31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.32 ¶ But recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with sufferings:33 partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated;34 for you had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and an enduring possession for yourselves in heaven.35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:37 "For yet a little while, And He who is coming will come and will not tarry.38 Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him."39 ¶ But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.  (Heb. 10:19-39 NKJ)

Over the last few months, I have reviewed sermons where doctrine was either thin, non-existent, and in some sermons, specifically non-Reformed. Although I count myself as unqualified to diagnose the sermons of ministers who have years of experience, the Scriptures provide a framework by which any sermon can be measured. A major work looking at five sermons, each from a different minister in the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, is almost ready to publish, in which I hold the sermon against the text.

As an introduction to that work, this sermon review shifts gears.  This is a serious Reformed-informed sermon where doctrine is present in detail and yet it still falls short of the experiential preaching that Reformed hermeneutics should be aiming for. I have a very high regard for the preacher and I acknowledge here my debt to him for the serious input to my own growth as a preacher. I proceed therefore with trepidation.

The sermon of this review was preached by Rev Graham Nicholson at the Hawthorn Presbyterian Church on the 19th January, 2025, and titled “The Deadly Sin of Throwing Jesus Away”. Hebrews 10:19-39 was the passage. The sermon is earnest, serious, and plainly desirous of warning the congregation against apostasy. It contains real Reformed doctrine, consistent with the subordinate doctrinal standard of the Presbyterian Church, the Westminster Confession of Faith. Christ is set forth as the only Saviour, the danger of repudiating him is not softened, and the preacher does try to protect tender consciences from misreading Hebrews 10:26 as though every grievous post-conversion sin were itself the unpardonable sin. Those are real strengths, and they should be acknowledged. This is not a frivolous or careless sermon. It is a grave sermon preached by a minister who clearly believes the text matters.

Yet for all that, I believe the sermon is still materially deficient, and the deficiency is not small. It does not arise because the preacher says anything untrue. It arises because the sermon does not bring the hearer under the actual structure, force, and logic of Hebrews 10. The warning is pressed, but the warning is not governed by the passage’s own centre of gravity. The hearer is told that casting away our confidence, verse 35 is akin to throwing Jesus away, and therefore is deadly. That is true but the hearer is not led clearly enough into what that confidence consists of, where it comes from, what it is for, what is lost when it is abandoned, and why abandoning it is so fearful before the living God. 

The deepest failure, as I see it, appears in the relation between verses 19, 26, 31, and 35. Those verses provide a structure to the passage but they do not feature as such in the sermon.

Verse 19 is the hinge of the passage: “having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus.” That is the interpretive key to the whole section. The confidence of verse 35 is not a vague inner firmness. It is not mere commitment, sincerity, or the resolve not to throw Jesus away. It is boldness to enter the presence of God by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is blood-grounded access. It is priestly confidence. It is the liberty of those who know that the way to God has been opened for them through the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ and that they have a great priest over the house of God. But in the sermon, the blood of Jesus in verse 19 does not receive the exegetical weight it ought to bear. That omission is decisive. Once verse 19 is under handled, the whole warning begins to float free of its proper foundation. A foundation that Calvin notes is the fulfilment of the Old Testament sacrificial system by Christ.

That is why the sermon builds itself around “throwing Jesus away” rather than around “casting away your confidence.” I acknowledge the former can be defended as a theological consequence. The latter though is the actual wording of the text. That matters greatly. For if the preacher moves too quickly from confidence to Jesus, he skips the very grace the passage is opening up. Hebrews is not merely saying, “Do not reject Christ” in the abstract. It is saying, “Because Christ has opened the way into God’s presence by his atoning blood that the previous animal sacrifices could not open, do not throw away the boldness that belongs to those who come through him.” The sermon never states that plainly enough, and because it does not, the hearer is not brought to see the grandeur of what is being warned not to abandon in v35.

The treatment of verse 26 suffers from the same looseness. The sermon rightly resists the crude misunderstanding that one post-conversion lapse places a believer beyond mercy. But it still discusses verse 26 too much in terms of “a sin,” whereas the text speaks of wilfully continuing in sin. Within the flow of the chapter, that is not best understood as generic moral failure. It refers to a deliberate continuance in repudiating the only sacrifice God has provided, namely the blood of Jesus just set forth in verses 19 to 22. The sin is not merely serious behaviour in the abstract. It is the ongoing rejection of the sacrificial and priestly provision of Christ. The sermon therefore spends effort denying one false reading, but does not positively identify the sin as clearly as the passage itself does. The contrast between the new and living way opened by Christ and the former order of repeated sacrifices, which could not perfect the conscience or secure final access to God, is not adequately presented in this sermon. Verse 19 is acknowledged in substance, but the blood of Jesus as the ground of confidence is not given the exegetical weight it ought to bear in the sermon’s argument.

