Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Hebrews 5:11-6:12
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Today’s sermon text is Hebrews beginning at chapter 5 verse 11 reading into chapter 6 concluding at verse 12. We will be dealing specifically with, if you’re looking at your handout, the boxed text, which begins in verse 4 and continues on to verse 8, but we want to put it in the context the scriptures provide. And so, we’ll read this entire section. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 5, beginning at verse 11.

Of whom we have much to say and hard to explain since you have become dull in hearing. 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. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.

If they fall away to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame. 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. But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you.

Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. 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. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end. That you do not become sluggish but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text and the beauty of it. We thank you for your word, Lord God, that it is unlike every other word, any other book. It is beautiful and a manifestation of tremendous truth and blessing to us, revealing your character and how you work in the world. Bless us now, Lord God, as we seek to attend to this word. It’s kind of warm, Lord God. Keep our thoughts attentive. Help me to be concise, Father, and to the point.

And help us to understand this text in a way that brings tremendous encouragement to us, but also an exhortation of caution. We ask this in Jesus’ name and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen. Please be seated.

Had this church picnic yesterday. Thanks again to Brian and Liz for making that a reality. You know, summer is just a wonderful time. It’s not irrelevant to our lives that the Lord God in his sovereignty provides these seasons of the year and summer is sort of a time when you look back on the beginning of the year and you sort of rest and things slow down maybe in our lives just a bit, or maybe not.

We recreate more and I suppose there’s a sense in which in my life I’ve kind of hit the summer, the summer of my life, maybe moving into the fall, being 50-some, but there’s a tremendous sense of blessing that I particularly during the summertime experience and think about here at RCC. The last few years, you know, we’re a mature church, we’re an adult church, we’re over 20 years old. And we have the wonderful blessing of seeing grandchildren now being raised in the faith of the men and women that began this church and the others that have come in who are our age and older as well.

And that is a tremendous blessing. That’s a blessing in any culture, the Christian church. Any time of the Christian church, it’s a blessing for which we should pause and be grateful to God and thankful to him for. But particularly in our day and age, of course, for many churches, you know, the rule rather than the exception is the loss of teenagers and not seeing children raised in the context explicitly, grandchildren rather, of the Christian faith and broken homes and the horrible implications of that and ramifications of it.

It’s quite sad in our culture. And as the culture continues to decline and becomes more and more that way, churches like what we’re doing here are harder and harder to accomplish, I suppose, but also a brighter and brighter beacon of hope in the midst of a hopeless world. And so we have a ministry to those around about us. We’re grateful and thankful for what God has done. And we have a ministry to the culture around us that I think is real.

I saw on television this last week a Christian cheerleader show. It was some kind of news show, not a Christian station, maybe C-SPAN or something like that, showing an explicitly Christian cheerleading camp and the difference of these Christian cheerleaders as opposed to worldly cheerleaders. And of course, there again, you know, the distinctions are becoming more and more clear. But something that one of these cheerleaders said sort of struck me as interesting in light of today’s text.

She said that Christianity is not about religion. It’s not about going to church on Sunday and singing in the choir. It’s about a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. I thought that was interesting. We have a text today I think that will give some relevance to what she said and kind of help us to think about it a little bit and evaluate it.

You know, twenty years ago, when our church formed up, twenty-two, whatever it was, we read a book by Gary North, “Unconditional Surrender,” and in his first chapter, or this chapter rather than the church, first paragraph, he talks about the historical versus the eschatological church as opposed to the visible and invisible church, you know, and Westminster standard language.

We have the visible church and the invisible church. The visible church is comprised of the elect and the non-elect, but who all attend church. And the invisible church are those that are truly elect, truly going to be saved and are going to be in heaven. And that’s okay. It’s an okay thing, you know, to think of it and talk about it that way. And North in his book didn’t say we shouldn’t talk about it that way.

But in our particular age, in an age where we think that what it’s about is the personal relationship to Jesus Christ as opposed to works of religion, attendance at church and ministry to others of singing in the choir. I think there’s a relevance, there’s a connection between those two statements. Because what we tend to—okay, if I say visible and invisible church, which is the real church? Well, the real church we’re tempted to think is the invisible church.

And that means that the church, Reformation Covenant Church, is not the real church. It’s one of these visible churches that’s combined of two different kinds of people. And as a result, of course, the immediate effect of that in our day and age is the marginalization of this unreal church. And what’s really important is that we are hooked into the real church. And those two ideas, personal relationship to Jesus, what’s important is the real church as opposed to the one that meets on Sunday.

These are sort of connected. And I think both of them will help us to critique both of them a little bit as we get into this text.

So this text we’ve dealt with it already in terms of the need for maturation. You know, I don’t want to talk about what we talked about three weeks ago again. What we want to talk about today are those elements that are difficult to deal with. The scary passage, the boxed section of the text, and we want to think about this, you know, in light of this Psalm of the month, Psalm 127: “Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain to build it.”

