Hebrews 5:11-6:12 - Don’t Fall Away from Jesus

And sometimes we can get tunnel vision and think only of the things that were better in the past and not about the things that have gotten better over time.

We focus on the corruption and ignore the progress we’ve made.

And if we regress to somehow fix the corruption, we also lose our progress.

And very often the loss of our progress is something that we can’t afford to lose, and the corruption is not something we can actually fix.

We tend to regress backward especially when we don’t understand the danger of going backward.

This passage, in Hebrews 5:11-6:12, explains how regressing back to Judaism leads to rejecting Jesus and rejecting salvation.

And the same is true for us Gentiles regressing back to our old way of life without Christ.

The explanation moves from the reality, to the remedy, to the result, and finally to the reversal of falling away from Jesus.

And it starts with a statement about the problem of regression.

Don’t Fall Away from Jesus in Regression (5:11-6:3)

The author of Hebrews is about to explain a deep and difficult concept about Jesus’ priesthood after the order of Melchizedek.

But he knows that his audience will have a hard time accepting it.

He’s going to explain it anyway, but before he does that, he explains to his audience their own spiritual immaturity.

And he does this so that they’ll understand why he is taking such pains to explain Melchizedek and all of the old covenant fulfillments in Christ.

He explains the reality of their regression and the remedy for their regression so that they will work hard to mature as the truth about Jesus is revealed to them.

First, let’s look at the reality of regression in chapter 5, verses 11-14.

Hebrews 5:11–12 ESV

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,

Hebrews 5:13–14 ESV

for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Here, we see…

The Reality of Regression (5:11-14)

This is the no-so-great situation the original audience was in.

And it’s the same situation we can find ourselves in as well.

The author comes right out the gate in verse 11 rebuking his audience for their dull hearing.

He just brought up Jesus’ priesthood after the order of Melchizedek in the previous passage.

And that’s what he has a lot to say about.

Jesus’ priesthood like Melchizedek is a topic that is rich and deep, but it would be confusing for those who are stuck in the legalism of the old covenant.

They had only ever known the Levitical priesthood, Aaron’s priesthood.

So, jumping straight to a different priesthood would sound to them like a deviation from God’s Law even though it’s actually the fulfillment of it.

The topic itself isn’t hard to explain, but the audience’s capacity to understand it makes it hard to explain.

So, before the author of Hebrews goes on to painstakingly explain Jesus’ priesthood after the order of Melchizedek to his dull-hearing audience, he rebukes them for their regression.

The opposite of progress is regression.

When a child or a pet is potty training, sometimes they make good progress toward avoiding accidents, but sometimes they regress and end up with more accidents than successes.

If a person has a severe enough brain injury or neural illness, they can regress to the point of needing to relearn how to walk or talk again like a child.

Regression is never a good thing.

The people of Israel regressed a bit when they said that they wanted to go back to Egypt, to slavery, rather than remain in freedom out in the wilderness on their way to the promised land.

The Jews the author was originally addressing here regressed a bit when they decided to go back to the rituals and rules of Judaism.

We can also end up regressing when we go back to our old way of life.

The author likens their regression to moving backward from maturity to immaturity, from adulthood to being like a child.

But their regression is spiritual, not physical.

He says that by this time they ought to be teachers, but they need others to teach them again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

This is very similar to Jesus’ rebuke of Nicodemus in John 3:10 “Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”

As a teacher of Israel he should have understood the new covenant, the second birth, the coming of the Messiah, and the nature of the Holy Spirit.

The Jewish original audience of Hebrews should have understood that all of the old covenant was leading to it’s fulfillment in the coming Messiah.

All of those things were clearly explained in the old testament Scriptures.

But reading them without a guide can result in misinterpretation.

And reading them with a hard heart can result in misapplication.

They had misunderstood or misapplied the Scriptures, and thought that they needed to hold onto the old covenant instead of moving on from it with Jesus as its fulfillment.

They knew the truth about Jesus, but they regressed back into Judaism.

And now, instead of building on the shared understanding of Jesus’ fulfillment, the author has to go back and explain Jesus’ fulfillment again.

