Hebrews Lesson 70
NKJ Hebrews
Before we get started in our
study of Hebrews, I want to start reading some things to you from the
newsletters that come out from Voice of the Martyrs. I think this is great because it gives us a
little exposure to what other Christians are going through and how the gospel
is making an impact in some tough areas around the world. The excerpt that I want to read this evening
is contained in a book that they have published containing various testimonies
from the underground
I
was kicked out from another place, but many had found the Lord. Then authorities wanted to isolate me even
more and sent me to another town 100 miles away. They made me drive way out of town for 4
years to an isolated clinic because I refused to grow a beard or wear clothing
like theirs and be an informer. About
300 people came to my clinic (This is apparently from a doctor.) each month
even in the desert area. Every day I
drove about 100 miles back and forth. I
had to get up at 6 in the morning, drive outside the city, and across the
desert to get there on time. The
authorities thought they were punishing me, but Jesus used me to reach new
people.
Then there is a note that
this man was arrested and taken to police headquarters and there he was
interrogated. He says in his testimony…
In
this two-story building there is a basement where all of the torture is going
on. Upstairs is where they do the interrogations. Even with a blindfold I knew they were taking
me all the way down. We walked to a room
which I saw later had only one door, no windows, no light. They said, “Sit down.” Then a man with a light behind me pulled off
the blindfold. They shined a bright light
in my eye so I wouldn’t see who was interrogating me. The man behind the light said, “Tell us the
truth. We will help you out. What are you doing? Tell us and we will help you not to be on the
bad list. We see some suspicious people
come and go to your office and ask for you specifically. There are also some Afghani and some Armenian
people. Tell us what is going on.” I got a little angry with them. I said, “Whoever comes to me it is because I
am a doctor. They need help.” Later on the police released him.
He goes on to say…
We
must move the clinic every two to three years.
We have moved six times so far.
This is the 7th place we have moved to in 13 years. Yet, this is not important. We don’t want any home here because we know
where our home is. We are always ready
to go to our main home with Jesus. I am
not afraid of death because I know where I am going. John
So that is one of many
testimonies of Christians who are actively involved in handing out Bibles,
passing out tracts and giving the gospel to people in an Islamic society. We need to constantly be in prayer, not just
for missionaries that are in
Let’s go to our study this
evening in Hebrews. We are in Hebrew 6:9. Before we start off in Hebrews 6:9, it is
necessary I think to go back and do some review and reorient our thinking so we
know how we got to where we are. We are
just about in the middle of the book now, but we need to go back and see what
has gone on already. I want to start off
by reading this next couple of verses to you so we understand where we are
headed. When we go back and do this
review it is pointed to a particular direction.
We have to understand how we got from 1:1 to these particular
verses. So, let’s just look at 9 and
10. The writer then says…
NKJ Hebrews 6:9 But, beloved, we are confident of
better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we
speak in this manner.
Remember he just gave them
this dire warning that because they had become dull of hearing they can be in
danger of regressing to point for all practical purposes it is just about
impossible to recover spiritually. But
then he shows the hope. That is the
point of this next section. No matter
how bad it gets, no matter what you have done, no matter how spiritually
regressive you have been, no matter how carnal you have been, there is always
hope in the grace of God. God’s grace
always provides the solution.
NKJ Hebrews 6:10 For God is not unjust to
forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in
that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
There are a couple of things
that we need to point out here to just keep in the front of your mind as we go
through our review. That is this
statement that God won’t forget your work and labor of love. As grace-oriented believers you understand
the gospel of grace that is based on the work of Christ and not on the basis of
our works. Too often grace-oriented
believers have a problem when it comes to passages like this and they start
talking about works. So we have to understand
the doctrine of work in the Scripture.
Now most of you are aware of what this signifies because we have gone
through this several times as we have gone through our study on Sunday mornings
in those 7 letters to the 7 churches in Revelation. Each time those evaluation reports begin they
begin with the statement from Jesus that “I know you work”. So work isn’t a bad word. It is not like Maynard G. Krebs (if you
remember Dobie Gillis).
