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HOLY HELP FOR THE HOPELESSWHO REMAIN LOYAL TO CHRIST AND HIS CHURCHHebrews 10:26-31INTRODUCTION Has fear of something bad happening to you ever motivated you to do something good or to stop doing something bad? Most of us take safety precautions out of fear. I wear a seat belt in the car, a helmet when riding my bike and blaze orange clothing when deer hunting because of my fear of being injured or killed in an accident. When I was a child fear of displeasing my parents or being disciplined by them often kept me from doing wrong and moved me to do the right thing. Fear of experiencing my wife’s displeasure has helped motivate me to be home when I say I will be home. Fear of getting a ticket has motivated me to drive close to the speed limit. Fear upon seeing a police car has on many occasions caused me to slow down. Sometimes fear has motivated my parenting. I have restricted my children’s freedom to do certain things out of fear for their safety: physically, socially and spiritualy. Fear of financial ruin has kept me from using credit cards and has motivated me to save money for college and retirement. I think we all know that fear can be a good and powerful motivator. God himself uses fear in our passage this morning to both stop bad believing and behaving and to encourage good believing and behaving. In the original language our passage begins and ends with the word fear. In v. 27, all who continue to deliberately sin have set before them a “fearful expectation of judgment” and in v. 31 “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” The entire passage is designed to strike fear into our hearts and thus to motivate us to do what is right and to not do what is wrong. I know that aiming to create fear in our hearts goes against the wisdom of our age. The modern church wants to concentrate on the positive and to motivate good behavior on the basis of love, not out of fear of retribution. I think John Stott, the great British pastor and theologian describes our age well in his book, “The Cross of Christ,” when he says, “The kind of God who appeals to most people today would be easygoing in his tolerance of our offences. He would be gentle, kind, accommodating, and would have no violent reactions. Unhappily, even in the church we seem to have lost the vision of the majesty of God. There is much shallowness and levity among us. Prophets and psalmists would probably say of us that ‘there is no fear of God before their eyes.’… We saunter up to God to claim his patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that he might send us away.” However, in our passage this morning we are confronted with a God who has a very violent reaction to certain actions and who is determined to send certain people away into eternal judgment. This strong warning is located in this place because of what the author has just said. For three chapters he described how Christ is our perfect high priest and our perfect sacrifice. He has demonstrated that by the work of Christ alone we are forgiven and made holy and made fit for heaven. Then, as we saw last week, in vv. 19-25 he describes the ultimate result of this work of Jesus. Jesus did all that he did in order to create a community of people who draw near to God in worship, who together hold fast to the hope of living with God forever and who pay careful attention to one another for the purpose of provoking one another to love and good works. In other words, Jesus did all that he did to create the church. What filled the mind and heart of Jesus as he lived on this earth in obedience to his Father and as he hung upon that cross is us, our church and the hundreds of thousands of other local churches that have existed throughout history and around the globe. As we have repeatedly noted this letter was written to these people because they were under pressure to abandon Christ and his church. In v.25 we discovered for the first time that the defection has already begun (note; "as some are in the habit of doing."). Thus, the author places this warning here to terrify those who yet remain so that they will remain faithful to Christ and his church. MAIN POINT We must remain faithful to Jesus by remaining faithful to his church because…I. Rejecting the church is rejecting Christ (vv. 24-26 & 29) First of all we need to recognize to whom this warning is addressed. It is not addressed to every human being but to a particular group of human beings. It is not addressed to all human beings who willingly sin, which is every human being, but to a particular portion of sinning human beings. The people to whom this warning applies are, first of all, “we who have received a knowledge of the truth.” Clearly this refers to every professing Christian, including the author of this letter. To use the language of this letter to the Hebrews, this refers to everyone who right now confesses Jesus as apostle and high priest (3:1), who have had the gospel preached to them (4:2), who draw near to the throne of grace with confidence because Jesus is their high priest (4:16), who have once been enlightened, who have tasted of the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age (6:4-6), who have come to God through Christ (v. 25), who are waiting for Jesus