Hebrews
71
Hebrews
6:9
We
are at the section getting into these verses (just coming off of that famous
passage of tremendous difficulty) - that warning passage dealing with those who
have fallen away. The text says in verse 6 that it is impossible to renew them
again to repentance.
Then
there was the illustration. We read in
verses 7 and 8 dealing with two different types of soil. The first deals with the soil that drinks in
the rain and produces fruit. That is a
picture of believers who respond positively to the grace of God in providing
the nourishment necessary for growth that comes primarily from the Spirit of
God using the Word of God in the life of the believer to produce fruit. Now that illustration is important because
the writer of Hebrews uses that to move on into his subject in the next section. So there is the contrast between the earth
that responds to the nourishment and grows and produces positive fruit and receives
blessing from God and that which rejects or misuses the grace of God and bears
thorns and briars. It is rejected and is
near to being cursed. We saw that it was
not a salvation rejection. That is that they lose rewards. That is the backdrop for this entire
passage.
But
the thrust of this passage seemed very negative up to this point. I want you to remember how negative it has
been. As the writer of Hebrews has entered
into this section (this is the third section of the five major sections in the
book of Hebrews), he started to develop the doctrine of the High Priesthood of
Jesus Christ in relationship to the royal high priesthood of Melchizedek. Jesus is not a High Priest according to the
order of the Aaronic priesthood which is under the Mosaic Law, but a higher
priesthood that relates to all peoples, the gentile priesthood of the royal
king Melchizedek. As he just begins to
introduce that in 5:6 he breaks off in verse 11 and just begins to castigate
these people to reprimand them for their spiritual dullness. That word is picked up for their spiritual
dullness in verse 12 in this next paragraph which we are beginning tonight in
vs. 9-12.
So
he reminds them….
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone
to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have
come to need milk and not solid food.
You
should have the spiritual maturity, the knowledge to have pressed on to spiritual
maturity; but once again I have to go back to the basics of milk and start over
again because you have regressed spiritually.
Then there is the warning in the first part of chapter 6 that believers
who regress spiritually jeopardize rewards and you can even possibly reach a
point of no return in your spiritual life where you end up being taken out
under the sin unto death. But he says in
a positive note in verse 9(that is where we begin tonight)…
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
In
what manner? “Though we have just faced
you down, though we have just confronted you and challenged you and reprimanded
you for your spiritual sluggishness though I have just rebuked you for your
lazy, sluggish, dull attitude toward Scripture, nevertheless I am confident of
better things for you.”
That
is the main thing that he is saying here. There are three sentences in this
paragraph. I want to run through those
so you get the idea of what he is talking about. First he says…
But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning
you
This
is a very positive note in the midst of this warning passage in this
exhortation section. Even though you have
regressed and are dull, we expect and are confident that better things are
going to happen, that you will recover.
Why? For God is not unjust. He goes to the character of God to support his
rationale for his encouraging and positive statements here. God is not unjust to forget what has already
taken place in your spiritual growth.
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
That
is the same word used back in verse 11 of being dull of hearing - that you not
become dull of hearing.
It
is the last phrase that we see that the thrust of this is to encourage them to
press forward so that they have an inheritance and receive rewards and blessings
at the Judgment Seat of Christ. So the
main idea of this first verse in verse 9 is to remind them that yes indeed, we
have confidence that despite past failures - no matter what has happened in
your spiritual life, no matter what sins you have committed, no matter how you
have failed – you may go through a period of weeks, months, or years where you
are just spiritually sluggish, where you are cold even to the Word where you
are living your life based on the sin nature - nevertheless no matter how bad
you have sinned no matter how far you have drifted off course from grace, no
matter how far you have gotten from the Lord, nevertheless we have confidence that
despite failure there is recovery. God’s
grace always provides for recovery. God’s grace is greater than any sin that we
can ever commit.
The
beginning of this verse is extremely important.
As I have been studying it for the last week or so and thinking about it
especially the last few days something hit me about this today in light of some
things that went on at pre-trib. That is
this first phrase.
