Thank you are reading this afternoon. Now comes from Hebrews chapter 6 verses 1 through 12. That's Hebrews chapter 6 verses 1 through 12. I'm using the ESV translation and you'll find that in your bulletin. So this is the word of the Lord. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity. Not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God and of instruction about washings and the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits for it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away. It's impossible to restore them again to repentance since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt for land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles it is worthless and near to be encouraged and its end is to be burned. Though we speak in this way yet in your case beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for His name in serving the saints as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have a full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. So the word of the Lord, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father we would not be presumptuous as to think that we understand these words easily as the difficult passage Lord but all of your word requires your spirit to illuminate it. I pray Lord that your spirit would be at work in that way. Dear Lord that as we read this we would understand it, give us ears to hear, give us hearts that receive it, give us mouths that proclaim your praise and response. Let us see ourselves transformed by the wonderful word of God as we talk about this passage this afternoon. And Jesus' name we pray, amen. So do I have what it takes? Do I have what it takes? It's a question that I think we all ask ourselves particularly in a setting like a seminary where people are preparing to go out and view a vocation. You're preparing for a work and you ask yourself sometimes daily, do I have what it takes? What if I don't? What if I don't have what it takes to succeed in this life? What would people say about me? There's a lot of pressure in that question. As a matter of fact the pressure can be so great that some of us are tempted to fail right out of the gate to undermine our own efforts even before we start. So often in life I think it's the truth those who care the most about success are the ones who actually try the least because they're trying to find relief in a sort of lethargy. A lethargy that says if you don't strive you can avoid the pain of failure you can avoid that acute sting of both trying hard and then also having unmet expectations. As a result the sluggish are often tempted to write their own autobiographies within action and inertia and ineptitude. I'm reminded of the football player who after a very poor performance on the field is running off the field and his coach meets him on the sideline and the coach says to him son are you ignorant or apathetic? The coach and the player responds coach I don't know and I don't care. The letter to the Hebrews is written to a lethargic church a church struggling with a spirit of sluggishness and lethargy. They seem to have settled into a sort of deliberate immaturity that was marked by thin experience of the glory of God in general and a thin experience of the glory of Christ in particular. Having received the gospel with faith the audience of the letter had collectively it seemed opted for a kind of sustained state of spiritual infancy. Nursing themselves on a kind of theological problem not because they didn't have the intellectual capacity to receive the deeper things of the word but because they did not trust in the spirit to provide them with the solid food, the real red meat of God's revelation about himself. Now the author of the letter is unnamed we don't know who he is he's clearly acquainted with the teaching of the apostles. Some doing a little bit of textual slew thing have tried to figure out who he might be some argue that it's Paul himself one of my early professors Ron Nash. R. T. S. Orlando thought it was Apollos. Chuck Hill who still is a professor at R. T. S. Orlando argues I think convincingly that the details lead us to Silas Silvanas. We know that he was a preacher alongside Timothy and Paul and that he co-wrote the letter to the two letters to the Thessalonians so he might fit. But ultimately these arguments are circumstantial and they don't shed much light on our interpretation. Well we can say is this that the author encourages the Lephargic Church to whom he is riding with a strong and robust theology of Jesus Christ. In the face of their spiritual immaturity the author is giving them a grand deeply egotistical portrait of the Son of God, the High Priest, the ultimate prophet he says. When he replaces the prophets of old the Messianic King Jesus Christ. The whole letter is fundamentally a Christological tract teaching a higher doctrine of Christ. Now I would argue that this passage that we're reading today is not fundamentally kind of at its core really a warning passage. We often receive it that way but I actually don't think it's actually a warning passage it's more of an encouraging passage. It's not written to warn about a danger to be avoided but rather he's making a comparison that is meant to encourage the Church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps understandably however whenever this passage is read the focus immediately goes to those individuals that he talks about here, those individuals who have fallen away from the community of faith. I don't know who to make of these people described in verses 4 through 5. These people who for some real reason experience the unique blessings of the gospel that then ultimately turn away from the community of faith, they turn away from Christ. Well first of all we can say confidently that this book does not teach that salvation is something that can be gained and then