Hebrews Lesson 73
NKJ Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
We are still in Hebrews 6. We are in the section from verse 9 to verse
12. Let’s go over these initially to get
the flow of thought in this section. The
writer 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.
Beloved is a term that is used for believers in the
Scripture so we know that he is not addressing unbelievers
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.
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
We have gone through verse
9. We have seen that the point is that
we can have confidence that despite failure, God’s grace always provides for
recovery. Remember he has just been giving
them a rebuke for their spiritual sluggishness.
He ends at the end of this section at the end of verse 12 by saying…
that you do
not become sluggish.
But actually back in verse 11
when he shifted into the warning exhortation, he said...
NKJ Hebrews
That is Melchizedek.
It is the same word that he
uses there. So they have gone into this
spiritual complacency where they are allowing the details of life to distract
them. They are allowing the religious prestige
of Judaism where most of these recipients were former priests and they had all
of the pomp and circumstance associated with temple worship. All of that is part of the pressure on them. They are ready to give up Christianity and go
back into the old legalistic system. So
there is this dire warning that he writes in verses 4 through 6 regarding the
dangers of spiritual regression. But
here he returns to a positive note emphasizing confidence that he has that they
can recover and they can go forward.
This word we are confident is
the Greek word peitho which emphasizes the
present results of a completed action.
He is confident that because of what he knows about God, what he knows
about God’s grace, because of what he knows about his readers that they can reverse
course. They can recover and go forward
because in God’s plan there is no sin that is too great for the grace of God. No matter what you have done you can always go
forward. You can always press on. So he is confident that they are not going to
remain in this position of spiritual doldrums, but they are going to press on.
The better things that he is
convinced of are not just the better things in time, but there are some are
associated with their ultimate salvation.
That brings to bear a future orientation as I have pointed out before. This Greek
word soteria for salvation in Hebrews is not a
word that looks back to our past justification, but is a word that looks
forward and anticipates the culmination of the whole salvation process –
justification, sanctification and ultimate glorification where we realize our
inheritance. If you look ahead in verse
12, he talks about inheriting the promises.
So the doctrine that ties all of this together, that binds these
thoughts together is this challenge to press on in the spiritual life because
only by endurance and by patience and by consistency in taking in the Word, applying
the Word, not being distracted by the pressures, the vicissitudes, the pains and
the problems and the traumas of life are we going to be able to reach spiritual
maturity and then when the Lord comes back in His kingdom realize the blessings
of inheriting the kingdom. So this is
his flow of thought.
In the second verse that we looked
at in verse 10, the emphasis is on God’s justice. We always have to start with any issue, any
problem, and any doctrine with the person of God - with His character, with His
essence, with His attributes. His point in
verse 10 is that God’s justice doesn’t forget or neglect or overlook the
spiritual advance that we have made. No
matter how badly you fail, God doesn’t overlook or forget that divine good that
has already been produced in your life.
If you have been growing and maturing as a believer and you have been
walking by means of the Spirit, there is divine good that is produced there and
God doesn’t overlook or forget that. But
if you go into spiritual regression, you may lose ground spiritually. You may lose ground in terms of spiritual maturity. You may go through some intense divine
discipline, but nevertheless God doesn’t forget that which is already been done. So the emphasis in verse 10 is that God is
not unjust to forget. It is a double
negative there. He is not unjust. He says it with a double negative to
emphasize the justice of God.
We looked at the essence of
God last time. The ten attributes of God
- His sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, omniscience,
omnipotence, omnipresence, veracity and immutability. We are focusing on His righteousness and
justice.
Psalm 89 says …
NKJ Psalm 89:14 Righteousness and justice are the
foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before Your face.
So this is the foundation of
understanding the character of God. He is absolutely correct in all that He does. The righteousness refers to the absolute
standard of His character and justice refers to its application. So whatever God does is just. We go through a lot of injustices in life. A lot of times we wonder where God is. If God
is really paying attention, then why does He let so-and-so get away with
such-and-such? It just seems like there
are some people who never get punished and everything they touch turns to
gold. Everything is wonderful. We wonder where the justice of God is. David did the same thing in the psalms.
He said, “How long O Lord,
how long will the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?”
