Hebrews Lesson 75
NKJ John
Hebrews 6:9-12
Let’s get into our study of
Hebrews 6. We are working through the
paragraph on verses 9-12. Now last time
as I went through this, we sort of built a case for where I was headed. We barely got there and then it was time to
take a break. Our break has extended for
three of four weeks so most of us need a little review to catch up and put our
head back into this particular passage.
The first thing that the
writer of Hebrews is saying in verse 9 is that we can have confidence that in
spite of failure and whatever failures his readers have experienced - however
they have fallen away, however they have been tempted to go back into Judaism, whatever
their spiritual problems are at this particular time - he is reminding them
that God’s grace is always sufficient for their recovery. There is nothing that they are going to do
that is too great for the grace of God.
So after several paragraphs where he has verbally rebuked them and
challenged them with the dangers of spiritual regression, he now comes back on
a very positive note to encourage them that they can indeed go forward and that
God’s grace is sufficient despite any failure on their part.
He says in verse 9…
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.
Not that you are going to
fall away, but we are confident that better things that accompany salvation.
Again we point out that
salvation here is the Greek noun soterion
which has a future orientation. Remember,
there are three stages to salvation.
Stage one is justification. Very
rarely do the Scriptures use the sozo
terminology – salvation, being saved, this type of terminology as a translation
for sozo to refer to what we normally refer to
as salvation. It has entered into
evangelical idiom to talk about entering into heaven, being born again as getting
saved. So we tend to always, every time
you read that word saved or salvation we tend to think of phase 1 or stage 1 salvation
justification. But there are many passages
where it is just not used that way. In
fact I am convinced that that there is possibly only one place in the entire
book of Romans where the word sozo refers to stage
1 salvation. We have many passages such
as Romans 5:9.
NKJ Romans 5:9 Much more then, having now been
justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
Justified is past tense.
We shall be saved (future
tense).
So you see you can be
justified and you are not yet saved. Now
you see everybody got confused as soon as I said that because you are typical
evangelicals who think that salvation means phase one. Every time you hear that, that is what you
think. But Paul doesn’t use it that way
most of the time. He uses it to refer to
either phase 2 or phase 3. It is working
out the result.
In stage one we are saved
from the penalty of sin. The penalty of
sin was spiritual death. In stage one we
become regenerate. In stage 2 we are
saved from the power of sin. That is Romans
6 through 8. We are being saved from the
power of sin. We don’t have to sin
anymore because sin is no longer our master.
It is no longer our tyrant. That
is Romans 6. We have a new master, the
Lord Jesus Christ. We are to obey Him in
righteousness. Then stage 3 is
glorification. It is when we are absent
from the body and face-to-face with the Lord when we are saved from eternal
condemnation and saved from the presence of sin. So that is what the writer of Hebrews is
talking about. We can go back to Hebrews
1 where we find the first use of this word.
In Hebrews 1:14…
NKJ Hebrews
Inheritances, remember, is a
glorification issue at the Judgment Seat of Christ which is when we receive our
inheritance. So this is all future
oriented - phase 3. That is how it is
used. So don’t fall into this trap of
just thinking of salvation terminology -saved, to be saved, salvation - as
justification. That word group never
refers to phase 1 in the book of Romans with one possible exception. So it is not the standard biblical way of
expressing phase one. That is usually
talked about in terms of reconciliation, redemption or justification rather
than “are you saved”.
The second point that the
writer of Hebrews makes in this paragraph is that God’s justice doesn’t forget,
neglect or overlook that which we have done in the power of the Spirit. Whatever you have done in the power of the
Spirit is going to be gold, silver, and precious stones at the Judgment Seat of
Christ. No matter how you fail it
doesn’t tarnish. It doesn’t turn into
wood, hay and straw. You may forfeit some
rewards due to regression and a lack of capacity, but you don’t lose what ever
divine good is produced in your life.
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.
This is the second point that
Paul makes. God is going to remember
your work and your labor of love. We
spent a lot of time discussing how work and labor were not wrong. As soon as we hear that word work we are like
Maynard G. Krebs in the old Dobby Gillis show.
“Work! Work is wrong. That is legalism.”