to appear (v. 28), etc. Every person who claims to be a Christian and who is right now vitally connected to a local church make up this group described here as “we who have received the knowledge of the truth.” The only people to whom the threats made in this passage apply are to those who make up every local church. However, there is an important qualifier added to this description. The threats contained in this warning are addressed to every member of every local church who is “deliberately continuing to sin.” What is this talking about? The fact that the author says “we” indicates not that he thinks he is committing these deliberate sins but that he recognizes that he, as a member of the visible church, potentially could engage in these deliberate sins. This warning is for him as much as it for them. He is not saying that any Christian who sins is in danger of experiencing God’s furious judgment. We’ve talked about this several times in the last few weeks. The NT, including this letter to the Hebrews, teaches that true Christians commit acts of sin and every act of sin is in some sense "willingly" or "deliberate". We are fit for heaven and forgiven of our sins and made perfect in God’s sight because of what Christ has done for us, not because we don’t sin anymore. We always need his blood shed for us and his intercession as our high priest because each day we sin. In the immediate context you can see what this “deliberately continuing to sin” is referring to. First, the first word in v. 27 is the word “for”. Unfortunately, the NIV does not include the word in its translation. The ESV does. It is an absolutely key word. The logic of the author in vv. 19-26 is this: we are to continue to draw near to God in corporate worship and we are to hold fast to our hope together and we are to not stop meeting together but we are to encourage one another daily because if we don’t do these things we are “deliberately continuing to sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth” and thus the threatened calamities will be true for us. In the context he is specifically referring to that group of people in v. 25 who are in the habit of not meeting with the church anymore. This is the "deliberate sin" to which he refers. He is not talking about people who skip a worship service or who don’t go to a small group bible study. As Calvin says in his commentary, “Those who sin, mentioned by the author are not such as offend in any way, but such as forsake the church and wholly alienate themselves from Christ.” He is talking about people who renounce their allegiance to Christ and so stop associating with his church. These are people who were once vitally involved members of a local church, fully convinced of the truth of the gospel but who due to the threat of persecution or weariness in resisting sin or desire for some earthly pleasure openly reject Christ and therefore their association with the body of Christ. In leaving the church the author is saying that they are also leaving Jesus behind. This does not necessarily mean that every person who has gotten out of the habit of going to church is in this category. However, the author is making a very strong connection between vital union with a local church and vital union with Christ and so those who once were vitally connected to a local church but who now are not should beware. You are on a dangerous road if you are not vitally connected to a local church. Verse 29 confirms that this deliberate, ongoing sin is a conscious, knowledgeable renunciation of Christ and his church, not merely a passive “I got out of the habit of going to church” or "I yelled at my children today." There are three clauses describing what the people who are in the habit of not showing up at church gatherings are actually doing. First, they are trampling underfoot the Son of God. These are people who at one time affirmed everything that is said about Jesus in this letter. They believed that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. They were people who confessed that Jesus sustains the entire universe by his word. They would agree that Jesus was seated at God’s right hand and that he was superior in every way to the angels. He is that infinitely superior high priest of whom the Levitical priests are but a dim shadow. He was the Son over God’s house and thus greater than Moses who was only a servant. But now, they trample Jesus under their feet. They treat him like the dirt under their feet. They are as indifferent to him as to the pavement they walk upon. He is contemptible to them; a nothing and a nobody. Second, not only do they treat Jesus, the Son of God, with contempt but they treat his blood, his suffering, his death on the cross with contempt. They treat Christ’s blood as if it is unfit for God. They claim that God himself treats the blood of Jesus like an unclean thing. They assert by their defection that God feels about the death of his son the way that he feels about murderers. Don’t miss the steep irony. This blood that they treat as unholy is the very thing that makes sinful humans holy and by which at one time they claimed to have been made holy. Finally, they insult the Spirit of grace. What a marvelous description of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to what