“But
beloved we are confident of better things concerning you.”
What
a powerful word that is that we are confident.
It is the Greek word peitho. It is a perfect passive indicative here. What is important to understand is that it is
a perfect tense verb. Now the grammar
there is important because it helps us to understand the thrust of what he is
saying. A perfect tense verb in the
Greek indicates, especially in the intensive perfect tense, that this is this
emphasizes the present results of a completed past action.
So
the writer is saying, “I am currently confident and have been confident as a
result of some past action.”
Now
that past action is his understanding of the grace of God and how the grace of
God works in the life of the believer.
If the believer fails no matter what it is we have a promise of
forgiveness.
NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Confess
means to admit or acknowledge our sins to God.
I
John 1:9 is an important thing to understand because when we are out of
fellowship we cannot produce anything of eternal value. We are out of fellowship with God. We have breeched that rapport. God
the Holy Spirit isn’t working positively in our lives for growth. He is working in a negative sense to bring us
back into recovery into fellowship with God to produce. We are walking by the flesh and not by the
Spirit. There is that important contrast
that we have studied in Galatians 5:16-25.
Before anything positive is produced in our lives after we have sinned, there
has to be this recovery. You confess
first.
Lately
there have been people asking me, “What is the relationship between repentance
and confession?”
The
word repentance emphasizes change. Repentance
really comes after (if you want to break it down logically) confession. If you repent before you confess, you are
doing it when you are out of fellowship.
You are doing it in the power of the flesh. You have to get back in fellowship before it
has any value. You don’t repent and then
confess. You confess and repentance may be years away.
I
was thinking of an example. Let’s say
you are in a situation. This
happens. It is very common today. You have somebody who gets abused,
maltreated, betrayed in a relationship.
I can imagine many different situations involving marriage where there
is betrayal or where there is abuse.
There may be emotional abuse, physical abuse or whatever it might
be. There is a horrible divorce
situation. One person is more in the
right and the other person is much more in the wrong. It has really produced a horrible situation
which is very abusive and very wrong.
And when that marital split occurs there are often on the part of one
person very hurt feelings. There is that
tendency to anger, resentment, bitterness, and revenge that can dominate the
soul. If that abuse and all of that treatment
has gone on for years and has been truly horrible, then that person may
struggle for years with bitterness.
Every time they think of that person they were married to, there is this
welling up of emotion.
Yet
in order to ever grow past that, what do you have to do? You have got to be in fellowship. Right?
You can’t deal with it in the power of the flesh. You have got to deal with it by the power of
God the Holy Spirit. So that means you
have to be back in fellowship. You can’t wait and get back in
fellowship. You may not even at times to
be willing to admit that it is a sin. It
feels good to be vindictive and to enjoy those thoughts. We are all that way. Don’t look at me like I
just said something …. We are all that
way. But those thoughts don’t dominate
us 24-7, not 60 seconds out of every minute, 60 minutes out of every hour and
24 hours out of every day. There are
times when you get distracted and you are watching the evening news. You get mad at some politician. (I am just kidding.)
You
get distracted because your favorite football team won and there is happiness
there. You confess some other sin. Yes, you are forgiven of all sins. That is what I John 1:9 says.
NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we confess
our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.
“Our
sins” are those we mention.
Five
minutes later when you think of that dirty SOB (that is son of Belial), then
you are out of fellowship again. But you
don’t have to repent of that. It may take
years in many cases for us to grow through and grow out of and pass certain
sins that are trends, comfortable trends, of our sin nature. We all have the comfort zone of our sin
nature. It is a dangerous place to live,
but we all do that more often than we are willing to admit. But there is always recovery. We have to keep our eye on that forward
momentum that we have to grow through all of this even though all this times it
may take us years to recognize that certain mental attitude sins that we have
aren’t really unhealthy and we have to move passed them. If we have to come to a point of fully
recognizing their sinfulness and they are wrong before we can ever confess any
sin then we are in trouble because you never get back into that position where
you can walk with the Spirit again and the Spirit can begin to deal with those
things.