There are two or three
different psalms where he vocalizes that very thought. Yet God says that eventually there will be
justice either in time or in eternity. A
lot of times we just don’t see it. We
aren’t there to watch what happens. It is like when the Israelites were in the
wilderness. They grumbled against God
because they didn’t like the food. They were
eating manna every morning and every
The psalmist says that God
answered their prayer, gave them the desire of their heart; but He sent
leanness to their soul.
There are people in
life. That is what God does. He blesses them to a point to show how
absolutely miserable they are. We don’t
see the inner soul misery that a lot of people have when the lights go off at
night and they are there by themselves. They have to look at the mirror and we
don’t recognize what is going on. Now we
would like to. Now that is the
problem. We would like to see some
people and understand their pain and misery and watch God discipline. That is part of our carnality and our old sin
nature trend. So the Scriptures
emphasize the fact that God is always just.
He is always fair. This is what
Abraham said back in Genesis 18.
NKJ Genesis
No matter what happens God is
the one who has all the facts, all the data, all the information. He is the only one who can treat man
collectively or individually with absolute justice and righteousness. So the writer of Hebrews says…
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.
He is not going to forget
what has gone on. There are three things
that are mentioned there related to the verb.
The verb is epilanthano which
means to forget or to neglect or overlook.
In a sense it is an anthropopathism related to God because God isn’t
concerned with memory. So we have to
always go back and remember our definitions for anthropomorphism and anthropopathism.
Now we just did this Tuesday
night in a different series.
You see the trouble when you
are doing different series and you do the same thing is that everybody was here
on Tuesday night and says, “Oh, we know all this.”
But the people who are
listening out there in – what do we call it?
They don’t listen to tapes anymore.
It’s MP3 land or DVD land, out there in media land and the universal
electronic church. They are just
listening to Hebrews. So they need to
hear this.
So anthropomorphism is a
figure of speech where there is an ascription.
The language ascribes to God human physical characteristics which He
doesn’t actually possess, (like eyes, ears, nose, fingers, toes) to explain His
essence, policy, acts and decisions in terms of human anatomy. So He is using human body parts to help us
understand. It is language of
accommodation, language of a common frame of reference to understand God’s
work.
An anthropopathism is the
same thing. Instead of ascribing physical
characteristics to God, emotional characteristics are ascribed to God. You may not realize this because most of you
have heard me teach this for so long, you have heard this taught. When I went to seminary I was surprised when we
got into Psalms that second semester or second year of Hebrew when you are
dealing with Hebrew poetry and you go through figures of speech. One of the
first books you have to buy is a big 3 inch book done by Ethyl Bolinger on figures of speech used in the Bible. Now I was an English major and I would
suggest that most of you who were English majors that are here (I think there
are one or two here) never heard of 90% of these figures of speech. He traces them all the way back to
Greek. He gives you the Greek names, the
Latin names for them, all the examples in Scripture. It is a fantastic book. He does have anthropopeia
in there which is the Latin form for anthropopathism. You have anthropopathism.
But today we live in a world where
people reject the notion that there is real anthropopathic talk. In other words, God really does feel all of
these emotions. What is interesting (and
just to make a little connection with something I talked about on Tuesday night)
remember on Tuesday night I talked about guilt and shame and how our
understanding of guilt and shame has changed in the last 30 or 40 years. Ultimately this is all part of personality. We
live in a world where we worship personality instead of character. If you go back before 1900, you won’t find
works or people talking about personality.
They were focused on character. I
believe that a lot of that is the result of Freud. I have done a study. I haven’t been able to do an exhaustive
study. I haven’t been able to go up to
the
Years ago I thought, “Hum. I
wonder if that means anything.”
What happened in the middle point
of the 19th century? That is
when you have the introduction of psychology and Freud and all this other stuff. That
just shows an example of how worldly thinking, the philosophical concepts of
the world put pressure on the church. The
church always struggles with the garbage from the world outside. So there is a lot of debate here.
In fact there was a time when
theologians believed in what was called the impassability of God. Break that word down etymologically. That middle syllable “pass” derives from the
same word where we get passion which was a word that was typically used in the
Middle Ages to talk about human emotions.
They were passions. They were
fleshly passions that needed to be controlled.
So when you talk about impassability, you are talking about not having
the passion and that nothing man did would enter into and change the passions
of God. He was impassable. Now you will find that very few conservative
theologians will agree that God is impassible.
God has emotions. Like I pointed
out the other night that there is one who will remain nameless because he is
near and dear to many people in congregation, a theologian who wrote a paper not
long ago on the emotions of God and had it published. I challenged him on it.