There was a house being built that’s described there. It’s not as if houses aren’t built, but at the end of the box section, it’s going to be burned. There was a city whose foundation was not Jesus, and it would be burned in AD 70. As hard as they might have worked to build the city, our homes, these blessings I’ve spoken of, you know, are built in a particular way. And this text helps us to see how that building occurs and warns us that if we don’t build in this particular fashion, then there we’re in danger of moving into that judgment of God, fire, cursing, etc.

So, let’s talk a little bit about the text. And again, if you’re using the handouts we provided in the orders of worship, then you’ll see we’re going to get to the box text, but just a couple of comments as we get there. And again, the topic of this sermon is falling away. Can it happen to you? You personally? That’s the question that’s posed by this text. The way I want us to look at it: Can it happen to you?

All right. So, this is a section and I’ve used this strange word “inclusio.” You know, it’s just a term that’s used in the Christian culture. You ought to know it. Not a big word. It just means that here in this section, we have a section of text bracketed off by this word “sluggish.” And these are the only two occurrences of this particular Greek word in the entire Bible. And the value of knowing this is that it brackets off this text as a unit.

Now, there’s other ways that are demonstrated, but that’s why we’re looking at it as a unit that it’s warning against, you know, a slothfulness, a failure to attend, you know, to our Christian walk. And it’s going to warn us in the midst of that some horrible things may well happen to people because of slothfulness. This isn’t a new theme. I’ve been teaching Proverbs to the 12- to 14-year-old Sunday school class.

Well, you know, you get to the end of the central section of Proverbs, the words of the wise, and it’s that great illustration: “I went by the house of the sluggard and it’s broken down. Curses happen to it.” So, you know, activating ourselves is what this section is all about. Warning us that we’re supposed to be teachers, we’re supposed to rule, discern good and evil, etc. And then that’s in the context of which he then says, “Well, we’re going to press ahead if God permits,” in verse three of chapter 6.

And then verse four: “Impossible it is for those who were once enlightened.” Now the word “impossible” is placed forward in this verse in the Greek text. So who cares? But the point is it’s really stressing this in word, the impossibility of something. So that helps us because we don’t think he’s using, you know, exaggerated language for effect here. We might be tempted to think that because of what he’s going to say, but he places it forward.

He wants to make this term not just one he kind of throws in, but emphatically stated. Now look, he’s saying there is something that’s impossible here. Okay? And now he describes the condition he’s going to get in verse six—renewal to renew to repentance. That’s, you know, so basically it’s impossible to renew people to repentance, but in the middle he’s describing who it is that’s impossible to be renewed to repentance.

And what is he saying? Well, he gives this description, a five-fold description of who it is that he is warning here. Well, there are people who were enlightened. Now, in church history, this has largely been taken by the church fathers, at least, as a reference to baptism. I don’t think it probably is, but the idea of some kind of enlightenment going on that have tasted the heavenly gift. Now, we’re going to talk about this at communion, but earlier in Hebrews, this same word is used that Jesus tasted death for us.

So, in the way the word is used in Hebrews, we probably can’t get away from this being just well, a little bit of something. Now, you’ve tasted of the heavenly gift. You have actually become partakers of the Holy Spirit. You have tasted the good word of God. You’ve been in the context of the scriptures and the powers of the age to come. He’s describing here things that have really happened, not who look like you might have done these things.

He doesn’t say, “Well, you know, it’s impossible to renew some people to repentance who we thought might have been like this.” It’s not what he’s saying. Now, I think that specifically there may be references here. Well, go backwards just a little bit. We remember earlier in another sort of scary passage of Hebrews the idea to press on into Sabbath rest. He compared them to the rebellious generation that refused to enter the land in the wilderness wanderings.

Well, in Nehemiah 9, turn there for just a couple of minutes. Nehemiah 9 describes God’s church in the wilderness. And it describes it in some interesting language. Verse 12: “Moreover, in a pillar of cloud, thou letest them by day and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light in the way wherein they should go.” So in chapter nine of Nehemiah, the description of those people that became rebellious, they were enlightened.

You see, he gave them visible light to give them light in the way wherein they should go. And then now look at verse 15: “Thou gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, brought us forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and commanded them that they should go in to possess the land which thou had sworn to give them.” So there was a heavenly gift of manna that they ate. He gave them bread from heaven.

And then look at verse 20: “Thou givest also thy good spirit to instruct them, and withholdest not thy manna from their mouth and gavest them water for their thirst.” Okay. Well, this is sort of the flow of our text here. You know, he says that this people that he’s warning were enlightened. They’ve tasted the heavenly gift. They become partakers of the Holy Spirit. And this congregation are those who were the text in the Old Testament makes very clear what he gives them as they come out of Egypt?

He gives them their law. He gives them their words to govern them. And that’s the next thing that’s talked about here in Hebrews. And then finally, the powers of the age to come. Commentators have noted that this idea of the powers of the age to come, the powers and gifts and signs and wonders, is what kind of refers to. Whenever this is used in the Old Testament, where it’s used quite a bit, the general reference almost always is to the signs and wonders that God demonstrated to the Jews as he brought them out of Egypt, the parting of the waters, the destruction of their enemy, etc.