“Works!”
It is not automatically
something terrible.
So let’s go back to Hebrews
1:1 and take a run through the first six chapters to end up where we are now in
6:9. Remember the theme of Hebrews is to
challenge Christians who are on the verge of chucking it. They are on the verge of just stopping and reverting
back to Judaism. These are believers who
have come out of a Jewish background.
They were probably priests who functioned in the service in the temple. They are on the verge going back into
Judaism. The theme of the writer is to challenge
these Christians to remain faithful in these last days. That challenge is just as valid for gentiles at
any time, not to give up, not to just reach a state of satisfaction in the
Christian life, but to continue to hold fast and press forward to spiritual
maturity. So Hebrews is a challenge to
remain faithful and steadfast in our spiritual growth today in light of future
service in the
As we go through this book I
pointed out in the introduction that I believe that Hebrews really isn’t an
epistle. It is often referred to as an
epistle and almost every Bible you have got refers to the epistle. If you have a Scofield Reference Bible or some
versions of King James it might even say the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews even
though the text doesn’t identify the author.
So we have to be careful. But it
isn’t an epistle because it doesn’t fit the standard format of an epistle. There is no salutation to the Hebrews -grace
and peace to you. There are not closing remarks
at the end. There are a number of other
things that you normally have associated with a letter that aren’t here. It probably is a written out sermon much like
the transcript that we published from the message on Crisis in
Pastoral Leadership. This was a
sermon that was taken and then transcribed, written out and sent as a
letter. I believe the epistle by James
is the same kind of thing. There are
elements in here because of its organization that fit more of a verbal instruction
pattern than a written tool. That has to
do with its structure.
There are five basic points that
are made in the outline of the book. We
studied the first three.
The first section; Hebrews
1:1:2:4
The first section goes from
1:1 to 2:4. Actually 1:1-4 is an opening
prelude where the basic theme or foundation for the doctrinal message, the
teaching (the exposition) is laid out and is grounded in the ultimate revelation
and completed revelation of God in Jesus Christ. So we have this opening prelude and then
there is a doctrinal exposition or didactic explanation (that is a teaching). It is an instruction to the church related to
various passages of Scripture. Of course
as we saw from 1:5-14 there are several Old Testament passages that are cited
and woven together by the writer of Hebrews to make his point. So it begins with the doctrinal exposition,
the didactic section. Then it is
followed by an exhortation and warning. That
is what we have as we go through each of these sections. So just to review the outline, we go through the
first section.
The second section;
Hebrews 2:5-4:13
Then the second section picks
up a couple of main ideas from the first section, develops that out in the
doctrinal exposition form 2:5 – 3:6. And then beginning in 3:7 we have our
practical exhortation. An exhortation is
an application and a challenge mixed together.
It is taking the teaching that we just had and driving it home in terms
of a practical application. So if you
want to understand how the first century apostles understood application, this
is a good place to go. You read through
this section in 3:7 to
The third section -
Hebrews 4:14-6:20
The third section (the one we
are in) is from
“You are too dull of
hearing.”
He starts to blast them for
their spiritual regression. He gives them
this dire warning in verse 4-8, but then he comes back and in a very
encouraging grace-oriented manner he says, “We are convinced of better things
for you. Don’t give up.
We are confident that there are better things for you.”
So, section three is composed
of that doctrinal or didactic exposition from
Let’s hit some of the high
points that we have studied. In those first 4 verses there is an emphasis on
the completion, the culmination of God’s revelatory process in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. The writer begins
by saying…
NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in
various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
NKJ Hebrews 1:2 has in these last days spoken to us
by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also
He made the worlds;
This is a finished work. It is a completed action. I want you to pay
attention to this terminology that we have.