No! Work is one of those value-neutral
words. It depends on the context. In fact it has always been understood among
Christians that work is a virtue. That
is where you get the old Protestant work ethic.
Work is a virtue and discipline. This
is something that is to be cultivated as a virtue in the Christian life.
The other aspect of this
verse is this word translated minister. Twice
we have the use of the verb diokoneo. Diokoneo
means to minister, to serve. In some senses
it has the idea of financial help. But
it has the idea of serving other believers, helping one another as part of the
Christian life. So the emphasis here is
on Christian service as very much part of the spiritual life. Now where this gets into problems is that it
is not the cause of spirituality, but is a result of spirituality.
One of the problems that we
have today is indicated by the recent survey that George Barnas
group did. Most Christians have no idea whether
or not they are being spiritual. They
have no idea how to get there. Most pastors
don’t! Fewer than 10% of the pastors had
any kind of tool for measuring their own spiritual growth, not to mention the
spiritual growth of their own congregation.
Why is that? Because most pastors don’t have a model or a
blueprint for how spiritual growth happens.
They don’t understand the mechanics.
So they have no way of measuring it.
Another thing that came out
in that survey was that pastors thought that 70% of their congregations put God
as their highest priority. Awfully
naďve! This is just standard across the
board. Whereas only 15% of regular
church going Christians said that God was their highest priority. Now that is a tremendous difference! The pastors are in la-la land. They think 70% of the congregation is
positive.
The congregation is sitting
there saying, “Most of us really aren’t.”
It says a lot about
Christianity.
We developed a chart where
the Word is taught through the filling of the Holy Spirit. That becomes
epignosis knowledge or usable spiritual knowledge or potential spiritual growth
based in your thinking. We have divine
viewpoint that comes in and human viewpoint goes out. That is the operation of Romans 12:2. As we walk by the Spirit, it produces spiritual
production and Christ-like character on the one hand; but it also produces Christian
service on the other hand. This can take
a lot of different manifestations as I pointed out. This can take manifestations in terms of your
spiritual gift. It can be helping at a
church. It can be ushering. It can be coming down and vacuuming the
church or sweeping out. It can be going
out and being involved in missions or helping missionaries. There are as many different ways that
Christian service can look as there are people and personalities and spiritual
gifts. But it is the function of our
royal priesthood and our royal ambassadorship.
I am going to insert
something new here that comes out of these verses. There is an emphasis on work, their labor of
love and their service. What is
emphasized in these verses is also Christian virtue. We have the emphasis in Hebrews 6:10 on their
labor of love. Then in verse 11 there is
the mention of hope.
NKJ Hebrews
Then in verse 12…
NKJ Hebrews
So you have what? Faith, hope and love. These have been referred to historically as
the three Christian virtues. As I have
been reflecting on this – I have been doing some reading among a number of
pretty good Christian scholars who have done a lot of reflection and study on
different aspects and trends in our culture today.
One of the things that we have
lost in the last 100 years is the emphasis on virtue and it has been replaced
by values. The concept of virtue comes
out of the Latin, but its root is in Greek in the word aręte. In the Greek thought it had to do with a
habitual or cultivated excellence. Now
think about that just a minute - virtue as a cultivated excellence. You can talk about the Greek virtues. You can talk about the seven virtues in the
Catholic Church. That starts off with chastity. So you know where that goes. But in the Scriptures you do have an emphasis
on virtue. Virtue was a cultivated
excellence. It is an understanding that
there is an absolute standard or an absolute criterion toward which people
should be moving. It involves training. It involves self-discipline and self-mastery
in order to see these virtues work out in our lives. If you go back and read typical self-improvement
manuals in the late 19th century or early 20th century
the emphasis is on developing these virtues.
There was an understanding that there were absolute character traits that
people should cultivate in their lives if they were going to be productive
members of society and not end up as criminals.
What has happened over the last 100years is the whole concept of virtue
has disappeared from textbooks and from school education and from churches. The big catch word that we hear today is
values. There is a difference between
virtues and values. I have 5 points here
to summarize this.
NKJ John
He
did something in terms of that relationship.
He gave His Son.
NKJ Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love
toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
You
have all the various parables in the gospels that deal with how forgiveness is
to operate to those who treat you poorly.