He gives the metaphor of food and maturity.

Milk is for babies who can’t chew or digest solid food.

Solid food is for those who are able to chew and digest it.

Milk has all the nutrients babies need, but milk is insufficient once they are able to chew and digest solid food.

Likewise, the old covenant had all the necessary spiritual nutrients for God’s people at that time, but now that Jesus has come and brought in the new covenant, God’s people need more than that spiritual milk, they need the solid food of Jesus.

But they had regressed and needed to be weaned again.

The author explains some aspects of spiritual maturity and immaturity here in verses 13 and 14.

The spiritually immature are “unskilled in the word of righteousness.”

They don’t know how to chew and digest God’s Word to live righteously.

Either they choke on it and spit it out in rejection, or they swallow it whole and it passes right through them with no benefit at all.

They need milk, which is nutrients from that same solid food processed through the child’s mother so that it actually benefits them.

Spiritually speaking, this is why God gave them rules rather than principles, because as spiritual children they needed God to process the principle for them and give them the rule that clearly showed them what was good and what was evil.

That’s the mark of spiritual immaturity, needing someone else to tell you how to live righteously according to God’s Word.

Now, the spiritually mature are able to discern between good and evil.

In the old covenant God processed his principles for his people and gave them rules to follow.

But now, in the new covenant, we have principles from God’s Word written on our hearts and we can know what is good and evil through constant practice.

Reading God’s Word and applying it to our context to see all the good and evil around us and in our lives.

It’s the same truths, the same principles from the old covenant, but we aren’t bound by those rules anymore since we can see and process God’s principles of righteousness from his Word.

We can do this because now we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us to help us with our discernment, and we have the mind of Christ to know what he would want us to do, what righteousness actually looks like.

So, if you have the ability to discern between good and evil, if you have the ability to live righteously in Christ, then why would you ever want to go back to your old way of life, away from Jesus?

So, this is the situation, the reality of regression.

But once we find ourselves there, once we find that we’ve run backward away from Jesus…

What do we do to fix it?

Next, the author of Hebrews explains exactly what we can do about it in chapter 6, verses 1-3.

Hebrews 6:1–3 ESV

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, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

Here, we see…

The Remedy for Regression (6:1-3)

This is what the original audience was to do about their situation.

And it’s also what we can do to come back to Jesus after we’ve run away from him.

The author says that the remedy, the solution for spiritual regression is simply to grow up.

That might sound a bit harsh, but the reality is that it’s disobedient and dangerous to regress like this.

In order to repent of our regression we need to move on to maturity, to leave the elementary doctrine of Christ, and grow up in him.

The elementary doctrine of Christ is all of the types and shadows and covenants and prophecies that looked forward to the coming Messiah, the coming Christ.

These are all super important, and the author isn’t saying that we should completely abandon them, but we have to move on to understand their fulfilment in Jesus.

Using another metaphor, the author likens the old covenant to a foundation that the new covenant in Jesus is built on.

When you build a house, you lay the foundation, but as soon as the foundation is laid, you move on to build the rest of the house.

You don’t lay the foundation again and again.

Then all you would have is a giant foundation and no building.

You’ve got to move on to build what the foundation was always meant to support.

The author lists six things that were foundational in the old covenant that find their fulfillment in Jesus.

These six things are in three couplets.

First, repentance from dead works, and faith toward God.

The dead works he’s referring to are not our efforts to be saved.

They’re works of death, sin, selfishness, the things we do in our state of spiritual death.

Ephesians 2:1–2 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—”

The old covenant called God’s people to repent just as much as the new covenant.

At the end of the book of Leviticus God told his people that if they disobeyed him, then he would discipline them to turn them back to him, to encourage repentance.

Leviticus 26:23–24 ““And if by this discipline you are not turned to me but walk contrary to me, then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins.”

Faith toward God goes hand in hand with repentance because in turning away from sin we are turning toward God in faith, believing what he has said about our sin and about what he wants us to do.