we deserve the HS gives us new hearts, cleanses our hearts from a conscience of evil, puts God’s mark of ownership on us, comforts us through all the troubles of this life and at the end, raises us from the dead. He is indeed the Spirit who gives us the unmerited and unearned kindness of God. At one time these people all claimed to be the recipients of his gracious work but now they insult the Spirit. In their particular case as they are returning to their former way of life as Jews they are renouncing the work of the Spirit promised in the NC and embracing their own work of keeping the law as in the OC. They assert that their work of obedience is far superior to the work of God the Spirit. This is true for everyone who abandons Christ. We insult the Spirit who gives us God's grace by insisting that our work is superior and more reliable than his. The author wrote this letter to keep these people and us from becoming like this. It is the central concern of this letter, to prevent this kind of apostasy from Christ and his church. His aim is to stimulate perseverance in the face of suffering and sin. It is very important to note as I have on several other occasions that the author is not answering the question: “Can a true Christian lose his or her salvation?” I have no doubt that if this question were put to the author he would answer that it is impossible for a person who has been made perfect by Christ’s once for all sacrifice to become “unperfect.” True Christians cannot lose their salvation. He is not dealing with a theological issue here. Rather he is dealing with a pastoral issue. He is seeking to use the living and active word of God to penetrate to hard hearts and thus prevent those who belong to the visible church from defecting. He knows that all who are part of the local, visible church are not necessarily members of the true church and so he aims to convert those who are not yet Christians and to strengthen the faith of those who are. He wants all of us to know that everyone who is vitally connected to Christ remains vitally connected to his church no matter what it may cost to do so. We must remain faithful to Jesus by remaining faithful to his church because…
II. Rejecting Christ permanently excludes us from the benefits of Christ’s ministry (v. 26b) The end of v. 26 states the consequence of rejecting Christ and his church. This is very similar language to chapter 6 where we were told that those who reject Christ in this way cannot be renewed in their repentance. In the same way, if you knowingly reject Christ and cut yourself off from his church then you are cutting yourself off from the only possible way to escape your sins and to gain heaven. The entire argument of the central chapters of this letter is that only Jesus is a sufficient sacrifice for sins. In fact, 10:18 says in almost the exact language that because sins are forgiven through the sacrifice of Christ there can be no other sacrifice made to gain forgiveness. The reason there is no other sacrifice is because Christ’s sacrifice is the only perfect sacrifice. He is the only Son of God. He is the only perfect human being. He is the only priest who never dies. He is the only one who offered himself as a sacrifice for sins. He is the only one who always lives to intercede for us. He is the only one who has passed through the heavens and is now seated at God’s right hand. He is the only mediator of the new covenant. It is only his blood that can cleanse our conscience from acts that lead to death. It is only the sacrifice of the body of Jesus that makes us holy. Therefore, if you, knowing all this about Jesus and having assented to its truthfulness in the fellowship of the church now reject Jesus and all he has done, and abandon the church where Christ and his work is experienced in baptism and communion and in the word and in the fellowship of the saints, then there is no other possible sacrifice available to you. You are on your own. You will have to stand in front of God, your judge by yourself and give an answer to him. You will have to explain why he should let you into heaven based on who you are and what you have done. Good luck with that. This is the unforgivable sin that Jesus describes in Matthew 12 and the sin that leads to death that John describes in his letter. It is not a sin that can be committed by a person who is not a vital member of the visible church. People who have committed this sin are not worried about whether or not they have committed this sin. They don't care about Jesus and so they don't care if they've trampled him under their feet. People who deliberately continue to sin in this way have determined, in the face of overwhelming knowledge and experience that the Jesus they have professed to trust and love and the church in which they have lived are irrelevant to their life; of no consequence whatsoever. They are like the cancer patient who is fully immersed in chemotherapy but then who decides that the homeopathic cure offered by a clinic in Mexico is the way to go. In spite of a doctor who gives full information and in spite of the progress they were experiencing and in spite of the pleading of their family they quit the chemotherapy and go to the clinic in Mexico. From that point on the chemotherapy is no longer