So, we have wilderness language, Exodus sort of language being used here in this text. And so, it seems like what’s happening here again is the author of Hebrews is identifying the people he’s warning here and he’s talking about them in a way which we could certainly say in a general sense is true of us as Christians, but it’s also true of them in a particular place being referred back to those that were brought out of Egypt and yet many of those did not enter the promised land.

Okay, so these are the people who have had some kind of real blessings. And in fact, looking at it this way, there’s sort of a totality of these blessings that’s being described there. This five-fold repetition of blessings that they’ve received. You know, this is sort of what a description of the Christian life from one perspective. This is what we are. And so, that’s the context for the warning. And then he says that for these people, it’s impossible to renew them again to repentance.

So, now what he’s saying is when he says it’s impossible to renew them to repentance, that implies, of course, that they’ve already come to repentance. You, you know, it’s not impossible to renew them of something they never had. It’s not what he says. It’s impossible to bring them to repentance. He says it’s impossible to renew them to repentance. So we could say that another characteristic of these people that are being warned is they are people who have come to repentance, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the forsaking of their sin.

A turn, a turn away. And yet it seems here that what they’re going to do is they’re going to involve themselves in a position of not being able to restore to repentance. They’re going to fall. In other words, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame. So what he’s saying is now listen, he’s given you a warning, Hebrew Christians. He’s saying that you’ve been part of Jesus Christ, you’ve partaken of the Holy Spirit, you’re part of his church, you got all these blessings, you’ve repented, but you know what? Your situation is pretty dire, and if you continue in the path you’re going, you may fall in a way that is irretrievable, irrecoverable. And when you fall, it is going to be into perdition.

It’s going to be into judgment. And the reason is because you’re going to crucify again the Lord Jesus Christ and put him to open shame. So these people are people that have turned their back or are in danger of turning their back in an overt way on Jesus Christ.

Now, you know, the specific context of course we’re talking about is the crucifying of Jesus by the Jews using the Roman government. And so this has definite aspects of that to it that we can’t miss.

Now verse 7 begins with “for,” and that is a strong tie word. So what happens next is definitely part of this warning. It’s tied to it. He’s continuing on the same subject, in other words, of this warning. And that’s why it’s in the box on your handout.

“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. But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.”

So he’s warning Christians, he’s warning the church that he sermon is delivered to that if they fall away, having been brought into the Christian church, they may actually get to the point of falling away to the point of no return. And the judgment that will come upon them is a severe one. It’s being cursed and being burned with fire. There’s a finality to that.

Now, notice that you know what the reason that this happens to them is moral and ethical. It has to do with the fruit that’s born in their lives. Okay? So, you’ve got this blessedness. The rain has fallen on your land. But whatever you do with that, if it’s wrong, if it isn’t what God wants you to do with it, that’s the danger you have of now being close to being cursed and going into hellfire.

So, this falling away is unto curse.

Now, again, here it seems like there’s Old Testament references going on. In Deuteronomy 11, the promised land was spoken as a land of hills and valleys that drinketh water of the rain of heaven. And it seems like there is that reference in the Bible that could be talked about here. Another, in other words, another reference to the wilderness and whether you’re going to go into the promised land or not. But there could also be a reference here to Genesis 13, where the land that we know we think of as Sodom and Gomorrah is first described—the Jordan plain as well watered like the garden of the Lord.

You know, Abraham has to split with Lot, and Lot goes to the place that was well watered, as the garden of the Lord, and yet we know that becomes Sodom and Gomorrah because of the fruit that’s not born correctly, the bad fruit of that place, and it becomes fire. It becomes consumed. So again, these Old Testament references abound in this book and are useful to understand what’s going on.

Now I want us to look for a couple of minutes before we go to the seven basic points that we’re going to talk about in terms of answering this question. Falling away, can it happen to you? There’s a parallel text in Hebrews that we want to look at and that’s also on your handout. Now on the handout, the corresponding bookend text in Hebrews 10:19-35.

You’ll remember that you know Hebrews is a series of concentric sections. We’re moving into the middle section of the book, the long section that deals with the priesthood of Jesus Christ, better priest than Melchizedek, high priest of good things to come. But as we move into that section, it begins with this section we’re looking at now, a strong warning and exhortation, you know, to wake up and attend to what I’m telling you here, and that section will end with this section in 10 also with warning and exhortation. So they’re bookends to the doctrinal content at the very heart of Hebrews. So at the heart of Hebrews, at the heart of the matter, there it’s bounded by these warning texts, these scary passages of scripture in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10.

So let’s look at it, and as I say on the handout, just as Hebrews 5:11-6:12 begins the long central section of the sermon, 10:19-35 concludes it. 10:36-39, which we’ll look at in a minute, serves as the introduction of the fifth section, deals with endurance and faith taken up in reverse order. In other words, when we get after the central section, the next section is introduced by the end of this section in 10, having to do with endurance and faith. But every time this happens in Hebrews, he addresses them in reverse order. So that what we’re moving toward here next week is that central section.

But any event, let’s look at it then and see the connections.