And these are fulfilled in Jesus because he also calls us to repent of our sin, of our works of death, and we’re able to do that because God the Father disciplined his Son, Jesus on our behalf.

And we are called to have faith in God, to believe what God has said, specifically about his Son, Jesus.

We’ve got to have faith in Jesus as the fulfillment of all that God was building in the old covenant, believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God who became human, died in our place, and rose from the dead so that we could be reconciled to God through our faith in him.

The second foundational couplet is instruction about washing and instruction about the laying on of hands.

Some see this as baptism and receiving the Holy Spirit.

But those things are decidedly new covenant aspects, not foundational old covenant things that we are supposed to move on from.

I think the old covenant aspects in view are ritual washings and sacrifices.

Throughout the book of Leviticus, God told his people to wash their hands and their bodies and their clothes in all kinds of different circumstances.

And all of that washing highlighted the dirtiness of their sin, the dirtiness of their hearts that needed constant washing.

But in the new covenant, Jesus washes our hearts clean.

Ezekiel 36:25 “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.”

Also, throughout the book of Leviticus, the sacrifices were killed while the priests laid their hands on the head of the animal.

The author of Hebrews will go on to explain Jesus’ fulfillment of the sacrificial system in later chapters.

But the reality is that we don’t need all these sacrifices anymore because Jesus sacrificed his perfect life once for all time to atone for our sin.

The third foundational couplet is the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

Now, the resurrection of the dead is a topic that was so obscure in the old covenant Scriptures that the Sadducees in Jesus’ time didn’t believe in it.

Matthew 22:23 “The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question,”

After answering their ridiculous question, Jesus addressed their rejection of the resurrection of the dead.

Matthew 22:31–33 “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.”

Jesus used grammar to prove the resurrection of the dead.

God is, present tense, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who at the time Jesus was speaking and even now, are dead.

So, for God, the God of the living, to presently be their God, they need to be somehow alive for him to be their God.

And the clearest deduction is that this is only possible if they are raised from the dead.

There are other passages in the prophets and writings that indicate more clearly the truth of the resurrection.

But we’re going to move on to the last foundational aspect of the old covenant, eternal judgment.

Eternal judgment was also something only hinted at in the old covenant Scriptures, but it’s clearly there in God’s character as eternal and just.

Moses sang about it from God’s perspective in Deuteronomy 32:40–41 “For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, As I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me.”

Both the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment find their fulfillment in Jesus because he is the firstfruits of the resurrection and he is the eternal judge.

All of these things are important aspects of God’s Word, but we can’t leave them in the old covenant and not see how they are fulfilled in Jesus.

We can’t keep laying the foundation of obscurity without moving on to clarity in Christ.

We have to move on, we have to grow up, we have to mature in our thinking and understanding of Scripture and its fulfillment in Christ.

But the only way we can do that is through the power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

That’s why the author says that he will move on to explain Jesus’ fulfillment of these things if the Lord permits.

He’s going to move on because the Lord has compelled him to do so.

But he realizes that the only way his audience will follow him and his explanation of Jesus’ fulfillment is if the Lord permits.

The only way that we can move on to maturity and understand these spiritual things is if God in his sovereignty allows us to understand.

But it still takes effort on our part to resist regressing.

So far we’ve been talking about regression, running back to our old way of life away from our new life in Christ.

But regression, like a disease or a wound, if left alone and untreated, will fester into rejection.

We’re moving into the second half of our passage where we find the warning.

Don’t Fall Away from Jesus in Rejection (6:4-12)

The author of Hebrews presents this warning in a way that, at first it seems like a reality.

But the warning gives way to a statement of assurance that renders the warning only a real possibility rather than an actual reality.

This is a possibility that functions the same way as all the other warnings in Hebrews.

God uses the warning to make sure that those who are truly his will not do what what he warns against.

So, let’s read the warning in verses 4-8 so that we’ll understand what’s at stake here.

Hebrews 6:4–6 ESV

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, 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.

Hebrews 6:7–8 ESV

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 being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

Here, we see…

The Result of Rejection (6:4-8)

This is an explanation of why this discussion about regression, running away from Jesus, is so important.