Again and again and again as
we go through Hebrews you ought to underline every time you have verbiage
related to God speaking or God saying or God calling. There is this constant theme of God speaking that
implies and demands our obedient response.
You see this thread that runs all the way through the book of
Hebrews. So there is this culmination –
everything in history has led to the revelation of God in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
As Paul said in Galatians
4:4…
NKJ Galatians 4:4 But when the fullness of the time
had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
He had to wait for the right
time in human history. He had to prepare
the nations and He had to prepare
In this revelation we learned
several things about the Lord Jesus Christ.
We learned that He is the heir of all things. This is a key concept in the whole book of
Hebrews - inheritance. Jesus Christ is
the heir of all things and we become joint-heirs with Him. The emphasis secondly is on the Son as the
creator of the world. Then in verse 3
the writer goes on to describe the Son as the exact duplicate of the Father in
essence and in power. So the Son is not
just the Son in terms of humanity; He is the Son in terms of deity and is
completely equal to the Father in His essence.
Further he goes on to
emphasize that it is the Son who has entered into history. He is the one who paid the penalty for our
sins as a man. So the hypostatic union
lies behind the explanation of verses 1-4.
The Son is man – perfect man and is true humanity. He enters history, pays the penalty for sin
and then because of His victory over death in the resurrection He is promoted
to and He is brought to and ascends to heaven where He sits at the right hand
of God the Father on the Father’s throne as we have seen in our study of
Revelation 3:21. In His humanity He is
elevated over the angels so that now there is a human being sitting at the command
post of the universe. A human being has
been elevated over the angels. It is the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ who
is in that position and we will join Him – that is the exciting thing – we will
join Him as joint heirs in that inheritance that culminates in His
kingdom.
We went through the whole
study on the ascension and session of the Lord Jesus Christ and how that doesn’t
come to completion until He returns at the Second Coming. Daniel 7 says that the Son of Man comes to the
earth to establish His kingdom. That is
when the inheritance is realized. These
4 verses provide a brief but jam packed and brilliant explanation of the Son in
terms of His past accomplishments. But
what is involved here is that in these past accomplishments are set in the
context of His future destiny as an heir.
That sets the foundation for the rest of the book. Then from verse 5 through 14 the writer
connects the superiority of the Son and His accomplishments with His destiny to
rule the planet as the Davidic son. He
cites all the various psalms and interconnects this with the realization and
the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant.
Now Jesus Christ came. Gabriel
announced His coming and announced to Mary that He was going to come and rule
on the throne of His father David. So
His birth is announced in terms of reigning as the Davidic heir. He came to offer the kingdom. John the Baptist said to repent for the
kingdom of heaven was at hand. Jesus announced to repent for the kingdom of
heaven was at hand. The disciples were
all sent out to
So in verse 5-14 there is
this emphasis. The writer builds line
upon line. He takes each of these Old
Testament passage and he weaves them together to bring our attention upon this
future kingdom that is characterized by an eternal throne and a scepter of righteousness
in that particular kingdom. All of that
leads us to the conclusion that the angels who are now over us will in the
future be under us. So part of their
responsibility today is that these angels minister to those who will inherit
salvation. That is in the last verse of
the first chapter.
NKJ Hebrews
It is not saying for those
who were saved (past tense); but for those who will inherit salvation. It is a future oriented concept. That is realizing the fullness of our
inheritance when salvation is completed - phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3 when we
are absent from the body face to face with the Lord. The Lord comes in His kingdom. That is when we inherit salvation. So it is a future oriented concept. That leads to the first warning.
Salvation is not what we got when
we trusted Christ as Savior. Salvation
is what we are headed toward in the realization of this whole process as it comes
to its culmination at the Judgment Seat of Christ and our return with Jesus
Christ to rule and reign on the earth.