available to them. There is no possible way for them to experience the benefits of chemotherapy while they are convinced that it won’t help and that the homeopathic solution is best. (Let me quickly say that I am not endorsing chemotherapy over homeopathic but simply using this as an illustration.) Also, I know that the illustration is not perfect because you can always come back from the clinic in Mexico and return to the chemotherapy, whereas both here and in Hebrews 6 there is a permanent exclusion from the benefits of Christ’s work. Though as long as you believe the homeopathic cure is superior to chemotherapy the benefits of chemotherapy will not be available to you. The argument of this letter is that there comes a point on the road away from Christ after which there is no turning back. The heart is so hard against Christ that the benefits of his cross can never be regained because there is nothing that can persuade you that Jesus is better than the salvation you have chosen instead of him. This highlights another critical point in this discussion. Does the author believe that the people he mentions in v. 25 cannot be brought to repentance, have no sacrifice for sins left to them? I don’t think so. This seems to be the point to the letter; to stop further defection and to call back those who have started down the road to a permanent defection. This author never makes this assertion about particular people. He only describes where the road ends. I don’t think it is possible for one human being to say about another human being that we are certain that he or she has crossed the line and there is no way back. We can and must tell people that there is a line that can be crossed and so you should do everything to make sure you are not heading in that direction. Like the apostle Paul says about himself, “I beat my body and make it my slave so that after preaching to others I, myself will not be disqualified from the prize.” Paul knows that there is no sitting still in the Christian life. You are either making progress, “being made holy,” as in v. 14 or you are heading down the road of apostasy. The further you go down the road away from Christ the harder it is to turn around. So turn around now and come back to Christ who is the once for all sacrifice that takes away sins. Central to the act of returning to Christ is returning to his church, to the community that worships together, holds fast to hope together and pays attention to one another in order to provoke one another to love and good works. I have no doubt that there are people sitting before me today who are heading down this road of deliberate sin in the face of a full knowledge of Christ. I urge you to stop and turn around before it is too late. We must remain faithful to Jesus by remaining faithful to his church because…
III. There is a fate worse than death (vv. 27b-31) The bulk of this passage is taken up with describing what will happen to the professing Christian who knowingly and deliberately rejects Christ and his church. This language is intended to frighten. What the author is doing is what doctors regularly do when they get a smoker in the office with them. They pull out the pictures of dissected cancerous lungs and people with parts of their faces cut off due to cancer of the mouth and descriptions of the slow, suffocating death of emphysema. Doctors are not morbid sadists but are seeking to terrify smokers so that they will quit smoking. The author is doing what the police department and Mothers Against Drunk Driving do each spring when they simulate a crash in the parking lot of Craig and Parker high school and have all the juniors and seniors watch and then they have someone describe the horror of losing a loved one, killed by a drunk driver. This is the same thing this author aims to do. He wants to terrify us so that we will hold fast to Christ by holding fast to the worshipping/encouraging community that Christ died to create. All of this language is taken right out of the OT, most of it from the Law of Moses, the first five books of the OT. Verse 27 is a clear reference to the fire of God that came out from the tabernacle and consumed the two sons of Aaron: Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10) who ignored God's command to only use one kind of incense when approaching him. It is also a clear reference to God's fire consuming the 250 Levites who allied themselves with Dathan and Korah in their rebellion against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16). In both cases people who were fully informed of God's covenant and who had participated in the cleansing rituals of the tabernacle deliberately rose up against God and treated him and his servants Moses and Aaron with contempt and thus the fire of God's jealousy burned them up. In both cases these were priests and Levites. The word that is translated "raging" in the NIV and "fury" in the ESV is the word for jealousy or zeal. While the word is not directly used in the case of Aaron's sons you can hear the idea in God's explanation for why he burned them up: "Among those who approach me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be glorified." The idea is that God is jealous for the glory that is due to him alone and when people spurn him and his grace his