Here
we have a statement that we have confidence – the writer says that we can be
sure, we can have confidence that there is recovery and he has confidence that
even though this congregation has failed miserably he is confident of better
things for them.
Now
this word confidence is very important because we can have confidence in the
right things and we can have confidence in the wrong thing. This word confident is the Greek word that peitho which indicates the attainment of
certainty. Certainty is one of the
things that you are either sure or you are not sure. It is sort of like being pregnant. You are not just a little bit pregnant. You are either sure or you are not sure. Now the trouble with living in the post
modern era is people want to think that you can be a little bit sure.
“I
am 80% sure. I am 50% sure. I am 30% sure.”
You
just don’t have a basis of knowledge or what philosophers call epistemology for
being absolutely sure of anything. Yet that is the terminology here. We can attain certainty. We can be convinced; we can be persuaded that
something is 100% true.
As
Paul says in I Corinthians 5, “We walk by faith and not by sight.”
The
trouble with most people is that they think that certainty relates only to
sight. In other words if we put it into
epistemological terms, you can only have certainty on the basis of empiricism
or rationalism. But faith, well that is
a leap of faith. That is subjective so
there is not any certainty there. But
the Bible says there are people who have certainty in the wrong things and in
Luke 18:9 Jesus tells a parable to some of the people around Him who trusted. There is that word peitho.
They had confidence in themselves that
they were righteous and viewed others with contempt.
NKJ Luke 18:9 Also He
spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous,
and despised others:
This
is the parable of the Pharisee and the publican where the Pharisee was the one
who stood and he prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people”.
“I
am not a Democrat.” No…..
“I
am not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all that I get.”
Emphasis
is on what he did - emphasis on his own actions as the source of
righteousness.
In
contrast there is the tax collector who says, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
Jesus
goes on to make the point that the man who was humble, the tax collector, who
recognized that he had no standing whatsoever before God on the basis of what
he had done was the one who was the justified one. He recognized grace. So we see that there are those who are
persuaded of the wrong thing. So you can
believe or trust or be confident in the wrong thing. In fact peitho
isn’t a synonym for trust even though it is etymologically related to the word pistis which is the word for faith. Now we have a positive use of this confidence
in Romans 8:38-9.
NKJ Romans 8:38 For I am
persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor
powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor
depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul
is saying that he is confident and we can be confident too. On a scale from one to ten, how confident is
Paul? Ten! He is absolutely confident. He has no shadow of a doubt that he has
perfect standing before God. It is not 80% or 60 or 40%. The expectation from this verse is that we
can be just as certain and just as confident of our salvation. So the bottom line here is that the Bible
teaches that we can have confidence or the certain knowledge of the truth. Why is that?
Again as I have stressed over and over, it is because our confidence is
in the revelation of God. It comes back
to that theory of knowledge. We can know
truth because the God who is truth has communicated to us. The omniscient God who knows everything – who
knows everything that will be, everything that could be has communicated to us. Not only that but we have an understanding that
this God created us and He designed us in such a way that despite the chaos from
sin we could still hear what He said. He
could still communicate to fallen man. Of
course in the Church Age for believers we have the addition of God the Holy
Spirit who enables us to understand fully the Word of God. Aside from the gospel the natural man can’t
understand anything. He only understands
the gospel because God gives us the Holy Spirit makes it clear to them. God gives us the Holy Spirit who makes the Word
of God clear to us, makes it perspicuous to us so we can truly know what the
Word of God says.
Now
this last week when we were up at pretrib one of the
papers that was given (an excellent presentation) was by Dr. Bob Wilkin who is
the president of Grace Evangelical Society.
He delivered an eye opening paper entitled Postmodernism and Its
Impact upon Theological Education. Now
he sort of left no institution unturned.