That is Hebrews 2:3
NKJ Hebrews 2:3 how shall we escape if we neglect so
great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was
confirmed to us by those who heard Him,
That is escape judgment. See the Jews neglected what they had in the
desert. That is the backdrop for
that. They neglected what they had. So they were judged. If that happened to them, what more will
happen to us if we neglect all that we have in relationship to our
destiny. The warning is that we need to
focus on our spiritual life living each day in light of eternity.
Then we come into the second
section. In the second section there is
a doctrinal exposition. The doctrinal
exposition is from 2:5 down to 3:6. In
that instructional or pedagogical section as he is teaching them on the basis
of these Old Testament ideas he starts to unpack even more this whole idea of
Jesus being elevated over the angels.
That is the point he establishes in that first section – Jesus is
superior to the angels at the ascension.
He is elevated over the angels and the angels now serve us who are going
to be heirs of this future salvation. Now
let’s unpack that concept and see where that leads us.
So he starts off in verse 5.
NKJ Hebrews 2:5 For He has not put the world to
come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels.
In other words the future
age, the Millennial Age, isn’t in subjection to angels; it is in subjection to
the bride of Christ. It is in subjection
to us. So that is what he begins to
develop. So he emphasizes the point that
man was made lower than the angels because his future destiny is to be elevated
over the angels. We are in a training ground right now unlike anything the
angles went through.
Second, he points out that
Jesus Christ as true humanity has been elevated above the angels. He is our pioneer and He sets the course so
that now we realize that a human being is over the angels and at the command
post of the universe. That is in verse
9.
NKJ Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a
little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and
honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.
Then in verse 10-13 he points
out that in His humanity (not as God in His deity not using is omniscience,
omnipotence and omnipresence and not utilizing all of His powers) He is
qualified to go on the basis of humility of obedience and His spiritual growth (that
takes Him through maturity and adversity testing) to go to the cross. So Jesus Christ qualifies in His humanity by
using the same tools, the same doctrines, the same Holy Spirit that you and I
use.
Now don’t take me wrong
here. In a theoretical sense it is
possible for us once you are saved with the Holy Spirit to be sinless. None of us are ever going to do that. No one is going to do that. I am not teaching sinless perfection. Don’t take me wrong. I am just saying that theoretically that’s
possible. If you were to start walking
by the Spirit from the instant you were saved until you died, you would never
sin. You still have the sin nature even
though the power is broken. It is still
there and we are all going to sin. We
are never going to be sinless and no one is ever going to reach
perfection. The pattern was set by Jesus
in His humanity to show that it’s there. You can do it.
The Holy Spirit is powerful
enough to do it. The Word of God is true
enough for you to do it. The problem is
your own volition. You are just not
going to do it. But grace always
provides the solution. When you fail you
have got I John 1:9 and forgiveness so that we can continue to press on to
maturity. He points out that Jesus is
the pioneer of our spiritual life. He is
the archegos.
He is the one who is the pathfinder who sets the course for us. We follow in His example.
He concludes that since
Christ had victory over sin and over death, He is promoted to the position of High
Priest. That is what all of this is
going from. The first section laid the
groundwork that Jesus is superior to the angels. He is promoted over the angels. Why did He
get promoted over the angels? Because in
His humanity He went through all of this adversity testing and in true humility
never yielding to arrogance, never sinning He qualifies to go to the cross and
because (as it is going to be pointed out in the application section) He is
tested in every point as we are yet without sin He is now a High Priest who can
commiserate with our weaknesses. That is
where all of that is headed. So because
He goes through the whole process of testing just as we do, He is qualified for
that promotion to be the High Priest. So
he moves from superiority over the angels to His being testing in His humanity
to qualifying Him to be the High Priest.
Guess what is going to be developed in the next section – His High priesthood. See how logically this flows.
He will then start to show
why the high priesthood of Christ is so important. First you have to understand that it is not
an Aaronic high priesthood, it is a Melchizedekean high priesthood.
“But you are to spiritually
dull to listen!”
