Untitled Sermon

Sometimes we need a little kick in the pants. Sometimes we need to have someone come alongside of us and tell us what we may not want to hear.

This is the case with the audience of the letter of Hebrews. We call it a book, but in fact, it was a letter written to Jewish Christians who are struggling some.

5:11-6:12 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 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, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

6 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, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits. 4 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, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 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. 7 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. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10 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. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. [1]

There is a theme that runs throughout Scripture that we need to pay attention to. And it has to deal with this idea of Steadfastness. Remaining.

It means don’t stop, it means to continue the work that has been started in you.

The group of Jewish Christians are hanging on by a thread, it would seem that some of them are going back to their old ways. And our writer is here to encourage and equip them for their lives with Christ and the writer is also warning them to continue on, to persevere in their faith because if they don’t then they are basically telling the world that they don’t want anything to do with Jesus and His Salvation. We will get to that portion soon.

And so when we read those words to the Hebrews we get this great picture of what is going on and what the writer is trying to communicate. In one sense the writer is saying

The writer is saying that this is serious business here. You need to pay attention.

verse 11 says that you have become dull in your hearing, listen up people! you’re not hearing me. He is saying, “hello! Is this thing on?”

The writer is basically saying that they have become dull, ignorant (Now I hope you understand that the word ignorant does not mean that you are being mean or disrespectful, that is the way we use the word ignorant, the word ignorant means without knowledge)

and they are ignorant because they have been lazy. They hear the truth but they don’t really care. They don’t care about the truths of Scripture, they don’t really care about the words of Christ. They aren’t doing anything with the knowledge that they have of Christ. You have to put something into it.

And when you don’t care you don’t put forth the effort in your relationship with God. When you are indifferent you don’t do anything one way or the other.

You could look at your relationship with God like you look at your marriage. Or maybe not. Are you pursuing your husband? Are you pursuing your wife? For many men the wife is pursued really heavily during the dating relationship.

You call, you write little love notes, you plan out dates and you buy little gifts. All of those little things you did when you were dating showed that girl that you really cared about her and that you wanted to get to know her and that you would do anything in your power to spend time with her.

And when you did all those things you were showing her your desire for her and so when you finally popped the question she said yes because she knew how much you loved her because you showed her. And you reaped the benefits of loving (action word), not a feeling but a verb of loving someone.

What about your relationship with God? Men and women. A healthy relationship with God means that you are pursuing God with your life. You spend time in regular scripture reading, regular prayer and regular practice at doing what Jesus says. That is what it looks like to pursue a relationship with God.

What the writer of Hebrews is saying here is that their Christianity isn’t part of their every day life. And remember, that is what this faith is. It is every day. It is surrender to Jesus, surrendering what? Your soul? No, not just your soul, but your whole life. Your life shows what you believe in. Your life shows what is important to you.

So, is church a priority to you? Or is it that you come when it is convenient? Or when you just feel like it? Gathering together is a priority. It can’t be a convenience thing. There are these trends today where people will call themselves regular church attenders when they are only showing up 2 times even 1 times a month!

So you may ask yourself, “why is my relationship with God not what I want it to be?” And there can be many answers to that question. The first question I would ask would be. Are you in church? Later we will talk about the verse that says “do not forsake the gathering together”.

So people need to mature in their faith.

So #1 Grow UP!

12-13 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness[2]. You are still being bottle fed?

This idea isn’t new to the scriptures, this idea that someone is only getting their nutrition from milk.

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,

1 cor 3:2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready[3]

So here is a question. Who drinks only milk and no solid food? Babies! So there is this idea of being infant Christians who seem to feed only on milk and not on solid food. What does that mean for the Christian?

The author says essentially:

#1 Grow Up. You don’t need to learn the same things over and over again. He is talking about them being childish in their faith.

It means 1. Stop Being Childish! It means what he says in verse 12 in chapter 5; In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again.

I love the boldness of the writer. We don’t want to offend anyone. We say, “it’s okay, you are doing okay, you are doing better than you used to, yeah, you haven’t moved at all in the last 10 years of your relationship with Christ but it is true. If you aren’t progressing in your faith you are still drinking milk, baby formula!