You have the parable of the Good Samaritan. You have various other parables related to
forgiveness.
Peter
says, “How many times should I forgive someone who offends us?”
And
the Lord says, “Seventy times seven.”
In
other words, it doesn’t matter how many times (and we will get into this next
week in our study on confession and repentance and forgiveness) somebody offends
you or attacks you or assaults you. If they
come back and say, “I repent.” - which
as we will see in the passage is a change of mind- if they do it 7 times during
the day, how many times do you forgive them?
Jesus says every time. It does not matter if their attitude is
flippant. It doesn’t matter if you don’t
trust them anymore. Every time they come,
he says, you forgive them. That isn’t
easy. That is the virtue of love. That is one of the hardest things for us to
understand. We have different dimensions
that we talk about for that love. We
talked about it being unconditional. We
talked about it being impersonal. We
don’t have to know the person at all. We
talk about personal love. But fundamentally
I think the whole concept of love is seeking and doing the best for the object
of love. See, there is a tough thing in
the definition I just gave you.
If
you are some sort of arrogant self-absorbed, spoiled rotten individual and you
think that definition of doing what is best for the other person, how are you
going to define best? That word best
immediately brings a whole boatload of value judgments. It is only when you have the divine viewpoint
of divine righteousness that you can truly understand what is best for someone
else. That is why love has to be virtue
driven. When it is not, it becomes self
serving and is no longer love. It is a perversion
of love. I have thought about this down
through the years trying to define what love is and looking at the cross which
is the example. If anyone is going to
define love, you have to start with the cross.
You don’t start with your experience.
You don’t start with your marriage.
You don’t start with your dating experience. You don’t start with how you feel about
certain things. You start with what
happened on the cross. What happens on
the cross is that God is going to do what it takes to do the best thing
possible for the object of His love no matter what it costs Him personally. As soon as you use these words like better or
the superlative best, you immediately bring into the discussion some sort of
value judgment. Where do you get these
values? Where do you get these norms and
standards? Where are you going to make a
choice that this is best versus that is best?
It can only come when you have the objective standard of righteousness
coming from the character of God.
Under girding these last
three verses here in this paragraph, we have the three virtues of faith, hope
and love. In this first section I said
that the believer is to persevere in the light of our future expectation. That is our hope. The believer is to persevere now in light of
our future expectation and to continue in faith and patience to realize a full
inheritance.
Don’t give up. Don’t become weary. Again we are going to see this note in
Hebrews. Don’t tire. Keep with it.
Run the race. Finish well.
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
Then I started talking about what
it means to imitate those who “through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
I am going to skip over a
couple of verses in the interest of time to bring us to our point. In the doctrine of imitation Paul says that we
are to be imitators of him.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
NKJ 1 Corinthians 11:1 Imitate me, just as I also imitate
Christ.
You have to understand what
he is saying when he talks about being an imitator of himself. He is not being self centered.
He is saying, “Imitate me in
the ways I imitate Christ.”
Christ is the standard. He is the template.
Paul is saying. “I give you
an example in my life of what Christ is like.
Imitate me in those areas.”
So “imitate me.”
NKJ Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as
dear children.
In I Thessalonians, twice he
talks about being an imitator of himself.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 1:6 And you became followers of us and
of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy
Spirit,
NKJ 1 Thessalonians
Imitation there is related to
imitating in the way that he handled adversity.
In verse 12 he says,
NKJ Hebrews
The word patience there is
the Greek word makrothumia meaning long
suffering, forbearance, self-restraint, and waiting. It is related to waiting on the Lord. It is different from endurance. Endurance has to do with hanging in there for
a long period of time in difficult situations.
Patience emphasizes just waiting.
Remember, they are waiting for those promises to come. They are waiting for God to fulfill His plan
for
So I went from there over to
James 5 because James 5 gives us the same kind of exhortation.
What happens is that as soon
as we start hearing people say, “Imitate Paul”,
they say, “Imitate Paul? Who am I?
He was super, who am I?”
But Paul says that the
everyday believer should imitate him in that he is imitating Christ. We have a tendency to put Paul and Moses and
David and Isaiah and Daniel up on these pedestals that they were just super
spiritual. But, we can’t come up to
their standard, we can do the kinds of things that they did. That is a lack of faith in God. That is where
I was headed last time. I was trying to
get there sooner tonight, but we got sidetracked on a couple of things. James 5 says this.