So then he goes through his
diversion in the warning passage of Hebrews 6.
At the end of that in Hebrews
So back to the exhortation and
warning in 3:7-4:13. That section you
remember focuses on the importance of understanding our future rest in the
We look at that section and three
times we have a quotation from Psalm 95:7.
In verse 7 it reads…
NKJ Hebrews 3:7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:
"Today, if you will hear His voice,
NKJ Hebrews 3:8 Do not harden your hearts as in the
rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness,
Then it is quoted again in
verse 15.
NKJ Hebrews
Then again in 4:7…
NKJ Hebrews 4:7 again He designates a certain day,
saying in David, "Today," after such a long time, as it has been
said: "Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts."
What is he trying to
say? Don’t harden your hearts. Don’t be foolish and stubborn spiritually
like that Exodus generation was. You can
do the same thing today that they did.
You can reach a spiritual
plateau and say, “I am happy and satisfied.”
The next thing you know you
are sliding back into spiritual regression and divine discipline and jeopardizing
your inheritance again – not your salvation because you can never lose that. That is the heart of this warning in this
particular section.
So what the writer is saying
there is that just as the entry into the Promised Land for the Jews to the
Exodus generation would have been to realize their ownership and inheritance in
the blessing of the land that flowed with milk and honey. They lost that because of spiritual hardness
of heart and because of spiritual failure.
That is the analogy. That is the
point of rest that he is talking about.
You and I have a future rest.
That is where he concludes when he says in 4:8…
NKJ Hebrews 4:8 For if Joshua had given them rest,
then He would not afterward have spoken of another day.
You see there is another rest
beyond the rest in the kingdom. That is
the challenge. So he concludes with
this challenge.
NKJ Hebrews 4:9 There remains therefore a rest for
the people of God.
NKJ Hebrews
They weren’t diligent. But we need to be diligent that we enter that
rest lest anyone fall. How do we do
this? It is on the basis of the Word of
God.
NKJ Hebrews
So the key idea in that section is to hear what?
Hear His voice. It takes us right back
to Hebrews 1.
NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in
various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
NKJ Hebrews 1:2 has in these last days spoken to us
by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also
He made the worlds;
He has spoken today. Are you going to listen?
If you will hear His voice –
that is the fullness of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ – don’t harden
your hearts as they did in the rebellion.
So the final exhortation is
to enter the rest.
We say, “How do we do that?”
It is on the basis of the
Word of God. It is on the basis of the sufficient
Word of God. That is all you need. If you were taken today and dropped down into
some back water jungle, primitive island in the South Pacific and all you had
was your Bible; then that is all you would ever need to face any problem, any
difficulty that you would ever face.
That is it. That is what we mean
by the sufficiency of Scripture. You
don’t need to have counseling textbooks by Freud or any other counselor to
figure out personal relationship problems.
You don’t have to learn how to live the purpose driven life. You don’t have to have any of these other
things. All you need is the Word of
God. That is sufficient. You have the Word of God and the Spirit of
God. We don’t need anything else in
terms of our spiritual life.
So where does he go from
here? Section 3
Starting in verse 14 he gives
a doctrinal explanation where he takes the concept of a high priest and he
starts to unpack that idea. We have a High
Priest and He is our high priest because He is just like us. He is a true human being. He is not like us because He never had a sin
nature, but He is like us in terms of our humanity. He went through all the same tests that we go
through. That is how he begins the next
section.
NKJ Hebrews 4:14 Seeing then that we have a great
High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us
hold fast our confession.
He picks up that idea from
the first chapter. He has gone through
the heavens. He is elevated over the
angels. He is promoted over the
angels. We have this High Priest who has
ascended above the angels and therefore let us hold fast our confession. In other words - let us hold onto our
doctrine. Don’t give it up. Doctrine is important. That’s what confession describes. Why?
NKJ Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who
cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we
are, yet without sin.