“Therefore, brethren, having boldness, and now this is in this section. The same way that sluggishness was the marker here, here we have boldness for an act. It’s not the only place it’s used in the Greek, but still it seems like it’s including a section for us. There’s to be a boldness as we could contrast that with the sluggishness that we’ve seen as the bookends in the section we’re dealing with today.

So, we’re supposed to have boldness by entering a new and living way which he consecrated for us through the veil, that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God. We draw near—well, draw near in the first sense in terms of worship with a true heart, full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. We’re baptized. We have the entrance into the church. Our bodies washed with pure water.

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. He who promised is faithful. Let us consider one another and I’ve got this bolded for a reason to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as we see the day approaching.”

So he’s exhorting them as he begins the warning section to do two things. To continue to go to church, not forsake the assembly, and to be an encouragement to the saints. And then he gives them the warning.

“For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, after we’ve been enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift and been partakers of the Holy Spirit—same kind of thing, right? If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth. Summary statement: There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. There was before. There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation.”

You see, it’s the same thing. Just as our text warns us, you’ve been partakers of these great gifts. And if you fall away, then the only thing you’ve got left is fire. And he says here, if you fall away, sin willfully, you have an expectation of judgment and fire indignation, which will devour the adversaries.

“Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will be thought worthy, who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the spirit of grace.”

Well, this connects back to our text we’re looking at today, right? Recrucifying Christ, putting him to open shame, trampling him underfoot. You’re partakers of the spirit of God. And yet, you’re you’re turning your back on the wonderful, wonderful gifts that God has given to you.

“For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.’ And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

And so he’s saying that it’s not easier in the New Testament. We don’t have a God of wrath in the Old Testament and a God of grace who overlooks everything in the New. No, in fact, it’s just the reverse. It’s more important now to stay with the program. That’s what he’s saying. And God’s gifts are better. All those gifts, union with Christ and his blood shed for us and all those things. And now we’ve really partakers of the heavenly gift. The gifts are better, but the responsibility is better, or increased rather, as well. And so these are real warnings, real warnings of damnation.

But he says, “Recall the former days in which after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle, and then you also became companions of those who were so treated, for you had compassion on me in my chains.”

So then he says we have this confidence, and then the next verses are the introduction to the next section. So we won’t deal with them.

But in our text from today, following the box text of the warning section in the Hebrews 6 text, verse 9 says, “But beloved,” see, he does the same thing in Hebrews 10. “But you know, good things is what I’m talking about for you. Recall the former days. You’ll be okay. God is blessing you.” And in Hebrews 6, he says, “But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, you whom we’re warning—we’re convinced of better things concerning you. And why? Because God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love that you have shown toward his name in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister.”

Okay. So just like Hebrews 10, he points them back to previous works of love to the saints of Christ and compassion and exhorts them to further deeds of love. So that’s the source of their assurance that he gives them at the end of the text.

Notice, by the way, in verse 11: “We desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope to the end. Okay?” Now, that’s important. Let me tell you why it’s important.

Because this text, it’s hard, right? What does it mean? Can we fall away? Can you fall away? Do you have to be worried about hellfire yet in your life as a Christian? It’s hard. These are warning passages that seem to give us whiplash in these texts, right? You know, “Well, you better watch. You’re going to burn in hell.” But “We are convinced about better things.” And then the next section we’ll deal with next week, tremendous statement of assurance of salvation. God has sworn by himself. You know, God is doing everything for you. Tremendous assurance of the Hebrew salvation is the very next thing he talks about. And you’re sort of thinking, “How does this work together?”

Well, one way that people have tried to make it work together is they’ve said that well, the warning passages are to a corporate entity, to a collective group—to the wilderness generation back then and now to the Hebrews as a church. And maybe if the whole church falls away and apostasizes, then you know this fearful expectation of judgment in terms of the church, but this verse shows us by way of application that while the covenantal language is certainly there.

We won’t ignore that when we get to the points of understanding of the text. The covenantal language is there, but we have individual language as well. You see that he doesn’t say, “So as a group, then you know, I hope you guys work on this. We desire that your church show the same.” No: “We desire that each and every one of you in particular, you know, Joe, Sue, Mary, every one of you that’s getting this sermon who are in this Hebrews church.

We’re talking to every one of you. Okay?” So, we can’t dodge the issue, you know, with a corporate perspective. Okay?

All right. So, that’s the text, and I think it’s helpful to see the bookend in Hebrews 10 so that we can make proper application of what’s happening.

All right. Now, we get to the notes from the text itself. The context is real blessing. I didn’t put “real” in there, but I would put “real blessings.” The context is blessings for participants in the covenant community. You know, this text. Another way that people explain away the warnings is that well, the people that the warnings are really given to are those who never were Christians at all.

So, you know, once they fall into apostasy, then what’s going on is they never really had any real blessings from God. Now, we know what drives that. Our systematic theology drives that. And we certainly believe in the perseverance of the saints. We certainly believe that in the eternal decrees of God, he has selected and elected a particular number and they cannot lose salvation. The text doesn’t say we cannot let this text tell us what the rest of the Bible denies—that people can lose their salvation.