In this section we get a crystal clear warning and an illustration to explain it.

The warning is all about the impossibility of repentance for those who have rejected Jesus after fully witnessing and associating with the new covenant.

It’s impossible.

Not difficult, or nearly impossible, or improbable… it’s impossible.

Just like it’s impossible for God to lie, or it’s impossible for animal blood to actually take away sins, or impossible to please God without faith.

It’s impossible.

Just so we’re clear, the description here is not of those who are legitimately saved.

None of these descriptions are used anywhere else to describe the state of salvation.

They only describe witnessing and associating with the new covenant, not being under the new covenant.

Being enlightened, having the truth of the new covenant in Jesus fully explained.

Having tasted the heavenly gift, like a detective tasting some evidence and then spitting it out, or a food critic tasting a dish without swallowing.

Having tasted Jesus, the bread of life but not feeding on him.

Having shared or associated with the Holy Spirit, seeing his work in people’s lives, witnessing his power in action through the spiritual gifts.

Having tasted the goodness of God’s declaration of freedom in Christ, again tasting but not feeding.

Having witnessed the powers of the age to come, again seeing the power of God to give spiritual life and freedom from sin, and the power of the Holy Spirit in the authenticating sign gifts.

This is the state that the original audience was in.

They had seen and witnessed all of these things, but they had regressed back into the rituals and rules of Judaism.

They had regressed to a point, but they had not yet regressed to the point of rejecting Jesus.

The warning is that these Jews who had experienced all of this, if they remained in their regression or regressed any further, then they would end up rejecting Jesus and it would be impossible to bring them back to repentance.

They would go past the point of no return.

But… why?

Why is that the point of no return?

Why is it impossible for them to repent?

Why would it be impossible for you or me to repent if we also rejected Jesus like that?

The author of Hebrews says that it’s impossible because having that much evidence and truth right in front of you and still rejecting Jesus is like saying that he isn’t the Christ, and he deserved to die for his own sins as a heretic and a blasphemer, and assigning his miracles to the work of demons.

I think this is exactly what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 12:31–32 “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us understanding, the one who allows us to accept the truth of the gospel.

So, the one who sees what the Holy Spirit is doing, the one who has witnessed and associated with the power of the Spirit, as our passage in Hebrews 6 describes, and then rejects it as demonic…

That is unforgivable blasphemy of the Spirit, leaving it impossible for them to repent.

They are crucifying Jesus once again to their own harm, not to his.

To give an illustration of this warning, the author of Hebrews explains how a plot of land is useful if the rain and cultivation produce a crop, but if the rain and cultivation produce thorns and thistles then it isn’t useful at all, near to being cursed, and destined to be burned.

There are two other illustrations that Jesus gave that are similar to this one.

In John 15:1-6 Jesus gave an illustration of himself as a vine and us as branches, and any branch not attached to the vine would not produce fruit, and it would be gathered up and burned.

Another one that might be a little closer to this warning in Hebrews is the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13:24–30.

The point of that parable is this:

True believers and false believers are in the Church, and they have been from the beginning of the Church.

But we aren’t supposed to root out the false believers.

Instead we are to grow up with them assuming that all of us are true believers, and let God sift us out.

This warning in Hebrews is not meant to be used as a litmus test of other people’s faith.

It’s to be used as a tool for personal assessment and application.

If you feel tempted to abandon Jesus after having witnessed his glory and beauty in the gospel and in his Church, then use this warning to understand exactly what you are giving up.

If you feel tempted to abandon Jesus, and you have no fruit, no useful crop, no evidence to show that you even remotely understand the gospel, then you may be heading past the point of no return.

But if you have fruit, a useful crop, ample evidence that you’re a true believer, then there’s no way God would let you give up on his Son.

Does this actually happen?

Yes.

The Pharisees did it just before Jesus hit them with his teaching about blasphemy of the Spirit.

It’s happened to plenty of people who we thought were believers, but proved otherwise by rejecting Jesus after witnessing and associating with the truth of the gospel and his power in other believers’ lives.

