There is powerful stuff in Hebrews 10: it’s not priests and ritual. The sacrifice for sins is complete.

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10.11 – 14, ESV)

“By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” And this was predicted in the Old Testament – the covenant in Jeremiah. 

“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” then he adds,“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” (Hebrews 10.16, 17, ESV, quoting Jeremiah 31.33, 34)

And then the follow-up as I wrote about when I was comparing Hebrews 4 with this section of Hebrews 10:

“Not neglecting to meet together…” – compare Hebrews 3.13, “Encourage one another daily.” My Alcoholics Anonymous friends are onto something. For new people they say, “90 meetings in 90 days.” I have a friend who is nearly 15 years sober and still goes to a meeting every day. Why? Because it’s easy to drift. 

And we don’t want to drift:

Hebrews 10:26-31 (ESV), bulleted for clarity

• For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
  • but a fearful expectation of judgment, and 
  • a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
• Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
• How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who
  • has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and 
  • has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and 
  • has outraged the Spirit of grace?  
• For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, 
• “The Lord will judge his people.”
• It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Depending on your theology, you may want to look for ways to explain why this passage doesn’t say what it appears to say. But my friend and Navigator Hero Skip Gray, whose memorial service we attended Sunday, would say: “I don’t know all that that means, but it’s a bad scene, and I don’t want to make it.”

Hence, we need to keep encouraging one another and “hold fast our confession.”

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3.12 – 14, ESV)