That’s not what’s happening here. And that’s what drives to this way of interpreting the text. But it just doesn’t wash. As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this word is gospel to us, I cannot take that road because the text seems very clearly given over, as many others are, to saying you had real stuff here. You partook of the Holy Spirit. You ate the heavenly gift. You tasted the word of God in the power of God in your life and the life of the community.

You have come to repentance, is what he says. Okay. So these are real blessings given to people. Okay? So they’re real blessings.

Now another way that people talk about this currently is this: “Well, okay, so these people were united to Jesus Christ and they got real blessings, but they just didn’t get all of them. Okay, and specifically what some people say is these people who have the possibility of falling away from the faith to damnation and perdition, these people were not—they were given all the blessings of Christ except that of perseverance.”

And I think that’s a problem because it’s not as if the blessings of God are kind of divvied up. They can be spoken of in diverse ways, but our blessings come to us through union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Period. So I think it’s a little difficult, you know, just in terms of correcting our view of how blessings are received. It’s not as if God gives us this card and this card and this card. The whole deck is the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, secondly, we have a text in Isaiah 5 that I think is important to us. In Isaiah 5, he says this:

“Let me sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. My well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up, cleared out its stones, planted it with the choices vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a wine press in it. He expected it to bring forth grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.”

And now, oh inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, “So what’s he saying? He’s talking about covenantally Israel, just like we’ve talked about the wilderness generation, then Israel after they come into the promised land and the general apostasy. He’s talking about Jerusalem in AD 70 and all that stuff, saying well they weren’t a fruitful vine. But now listen what he says here. He says to people, “Now judge between me and my vineyard.

What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then when I expected it to bring forth good grapes did it bring forth wild grapes?”

And now please let me tell all what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge and it shall be burned.

See, burning again. Now sometimes it seems like some of us want to say, “Well, I’ll tell you what else you could have done for these people. You could have given them perseverance. You know, you gave them the word and you gave them baptism. You gave him enlightenment. You gave him your spirit. But you didn’t give him perseverance of Jesus Christ. Perseverance.”

Well, God makes it quite clear, doesn’t he, out in this text that he’s done everything for the vineyard. He’s given them everything they needed. Right? We cannot say that God somehow withheld from these people some gift.

He says that from this perspective that’s addressed in Isaiah 5 and in Hebrews 10, he’s done it all. His point is not, you know, “I kept something back.” In Hebrews 10, his point is, “Look at all the good gifts I showered upon you. Look at these blessings,” or Hebrews 6 rather, and 10. “Look at all these blessings I’ve given to you.” That’s where we want to leave it. You see, we don’t want to start thinking, “Well, what didn’t he give them?”

And in fact, God says, “Don’t tell me that I didn’t give them everything, you see.”

So, these are blessings that have been given to certain people from God. So, they’re real blessings that people have experienced. And again, while Isaiah 5 is dealing with the covenantal nation, I think we have to remember that we don’t want to fall into the ditch of covenantal talk as opposed to individual. Hebrews 6 puts that balance back and forth.

The application is to every one of you too. Then the real—there is a real warning in this text to the covenant community is the fiery judgment. What is the warning? It’s the fiery judgment that is promised to those who fall away. You know, we want to avoid the tension in this text of the great assurance and comfort given to them as part of their being part of the covenant community and what’s happened in the past, and then this tremendous warning that they are nearing—this, they are nearing the point of no return as a people and as individuals. And the point of no return will lead them to damnation.

You see, they’re nearing that, and we don’t want to take away either one of those two truths. This text is a text of real—because here’s another way that reformed people tend to want to treat the text: “Well, it’s a hypothetical warning, not really real. You know, as some people have said, it’s like a sign in the middle of Kansas saying, ‘You know, watch out for the clips,’ when there really are no clips,” to the Christian.

So, it’s a hypothetical warning just sort of meant to keep us in line. I don’t think it’s that at all. I do think that pastorally it’s an encouragement to us to something. We’ll make that point. But, but you see, that is not God’s primary way of keeping us in line. The primary way God has of keeping us in line is his goodness to us. It’s the goodness of God that’s supposed to yield repentance. And that’s what he starts with.

“You’ve got all these great things.” And then he does include the warning. So, we can’t say that this is hypothetical. It is a real warning. “Impossible to restore these people to repentance.” So the like the reality is some of you can and maybe have and will fall away.

Three, the allusions are to the coming judgment of Jerusalem in AD 70 as a type for all those who fall away from Jesus. So this is true. You know, in a few years, you have to read Hebrews with this understanding. In a few years, the apostate Jews who would not trust in Christ and in God’s justification, etc., God is going to judge them definitively. He’s going to destroy the temple, destroy Jerusalem. It will literally be burnt.

You know, Revelation warnings to various churches in the first couple of chapters and then a further warning by showing God’s judgment on a church, on his bride who has become apostate, on that vineyard that brings forth not good fruit but bad, on that land that people that had the good water, all the blessings that God could give to it, and yet spurned his goodness, spit in his face, turned against Jesus, him, and his Son Jesus Christ goes to claim the vineyard and they kill him.