He says, with the amount of time that you have had in your relationship with Christ you should be a teacher by now. A teacher!

And so the author says, chapter 6:1-2 Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

I just have to say “wow”! That is hitting pretty hard isn’t it? The author here is saying “Grow Up!” Get on with it. And I have to say, “Amen! to whoever wrote this book. Wow! I have to tell you that this is exciting to me. You ought to be teachers with all that you know. But you are still a nursing baby.

What would happen if your high school kids came home from school and you asked them, “what did you learn today?”, and they said, we did the abc song again. We learned how to count to 10 again.” What would you say to that? Would you be happy with that child’s education?

What would it look like if I said, when the big and is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 11 what time would it be? We are getting close to that time so we need to move on.

But you see how ridiculous that is isn’t it? You know the alphabet; you know how to tell time, why would we go over it and over it again and again. You know it already.

So when it comes to the scriptures; we don’t need to convince you about the resurrection, we don’t need to talk anymore about you being baptized cause you have already been baptized, let’s move on!

The writer says “You should be eating solid food by now”. Now what does that mean? What is solid food mean? Part of it can mean that you can feed yourself…” Guess what, if you have surrendered your life to Jesus you have the Holy Spirit that lives in you and what does the Holy Spirit do? He teaches, he prompts he discerns.

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. You will be guided by the HS

You should be teachers, not because you are qualified, not because you have a degree, but because the HS lives in you and you have the ability to let the HS work through you into the lives of others. Look, you can’t do anything on your own, I can’t do anything on my own, we have to let the HS work through us, and He will when we let Him by being available and faithful.

And we have to 2 HANG ON

v 4-8It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.

We need to remember that these verses need to be taken into context from whom they were written to. We can’t forget that these Hebrews were being faced with persecution from Rome where they would actually be stood up and asked point blank to renounce Christ or die. What would we do? What would we do if all of a sudden some law was passed in the name of tolerance that you could no longer adhere to your Christ-only line of thinking?

Would you proclaim Christ? Or, would you say, I renounce Him so that I could live, maybe to live to tell others about Him.

But the question that usually crops up in everybody’s mind, well do you believe “once saved always saved’? Meaning once I say the prayer don’t I get to go to Heaven?

And usually, the thinking behind that is again of an insurance policy to get you to the right place, to go and be with the “Man Upstairs”.

And I think that when we treat salvation like it is a transaction, which it is the way to heaven then we don’t really understand salvation at all. And I need to tell you that this isn’t salvation at all.

Too many people treat Salvation like it is something to cross off of a bucket list, a thing to cross off of your to-do list but please know that it is so much more than that. Again, this is why I try not to use the term, become a Christian, because the reality of being a Christian involves a loss, a total loss of your life as you surrender it to Jesus Christ.

And there are many people who at one time in their lives walked up front in a church service, or raised their hand while no one was looking, or filled out a card, or prayed a prayer who may very well go to Hell.

So when you say do you believe in once saved always saved I guess there would need to be a qualifier there. Is the person actually saved? I have to tell you that I have seen a lot of kids in youth ministry go up front and agree that they want to get saved after a speaker manipulated them into coming up front. There are lots of speakers, people that have the ability to stir the crowd up and get people to come up and seemingly give their lives to Jesus. Even with good motives.

I have seen Christian concerts where the million album selling singer calls people to a relationship with Christ and you see all kinds of people giving their lives to Jesus and a month later they go back to whatever it was that they were doing.

I remember mission trips where on the last night, when everybody is tired and emotional and open that everyone has this special time when they all cry and fall all over one another and I would think to myself, man, God is doing great stuff here and maybe HE was, but we always need to examine these things.

I would like to read a couple of verses to you this morning that relate when it comes to this idea of Can people fall always from Christ? Can you lose your salvation? Where you ever saved in the first place? Is your salvation genuine?

I am just trying to be real here. I am not telling you that I have the best handle on the answer to the question because I don’t. There are theologians who write books on this stuff and they fall on different sides of the issue and I don’t believe that I can shed any new light on the debate.

But for some reason, the writer in Hebrews says this. 4-6 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance.

He says that you can’t come back to salvation again because it would be like crucifying Jesus all over again. This is a really difficult passage, and I don’t think that we can simply dismiss it. I think we need to look a little further.