He said, “How can you say
these are figures of speech?”
I went to Exodus and said, “If
you look at Exodus where it says that God got angry with
In other words you do have a
figure of speech there. It is an anthropomorphism. But the anthropomorphism is an anthropopathism. So it is a double figure of speech.
He went “Hum. I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe I need to go back and think about that.”
“Yeah, you do.”
So, what does God remember? See God doesn’t forget things because God is
omniscient. He always knows all of the
knowable and nothing changes. So there
are three things that God remembers. He
remembers your work. He remembers your
labor of love. He remembers your
ministry. Now if you look at your text
if you are using the New American Standard Bible, an NIV Bible, (God forbid)
the Message, or the Living Bible or some of these others – the contemporary
English Version, The Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version,
any of these contemporary versions; it doesn’t have labor of love there. But that is in the Majority Text and majority
of documents. Labor should be there. There are other passages that use that same
terminology, specifically in I Thessalonians 1:3 which we will look at in a
minute.
So God remembers work, labor
of love and ministry. I pointed out last
time that among most conservatives and evangelicals we don’t like that word “work”
because we think of works of the law. We
think of works of morality, doing something to try to impress God except that
the word work really has two basic ideas.
One is negative work that is done in the power of the flesh and that
which is positive, work that is done in the power of the Holy Spirit. So that is what we are focusing on here – the
divine good that has been produced in the person’s life. So when we talk about work we are talking
about divine good. When we talk about labor
of love, it is actually the labor that comes from the source of love. You see it is the love for one another
motivates that labor and then Christian service. That is what ministry is. It is diokonia
here. It means Christian service. We are going to look at what all that means
in just a minute.
So we looked at a summary of
what we did on the doctrine of work last time.
Work comes from the Greek ergon which
refers to any kind of performance, doing something. It
can be meritorious. It can be
activity. It can be thought. It has a broad range of meanings – any kind
of accomplishment. It is a value neutral
word in and of itself. Context indicates
whether it is bad or good. As I pointed out a minute ago some versions remove
the word labor, but it is found in a majority of documents. It should read…
Literal translation: For God is not
unjust to forget your work and labor of love.
Make sure you have that in
your text. Write it in if it is not
there.
Now we looked at the whole
concept of work. I just want to review a
couple of verses we had up on the screen last week to emphasize the positive
value the Bible has on work in the Christian life.
NKJ 2 Corinthians 9:8 And God is able to make all
grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things,
may have an abundance for every good work.
In other words God gave all
of those spiritual assets - the problems solving devices, a completed canon of
Scripture, a pastor-teacher, a local church where you can learn the Word of God. All of this is driving you to a point of production
in terms of Christian service, in terms of Christian work, whatever field that
may be in. The trouble is that when most
people talk about Christian service, they have been exposed to too much
legalism and they have this narrow view of what Christian service is. It is teaching Sunday school, working as an
usher, being a deacon. Here it is baking
cookies for church which I think is a very fine occupation. But Christian service can involve all manner
of different things. A lot of it is unseen.
It can involve prayer for people, prayer for the sick, calling people and encouraging
them, helping out you know who are going through some kind of difficulty. A lot of this is unseen and it should
be. It is not the job of the deacons to
make sure (or Sunday school teachers or whatever else they have.) or of the
leadership of the church to make sure that everybody is out there doing
Christian service. Christian service is
a result of spiritual growth, not the cause of spiritual growth.
My philosophy of ministry is that
you teach the Word, people respond and grow.
As they grow the Holy Spirit is going to bring into action their
spiritual gifts, their talents, whatever it may be. It will flow naturally as time
progresses. If they sit out in the pew
and take notes and have volumes of notebooks and twenty years go by and you
don’t see any Christian service then you have to start wondering if they are
ever really in fellowship or if the Holy
Spirit is doing anything because that should be the ultimate result.
In Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
The role of the pastor and
teacher is found in Ephesians 4:11-12.
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
So the teaching ministry of
the local church is training, to teach you how to think and to understand the
assets that God has given you – how to live the spiritual life so that the outworking
of that is in terms of Christian service.
Negatively it is used for example
in Ephesians 5:11.
NKJ Ephesians
So you have deeds of the darkness
which would be sin and you have works of the law which would be morality,
neither of which would have any kind of spiritual value.