So this is what’s going to happen in just a few years, and there is definite language. Okay, so you know the wilderness generation was moving toward a real period in history when they were going into the promised land and they pulled back to their destruction. And the Hebrews particular, people groups, this particular church but other people as well in the years between AD 30 and 70, they’re in that same wilderness period. They’re moving toward the fullness of the kingdom being established with the destruction of the old world in Jerusalem in AD 70. And he is warning them: Don’t attach yourself to Jerusalem. That’s your point of no return. He’s saying, you know, it’s different for different groups, periods, times.

The Old Testament, the point of no return for the wilderness generation was the sending of the spies in their unbelief. The point of no return for the Hebrews is this coming judgment of Jerusalem, AD 70. You leave the Christian church or you turn your church back into a synagogue of Satan and you go back to that temple stuff and you start hanging out there, maybe literally with many of you—you’ll be destroyed in Jerusalem with fire. But figuratively, even if you make it out of that physical fire, you’re going to suffer damnation forever.

You see? So that’s their point of no return. There is covenantal language here that is clear and obvious that we’ve talked about as we went through the text, and their moment of the impossibility of repentance is approaching in a few years, and they are moving toward that.

I think that we could make application to other covenantal groups as well. Steve Samson, when he were—when he was here with my sermon three weeks ago, whenever it was, on this same text, and he knew I was headed toward this discussion of the impossibility of repentance, recommended a book called “The Cube and the Cathedral” by George Weigel.

Excellent book. And Steve recommended it because if we look at post-Christian Europe, we can see that they seem to have hit, or maybe getting very close to a point of no return, covenantally as a group of nations. You know, the cube and the cathedral. The cube was this big architectural structure, 40 stories high, made of glass and marble with nothing in it, on the east side of Paris.

You could have an elevator ride to the top. You can look over all of Paris. The cathedral is the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which you can see from the cube. And there are two architectural symbols of two different views of life. The cathedral—or the cube is so big the entire Cathedral of Notre Dame with its spires could be placed inside the cube, intentionally made bigger than it.

You see at the top of the cathedral are spires, emphasizing the transcendent God, calling us, God’s word. There’s beautiful architecture. There’s curves. There’s all kinds of stuff. The cube is rationalism at the end of its tether, so to speak, or beyond it. Nothing. No curves. Like I said, all geometric, you know, simplicity, all rationality, no transcendence. Well, actually there is a bit of a transcendence. There’s three stories at the top, the roof. That’s the only place that’s occupied. And that’s the International Commission on Human Rights, the exaltation of the Rights of Man, all of the French Revolution in this structure that’s sort of linked to the defense of the city of Paris.

You see, two worldviews. Europe is in the process of apostasy. In fact, she’s quite far down the line. You see, she had certainly tasted of the good gifts of Jesus Christ. At the core of her existence as European states, it’s all founded on Christianity. But when it comes time to write a constitution for the EU, they try to, in Weigel’s words, airbrush out any reference to Christ, Christianity. All people wanted was not, “We’re going to build a theocratic union.” We want an acknowledgement in the Constitution that Europe had Christian foundations. That’s all they wanted. And they weren’t given that. It was airbrushed out. “We don’t want reference to that in the documents of the New World.”

You see, they just assume get rid of all those overt references to Christianity. It’s hated. Europe moves toward death. It moves toward the kind of burning, you know, that our texts talk about.

In Europe, many of the major papers in Germany will no longer print obituaries because they don’t—be reminded of death. And I think either Sweden, probably Sweden, instead of cremating bodies alone, what they do now is they’ll take bodies and put them in liquid nitrogen and freeze them and then run ultrasonic waves through them to just pulverize them and use them for compost, human bodies. A company has now been set up to do that.

They’re trying to get rid of all that Christian vestiges of burial or even cremation. You see, get rid of it. So there’s this insanity that’s going on. And at the same time, they embrace death through negative population growth. If you look at all the countries, the major countries of continental Europe, they’re all far below the needed replacement rate to maintain themselves as a people. And of course, the only reason they’re not completely dying off is that all the Muslims are flooding into these countries who have a lot of kids.

So there’s an apostasy in Europe. It’s covenantal, I think. And I think that we can see that there’s application of this text to covenantal entities and groups—churches, cultures, continents, maybe even, certainly countries. That’s important for us to keep in mind.

However, point number four: We personally should also take this warning very seriously. Our tendency is to say, “Oh, yeah, okay, gee, it’s Jerusalem AD 70. Great. Okay, I don’t got to worry about it now.” I don’t think that’s true. This text warns each and every one of them. And I think it’s a warning to us. It says that no matter what their particular historic situation was, the description is of their general partaking of the blessings of being in Christian community and still people in the context of Christian community can fall away.

Now it’s really just a repetition of the warnings of Luke 8, the parable of the sower and the seeds, right? And we could say that what he’s describing to these Hebrews is the same thing that Jesus warned us about. There are those people who believe for a while and in a time of temptation—that’s what the Hebrews were facing. Temptation of persecution, etc.—fall away. And he says, if you fall away, it’s important. It’s impossible to renew. There are other people that, you know, the seed is planted, but it seems to fall among thorns and thistles. Those who have heard go out and are choked at the cares, riches, and pleasures of life and bring no fruit to maturity.