He dealt with a number of seminaries and Bible colleges around the
country and how members of their faculty (not everybody on their faculty) the
whole institution hasn’t gone over to postmodernism, but how certain members of
their faculty are allowed to make some extremely dubious statements. He named names and he gave examples. Some of these included recent examples from Dallas
Theological Seminary. I thought that I
would share that with you so that you could be warmed and spiritually
encouraged by where our seminaries and schools are going.
Recently
Dallas Theological Seminary had a conference on postmodernism and they invited as
one of the speakers a man by the name of Brian McLaren. Now most of you have never heard of him, but
he is one of the major influences in the Emerging Church Movement. Most of you have probably never heard of that
either. That is one of these kind of movements where
everybody sits around and instead of having pews or chairs they bring in a bunch of sofas and they all share with each
other about all of the warm fuzzies that the have
from God. So the Emerging Church Movement
is just really going. That is the
seeker-sensitive-purpose-driven next step.
It is extremely scary. Anyway McLaren was listed recently by Time Magazine (according to Wilken) as one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in
American today. Wilken
writes…
That fact combined with the fact that DTS wanted him
to speak there should grab all of our attention. What he has to say is important even if it is
heretical.
Bob’s
words. I agree, but they are Bob’s
words.
I used that term intentionally. During a question and answer session McLaren was asked if he knew anything for sure.
Now
remember I just said that the Apostle Paul says you can know some things for
sure. The Scripture is certain about
that.
But initially McClaren said
he did know some things for sure, such as knowing that he had experienced God’s
love But then he said, “I can have
doubts about anything if it’s late enough at night. Certainty, he says I think, is overrated in
the modern world.”
My question
is, “In the modern world there is no certainty.
Nobody believes in certainty. It
isn’t rated at all.”
But
anyway Wilken goes on to comment about this statement…
That is the heart of postmodernism. He says certainty is overrated in the modern
world. What is not overrated in the
modern world is doubt. Everybody needs
to have a healthy amount of skepticism.
He
moved on from Brian McLaren who is not a DTS student
or faculty member but was invited to speak at the conference to talk about Darrel
Bock. Dr. Darrel Bock is a distinguished
research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Seminary. He is a
Bock’s remarks are equally amazing. He said the following immediately after McLaren ended his answer.
This is Bock’s speaking.
“I think when you are discussing foundationalism (the
idea of having a sure and certain foundation to our doctrine) the concept of
certainty has also to do with provability.
Can I prove that something has taken place? Can I prove beyond any reasonable doubt? Can I prove it?
See
most of us who went through
So Bob
goes on and he says (to give an illustration)…
We have to talk about the
relationship of conviction, certainty and faith.
Then
he says….
I am reminded of a situation where I was debating
Marcus Borg.
For
those of you who don’t know, he is one of those big bad liberals who are part
of the Jesus seminar who doubt that 95% of the gospels had anything to do with
what actually happened. So he is
debating Marcus Borg and Borg got up and began his debate by saying,..
“I don’t think that this
debate is a real debate because Darrel is going to defend the position that he holds
to which is that the Bible is inerrant.
As a result the resurrection must happen, talking about the proof for
the resurrection of Christ.
Well, Bock responded by saying,”I thought that was
an interesting way to begin a debate.” I got up and said (these are Darrel Bock’s
words.), “I think what tonight is about is not whether I can prove the
resurrection takes place as a matter of absolute certainty, but whether or not
the case for believing in the resurrection as physical act has greater
plausibility than the case that it’s a metaphor. And, there is a distinction
between what I believe and why I believe it and how strongly I hold to it and
what I can actually show.”
This
is the research professor of New Testament, Dallas Theological Seminary. What he is saying is that all we can get out of
Bible is greater plausibility.
Why
do you believe the Bible instead of Islam?
“Well,
it is a little more plausible.”
When
you die and you are entering heaven and Jesus says, “Why should I let you into
heaven?”
“Well,
I thought you had a little more plausible explanation of things.”
Is
that what we are talking about? Now not
every professor at Dallas Seminary holds to positions like this. I want to make that clear. There are some
good men there. But, there was no one there
like that 30 years ago. They would not
have been allowed to come back on the campus if they ever made a statement like
that 30 years ago. Now they are promoted
to positions of research professor.