So what does the writer mean? There are three main and very different explanations as to what the writer means. The first view is that you really can lose your salvation and that once you lose it you can never be saved again.

There second view that says that the persons in question were never actually saved to begin with. They never really gave their lives to Jesus. And this might be an easy explanation to the problem but that is a difficult explanation because the writer uses the term “tasted the Heavenly gift” which for all intents and purposes means that they were saved.

The third view is that the losing of your salvation is hypothetical, the “if this were to happen, then” but ultimately that would never happen.

So you see where this is difficult. And this is where if you are being bottle fed that the answer might seem impossible.

But if we look at Scripture, we remember verses like My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall 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 can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. The question then is, “who are His sheep”? Those who prayed a prayer? Those who walked up front? Or those who genuinely gave their lives to Jesus and continue to live for Him.

Paul tells us

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And that is good, we saw where Jesus said that His sheep will never go away, but in

Matthew13 and the four soils. We can look at certain characters in the bible. Saul who was chosen by God but ultimately falls away. Judas was one of Jesus’ inner circle of men and ultimately turns Jesus in. There are other stories of people who the Holy Spirit was using who fall away.

When Jesus talks about the four soils remember that the seeds germinated, they took root, began to grow, but when the cares about life and the world came there was no root to sustain them. I feel like this is the person who out of emotion gave their lives to Christ but didn’t really know what it meant.

Sometimes people treat their relationship with God like it is a get out of jail free card, ro that there is a particular situation that they need to get out of or get understanding from.

Preachers should really be upfront that the Christian life is not floating down the lazy river, there are toils and hardships and suffering that is guaranteed with Christianity.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

He continues on to say rejoice in the suffering of Christ.

We do a disservice to people when we sell them a Jesus that will give us a life free of worry and free of pain. Because when we do that and the first time something bad happens then you drop Jesus because he didn’t give you want you wanted.

Please know that I am telling you right now that when you have given your life wholy over to Jesus you will encounter suffering. You will encounter trials. It is during those times of testing that you find out who you are in Christ. Are you really trusting in Him?

And understand this, “We are not here dealing with he sincere believer who is depressed about his spiritual failure, or the backslider who has temporarily lost interest in the things of God.[4]” The person we are talking here about a person who rejects Christ entirely, even blasphemes against the Holy Spirit.

This isn’t, “I told a lie yesterday am I really saved?” Lying is serious, yes but that isn’t the type of situation going on here. This also isn’t, “I haven’t been praying as much as I used to”. No, this is a blatant and knowing turn from Jesus, even speaking against Jesus. I can’t say who is or is not going to Heaven or Hell. That is only for God to judge. I know that if your life isn’t surrendered to Christ than the Bible says that your ultimate destination is eternal separation from God.

But the writer of Hebrews is saying, “We aren’t worrying about you guyes”.

So we are told to grow up, to hang on and finally to 3. Keep Going.

Let’s move on to verse 9-12 Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

It seems like the writer might have sparked a little fear in this church and he wants to reassure them that he isn’t actually talking about them. Or is he? He says that God is not unjust! That is encouraging to me. He is not unjust. You don’t have to fear that you are going to lose your salvation, he says God will not forget your work and the love you have shown him by helping his people and then he says, CONTINUE to help them, and then he says show this diligence to the VERY END, SO THAT what you hope may be fully realized, not be become lazy.

Being a fully devoted follower of Jesus looks like something. The writer of the Hebrews is saying. Keep doing what you are doing. You belong to Christ, keep doing what Christ wants you to do. Keep showing yourself approved. Not because it saves you but because when you have Christ at the center of your life it shows.

The book of In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

Earlier in this book it is said, Don’t Drift.

This is the time when we look at our lives and take a little inventory. We examine ourselves. Please take a moment to examine yourself this morning.

Have I really given my life to Jesus? Maybe you haven’t, maybe you have. But there is a step that you need to take in your faith.

You aren’t here for just a ride; you really have to do something in your faith. God

Please let the Words of God change you. Please let these verses spark a flame in your heart that will change everything about your life.

[4] Brown, R. (1988). The message of Hebrews: Christ above all (p. 114). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.