|
Sermon Manuscripts
The Penalty of Apostasy Part 1
a sermon in the series,
Hebrews: an Epistle of Encouragement
A sermon delivered
Sunday Morning, September 9, 2001
at Oak Grove Baptist Church, Paducah, Ky.
by S. Michael Durham
© 2001 Real Truth Matters
Hebrews 10:26-31
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. 28 He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: 29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
As encouraging as the book of Hebrews is, it’s also a very serious book with some very serious warnings. Our text today is one of the most serious warnings of the entire book. It’s much like chapter six verses four through six. The writer of Hebrews, after a deep and very long theological treatise on the superiority of Christ, has begun his practical exposition beginning with chapter ten and verse nineteen. Verses nineteen through twenty-five have been the subject of several messages in the last few weeks. But let’s read them again.
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:19-25)
It’s so easy to look at these practical instructions as options for Christians. We tend to say to ourselves, "Yes, these are some wonderful ideas, but they’re just not functional or practical for our times. Life is so much different now than then.” And so we tend to see these commands more like suggestions. But the remainder of this chapter, starting at verse twenty-six, should help us to see that these are just not suggestions, they are imperatives. And we should correct our thinking about these practical instructions that we’ve been studying for these last few weeks. The penalty of not taking these verses seriously is a grave probability of ruining your own soul. If we do not do what the writer of Hebrews intends for us to do with these commands in verses nineteen through twenty-five, then we are removing ourselves from support and strength much needed in order to remain faithful to Christ. The stakes are just that high, and the writer of Hebrews realizes that. And so he places a stern warning against apostasy here and shows what the penalty is if we do apostatize. No matter the difficulty, and no matter the changes necessary to obey these guidelines, we need to do whatever is in order to practice them, and not just for your own soul, but for the soul of a brother or sister.
In Hebrews chapter six verses four through six we preached to you, “Tough Talk: A Warning Against Apostasy.” Now, in Hebrews chapter ten verses twenty-six through thirty-one, Paul gives us the penalty if we forsake the warning.
There’s a warning and there’s a penalty stipulated here. I want you to see three very critical points. First, Jesus is being clearly despised by such a person who would do what verse twenty-nine says. Secondly, in response, judgment is dispensed. God will not take it lightly when one despises His Son, who is the sacrifice for our sins. And then thirdly, we will see that justice has been determined and will be fulfilled. Because of the seriousness of this passage we will only deal with the first point this morning.
JESUS DESPISED
What does the writer of Hebrews mean when he says, “If we sin willfully”? Well, in order for us to really understand what he’s meaning, let’s eliminate other interpretations that have been put forth.
The first possible interpretation is that any and every premeditated sin is what it means to “sin willfully.” But is the writer of Hebrews saying that when you premeditate sin you are removed from grace and there is no hope for you? If he were, nobody would make it to Heaven. The sad fact is, every one of us, including myself, after having been converted, has premeditated an act of disobedience. Unfortunately, in my case it has been more than once. We all have willfully sinned since becoming Christians. Therefore, this cannot be the meaning. There are too many promises that tell us that once we have been saved by grace we will be kept by that same grace.
A second interpretation that does not have merit is that sinning willfully means a period of declension. The word “declension” means a declining. The writer is not saying that if you decline or go through a period of what some call “backsliding,” then you’re outside of hope. But who has not experienced a decline in spiritual progress? We have all experienced times of declension. The Christian life is much like swimming upstream. It’s manageable, and you can do it. The current of the river is not so swift that you cannot make some progress, if you continue to swim. But the very moment that you cease stroking and begin to float, you will go backwards. The current will carry you back. There is no status quo in the Christian life, no plateaus, no stopping and taking spiritual vacations and resting a while. The moment you take a brief respite, a declension takes place. I don’t believe that the writer of Hebrews is saying that if you go backwards for a time that you have no hope. Such a position presents problems that the Scriptures do not answer. For example, how long can one decline and not lose their salvation? The Bible does not give us any indication of such a time line. If sinning willfully means a period of declension, then it would be reasonable to expect the Bible to state the length of that period of declension. Instead, the Bible states clearly that those whom God has saved He will forgive their sins and eventually deliver them from the power and presence of sin. For whomever He has saved, He will finish the process until the moment they are glorified in His presence. If we should go backwards, and occasionally we do, thank God that His grace and mercy is still there reaching out like a lifeguard pulling us back.