lost. Rather throughout the letter the author makes it clear that those who have faith will always endure in the faith. In chapter 3 verse 6 of the letter he says this and we are his house he's talking about the house of God. We are his house if we hold fast to our confidence and pride in our hope. In chapter 3 verse 14 he says for we share in Christ if we hold our first confidence firm to the end. Chapter 10 verse 39 he says that we are not those who shrink back in our destroyed but of those who have faith and keep their souls. So for the author of the letter he presents faith in perseverance as inextricably connected to one another. Faith, the saving faith is an enduring faith. It's not a deserting faith. No one has faith or no one who has faith who shares in Christ will fall away from him. They may struggle, they may fail, they may fail deeply as many renowned saints have but over the course of their lives they will reflect the divinely ordained and empowered perseverance that can only come from true belief. When they stumble they will be disciplined by God the loving father who cares for and raises up his children in the faith. This is the experience of every believer in Jesus Christ. For those who are in Christ God's word is never condinitory. It's always loving nurture because every believer is united by faith with a resurrected and glorified Christ. And as a result every Christian life is ultimately a comedy and not a tragedy. But let's look at the case of these described in verse 4 through 5. These who experience these temporal blessings and then follow away. Look at how they're described. They're described as being enlightened. This is a strong language. It's used elsewhere to describe those who both here and understand the gospel message. Some commentators have suggested this term was used to also talk about baptism so these may have been baptized persons. Though the evidence that they give for that determine light and being used to refer to baptism is a notably later use than this letter is itself so we should take that with the grain of salt. These people also describe as having tasted a heavenly gift of redemption perhaps perceiving its glory and blessing for those who receive it in faith. They have shared in the Holy Spirit possibly a reference to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. And they have tasted or experienced in some way the good news of the word of God and the powers of the age to come. The description seems to include all of the outward blessings of the covenant community blessings that seem to have been received with some measure of enjoyment and appreciation by these individuals. We could use the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to say they had experienced life together in the covenant community. Those who enjoy such an experience and then fall away into sustained and permanent apostasy or unbelief cannot be recovered to the gospel by repentance is what the author is saying. In fact he says there's a very clear way of knowing whether or not you're one of these people. Do you repent? Because if you're one of these people you can't repent. You have no interest in it. You go to your grave never looking back to the cross of Christ. Now this doesn't mean that we're not meant to coax our friends back to faith that they seem to fall away. As a matter of fact James chapter 5 verse 19 encourages us to do that because we don't know. We know if the unbelief the person shows is permanent or is it something that is just a passing season in their life. We're called to draw them back with love and with respect and with brotherly and sisterly care. So what is the problem for these individuals? It's not the blessings that they receive. It's not that they were enlightened by the wrong gospel. It's not that they tasted the wrong heavenly gift or were inspired by some false spirit. Like those unbelieving Israelites however who left Egypt in the Exodus only to be swallowed up in the wilderness. These believers are enjoying temporal blessings of the temporal blessings of the covenant community by their proximity to the covenant community. But the problem is that they're passive recipients. The author of Hebrews uses this common biblical agrarian imagery to talk about the soil of these people's souls of their spirits. He says that some people who receive the gospel are like soil that receives these blessings and produce a harvest of faith. And some are like a soil that receives these blessings and produces a harvest of horns of brambles. That's a harvest of unbelief. It's very similar to the image that we see in Isaiah chapter 5 when Isaiah talks about the good planting of the people of Jerusalem and Judah. It's very similar to the parable that Jesus uses in Matthew 13, the parable of the sewer, which is so well known, talks about the different kinds of soil that the seed of the gospel falls upon. So in each of these cases the image of the soil is used to describe the heart of the hearer of the gospel. Those who are elect and regenerate respond with faith and the fruit of faith, their soil produces and produce. Those who are not, while receiving the same outward blessings, the same gospel proclamation respond with unbelief. And the fruit of unbelief, which is rebellion, their soil only produces thorns and brambles. You see as ministers in Christ's Church or those who are preparing to be ministers in Christ's Church, I'm sure that each one of you either have or will encounter people who taste of the outward blessings of the church, of the community of faith, and yet turn away and go to their graves having turned away. Some of them will take people with them and we have to ask ourselves, what happens to them? Do they have faith? Do they believe and then they lose it? The author of the Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews, says the proof is in the harvest. Do