Lo! are not these things stored up by me, and sealed among my treasures? 35 In the day of vengeance I will recompense, whensoever their foot shall be tripped up; for the day of their destruction is near to them, and the judgments at hand are close upon you. 36 For the Lord shall judge his people... 39 Behold, behold that I am he, and there is no god beside me: I kill, and I will make to live: I will smite, and I will heal; and there is none who shall deliver out of my hands... 41 For I will sharpen my sword like lightning, and my hand shall take hold of judgment; and I will render judgment to my enemies, and will recompense them that hate me... 43 Rejoice, ye heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him; rejoice ye Gentiles, with his people, and let all the sons of God strengthen themselves in him; for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and he will render vengeance, and recompense justice to his enemies, and will reward them that hate him; and the Lord shall purge the land of his people.” (Deut. 32:19-43, Brenton)

• We who know this God know that it is no trifling matter to ignore His messages and make light of Jesus. We who know the God who said these things know that we must instead do like the apostle of Hebrews said and like Moses said long before:

• Deut. 10:12 "And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³ and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good? ...¹⁶ Therefore circumcise... your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. ¹⁷ For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe… ²⁰ You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast [κολληθήσῃ], and take oaths in His name. ²¹ He is your praise, and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen.” (NKJV)

• Hold fast your confession and stimulate one another to love and good works for the Lord is sure to come and judge His people.

• Psalm 76:6 “At Your rebuke, O God of Jacob, Both the chariot and horse were cast into a dead sleep. ⁷ You, Yourself, are to be feared; And who may stand in Your presence When once You are angry? ⁸ You caused judgment to be heard from heaven; The earth feared and was still, ⁹ When God arose to judgment, To deliver all the oppressed of the earth. Selah ¹⁰ Surely the wrath of man shall praise You; With the remainder of wrath You shall gird Yourself. ¹¹ Make vows to the LORD your God, and pay them; Let all who are around Him bring presents to Him who ought to be feared. ¹² He shall cut off the spirit of princes; He is awesome to the kings of the earth.” (NKJV)

Appendix 1: Instances of “the day” in the NASB epistles

Rom. 2:5 But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

Rom. 2:16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

Rom. 13:12 The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

1Cor. 1:8 who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1Cor. 3:13 each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work.

1Cor. 5:5 I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

2Cor. 1:14 just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason to be proud as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.

Eph. 4:30 Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Php. 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Php. 1:10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;

Php. 2:16 holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.

1Thes. 5:2 For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.

1Thes. 5:4 But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief;

2Thes. 2:2 that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

Heb. 10:25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

1Pet. 2:12 Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

2Pet. 1:19 So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

2Pet. 2:9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,

2Pet. 3:7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

2Pet. 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

2Pe. 3:12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!

2Pe. 3:18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

1Jn. 4:17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.

Side-by-side Greek Text & English Versions of Heb. 10:23-31^A