He told Timothy to instruct
his congregation to do good and to be rich in good works and to be generous and
to be ready to share. He also told him
in II Timothy 3:17 that the man of God was to be prepared for every good
work. Verses 16 and 17 deal with the inspiration of
Scripture.
NKJ 2 Timothy
NKJ 2 Timothy
In Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
good works,
In other words, Christians
will get together (I know you do this) and talk.
“How can we help that person?
What can we do over here? How can we
make this better?”
That is the interaction of
people coming together and talking about how they can take things to a new
level in whatever the issue is whether it is helping somebody or helping a
missionary or being involved in prep school or whatever it is. There are all kinds of different areas, areas
that we can’t even approach here.
Let’s look at this in terms
of a flow chart. The Word is
taught. You listen to a pastor. You listen to a Sunday school teacher. You listen to somebody on a tape. You hear the Word being taught. Under the filling ministry of God the Holy
Spirit that goes into your soul as epignosis doctrine. Now we all know the dynamics of that. That is the process of divine viewpoint truth
going in and hopefully human viewpoint kosmic thought being flushed out. That is the whole learning process. It is Romans 12:2.
NKJ Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
That comes from coming to church. That is why church is foundationally in the
Scripture based on an educational model and not a fellowship model.
Somebody was showing me right
before church a little flyer. You know we
have these little things that you can pass out. You can use them to give the gospel. How many Scripture references are on
here? 8?
There are 8 Scripture references on this 3 x 5 card. There is a big flyer that they got in the
neighborhood. A new church is going
up.
There is a picture of Mexican
food on the front and it says, “It is NACHO Mama’s Church.”
Not a single Bible reference
in the whole thing. They could have put
30 in there. Not a single reference to
the Bible, to Scripture, to Christ, or to salvation. Oh, we live in such great times. What they have got is a church where kosmic
truth is being reinforced and reemphasized and there is no biblical truth whatsoever. But they operate on this assumption that the
church is a social institution.
Now when I went to university,
I am sure that the leadership at the university had some concept of social life
among the students - like keeping it down.
But the main focus of the board of trustees of that that institution had
to do with making sure that the students that came there would get a good
education and that they would maintain their accreditation. Now even though that was the focus and
objective of the school, there was a lot of fellowship going on. There was a lot of social life. It is a by-product. Whenever people get together there is social
life. Just look at what happens here in
the kitchen every time before class. You
can’t stop it. Some people try, but you
really can’t stop it. They are going to
get to know each other.
But when you put the focus on
fellowship and on social life, then what falls off the table is learning the
Word of God and growing. So the emphasis
has to be on learning the Word, putting divine viewpoint in your soul and
getting rid of kosmic thought. When you
walk by the Spirit, as you apply the Word and go forward that leads to
spiritual growth. As you grow
spiritually, this is going to impact two areas.
First of all there is going to be spiritual production in the sense of
the fruit of the Spirit. This is character transformation. These are the biblical virtues of love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, gentleness – all that in Galatians 5:21-22. That is Christ-like character that takes
place. Then there is this second area of
production. That is Christian service. Now Christian service is part of two aspects
– our royal priesthood which is toward God.
This is prayer, giving, reading the Scriptures, and learning the
Word. All of this is part of our
priesthood. Then there is our ambassadorship
which has to do with witnessing, teaching in Sunday school, living our life as
a witness or testimony before unbelievers and before the angels. There are a lot of other different dynamics for
both royal priesthood and ambassadorship.
That is what Christian service really is. It is the function of our royal priesthood
and our ambassadorship. The
ambassadorship works in outward toward human beings and the priesthood is
toward God.
So that chart shows the role
of work - going to Bible class, studying your Bible, thinking about it,
learning it, memorizing Scripture, memorizing promises, claiming promises,
being conscientious when you are driving down the freeway rushing to get that
last minute Christmas present. Some
illegal alien cuts you off because they don’t know how to drive in American
traffic and you get mad and angry. You have to exercise work to think about the
fact that you are to respond differently.
Sometimes that takes work.
Then we have the labor of
love. That is the outworking of the love
that is the Christ-like character, the love that is produced by God the Holy
Spirit and then that becomes a motive for labor in terms of service. So that is how these three aspects work out as
they are emphasized in verse 10.
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.
The focus is on His
character. Whenever you see the name of
God in Scripture that emphasizes His character, His person. That is our motivation. We learn who God is and that drives us to
serve Him. Romans 12:1 talks about that
being our reasonable service toward God.