Once again the focus is on
the Lord’s coming and ultimate accountability.
He uses an illustration of how the farmer waits for his produce to come
in.
Then he says in verse 8…
NKJ James 5:8 You also be patient. Establish your
hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
NKJ James 5:9 Do not grumble against one another,
brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!
Again, emphasis on eventual
accountability. Then in verse 10…
NKJ James
That is the same idea that we
have in Hebrews 6. Go back to those Old
Testament prophets. They had an example
of suffering and patience. You follow
their example.
So he said, “Wait a minute, I
can’t do that. Those guys were super
spiritual.”
Look at what James says in
NKJ James 5:17 Elijah was a man with a nature like
ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on
the land for three years and six months.
Look at what Elijah did – his
confrontation on
He said, “It isn’t going to
rain until I say so.”
Then he went off and the Lord
hid him and protected him and provided for him for quite a period of time. How
can we be like that? This guy walked on
water almost. He raised the widow of Zarephath’s son from the dead. How can we be like that? The Scripture says that we may not do exactly
those same works, but you can be just as mature a believer as Elijah, Moses,
David or Paul. You may not be used in
the same way. You aren’t going to be an
apostle. You aren’t going to be the king
of
What made them different?
Deuteronomy
NKJ Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy 6 is quoted by
Jesus in Matthew 4:13. In Matthew
NKJ Matthew
That is to be our focal point. Romans 12:1 talks about this in terms of
service again just as Deuteronomy
NKJ Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
This is the logical result. When your starting point is the Word of God
this is the logical result. I was
probably in college (and this sounds a little trite) but it struck me at the
time as encapsulating the issue. If there is no God, nothing matters. Right? Everything is relative. We are a cosmic accident. We are just an accidental blob of
protoplasm. But if there is a God, then nothing
else matters. Whatever it is that is
going on in our careers, in our families, in our hobbies and in our lives; the
only thing that matters is who God is and what He says. That is what the Bible is all about – who God
is. The way Paul says it is to present
our bodies. He is talking about the entirety of who we
are. It is to serve God. This is not a one-shot decision like you will
find in the old holiness days – walking the sawdust trail and making a one-shot
decision for Jesus. It is an ongoing
reality. The terminology that was often
used by Chafer and Scofield and men of that generation was yieldedness. Someone else said it was authority
orientation. That is all it is. It is recognizing that God is the boss and
you are going to be completely sold out to serving Him. So you present yourself a living sacrifice
wholly acceptable to God which is the rational conclusion of what Christ did on
the cross. It is your reasonable
service.
Latreia is one of two
different words used in Scripture for worship. This has to do with worship of
our personal life as opposed to corporate worship which uses a little bit
different terminology. We are to serve
God.
This is following in the
pattern of Jesus.
NKJ Matthew 20:28 "just as the Son of Man did not
come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
Here He is as the Son of Man
who is the heir of the kingdom. Whenever
you read the Son of Man you always have to go back to that Old Testament image
of the Son of Man coming in Daniel 7 and destroying the kingdoms of man to
establish His kingdom. So the son of
Man emphasizes His humanity as an eschatological title that is focusing on the
coming of the Messiah as the culmination of all of God’s plan in history to be
the king who will rule all of the nations.
So here is the Son of Man who is the one who has every right to be
served, but He comes to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. So to be Christ-like means to be serving God
in a capacity that serves others.
NKJ Matthew
All of this flows out of what
virtue, faith hope or love? It flows out
of love. All Christian service flows out
of that virtue of love for one another.
NKJ Luke
The issue for most Christians
that goes through their whole life is for 50 years they are trying to figure
out if they are really going to serve God and 5 minutes later they are back to
serving themselves. They never finalize
the decision. That is the difference between most of us and the Apostle Paul
and Daniel and Moses and all the others.
It is because we just can’t quite get to the point that we say we are
going to give 100% to serving the Lord.
That is our second point and I said that there were 5 different points
that I want to go through on what makes the difference between these men and why
we are supposed to imitate them and what is typical of most Christian
experience. We will come back and look
at the other three points next time.