There are people in the context of the church of Jesus Christ, the real church, who will not bring forth fruit even though they’ve been united to Christ in Christian baptism, recipients of the word of God, partakers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the heavenly gift of communion, they’ve done all that stuff—they’re real blessings that have been theirs in the context of the church. And yet they’re not going to bear fruit.

And God says fruitless Christians are ones who are sent to perdition. And that fruit is choked out of their lives by the world and concerns and money and things they’re doing, improper attitudes toward things. This is a real warning to us. We’re to put off these things that might draw us away from Jesus Christ. And then we’re supposed to put on some things as well according to the text that we’ve looked at.

We should, point number five: Redouble our commitment to the assembling of the saints. Why? Because if you look at this text, the overall thing that’s going on in Hebrews is people are tended to not assemble together on the Lord’s day anymore for worship because that’s what’s going to get them in trouble and persecution. They’re not being tempted yet to just say Jesus isn’t Lord. They’re being tempted not to go to church.

You see, they’re being tempted not to assemble. And so the assurance that the writer of the sermon to the Hebrews gives them is based upon their continuing to assemble together. He warns them in Hebrews 10 about—after giving the fiery warning to them, he says, “Now don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together.”

Getting together on church on Sunday is not irrelevant to whatever it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And in fact, going to church on Sunday is exactly what the author here admonishes us to recommit ourselves to do in light of these real warnings to us who have been really blessed. It’s us. The text talks to today. And Jesus warns us, and one of the ways he tells us to avoid this warning, to avoid the reality of it, avoid the falling into this trap, is to redouble our efforts to go and assemble together with others.

Now, the next thing the text says is that we’re to encourage each other.

Six, we should redouble our commitment to the ministry of service to the saints. Now, these two are not really two separate points. When you come to church on Sunday, it is an encouragement to everyone else here. It is an encouragement to them to take seriously the worship of Jesus Christ and to get marching orders for the week to walk in connection to him and to work for him in everything that we do and say.

And if you come dragging in halfway through the service or late, or you’re not here every other week and people notice it, it is a discouragement to them. Okay? So, the first thing you can do to encourage other saints—and if you don’t encourage other saints, if you don’t have ministry to the saints, then you don’t have the assurance in six. You know, and the writer says, “Watch it.” But we’re convinced of better things because we’ve seen your service to the saints. And then he tells him later, “Be an encouragement to each other so much the more as the day of judgment,” probably AD 70, is “us, you know, being careful that we don’t reach the point of no return. Be an encouragement to people.”

If you don’t have that going on, then don’t walk away from here feeling comforted about your situation. You have—well, the text focuses primarily on your ministry to other Christians as the basis of your assurance of your relationship to Christ. Religion works. Good works, pure and undefiled religion to visit widows and orphans in their distress. The Bible commends it to us.

Now, who knows what that cheerleader meant by religion. But usually we’re talking about a set of duties. Those things are important. It’s important to sing in the choir on Sunday. And we shouldn’t put that or pit that in opposition to some kind of personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with ministry to the saints or the worship of God or the duties of religion. Because that’s exactly what these texts tell us we should do to avoid this fate. It tells us those very things, you know.

It is we should be developing communities of service here. What do I mean by that? Well, do you have a ministry at RCC? Do you have something you’re doing for the saints? If you don’t, then you should leave today’s assembly a little worried, a little tense because the assurance to these people that they’re not going to fall into hell is that they’re ministering to other people and that they take church seriously.

It’s going to church, singing in the choir, and doing religion. Apart from that, I don’t know what a person might mean by their personal relationship to Jesus Christ. The text ties us to the real, historical, visible church that assembles on Lord’s Day to be an encouragement to another and to equip each other.

You want ministry and service here. You know, one of the most important things we can do for our young people to cause them to walk up and continue the blessings to us that they’ve been is to encourage service. You young people going back to college over at Moscow or wherever you’re going this fall, don’t say, “I’m busy going to college.” Find some service there in the church where God has you this next year to do. Look for some ministry to other people.

The essence of the Christian faith is not my will, but thine be done. Now, God has called you to go to school, maybe full-time. He’s called the men here to go to work full-time. But don’t think that means you shouldn’t have some kind of ministry to the saints, formal or informal. You should. You ought to have some kind of, particularly young people getting trained for leadership. I would might write a letter to the churches in Moscow and say, “Why don’t you have some kind of required Christian service component if our people are over there for you?” Maybe we should have it. I don’t know. But you see, it’s important. It’s not some extra thing. It’s at the core of who we are as Christians, serving the body of Christ, ministering in the context of community.

And you know, I’ve seen people—I’ve been here you know 20, 22 years—and I’ve seen people get kind of lonely, and you know not worry about not having friends. Well, I think this is the key to the answer to that as well. You know, I read an article many years ago—read an article many years ago—”The Quiet Passing of Natural Community.” And what it said was with the removal of an agricultural economy to an industrial one, we didn’t have natural community left, extended family, little villages. So, we have to work at creating community.