It is part of our personal worship.
It goes in the direction of ministry, diokoneia. That is service to the saints. There are a couple of other passages that
reinforce that same idea.
One is I Thessalonians
1:3. There Paul says in his opening
salutation to the Thessalonians, he reinforces the idea of his prayer and what
he is praying for and what he is giving thanks for. For them he is giving thanks for their work
of faith, their labor of love and their steadfastness of hope.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 1:3 remembering without ceasing your
work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in
the sight of our God and Father,
So you have these three things
emphasized there. There are three
virtues that are mentioned – their work, their labor and their
steadfastness. They are each linked to
something by a genitive construction. That
genitive should be understood as a source.
The work comes from their source of their faith as they learn to trust
God and as they are trusting in God they are willing to put forth the effort needed
to concentrate on learning the Word of God, studying the Word of God, memorizing
the Word of God, applying the Word of God.
So that is called the work of faith.
Secondly, there is the labor
of love. This is the Greek word kopos meaning to engage in an activity that is
burdensome. So it goes beyond work to
labor. It is going to take time. There may
be self-sacrifice. If you decide to go
to seminary, it is going to mean sacrifice at a certain level – staying up late
at night. It is intense. If you decide to teach in prep school or if
you are going to help out in different functions around the local church, it is
going to take time. It is going to take
energy. There are things that are going to have to say no to so that you can do
a good job in those particular things.
But it is a labor that comes from the source of love.
Notice the faith rest drill
characterizes that spiritual growth in infancy.
The labor of love is a more mature love.
Then the steadfastness of hope focuses on that personal sense of
destiny. That is the third area.
The word there for
steadfastness is that very important word hupomone
which means perseverance, hanging in there under trial. That is what James talks about in James 1: 2.
NKJ James 1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when
you fall into various trials,
NKJ James 1:3 knowing that the testing of your
faith produces patience.
Endurance has its maturing
result. Paul talks about it in Romans 5 that endurance produces character and
character hope. Hope is linked to
endurance again in here in I Thessalonians 1:3.
So the work comes from faith as you learn to trust God. Work comes from the source. Labor comes from the source of your love for
God and motivates labor. Your hope that
is your confident expectation in your future destiny - hope is always a future
word. It is not this sort of wishful
optimism that you have.
“Golly I hope that maybe we
will have a White Christmas. We had one
two years ago. Maybe it will happen
again.”
No, that is wishful
optimism. It probably isn’t going to
happen. It most likely isn’t going to
happen. But the hope in Scripture is a
confident expectation. It is a
certainty. We know what our destiny
is. Because we know that, from the
source of our confidence we are able to endure the difficulties, the
temptations, the tests, the vicissitudes, and the problems of life and go forward
in spiritual growth. So that is what
Paul is praising the Thessalonians for and giving thanks for in his prayers. It is because of their work of faith, their labor
and the steadfastness of hope.
Now do you notice anything
interesting in that passage? We have
three things: faith, hope and love. Do we run into those three anywhere else in
Scripture? Sure we do. In I Corinthians
13:13 at the end of that famous chapter that gives us the characteristics of
the love that the Holy Spirit is producing in us, at the end of the section that
deals with the temporary nature of certain spiritual gifts specifically
knowledge, prophecy, and tongues - at the conclusion the writer of Corinthians
Paul says…
NKJ 1 Corinthians
This is really an interesting
passage. In fact this passage is one
that really opens up the interpretation of the last part of chapter 13 and
drives a stake in the heart of the whole Pentecostal false teaching on
tongues. There are a lot of
non-charismatics who believe that this chapter is talking about the fact that when
the perfect comes and that which is partial will be done away back in verse 10 that
the perfect has to do with something in the future. It has to do with being in a perfect
environment in heaven, being in a state of perfection before Jesus. So they tie it to either death when we are
face to face with the Lord or the rapture when we are face to face with the
Lord or the Second Coming.
I always love those
articulate theologians who want to sound so erudite and say, “This refers to
the eskaton.”
Oh really! What is that?
It is just indefinitely out there in the future somewhere. So you have said something erudite, but you
haven’t said anything. The problem with
all of those statements is that according to verse 10 that says …
NKJ 1 Corinthians
Really we should translate
that the completed thing.
