Grow Useful Fruit!

Hebrews 6:4-8

Keep Growing

Keep growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 3:18)

Part two of "Let's Grow Together." Last week: grow. This week: what happens when you don't.

Introduction

Reptiles keep growing as long as they live. It slows down, but a healthy animal never fully quits. When one does stop, you don't call it mature. You check whether it's sick or dying. Growth is the sign of life.

This is one of five major warning passages in Hebrews. The other four all reference the Old Covenant. This one is different: it is aimed at the readers' own growth.

Where We Stand: The Assurance Texts

Before the warning, the anchor. God keeps his own.

"I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."John 10:28-29.

"Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out... This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day."John 6:37-40.

Nothing in creation "will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."Romans 8:38-39.

"He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."Philippians 1:6.

Three Views of the Passage

1. The Arminian view. The people in verses 4-6 are real Christians who really fall away and really lose their salvation. The descriptions are taken at full weight as marks of regeneration.

Strength: takes the language seriously.

Weakness: must square "impossible to renew them" with a theology that usually allows return, and collides with John 10:28-29 and Philippians 1:6.

2. The hypothetical view. The warning is real but the case is impossible. If a true believer could fall away, there would be no way back. The warning is the means God uses to keep his people from doing the very thing described.

Strength: preserves perseverance and gives the warning real force.

Weakness: verses 7-8 don't sound hypothetical. The thorn-bearing field is presented as something that actually happens.

3. The Reformed view. The people described are not regenerate. They were in the covenant community with every privilege: they heard the Word, saw the Spirit's power, shared in the life of the church, tasted the goodness of it. But tasting is not feeding, and being rained on is not bearing fruit. Their falling away reveals what they always were, not the loss of what they had. Verse 9 confirms it: "we are confident of better things in your case, things that pertain to salvation."

Strength: holds warning and assurance together without weakening either, and matches the field imagery exactly.

Weakness: critics say it makes the strong language in verses 4-5 mean less than it sounds.

I. Check Your Gifts (vv. 4-6)

"Impossible."

Mark 10:27. "With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God."

Enlightened.

Tasted the heavenly gift.

Taste and see that the Lord is good? (Psalm 34:8)

Psalm 119:103. "How sweet your word is to my taste, sweeter than honey in my mouth."

John Owen: "There is a goodness and excellency in the word of God, able to attract and affect the minds of men, who yet never arrive at sincere obedience to it."

Shared in the Holy Spirit. Tasted the good word of God and the powers of the coming age.

Fallen away. Two shapes of tasting and turning:

Matthew 12:30-32. "Anyone who is not with me is against me... whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the one to come."

Luke 9:62. "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

II. Check Your Ground (vv. 7-8)

Same rain on both fields. The ground doesn't earn the rain. It reveals what it is by what it produces.

Growing in grace. Land that drinks the rain and produces a useful crop receives a blessing from God.

Growing in contempt. Land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless, near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

Luke 13:6-9. The fig tree in the vineyard. The axe is real, and the gardener is patient. "Leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. Perhaps it will produce fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down."

III. Check Your Growth (5:11-14; 6:1, 9)

Implications.

Mere knowledge is never enough. A reptile that eats but never converts food into growth is diseased. Knowledge that never becomes maturity is the same.

Sober assessment. Slow growth is still growth. Stalled growth is the warning.

Press on to maturity (6:1).

Conclusion

Back to John 10 and Philippians 1:6. The one who started the work will finish it. The question for a believer is never "will God let go of me?" but "am I still growing?" That is how you know you were ever alive.

Keep growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.