We have a High Priest who
understands what we have gone through so we can’t really blow a lot of smoke at
Him. We can’t rationalize, justify.
He says, “Been there. Done
that, but I got the T-shirt. You are not
going to get it. You keep blowing it.”
So we have a High Priest who can
sympathize. He understands what we are
going through. What then is the
exhortation?
NKJ Hebrews
It is dependence upon God to
go through those tough times.
Hold your place right here
and I want to go forward a couple of chapters to chapter 10.
In chapter 10 (that is
skipping ahead into the fourth section of the book) I want you to see how these
ideas get picked up and woven into future exposition. We get into the exhortation section in the
fourth section and here is what we read.
NKJ Hebrews
It is the same idea, but he
has added something. In chapter 4 he is
talking about the high priesthood of Christ.
Then he is going to develop that high priesthood aspect and tie it. What
can we expect? What is he going to tie
it to? The concept of the blood of Jesus. What is he going to tie it to? He is going to tie it to the sacrificial
death of Christ on the cross. A priest
performs sacrifice and offerings. That
is exactly what we see when we get into chapter 5. What does a priest do? Just the general principle of priesthood in
5:1 that a priest is appointed by God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. So we are going to see these threads are
going to be picked up. So by the time we
get to that fourth exhortation
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
So he is going to come into
this and explain for us why all of this is important.
Then he says…
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
You see how all of this
connects. He is building a case one
element at a time. He is not like
Paul. He isn’t just giving us 3 or 4
verses that are loaded with all of this intricate theology. He is taking it and building it one layer at
a time – line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little there a little. He is giving us that whole methodology.
In chapter 5 after laying out
the principle that we have a high priest who takes us before the throne of
grace in prayer because we have a High Priest who can sympathize with our
weaknesses in the first four verses in chapter 5 all he does is lay out the general
principle of priesthood. A priest serves
God and offers gifts and sacrifices to God.
NKJ Hebrews 5:8 though He was a Son, yet He
learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
That emphasizes His position
as the Son of God, as deity. Yet as a
human He learned obedience by the things that He suffered. He had to go through that process of learning
humility and learning authority orientation.
If Jesus had to go through that, don’t you think that we have to go
through that? He is already sinless and
He still has to learn obedience to the things that He suffered. We go through the same process and we have
got the additional problem of being fallen creatures. So 5:8 is a key verse. The result is given in verse 9.
NKJ Hebrews 5:9 And having been perfected, He became
the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him,
How was He matured? By going through the tests and suffering.
NKJ Hebrews
That’s where the writer of
Hebrews breaks off at the end of verse 10.
He then turns around and says, “But you can’t listen to this.”
There are some doctrines you
can’t listen to. People come in
here. I am sure that this happens. I hear about it every now and then.
Someone says, “I sat there
and I didn’t get a word that was going on.”
They are hip deep in
carnality and they can’t process even baby food anymore much less anything that
gets into any details in the Scripture.
I can understand that because if you have gone to any number of
so-called Bible teachers or congregations in this city or watched TV and that
is all you have ever heard; then when you have somebody come along and actually
teach the Bible, it’s going to blow you away because you have never heard anything
like that before.
So the writer of Hebrews
says, “You can’t hear it. I have a lot
to say. It is hard to explain because
you have become dull of hearing.”
So then there is the
exhortation beginning in verse 11. The
exhortation continues to the end of
1. Don’t ever be satisfied with where you are
spiritually, press forward. Press
on. Hold fast. Keep going.
Don’t become a complacent satisfied Christian thinking that you have
learned enough. There is always more to learn. If you get that way you will be surprised when
you end up in your resurrection body and discover that you are going to have an
eternity of learning. We are never going
to be omniscient; even in our resurrection bodies we are never going to be
omniscient. But God is omniscient. So He
has an infinite amount of stuff to teach us that He can’t teach us now. But when we get to heaven we have school for
infinity. I know that really depresses
some of you right away.