There is a contrast going on
here. If you look at verse 12, in the
English it says…
NKJ 1 Corinthians
The word there for “now” is
not the same word Greek word that you have for “now” in verse 13. The now in verse 12 is the now arti- now, generally speaking. Now we live in an age where we have a nation
that promotes the liberty and freedom of the individual. See that covers the period of the existence
of the
What Paul is saying is that
in contrast to that which is partial and will be done away with, what continues
now are faith, hope and love. So if then
faith, hope and love continue after the perfect stops; then the perfect is
somewhere off when we are in heaven then faith, hope, and love would continue
beyond that. Right? We have a problem with that because II
Corinthians 5:7 says that when you walk by faith and not by sight. But when I die and I am face to face with the
Lord I am going to quit walking by faith.
So are you. We will be walking by
sight. So if the doing away of the
perfect in I Corinthians 13 has to do with coming into the presence of God, then
faith won’t be continuing beyond that. So
that means that the cessation of the perfect has to be in time not in eternity or
in heaven or something like that.
Furthermore Romans
NKJ Romans 8:24 For we were saved in this hope, but
hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?
In other words, hope is going
to stop when you are face to face with the Lord. When you are face to face with the Lord,
faith and hope are not going to continue.
Faith and hope are going to cease.
The only thing that continues after you are face to face with the Lord is
going to be love. That tells you right
away that in I Corinthians 13 that the tongues, knowledge, prophecy and
everything had to cease in time because the perfect had to come in time, not in
eternity. In eternity there is no faith.
And there is no hope continuing.
So we have these three things
emphasized in I Corinthians 13:13. The “now”
there is emphasizing the fact that it is now in this immediate Church Age, this
post completed canon, post tongue, post Church Age, post miraculous period what
is going to continue is faith, hope and love.
These are the dynamics that drive spiritual growth and spiritual
maturity. As I pointed out in II
Corinthians 5:7, we walk by faith. That
means there has to be an object of faith.
There isn’t a Kierkegaardian existential leap
of faith.
“Well I am just going to
believe it because I ought to believe it.”
God never asked anyone to put
their brain in neutral and believe a bunch of irrational nonsense. That’s why in Acts 1 Luke tells Theophilus
that Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection and gave them many
convincing proofs. You see you don’t put
your brain in neutral when you trust Christ as Savior. There are rational and empirical evidences throughout
the Scripture for the doctrines that are contained in the Scripture for the resurrection
of Christ, for the miracles for the work of Christ on the cross, for creation,
everything. In fact you have to put your
brain in neutral to be an evolutionist.
You have to put your brain in neutral to be an atheist. You have to deny so much to reject God and to
reject the Scripture. You have to buy so
many lies and so many fabrications. In fact
it is nothing more than intellectual and moral laziness to take up the position
of agnosticism or atheism or postmodernism.
It is another way to suppress the truth of God in your own life so that
you don’t have to deal with the fact that God has a claim on your life as an individual
created in His image for a purpose.
So we walk by faith. That means we trust in an eternal authority who
gives us comprehensible information. We
have to understand it and trust it. We don’t walk by sight. It is not something that is rationally or
empirically discerned because rationalism and empiricism always break
down. It is too limited.
Romans
NKJ Romans
The context brings in the
idea of a future inheritance. Now the
trouble that we have with this verse as I pointed out before (I just want to
make sure you remember this) is the punctuation. The way it is normally punctuated, it looks a
though you have two different things going on here that are the same – heirs of
God and joint heirs with Christ - and
they are identical. But the way I have
punctuated it on the screen is to show that there are two different heirships. The one is heirship of God. It is common to every believer. We inherit eternal life. But the second is being a joint heir with
Christ, but that is conditional. It is
if we suffer with Him.
I gave you this fun little
illustration to punctuate the sentence.
Woman without her man is nothing.
Remember that? Everybody gets a good chuckle out of this
one. Women are going to punctuate it the first way.
Woman, without her, man is nothing
Men will punctuate it the
second way.
Woman, without her man, is nothing.
See, it is where you put the
commas. You have two completely
different statements there depending on where you put the commas. In the first example you end up saying that
man is nothing. In the second example
because of where you put the commas, you end up saying that woman is
nothing.