Bob
went on to say that there is another example from two recent Dallas Seminary
graduates who have a ministry called Reclaiming the Mind Ministry. He refers to a graduate named Michael Patton
who graduated in 2001 and Rome Dick who graduated in 2004 who are president and
executive director respectively of this internet based teaching ministry. He says they have an internet radio ministry
called Theology Unplugged. In one of
their internet broadcasts they featured a discussion between the two of them
and the radio talk show host, a man named Greg Kromarty,
who himself is conversant on post modern thought. So Patton started off and he asked the other
two how sure they were on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 represents absolute
certainty.
“Are
you sure you exist?”
“Yes,
I am reasonably sure I exist.”
That
would be a 10. And if you are sure that
is going to rain tomorrow that may be somewhere down around a one. Remember we are in
So
he asked them if on a scale from 1 – 10 how sure are you of God’s existence, Kromarty said that he would put God’s existence on a scale
somewhere between 5 and 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. Rome Dick the DTS graduate (Kromarty is not a DTS graduate) puts God’s existence on 7
on a scale of 1 to 10. How sure are you
that God exists? In other words would
you give your life? I have got a 45 pointed between your eyes, are you going to
give your life for the existence of God? On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are
you?
“Well,
maybe a 7.”
Then
they discussed how sure they were that Jesus will return at the rapture.
Kromarty quipped, “That is a nice story.”
Now
if you are in touch with postmodern thought, story is the key word. Everything is a story. It is
all a narrative. If it is a story, then he said he would rate the pretrib rapture as a 2 on a scale from 1 to 10. Dick
the DTS graduate doesn’t give a number but suggests that the answer to that
question might even be a negative number.
Now
Wilken goes on to note and I quote him…
The DTS students who worked for him (he always has 2
or 3 interns working with him) estimate that a huge percentage, over 80% of the
students in their classes buy the postmodern uncertainty that they are being
taught in class.
That
would mean 8 or 9 out of 10 DTS graduates will be like Patton and Kromarty and will be going out to stand in pulpits and give
people a plausible view of how God can solve your problems or how you can be
saved. This is the cream of the crop
today.
Now
the Bible says that there is certainty.
In fact the writer of Hebrews here is talking about a certainty that
doesn’t relate to salvation, that doesn’t relate to the empty tomb, that
doesn’t relate to the existence of God, but is something that a lot of
Christians wouldn’t be that certain about.
That is that he is confident that even though you have messed up your
life to the maximum because you have been living on carnality and you have
committed all kinds of egregious sins.
He
says, “I have this same confidence of my eternal security than I have that
better things are going to come out of you because you are going to turn things
around and get right with the Lord again.”
That
is what he is talking about. He has
certainty that if we completely blow it in the Christian life no matter how badly
you have failed, whatever sins you commit, no matter what sins you commit God’s
grace is great enough to give you recovery. So we have to remember that as long
as we are still alive God has a plan for your life and recovery may be long
slow and hard and you might have to go through a series of divine discipline just
like David did. Nevertheless God is
going to provide a way for you to recover because no sin is too great for the
grace of God. There was no sin that
didn’t make it into God’s plan when in His omniscience He was aware of every
sin in human history and imputed every sin in human history to Jesus Christ on
the cross.
He
didn’t wake up the day after and go, “Oops!
I forgot one. Oh! Oh! Wait a minute! John Hite is going to do this
and I slipped. That’s not covered. ”
He
is not going to do that. Every one of
them made it to the cross. No sin was
forgotten. So every sin is covered by
the grace of God. No sin is too great
for God to forgive because every sin was paid for by Jesus Christ on the cross. No sin was left out. No sin was
uncovered. Every sin was paid for and
therefore that’s not the issue. The
issue is - are you willing to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and
admit that what you did was a sin so that by confession you can have
forgiveness, recovery and move forward.