2. There is a dire warning here that you can regresses
at any moment. You can become complacent - slip on that spiritual banana peel and fall
right on your keaster and you will have a tough time
recovering if you don’t recover right away, if you stay there. You can regress. You can lose ground.
3. It is possible to regress to the point of no
return, from which you will most likely not recover. That is tough point for a lot of people. I am not saying it is an absolute point-of-
no-return. I am not saying that you can
reach a point that nothing will happen.
It is a practical point. It is
that you can reach a point in spiritual regression where apart from the intervention
of God you are not going to recover. See
with God all things are possible, but with us they are not. The context that we have to understand here
is that within the context of Hebrews, we are to be encouraging one
another. Pay attention to two verses –
Hebrews 3:13.
NKJ Hebrews
What happens when you get
hardened by the deceitfulness of sin?
Then it is going to be impossible for anyone else to help. You see when you look at that verse; we get
down into the 5 participles in the warning section. The key to it is understanding that
infinitive. There is no subject of the
infinitive. There is no grammatical
subject to the infinitive. In other
words it doesn’t say it is impossible for God to renew them to repentance. It doesn’t say it is impossible for Jesus to
renew them. There is no stated subject. So it is impossible for whom to renew them? Well, who is supposed to do the encouraging
in the book of Hebrews? It is one
another. It is part of the body of
Christ, the friends that you have, other believers, family members who
encourage you. It is not some stranger. You always have some people that get in
arrogance. They see somebody across the
church and they see somebody say something or do something and they have no
context of relationship.
They are as foolish as they
can be and they say, “I want to encourage you to stop doing that.”
“Get out of my face it is
none of your business.”
But there is context of
relationship. We have family. We have friends and we see the impact of
spiritual regression in their lives. Because
we are in the context of a relationship with them, we are already a trusted
individual who can then come alongside and encourage them not to fall apart
spiritually. But then we always run into
the ones who give us that look and we know they are not going to listen anymore. That is where the warning comes in. It is impossible for us to renew them to
repentance. Hebrews 10 brings back this
theme again in a well known passage.
NKJ Hebrews
Again and again we have this
thing of love and good works coming up. So
we have to make sure that we understand what that is talking about.
NKJ Hebrews 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of
ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another,
and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
There are always people - you
know them. You have got them in your
family. You have seen them in
church. You know that they have tubed it
spiritually, but they have put up a wall and you can’t do anything spiritually
anymore. It is in the hands of God and
we have to believe God that the Holy Spirit somehow will take out that
spiritual 2x4 and slap them up the side of the head. When I say it is a point-of-no-return, it is a
point-of-no-return from our perspective.
It is a point-of-no-return in the sense that unless God intervenes there
is not going to be return. That is what
the writer says right here in the context.
NKJ Hebrews 6:3 And this we will do if God permits.
But you see sometimes God
says, “You are carnal. You have gone
through this negative volition thing long enough. I am going to leave you in
your misery as an object lesson and an opportunity to test all of the believers
around you.”
NKJ Hebrews 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the
rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is
cultivated, receives blessing from God;
That is you are like the earth. You take in all of the grace of God that He
provides in terms of the Spirit of God and the Word of God. If you drink it in, what is the result? It bears fruit useful for those by whom it is
cultivated.
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but if it bears thorns and briars, it
is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.
“Bears thorns and briars” is
the regressive carnal believer.
That is the burning of lost
rewards. It is non-fruitful,
non-productive. So we see here that the
goal of the spiritual life is to be productive, to be fruitful.
We did a lengthy study. We tied passages together - John 15 with the
vine - abiding in Christ. Abiding Christ
is the only way to produce fruit in John 15.