Does that mean our loved ones who have fallen away from Jesus like this are gone forever?

Not necessarily.

We can’t know exactly what’s going on in a person’s heart.

Only God knows that.

So, keep begging them to come back.

Does this happen to true believers?

No, absolutely not.

If you are truly one of God’s children, then he won’t let you go this far.

He’ll direct you to this warning and others to keep you from falling away from Jesus like this.

So, we saw how we tend to regress, to run away from Jesus instead of running to him, and how we ought to remedy that by studying, listening, and meditating on the gospel and how Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises of the old covenant and better than our old way of life.

And we just saw how if we stay in our regression and don’t run back to Jesus, then we will eventually go past the point of no return, rejecting Jesus with no opportunity for repentance.

We know that our salvation is 100% dependent on Jesus to hold onto us, so those who go this far away from Jesus were never his to begin with.

And the author of Hebrews understands that this harsh warning might be distressing to us, it might cause some of us to doubt our salvation without good reason to doubt it.

That’s why he goes on to explain his assurance that his audience has not gone so far as to reject Jesus.

They actually have the reverse of rejection… acceptance, and faith.

They just need to mature in their faith.

So, let’s look at the last section of our passage in verses 9-12 so we can have that assurance as well.

Hebrews 6:9–10 ESV

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.

Hebrews 6:11–12 ESV

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the 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.

Here, we see…

The Reverse of Rejection (6:9-12)

This is how you can know that you’re ok, that you haven’t rejected Jesus.

The author reveals that he’s been speaking rhetorically of a real possibility when he says that he’s sure that his original audience is not beyond the point of no return.

He says that he feels sure of better things about them, things that belong to salvation.

And then he explains why he’s sure that they’re true believers.

And we can use his reasoning to assure ourselves of our salvation as well.

He says that they have a visible work of love for God’s name that God won’t overlook.

Fruit from their branch abiding in Christ, the vine, a useful crop produced from the rain and cultivation of their heart.

It would be unjust of God to overlook this evidence that they are true believers, that Jesus has paid for their sins.

And this visible work of love for God’s name, for all that God is… is serving the saints.

Love for God is worked out in love for God’s people.

John explained this so clearly in his epistle of 1 John.

1 John 4:20–5:1 “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.”

And the desire is that everyone in the church would have this same love for God’s name working out in service to each other.

And that love is an earnestness, a depth of sincerity about the truth of the gospel and the sufficiency of Jesus, that results in serving each other.

And not only that but the desire is also that everyone in the church would have the same assurance of hope in Jesus because we refuse to let go of him, we refuse to fall away from him.

And our earnestness for the truth of the gospel and our hope in Christ puts a desire in our hearts to love him by serving each other so that we aren’t sluggish.

So that we aren’t dull in action, so that our lives look like those who received God’s promises through patience and faith.

That word, sluggish, is the same word used back at the beginning of this passage describing the audience’s hearing as dull.

How we hear God’s Word directly affects how we live out his Word, and how we live out his Word indicates how we have heard his Word.

So, live consistently with the truth you’ve heard, live out your faith in Jesus, just like those who inherit God’s promises through patience and faith.

The promise the author has in mind is God’s promise to Abraham to bless him and multiply him, which he explains in the next passage that we’ll look at next week.

And all who put their faith in Jesus inherit that same promise of blessing.

So, we can look around at those who, like Abraham, live out their faith in patience and service to the saints and are blessed by God for it.

We can look at them and do likewise so we won’t fall away from Jesus.

Conclusion

Don’t fall away from Jesus.

Don’t regress back to your old way of life.

Don’t go back to the old way of relating to God.

Don’t run away from Jesus.

And if you find that you have regressed, don’t stay there and don’t go any further away from Jesus because that will only lead you to reject him.

Don’t reject Jesus because he’s the only way to be saved.

And if you reject him after witnessing so much evidence of his sufficiency and power and love and freedom, there’s no coming back from that.

It’s a very serious warning and dire consequence for rejecting Jesus like that, so don’t do it.