The treatment of verse 20 shows just how acutely this is underplayed. The “new and living way” is treated more as one benefit among many than as the objective, accomplished opening of access into God’s presence through the torn flesh of Christ. The contrast is not some shallow opposition between a pleasant new way and an unpleasant old one, nor between comfort now and discomfort now. The point is that Christ has actually done something decisive and final. This objective and eschatological dimension is seriously underdeveloped in the sermon. Jesus has opened the way into God’s presence now; a way barred under the old order and now inaugurated through his flesh. He has consecrated access. He has entered as priest. He lives, and therefore the way is living. The sermon does speak much of what Jesus gives, but it often expresses those benefits in a more immediate and comforting register than in the objective, priestly and access-centred terms that govern this passage. That makes the sermon sound at points as though the chief issue is what Jesus does for our present religious life. Hebrews 10 is weightier than that. It is speaking of the accomplished work of Christ, the objective sufficiency of his blood for our standing before God, the opened way into God’s presence, and the fearful state of the one who abandons that provision.

That is why the omission of verse 31 in this sermon is so serious. Peter O'Brien, in his Pillar New Testament commentary on Hebrews, regards 10:26-31 as the most serious warning passage in Hebrews; eclipsing those in Heb 6. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” stands at the climax of the warning, and the sermon does not reckon with it. That omission robs the passage of its sharpest urgency. The hearer is told of judgment and danger, yes, but not brought to the dreadful summit of the text. Verse 31 gathers everything together. To reject the blood of Christ is not merely to lose comfort, nor merely to forfeit future blessing. It is to stand before the living God without sacrifice, without priest, and without hope. That is the terror of the passage. Without verse 31, the sermon warns, but it does not thunder with the seriousness of the consequences of casting away confidence in the redemptive blood of Christ. The sermon indeed sounds an alarm, but it does not bring the soul face to face with the living God as the text does.

From this follows the central deficiency in the sermon’s handling of verse 35. “Do not cast away your confidence” is not explained in its proper relation to verse 19. Our confidence here is our confidence that the blood of Jesus secures our bold access to God. It is confidence to enter the holiest. Confidence to draw near. Confidence to hold fast confession under pressure because our priest stands and our access is secured. Because the sermon does not anchor confidence in the blood of Jesus, the term remains underdefined. The hearer may end up thinking confidence means determination, steadfastness, sincerity, or even personal commitment. But the passage is speaking of something far more exact and glorious: boldness before God through the priestly work of Christ that every redeemed saint is called to exercise. I would argue that the exhortation in v35 stands in contrast to returning to the Old Testament sacrificial system. However, the point remains as true for us as it dis for the original recipients. There is no other way, and we live in a world that says there are other ways.

And once that is blurred, several further failures follow.

The sermon does not clearly explain what this confidence is for. Confidence to do what? It is to enter, to draw near, to hold fast, to endure. Again, these themes appear in fragments, but they are never gathered into a sharp point. The hearer is not clearly taught that confidence is the living posture of faith we are to exercise before God, grounded in Christ’s blood. It becomes more a mood of committed Christianity than a defined new-covenant privilege and perhaps even, an expectation.

The sermon does not clearly unfold why this confidence is needed. The recipients of Hebrews were under reproach, loss, shame, and delay. They needed assurance that Christ’s blood had truly opened the way to God that the Old Testament sacrifices, or indeed any other sacrifice, could not open. Confidence in this passage is not ornamental. It is essential to perseverance. Yet the sermon mentions suffering without fully showing how confidence functions as the believer’s bold access to the sovereign God in the midst of that suffering.

The sermon does speak of the final danger of casting away confidence, but says less about the present losses involved. Hebrews is not warning only about the end of the road. It is warning that to cast away confidence is immediately to forfeit the freedom of approach to God, the consolation of Christ’s priesthood for our transgressions, the steadfastness that comes from his finished work, and the living privilege of drawing near. The sermon stresses judgment, but not enough the present spiritual impoverishment that comes when confidence in the blood is abandoned.