The next idea I want to address is that the writer of Hebrews is referring to some certain sins that are considered more heinous, such as adultery. But this interpretation seems to be a stretch since the author does not mention specific sins, but, rather, he states the one act of unbelief. The author says in verse twenty-three, “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised)” (Hebrews 10:23). In verse twenty-nine the author talks about crimes that deal with the aversion to and rejection of Christ’s sacrificial death. So the specific sin the writer is dealing with is unbelief, and this he has done throughout the entire book. As terrible as adultery is, it is still a sin that can be forgiven. David is an example. So it seems that this interpretation isn’t plausible.
So what does the author mean? He means a rejection of Jesus Christ and a defection from the church of Jesus Christ. The writer is speaking of apostasy. Now the word “apostasy” refers to a person who is a member of the church, who has professed faith in Christ and then rejects his profession, turning his back on the church and despising the Lord Jesus Christ. Apostasy is a despising and rejecting of Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, let me make you aware, if you’re not already, that the Father loves the Son infinitely, and those who despise the Son, the Father will despise. The Father will not take lightly anyone who rejects His gift of Jesus Christ. An apostate is a person, who has made a profession of faith, was baptized and became a member of a local church, and who subsequently has rejected the truth of Christianity, believing it to be no longer true, and has defected from Christ and His people.
Verse twenty-five sets up verse twenty-six and sheds light. He says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.” Verse twenty-five says that when you reject the church you also reject Jesus. The writer ties this thought in with his warning in verse sixteen. He was writing to a church that had experienced this very thing where several members had apostatized. Loved ones, neighbors, friends of the community had professed faith in Christ, been baptized, joined the church, walked with the church and appeared to walk with Christ for a season, but defected. When tranquility left the church as persecution arose, some in order to escape the persecution, renounced the Lord Jesus Christ, rejected the people of God, and went back to their former religion and lifestyle. The writer of Hebrews is saying if anyone does that, there’s no hope for them.
May I suggest to you that in order to apostatize, you do not necessarily have to publicly get up and say, “I renounce Jesus Christ and I recant all of my belief in the Bible and from this moment believe that the Bible is no longer the Word of God.” You don’t have to apostatize in that way. There are different degrees of apostasy and while that is the severest and harshest degree, and certainly the easiest to detect, you can apostatize by forsaking the previous instructions of verses nineteen through twenty-five and stay right in a local church.
Before I explain what I mean by that, let’s really look in detail at what it means to reject Christ. The author gives us several terms that I want us to look at. He states three things that are involved in the rejection of Christ, all from verse twenty-nine. First, he says, those “who hath trodden under foot the Son of God.” In other words, you have so despised Christ that you consider Him cheap and worthless like dirt under your feet. It’s an acknowledging that Christ has no relevancy to your life. Dear friend, again let me say, you do not have to say with your lips, “Jesus is not relevant to me.” You can just live your life that way, and you’re guilty of taking the Son of God under your foot and treading upon Him. The Bible teaches that the born again believer cannot live as he used to live. He cannot live with a disregard to Christ or His commandments. His inner man has been so changed that there is a stimulus motivating him to follow and to pursue God. Sometimes the desire is not as ardent as at other times, but that desire will remain. Christ is not nor can He be irrelevant to the Christian, and the Christian cannot live as if Christ is irrelevant to his life. Yet so many today in our churches are living in such a lifestyle and manner that ignores Christ in their everyday life. I find it difficult to understand how one can be saved and have no desire, no hunger, to study this beautiful, wonderful book. How do they go months after months not studying the Bible? The only word of God they get is from the preacher or Sunday school teacher. How can you ignore the Word and say that it is not relevant to your everyday life? And yet those who tread under foot the Son of God are saying Jesus is not relevant to their living.
Second, the author says, “hath counted the blood of the covenant . . . an unholy thing.” It is treating our dear Savior’s blood as a common thing. This is saying Jesus was only a man and that He died a death like any criminal would have died. It is to say that the blood of His sacrifice is of no atoning value, that it means nothing. There are church members who do this without having to renounce and recant publicly their faith in Christ; they simply live in disrespect to the shed blood and the holy power of that blood.