But you can be sure that you haven’t regressed or rejected Jesus if you patiently persevere in faith and living out your faith and love of Jesus by loving and serving other believers.

Not perfectly, but consistently coming back to believing that Jesus is enough, more than enough, and desiring to love him by loving each other.

Now, I don’t presume to know where your heart is this morning.

There’s no way I can really know what’s going on in anyone’s heart.

I mean, sometimes I don’t even know what’s going on in my own heart.

But God knows.

And if he is revealing to you that you are in need of a new heart, that you are lost and headed to hell and in need of salvation from sin and death.

Then I beg you to heed that call and put your faith in Jesus, the Son of God who loves you and who gave himself for you.

He’s God who became human to die in your place and rise from the dead so that you could be reconciled to God, saved from sin and death all by simply putting your faith in him and submitting to him as Lord.

Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Pray

Father, thank you for this warning in Hebrews.

Thank you for loving us enough to warn us of this danger so that we will stay far away from it.

Please help us to hold on to Jesus all the more when life is difficult or painful.

Comfort us in our affliction.

Remind us of the promise of your blessing.

Give us hope to persevere, to hold on to Jesus to the end.

Allow us a glimpse of the glory and blessing of eternity in your loving and satisfying presence.

And help us to desire to serve each other as the best way to express our love for you and your name.

Help us desire that, but also help us see exactly how that desire can be accomplished.

Help us see exactly how each of us can serve each other to your glory and out of love for you.

We ask all of these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

Communion

Well, we get to celebrate communion now.

And if you’re visiting with us and you’re a baptized believer not under church discipline, then we welcome you to join us in this celebration.

In our passage that we just looked at, specifically in Hebrews 6:4-6, we are warned about tasting Jesus and then falling away from him.

Tasting him but not feeding on him.

In John chapter 6, Jesus talked metaphorically about feeding on him as the true bread from heaven, eating his body and drinking his blood.

We’re not talking about cannibalism, we’re talking about reading and remembering Jesus’ sacrifice.

Sustaining our spiritual life by remembering the gospel as often and as necessary as we need to eat and drink.

Not just tasting, but feeding.

That’s what the communion celebration is all about.

Remembering Jesus’ death until he comes.

Remembering his sacrifice, his body broken and his blood shed so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.

Another thing in our passage, specifically in Hebrews 6:1-2 was the foundational aspects of the old covenant that are fulfilled in Jesus.

One of those things that isn’t specifically listed, but it still applies, is the Passover celebration.

The Passover looked back to how God had saved them from slavery in Egypt, and it looked forward to how God would continue rescuing them and ultimately rescue them through the death of the Messiah.

It would be foolish to regress back to celebrate the Passover without acknowledging how it was fulfilled in the death of Jesus Christ.

And the communion celebration is just that, acknowledging how Jesus has fulfilled the Passover, proclaiming his death and looking forward to his return in glory.

We can see this fulfillment very clearly in Luke 22:14-20.

I’ll read it, then I’ll pray, and then we will eat and drink together to celebrate Jesus’ fulfillment and our forgiveness and new life because of his death on our behalf.

Luke 22:14–20 “And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

Pray

Father, thank you for saving us through the death and resurrection of your Son, Jesus.

Thank you for giving us this reminder so that we never forget your love for us.

Lord, you have given us a hunger to remember the gospel, and you have given us your Word and your Church to sate that hunger.

You given them to us to remind us of the gospel, the good news of your great love for us and your great sacrifice of your Son for us.

This is a solemn celebration, but also a joyful celebration.

We know that the cost was high, so high that none of us could ever pay it.

But you paid that cost without even a second thought because you love us that much.

It’s a terrible thing that Jesus had to die, but it’s a wonderful thing that because he died, we don’t have to.

I pray that you would help us to remember that, to remember how wonderful it is to have new life in Christ because of his death.

Help us remember his fulfillment of the old covenant, so that we won’t be tempted to regress or reject him.

Please bless us now as we celebrate the infinite extent of your love for us and the fulfillment of Jesus at the cross.

We pray all of this in Jesus’ wonderful name. Amen.

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