they bear the fruit of repentance or they bear the fruit of rebellion? Those are the only two options, he says. There's no option see. Christ is either the odor of life for you or he's the odor of death. He either smells like life or he smells like a corpse. The gospel only allows for these two responses, repentance or rebellion. So why this passage? What purpose does it serve in the letter to the Hebrews? For one, in no doubt describes the experience of Christians to whom the letter is addressed. Like us, they had seen members of their own church fall away from the faith. They had wondered what it meant for those people, what it meant for their faith, their spiritual realities. How are they to understand their friends who are so passionate? As we say, sold out for Christ for the gospel, but now seemed to want nothing to do with him. Well, so is the author of the letter. The problem is not the gospel. Not the gospel, but that they lacked a sincere and enduring faith. Secondly, this passage seems to be meant to encourage sluggish believers. The author of the letter changes his cone in verse 9. Notice what he says there in verse 9 of chapter 6. He says, though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. And he's saying, yes, I know that these people have fallen away from Christ. I know that they've left the covenant community, but I'm writing to you because you are not them. You're not them. He knows that his teaching will benefit them because they are the ones who receive it in faith. They do not need to fear the kind of failure that they see in the apostate believers because they are living lives marked by true faith and repentance. As a Psalmist writes in Psalm chapter 1 verse 6, God acknowledges the way of the righteous. He knows the way of the righteous, and you are righteous in Christ. You can have full assurance that you will inherit his promises. God does not grant faith to some, and in patience to others, the author says, but true faith is a faith that comes with patience. It's matched with perseverance, one that relies on the Lord for the inheritance that he has promised. Here the author's teaching echoes the teaching of Paul and the letter to the Philippians chapter 2 verse 12, where he says, You can work out your salvation with fear and trembling. He's not saying the Christian life is supposed to be marked by fearfulness and timidity, but rather you can be confident that God is at work in you to make you the best possible man or woman in Jesus Christ that you can possibly be. Press forward in his word, strive for growth, for discipline, for a deep encounter and celebration of God's glory in this world. Not one constantly living under the threat of failure, but as one who was already breathing the fresh air of the new heavens and the new earth. Lastly, I can't help but wonder if this passage is not also there for those in the church who are perhaps considering the faith. They're still considering it, perhaps they're toying with the idea of belief. Perhaps they've been drawn by a friend and by the mystery and beauty of the gospel, but they haven't quite yet committed themselves to it. The author Hebrews here seems to lay out two paths and neither are to be taken lightly. Neither are options that you should consider with any sort of capriciousness.
There are times in Christ's ministry, I just want to add this, when he seems to try to dissuade followers. He reminds them that the faith that he's offering might mean their death. It might mean that they have to give up everything that they desire in this life. It might mean that they have to live lives in other submission to others and service to others. See, for Christ there's a gravity to evangelism and we do well to take its apart. We're not offering membership into a political party or a social club or a retreat center or offering life in death, but those who reject the gospel or receive it instantly, they heat condemnation upon themselves. For those who receive the gospel of faith and repentance, they receive an inheritance that the world cannot contain and either way we dare not withhold it from them. So as I close, I want to close just with this quote from Dietrich Bonhoffer, Pastor during World War II. Pastor in Germany, he saw many self-identifying Christians fall away during the reign of the Third Reich, those who fell away under the pressure that they experienced as Christians in Germany. And he writes this, he's comparing cheap grace to costly grace. He says cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living in incarnate. Costly grace, however, is the treasure hidden in the field. It is the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble. It's the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. I would encourage you, brothers and sisters, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ and those who train for similar work. It is easy for us to fall into habit. This is particularly for those in Christian ministry. It's easy for us to fall into that dangerous position of rope performance of the duties of ministry. Admittedly, we are rarely the ones who receive encouragement. Do you know that? You're going into a field where you will probably not receive. You won't be the first one to get encouragement in your ministry. I would encourage you then seek grace knowing that it's a costly grace, but it's a grace that God gives generously and he showers it upon you. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your words. Pray Lord that they would be efficacious. They address to you that our hearts and our minds would be opened to the glory of Jesus Christ. If this letter appeals to its audience, seek Christ. Dear Lord, let us be that soil that produces the fruit of faith and repentance. We might enjoy the riches of this world that you have created in the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.