So the translators of Romans
What is so bizarre today is
with the rise of the New Age movement back in the 80’s and the shift away from
the bankruptcy of enlightenment rationalism that really fragmented in the 60’s
and 70’s and the rise of postmodernism, everything is subjective. It is all about the self. It is all about what I experience because
after all that is so important. So what
you see in the church - remember what I said earlier that the church always
imitates the world. Well, as the world
has become more and more subjective. So
have Christians. Since the early 80’s I
have seen a rise in the popularity of the books from the mystics of the early
church. You couldn’t even find some of
this stuff in print 40 years ago. Now
you go to the local Christian bookstore and you can buy books by Theresa of Abila. You have never heard of them, all of these different
kinds of medieval mystics. They are so popular. In fact one of the big trends that has come
out in the last 20 years is contemplative spirituality. It is promoted by all kinds of conservative
evangelicals. It is just subjectivity. Let’s just contemplate our navels and call it
God talking to me.
That is not what we are
talking about here – suffering with Him.
If you are dedicated to grow as a believer, you will put yourself in right
smack dab in the middle of the angelic conflict with the bull’s eye on your
spiritual hind end. You won’t have any trouble figuring out where the suffering
is coming from. There will be all kinds
of suffering for blessing, suffering for training, and adversity. In fact the Apostle Paul tells Timothy that
those who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted in one form or another. You can just count on it. So you don’t have to go out and try to manufacture
suffering to become spiritual. It will
happen. Trust me. Just study the Word, apply the Word and it
will happen. So we go on in chapter 8
and Paul says...
NKJ Romans
What is he talking about
here? To put a category on it, he is
talking about that personal sense of destiny.
When you realize how great the glory is that we are headed to and what
we are being trained to accomplish and what God wants us to do in terms of that
future reign as kings and priests in the Millennial Kingdom; then Paul says
that when that becomes more real to you than your present problems, then you
are going to begin to understand what this is about.
NKJ Romans
That happens when Jesus
Christ returns. So the focus here is on
the future return of Jesus Christ.
He goes on to say…
NKJ Romans
There is a key verse for
understanding that when Adam sinned that sin was not something that just
affected him. I have heard this so much
lately. This idea that you come up with
that I am known for arguing that you can’t have an old earth because if
anything dies (not plant life because that is a different kind of life in Genesis
1) but animal life, human life if anything dies before Adam sins then it
negates the whole death penalty for sin.
Right? Well, people try to squirm
out from that all the time because the implications are that you really have to
get serious about the Bible. If that is
true, the Bible saying that the earth as we know it is only about 6,000 years
old. What about all of this science? There are a lot of conflicts there. So let’s figure out a way to make everything
billions of years old because those atheist scientists have to be coming up
with the truth.
They want to say that
spiritual death only affected Adam. No, Adam’s sin affected the whole creation. That is what Paul is saying in Romans 8:20 -
the creation was subject to futility.
Adam’s sin didn’t just separate him from God. It was like an enormous shock wave off a
nuclear bomb that reverberated through every system - physical, immaterial, angelic,
everything got impacted by Adam’s decision in some way or another. Everything got impacted. It changed lions from being grass eaters to carnivores. It created innumerable problems. Nobody
wanted to sleep with cobras anymore. Things got dangerous.
All of that is going to
change when the Millennium comes back. All
of a sudden Jesus is going to come back and almost instantaneously lions are
going to eat grass and they are going to sleep with babies. Kids can put their hands into cobra
dens. All that happens as soon as Jesus
comes back. It is going to go right back
to the way it was. So the creation – all
the death that you see evidenced in the fossil record is a result of a post
fall sin, not anything that could have happened before. If any of those fossils were laid down prior
to the fall, then you have a major flaw in the whole atonement theology because
you have death before there is sin. It
just can’t happen.
So Paul goes on to say….
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
That is about the third time
we have had the word “waiting.” That is
hope. That is that eternal sense of a
personal destiny.
NKJ Romans 8:24 For we were saved in this hope, but
hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?
NKJ Romans
See the connection between
hope and endurance? If you want to
develop biblical hope in your life, then that relates to endurance and hanging
in there. What gives us that ability to endure
is that we understand the future destiny, what the training is all about.
Let’s go back to our verse in
Hebrews 6:10.
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.
Hebrews
Literal translation: Because you
have served the saints and you continue to do so.
So they have been in
spiritual regression, but they haven’t totally gotten rid of Christianity. They are still involved in Christian service
and Christian growth.
We will stop there and come
back and look at 11 and 12 next time. We
have an understanding and flowchart to work with and we will develop that as we
go forward.