There is also too much undefined theological language. Terms such as “confidence,” “knowledge of the truth,” “grace,” “sanctified,” “faith,” and “hold fast” are made to carry heavy explanatory weight without sufficient definition. That is not a small matter. When such words are left vague, hearers often fill them with religious sentiment. Confidence becomes inward bravery. Grace becomes kindness. Faith becomes sincerity. Holding fast becomes trying harder. All the while the sermon still sounds orthodox. But the edge of the Word is blunted because its terms are not opened with the precision the passage demands.

Underneath all this lies the deepest issue: the sermon is stronger on warning language than on covenantal and priestly logic. As I said above, Hebrews 10 does indeed warn. But it does not warn in the abstract. It warns on the basis of Christ’s accomplished sacrifice for his people, the blood that opens our access, the new and living way we are called to, our abiding high priest, the threatened judgment of the living God, and the necessity of enduring faith in the blood under pressure when visible religion can seem more immediate and appealing. The sermon says many true things around these themes, but it does not let them govern the warning with sufficient care. The result is gravity without anchored precision. Seriousness without full textual anatomy of the passage.

That is why the sermon, though earnest and doctrinal in places, remains deficient. It does not merely miss a few helpful details. It fails to let the hearer feel the full weight of the passage’s own movement: confidence in the blood of Jesus, access by the new and living way, the horror of wilfully continuing in rejection of that provision, the terror of falling into the hands of the living God, and therefore the exhortation not to cast away that blood-bought boldness.

What would an experientially Reformed-rich sermon on this passage have looked like? A stronger sermon surely would have begun with verses 19 to 22, given the blood of Jesus its full exegetical weight, shown that verse 26 concerns a wilful continuance in repudiating that sacrifice for the old or possible alternative sacrifices, brought verse 31 to bear in all its dread, and then unfolded verse 35 as the exhortation not to abandon confidence in the blood of Christ that opened our way to God.

A stronger sermon, I believe, would have brought the context to the forefront. The sermon does provide a measure of broad context, particularly in describing the pressures facing the original hearers. It speaks of reproach, loss, hardship, delay, and the temptation to drift or turn back under social and personal cost. In this sense, the situational context is present. The hearer is helped to feel something of the external environment in which the warning is given. Yet this is only one layer of context. What is largely missing is the internal, theological context that governs the passage. Hebrews 10 is not structured primarily around pressure, but around Christ’s accomplished work. The boldness of verse 19, grounded in the blood of Jesus, the new and living way of verse 20, and the abiding high priest of verse 21 form the foundation from which every exhortation and warning flows. Because this theological context is not given sufficient weight, the warning is heard in isolation from the priestly logic that gives it its force.

This absence becomes clearer when the historical context is viewed through that theological lens. The original hearers were not merely tempted to abandon faith in a general sense, but to return to the visible and established system of Old Testament sacrifice. The pull was toward something tangible, structured, and socially acceptable, in contrast to the unseen sufficiency of Christ’s once-for-all offering. That movement, from the invisible to the visible, from the sufficient to the manageable, is central to the argument of Hebrews. While the sermon gestures toward this setting, it does not bring it into sharp enough focus, nor does it carry that logic forward into the present. As a result, the warning is not fully contextualised. Hebrews 10 is not simply addressing pressure to give up, but the deeper danger of replacing Christ’s priestly access with something more immediate and controllable. Without that context, the sermon warns of the danger, but does not fully expose its nature or its root.

For all its deficiencies, this sermon was not careless with Christ. It did not mock the warning, deny the danger, or speak lightly of eternal things. That matters. The preacher stood before the congregation seeking to sound an alarm, and in that there is something worthy of respect. Yet Hebrews 10 demands more than alarm. It demands that the hearer be shown why confidence matters, what that confidence is, and how it rests wholly in the blood of Jesus Christ. The tragedy here is not that Christ was absent, but that the riches of his priestly work were not allowed to carry the full weight of the warning. And so the great need in preaching remains this: not only to tell men that apostasy is deadly, but to bring them so near to the opened sanctuary, so near to the blood of sprinkling, and so near to the living High Priest, that they feel both the terror of turning away and the glory of drawing near. Unfortunately, this sermon was not able to do these things.

A recording of the sermon is on the Hawthorn Presbyterian Church website.

Alternatively, I have placed a copy on The Reformed Pastor YouTube channel.