Third, our writer says, “And hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace.” The word “despite” means to insult. These folks have despised or insulted the gracious loving Spirit of God. Insults can come in various forms, but the essence of every insult is disrespect. It is literally a rejection, a disrespect of the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is the person of the Godhead who communicates with us. He is the one who convicts us of our sins and points to Jesus Christ as being the redeeming sacrifice for those sins. The Spirit of God is the One who imparts the truth of the gospel to the mind and to the heart, and He’s the One who comes and lives within the person who has repented of his sins and trusted in Christ. And so, to insult the Spirit of grace involves some type of slander. If someone came up to you and said something slanderous to you, they no doubt have insulted you. They have been disrespectful towards you. The writer of Hebrews is saying here, these people have literally committed a blasphemous slander against the Holy Spirit.
What is their slander? They no longer believe the promise of the Holy Spirit. The promise of the Spirit is this, “Look and live.” “Look to Christ and be saved.” Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). Thus the Holy Spirit comes to a sinner’s heart and says, “There, there’s your hope, there’s your remedy, there’s your way to God; look and live, believe, and you will be saved.” But a slanderer is one who will not believe, and in effect accuses the Holy Spirit of lying. In effect, he says that whatever the Spirit of God says is not true.
It is extremely important to note that this is done knowingly by the apostate. He knows the truth of Christ and yet rejects it. It is the same as when the Pharisees knowingly attributed the works of Christ to the power of Satan. Although we would not call them apostates, they had a form of knowledge that Christ was the Messiah, and yet they considered His power as being satanic. Therefore an apostate is one who has confessed belief in the truth and now knowingly rejects the truth of the Holy Spirit for whatever reason or motivation.
How can a church member do this? Well, in the strict definition of an apostate, they cannot do this unless they also publically reject Christ. Yet, dear friends, how many people have professed faith in Christ, and they never rested or trusted in Christ’s work on the cross? They’re still trusting in their own goodness or morality? Therefore, in essence, they are insulting the Spirit of grace by saying, “Holy Spirit, I can’t trust what you’re telling me. You tell me that if I truly just rest in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him without anything else, without even my goodness, that I can be saved?” Yes. Absolutely. That’s grace. “But,” they say, “I can’t do that, I can’t have any assurance. How will I know when I die I’m going to go to heaven if I don’t do something?” And so the Holy Spirit is slandered by their not believing Him. If I have described your unbelieving heart, then you are saying the Holy Spirit’s testimony about Christ can’t be trusted. I urge you as strongly as I know how, to reconsider your position. This is a very dangerous posture.
Let’s look in verse twenty-nine as to who’s doing the rejecting here. We’ve got to analyze this and come to some hard and fast conclusions, or this passage could mean so many different things. If we don’t rightly understand who these people are that are rejecting Christ, we wrongly interpret this passage and could say one can lose salvation after having being converted.
The writer of our epistle says these are those who “have received.” “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth.” The word “received” means more than just hearing the truth of the gospel. The word in the Greek means “to make one’s own self; to make it your own; to take it unto yourself.” So in other words, these are people who have heard the knowledge of the truth, which is the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. They have heard the message, and they’ve acknowledged it as the truth and have claimed it to be their very own. They have publicly testified that they have accepted Christ Jesus as the Lord of their life and that He is the way, the truth, and the life. They have received the knowledge and have adopted it. Verse twenty-nine also says these folks have “counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing.” The writer confesses that these apostates have been sanctified. Now we know that the word “sanctified” means to be made clean or holy. Thus, the author states the possibility exists of a group of people who has heard the gospel and made some type of public profession indicating that they had received the gospel. These have been baptized, and have been sanctified.
Now I have only one question for you, what does that sound like to you? It sounds like a believer to me, doesn’t it to you? Absolutely. Here again is the same kind of dilemma we had with Hebrews chapter six. Who was the author writing about? Were they or were they not Christians? Was it someone who pretended to be a Christian or was it someone who was really saved but lost their salvation?
Allow me to ask a couple more questions. First question, can people experience grace and not be saved? What is grace? Grace is an undeserved kindness, a loving mercy which we do not merit. How many awoke this morning, got out of bed and enjoyed some aspect of God’s creation? Only Christians? Hardly, for even sinners experience grace. Did not Jesus say that He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust and the sun to shine on the good and the evil? Yes, He did. Does God show any mercy to a wicked generation who never repents and believes in Him? Absolutely, look at this nation, if you don’t believe me. This nation experiences the blessing of the mercy of God. Otherwise, we would have been destroyed a long time ago. That is what is keeping this nation from final destruction—the sovereign mercy of God. Oh, America, listen, God’s mercy is not forever with a people or a society. Read the history of His own people called Israel. His mercy came to an end in that He brought judgment upon them. Oh, but even in His judgment He was still merciful in that He did not annihilate them. He left a remnant. And so, I believe that people can experience grace but not be saved. For example, you take two men in a church service and both hear the gospel. One is saved and the other isn’t. We can clearly say the man who received Christ was converted because of grace. But we can also say that a man who heard the gospel received a grace from God. It was God’s mercy that allowed him to hear the truth and not die without a witness. That too is grace.