So there is no sin too great for recovery. The only thing that holds us
back is that our volition gets too locked in negative and we aren’t willing to
confess the sin and move forward.
The
point that we have to remember in the context of this passage is the serious warning
just given that from a human perspective in terms of normal recovery there can
be a point where apart from the grace of God there is no recovery. I pointed
that out last time. Again and again in
the book of Hebrews there is this emphasis on encouraging one another,
strengthening one another but sometimes people get locked into negative and
there is nothing you and I can say or do other than prayer to encourage their
recovery. It is up to the grace of God
and His divine discipline. So there is
certainly assurance and we can be 100 % sure and certain of God’s provision.
A
lot of people today frankly don’t have a lot of assurance in their
salvation. In fact I was talking with
one pastor at the conference, an older pastor, Dr. Joe Chambers. He would not mind me mentioning his name. He
is the pastor of a large classic Pentecostal church in
NKJ 1 John 5:13 These
things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that
you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe
in the name of the Son of God.
That
you may know - not that you may have a
plausible case for eternal life.
So
we can know that we are saved.
Another
line of argument for eternal security is based on the power of God because God
is omnipotent. He is able to do that
which He intends to do.
NKJ Jude
God
is able to make you stand in His presence and to keep us. He is able to keep us. We connect this with passages such as John
10:28-9 where Jesus says...
NKJ John
NKJ John 10:29
"My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all;
and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand.
He
doesn’t say, “And they might not perish.”
You
see that have eternal life. That means
it is not going to be lost.
These
are dogmatic statements of absolute certainty.
So
you are held in Jesus’ hand. Then the
Father has His hands wrapped around Jesus’ hands and who do you think can come
along and pry those open? It can’t happen.
So we have absolute certainty of our salvation because of the power of
God.
Third,
because of the sealing ministry of the Holy Spirit. He puts His brand on
us. I always like to think about the sealing
of the Spirit in terms of good old cattle branding. If you’re not familiar with
cattle branding, back in the Wild West days they used to have cattle rustlers
who would take a cinch ring off of a saddle that is a round ring. They would take that and hold it with a pair
of pliers and heat it up and would use that to change a brand. If you are looking at the skin of that
cattle from the outside it looks like that brand has been changed. That brand signified ownership. So instead of
being owned by one person, it now looked like that cow was owned by another
person. That cow might go the rest of his
life with that brand on him like that because the only way you could tell that
the brand had been changed was to slaughter the calf, cut the hide off and then
look at it from the reverse side you could see that the brand had been changed. A lot of Christians are that way. When they get saved they get branded by the
Holy Spirit and they are in the family of God and owned by God, but because of
carnality they let Satan come along and try to counterfeit or change the
brand. It is not going to be until they
die that you are going to see what the real brand was. It is
the brand of the Lord Jesus Christ. They
haven’t lost their salvation. They have
eternal security and assurance of their salvation.
Now
the writer of Hebrews here is confident of better things. Now what are those better things? Let’s just go back and finish up. Let’s get a corrected translation of the
verse.
Literal
Translation: But beloved, concerning you we are convinced
of better things that are related to your salvation.
So
there is an emphasis here with a term of endearment at the very beginning of
the verse.
You
who are dull of hearing sluggards who I have been reprimanding for the last 8
or 10 verses.
So
what are these better things that are related to our salvation? Well, we are not talking about salvation in
terms of classic justification or coming to Christ or gaining eternal life at
the moment of faith alone in Christ alone.
Remember we have seen that the Word in Hebrews for salvation soteria has to do with that completed process of
salvation not phase 1 justification when we are saved from the penalty of sin,
not phase 2 sanctification when we are saved from the presence of sin but phase
3 salvation glorification when we are saved form the presence of sin. That is what he is talking about – the better
things that are related to that salvation at the end of phase 3. So those better things that accompany
salvation that glorification has to do with rewards and inheritance which is
where he heads in verse 12 that through faith and patience we inherit the
promises. We will come back next time and
continue to look at the rest of verse 9 and the dynamics of spiritual work and
service in verse 10.