Then we connected that to Galatians 5: 16 f. When you are doing that you produce the fruit
of the Spirit. So the only necessary
condition to produce fruit in Galatians 5 is to walk in the Spirit. Well if in John 15 the only condition for
producing fruit is to abide in Christ and in Galatians 5 the sole condition for
producing fruit is to walk by the Spirit, then walking by the Spirit and
abiding in Christ must be tantamount to the same thing. They are two sides of the same coin.
That is related to the
filling of the Spirit because the Spirit fills us with His Word. We connected Ephesians 5:18 with Colossians
3:16. The Spirit is the one who fills us
with His Word. We connect Galatians 5:18
with Colossians 3:16. The Spirit is the
one who fills us with His Word. When we
are out of fellowship, that sanctifying ministry is grieved, quenched, and shut
down. The Spirit is doing a lot of other
things in your life. He is not producing
growth in your life, not forward momentum.
That can only happen when you get back in fellowship and start walking
in the light as He is in the light as John says in I John 1.
The end result of all this is
to produce fruit. But it is not because
I am going out there and pulling myself up by my spiritual bootstraps to
produce fruit. That can’t happen. Paul
tried that in Romans 7. But in Romans 7 he says some interesting things about
fruit that are important to pay attention to.
NKJ Romans 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also
have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married
to another -- to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to
God.
That “joining to Him who is
raised from the dead” is what happened at the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When we trust Christ as savior we are
identified with Him in His death, burial and resurrection and we are united
together with Christ. Why? What is the purpose clause here? That we should bear fruit to God. You weren’t saved so that you could just
spend eternity in heaven and relax. You
were saved for a purpose – to bear fruit, but not out of the flesh. That was the problem that Paul way trying to
deal with in Romans 7 - to do it in the flesh.
NKJ Romans 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the
sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to
bear fruit to death.
You see you can bear the wrong kind of fruit. That is what happens when you are not walking
by the Spirit.
In verse 6 Paul goes on to say…
NKJ Romans 7:6 But now we have been delivered from
the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the
newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
Serve is the same concept we are running into in
Hebrews 6:10 that we should be involved in ministry and serving in the newness
of the Spirit, and not the oldness of the letter. That is what energizes Christian service – however
it manifests itself in your particular life and in your particular
experience.
Ephesians 5:9 says...
NKJ Ephesians 5:9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in
all goodness, righteousness, and truth)
We are not talking about evangelism. You will go to all kinds of places saying,
“You need to have fruit, go out and witness.”
Fruit is character.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness,
goodness against which there is no law.
It is character. It is the
character of Christ. You see we were
saved for this purpose.
NKJ Ephesians
There is a purpose to salvation. Once you are saved in
the family, God has got a job for us. It
is to grow to spiritual maturity. The
Holy Spirit produces fruit so that we can love one another in the body of
Christ. We are to walk in those good
works.
NKJ Colossians
There again we see fruit and work linked
together. We are reminded in Romans 7:5
that there is also the wrong kind of fruit.
NKJ Romans 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the
sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to
bear fruit to death.
Now just to show that work and fruit aren’t bad words,
I Corinthians 3:13 says that at the Judgment Seat of Christ each man’s work
will become evident.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 3:13 each one's work will become clear;
for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire
will test each one's work, of what sort it is.
Someone will say, “That is just bad ones.”
No, look at verse 14.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
You see, work is not a bad word. Fruit is not a bad word. This doesn’t involve works by the law – works
trying to impress God by what we do or by how we say it or do it. It is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. That is the contrast – between the work and
the fruit that is self-generated in the power of the flesh and that which is
produced by the Spirit of God in conjunction with the Word of God and that is
the only thing that has eternal value.
But to get there we have to grow to spiritual maturity. It is the by-product of spiritual maturity
not the way to get spiritual maturity.
So that is where the writer of Hebrews goes because after blasting them
he says…
NKJ Hebrews 6:9 But, beloved, we are confident of
better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we
speak in this manner.
It is very
positive here. We will get to that and
start dealing with this doctrine of works and labor of love which is introduced
in this next verse next time.