And some of you come to this church and you don’t have natural community either. You don’t have the kinds of people that you normally hang out with as friends. But let me tell you, the best kind of community you can have is a community of ministry and service to other people. You know, church has gotten bigger now. We got more elders, more deacons. That’s tough, growing process because in the beginning, with just a few of each, you’re sort of with the guys you sort of know and are friends with and it’s kind of a natural community. And then God starts putting in guys that are different from you.

This has happened both in the elders and deacons—little there’s a little, you know, how do you work this out? It’s not natural. It’s not a natural fit for you, these guys. But you yoke up together in the team. You see, you yoke up together to serve Christ and his people, and then you develop not a natural community and affinity with these folks, but a community of ministry, of service. You see, that’s what ties you together.

You know, people come to me: “I don’t have any friends. What are you doing at the church to minister to other people?” A friend must show himself friendly. Ministry to other people is what the text—Hebrews will make this point again. We’ll talk about this again because the last couple of chapters, like he does here. You’ve got love for each other. Praise God for the love you have for one another. The spirit is giving that love and ministry here at RCC.

But improve on it. He says, don’t take it for granted, and they’re to do that.

Seven, we should warn those falling away. I think in any church of any size, we’re going to have people in the context of our church who aren’t coming to church every Sunday and whose lives are drifting away from commitment to Christ. And we have to tell them: We don’t know the point of no return for you, but there is a point, Hebrews tells us, of no return.

You’ve got to be careful. You think, “No, I haven’t turned my back on Jesus. I’m just not going to church, not doing much for the king.” We have to tell them. You have to tell them if you’re their friends, if you know them. I’ve got to tell them as their minister. We got to grab a hold of them and give them the warning of this text to them.

Look, there’s a place of no return, and I don’t know when it is, and neither do you. But God says, “Be warned, Christian. There’s a point after which I will turn you over to perdition. You will cry out for me, wisdom, says, and I will not answer. It is done. Over with, finished.”

God says it’s a real warning. Rob Raburn, about this text, says, “If you want an argument against allowing faith to flag, against dabbling with the idea of turning away from Christ, making peace with the spiritual culture that is antagonistic to a full-blooded Christianity, this text is a showstopper. This is it. This is the text that warns us against a nominal Christianity—a personal relationship that with Jesus that abstracts itself away from a ministry to Christ in terms of the body, that abstracts itself away from laboring together in the Lord’s day to be an encouragement to one another, that abstracts itself away, and then it tends to become amorphous. And there’s danger. Then this text tells us of falling away, the point of no return.”

One poet put it this way:

“There’s a time we know not when, a point we know not where, that marks the destiny of men to glory or despair. There’s a line by us unseen that crosses every path, the hidden boundary between God’s patience and his wrath. The point of no return.”

I don’t know it. You don’t know it. But it is real. God says that, you know, it is the utmost duty we have to people that are starting to become nominal in their walk to grab a hold of them, to come alongside them in no uncertain terms.

We don’t like doing it. It doesn’t seem kind. But is it kind to let people drift off toward the point of no return? They’re now going down the river. They’re not rowing, you know, the way Jesus wants them to row. They’re in that boat. They’re drifting along as the author said earlier in Hebrews. And we have to tell them that we don’t know where the waterfall is, but Hebrews 6 and 10 says there’s a waterfall and you drift that way. There’ll be a point at which you’ll be headed down the waterfall and you will cry out and God will not rescue you.

There’s a point of no return. And of course, actually, you won’t cry out. It’s the worst part of it. You won’t cry out. You’ll just go over the falls and you won’t even know it happened. And pretty soon Jesus Christ is irrelevant to you. But he’s not, because what you’ve done is exchanged a world where everything that happens to you is mediated through the grace, love, and blessing of Jesus Christ. You’ve exchanged it for a world where everything is mediated against you by way of curse. Your every step is marked by God’s anger and wrath against you.

May God grant that we never get anywhere near to that point of no return.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this day, Lord God. We thank you that we can come together and encourage each other in the faith of our Savior. Father, we pray that America would not follow the apostasy of Europe. Grant our country repentance, Lord God, as a covenantal group. Grant us, Lord God, those who were founded upon Christianity. Thank you, Father, that at least in our documents and halls of power, Christianity has not been totally obliterated the way it is in Europe.

Grant repentance, Father, to our culture. Grant repentance, Lord God, to those that we know who may have made a profession of faith in Christ and yet now do not see any importance to going to church on Sunday or singing in the choir.

Help us, Father, to redouble our efforts to serve Jesus. Thank you for the tremendous blessings this text has told us of. May those blessings indeed bring us to repentance for becoming nominal about Jesus. And may we, Lord God, recommit ourselves afresh to take seriously the assembling together on the Lord’s day and to take seriously our need to minister to others. To not seek to be ministered to but rather like our Savior to seek to minister to others.

In his name we ask it. Amen. Amen.