It is important to know that an individual can have the grace of God convict him of his sins but not lead him to a final repentance. There are Scriptures after Scriptures that show us men who came under conviction but did not get saved. We’re going to learn about one, named Esau, in the twelfth chapter. Esau sought the Lord God with tears but could not find repentance. There was a conviction that came upon him, and he realized he had done wrong, he had missed God’s will for his life, but repentance was not found for Esau. So yes, the Holy Spirit can convince a man or a woman of their sins without their becoming believers.
My second question, can people who have been saved by grace lose grace? Absolutely not! We have dealt with this question before and will deal with it again as we continue our trek through the epistle of Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews has made it clear time and again that a true believer shall remain a believer and not lose grace. Salvation is a mercy of God and not a work of man. If God saves a person and allows that a person to finally fall away, what kind of salvation is that? Either God delivers man from sin or He does not. It cannot be some hybrid in between these polar opposites. Neither is God’s salvation dependent upon the strength and commitment of men. Salvation is not a joint venture between God and man. Man is hopelessly lost and under the dominion of sin. His strength to oppose and overcome sin’s tyranny is not minimal, it is non-existent. God, and God alone is the deliverer. And make no mistake about it, God is sufficient to completely save.
How then do we understand who these people are and what’s occurring here? It seems very clear that the writer sees the visible church as a mixed congregation. The visible church is all who identify themselves with a local congregation. In the writer’s mind, he looks at this visible external church, to which he is writing, the same way that prophets did the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. They too were called the people of God. Israel, however, was a mixed group. Some of God’s people in the Old Testament were saved. Some of God’s people in the Old Testament were lost, in fact most were lost. For example, in Ezekiel chapter thirty-four and verse seventeen, God says, “As for you my flock.” Now whom is he talking to? The nation of Israel, and He says, “As for you, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will judge between one sheep and another, between the rams and the male goats.” God said about His own people that some were sheep and some were goats. Some were redeemed and some were lost. Paul says in Romans chapter nine and verse six, “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” In other words, within the nation of Israel was the real Israel who were the saved Jews. The believing Jews were the true Israel. Those were the Israel that the promises were for, the redeemed Jews. Father Abraham is a father of faith, and only those who have faith in Christ become the true seed of Abraham. Just because one was an Israeli naturally by birth did not mean they were the Israel of God. They had to be born again by the Spirit as do we.
What the writer of Hebrews is saying here is very, very important in our understanding of the value of warnings employed in this epistle. The author writes to this church and addresses the congregation as the people of God. In chapter three he calls them holy brothers. He assumed brotherhood upon all that identified with the church. But he knew, just like I know right now, that not everybody who attached and assembled himself or herself with the church of God is really converted. Oh, I’ve longed and prayed that everyone in this church would be born again. I long for this for you, but I know at this present moment not everybody is. There are some who have confessed Christ, and we have adopted you into our fellowship, but genuine faith does not reside within your hearts. How painfully true it is that some can be members of this church, show affection towards the people of God, and even some type of affection for God, but they are not the Israel of God.
Our beloved writer knew that within this visible church not everybody inside was of the true church of God, the elect of God. The visible church and the elect of God are not the same. He knew that there were many hypocrites in the church, and eventually they became visible by willfully apostatizing, or in the words of the author, “willfully sinning.” They forsook the gathering of the people of God. It is the same in Hebrews chapter six, when the author issued a very similar warning. Not able to look into a man’s or woman’s heart and know genuinely if they’re saved or not, he addressed them all as believers.
Somebody called me this week and asked, “What are the evidences that we can see in other’s lives to know that they’re truly saved?” I only know two that are reliable, but they’re reliable only up to a point. They also can be misleading. The first one is the fruit of the Spirit. The second one is perseverance, persistence, continuing with Christ. But we have seen false converts who later rejected Christ who for awhile displayed an imitation of the fruit of the Spirit. I’ve met people who were naturally and temperamentally very kind, very, very moral, and very loving people, but not converted. You would think that you were seeing a gentle, meek, kind Christian, but the truth was it was just their natural temperament. Also, the evidence of perseverance can be imitated. People can remain and appear faithful to the church by their attendance, but be not in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, as any gospel preacher realizing he is addressing a mixed crowd, the author of Hebrews does the same and addresses this warning to the entire church. Because the inspired author couldn’t look into the heart of a man or a woman and know if there was saving grace, he writes as he does, and warns all who would hear his epistle read. The warning is addressed to all who have professed faith. The warning is that any in the visible church could lose out with God. None of us should dare to presume anything and we must always be on the lookout for a seed of unbelief in our own hearts that could later prove that we never truly believed in Christ.
No man or woman who is truly saved by grace can lose the grace that has saved him or her, because God’s grace is promised to preserve the saint. But such a doctrine of perseverance should not create a spirit of apathy about our souls. Presumption of faith and perseverance of faith are not the same. Thus the warning of this text moves our heart closer to the “Author and Finisher of our faith.” The message is clear that this is a continual fight of faith, and constant vigilance is required.
There are people here today who on the day judgment will be separated from the redeemed. I don’t know who they are, but I know that you cannot have a gathering even this size and there not be one who on judgment day will be rudely and sadly awakened to the fact that all they had was an external religion. They didn’t have the heart of Christ beating within them.
I say, as the writer of Hebrews, don’t stop assembling. Don’t stop coming and being encouraged for three reasons. First, by coming and getting encouragement you will be around the light of the truth and perhaps enough light will pierce the darkness of your heart. Perhaps your self-deception will be exposed and you will cry out to God, and God will show mercy. Second, if you are not saved, and if you withdraw from God’s people, you may sin away the day of grace. You may so grieve the Spirit of conviction that He may refuse to strive with you any longer. There have been people who started out, and like Jesus said, were like a tender shoot springing up with hope and joy, but having no root they withered away. The Scripture said of them that they believed, but when difficult times came they proved that they never had what they needed in order to be saved. They had not truly experienced the loving grace of God and the Holy Spirit transforming them into a new creation. And third, if you are really born again, you can be discouraged, and so to keep discouragement from taking place, get around other believers who love you enough to hold you accountable.
Why is there no hope for these folks? Is there no grace; is there no grace that can save a person like this? No, it’s not that grace can’t save, but listen carefully to what the writer of Hebrew says, there “remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” Jesus is the only sacrifice for sin, and if you truly reject Him, you have rejected the only sacrifice by which you can be saved. There are no more other sacrifices, there is no other hope, there’s no other anchor for your soul’s safety. You’ve rejected the only hope. If you have heard the truth and know that it is the truth and then reject it, then you have said to God, “leave me alone.” And there are many with whom God will do exactly that. He will turn them over to their depraved minds and their end cannot be adequately described.
The remainder of this text describes that judgment, and I can’t even begin to tell you how that judgment will be dispensed, but I will try, Lord willing, next Sunday. But I want to speak candidly to us all this morning. I know the Lord can expose you if your life is nothing but a pretense, a shell, when it comes to true faith in Christ. And not only can He show you that, but He can change that. He can come with His glory, power and His love and literally transform you. I don’t want to confuse anyone; I don’t want anybody leaving here confused, so I want to make this very clear. I believe that the Bible teaches that a Christian will have a witness of the Spirit in their heart. His Spirit will bear witness with your spirit. I’m not talking about feelings. You could have feelings all day long and still die in your sins. If you study the Buddhist religion you would discover they talk about mystical feelings, supernatural things happening in the religion of Buddha. You can go to the Muslims and find miracles taking place among Muslim evangelists. So miracles and emotions can be very misleading, but the voice of the Spirit is so real, so convincing, and so persuasive, you know that you know that you know. That’s how convincing, that’s how persuasive He is, and every true believer has that.
I want to ask you a question. Is the assurance of your salvation based upon human reason? Human reason that says, “Well, you know I did this and I did this and I do this, therefore I must be saved.” Oh, friend beware! That’s the pathway that leads to this type of a passage, a warning, and a penalty that’s listed here. What must you look for when you ask these questions? What you need to look for is not what you do, but what Christ has done. Is there a work of the Holy Spirit in your heart that goes beyond even human reasoning that leaves you knowing the love of God but perplexed as to why He would love you? Oh, “Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God would die for me?” You know it’s true, but you can’t understand it. You simply rest in what the Bible says and the witness of the Spirit. Amen. |