jealous anger is provoked and it becomes a fire that consumes his adversaries. Aaron's sons deliberately sinned in the face of overwhelming evidence of God's grace and will. God's jealous anger throughout the OT is aroused by those to whom he has been gracious but who then turn to other gods, who deliberately reject him and his grace. With the coming of Christ, the adversaries of God in this passage, are all who have confessed Christ in the fellowship of the church and then turn their backs on the church and on Christ. Verses 28-29 are an argument from the lesser to the greater. This form of comparison is very common in Hebrews. Listen to 9:13-14, " The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" The idea is that if the OT law, the shadow of Christ is like this then how much more powerful or holy or glorious is the reality, Christ and his work. Here, however, the difference is not between the law's impotent provisions for sin and Christ's effectual work but between the punishment for those who reject the law and the punishment due to those who reject Christ. Verse 28 is referencing two passages in the book of Deuteronomy. It will be helpful for us to look at both of them. First turn to Deuteronomy 13:6-9a (page ___) & then we will look at 17:2-7. Notice that in chapter 13 God is describing the defection of Israelites from the worship of the true God to worshipping idols. Here are people who deliberately turn their back on the God who has delivered them from Egypt and cared for them in the wilderness and given them the land of Canaan. The God of grace is rejected and the worship of the true God at the tabernacle is replaced by worshipping false gods at altars and locations scattered throughout the land. Notice in vv. 6-8 that even if your own family member is the one who urges you to abandon God you are to show no pity but you are to turn him or her over to the community to be stoned and you are to throw the first stone. That word pity is the same word used in Hebrews 10:28, "they die without mercy." Then look over at chapter 17. Again the context is any Israelite, any member of the covenant community, bowing down in worship of false gods. If anyone is found to be doing this he or she is to be stoned. But notice v. 6. This can only happen on the basis of two or three witnesses, which is quoted in 10:28. So the author compares those who turn away from the church and from Christ and in the case of the Hebrews, returned to the Jewish synagogue, with those Israelites who worshipped false gods in the OT. But his main point of contrast is this: if people were killed for doing this in the OT and they were only turning away from a shadow, a copy of heaven, then how much worse punishment do you think is deserved by those who turn from Christ and his church which is the real deal? If this is how God reacted in the OT how do you think he will react to you if you desert Christ? There is a fate far worse than mere death. Death is nothing compared to the jealous fire of God's wrath that will be poured out on all who turn from Jesus. The author to the Hebrews is not alone in the NT to describe this wrath. Jesus himself said to his disciples in a context in which he is exhorting them not to be hypocrites. He says, "Do not fear those who can only kill the body. I will tell you whom you should fear. Fear him who after the killing of the body has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!" There is a level of complexity to the emotional life of Christians in their relationship to God. While it is true, as the apostle John says in his first letter that God's "perfect love for us drives out fear," yet there must be a place in our hearts for a real fear of God. There can be no doubt that this is the aim of this author. In the last part of this chapter he is going to tell these people that he is confident they have a genuine faith and yet he does not hesitate to use such fear provoking language. So while we must find rest for our hearts in the sufficiency of Christ and his love for sinners, yet we must also fear his wrath against all who reject his grace and this fear must be part of what motivates us to hold fast to Christ. It is this fear that should motivate us to admonish one another to fight sin and pursue Christ. Notice how the author confirms his assertion that there will be a worse punishment than death for those who reject Christ by quoting a portion of two more verses from Deuteronomy. Verse 30 quotes two lines from Deut. 32:35-36. Deuteronomy 32 is Moses final song to the nation of Israel. It basically says that while God has been so kind to them and done so much for them he, Moses, knows that they are not going to do what God has said and thus God is going to destroy them. He will take his vengeance on these people who have been given so much but who have rejected him and his worship. It is God's nature to defend the honor of his name, to deal justly with all human beings. He cannot be bribed. He does not play favorites. He will give to everyone exactly what they deserve. For those who are outside of Christ it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. To stand before God without Christ is to stand before a perfect judge who is jealous for the glory due to him as one who has spurned that glory. If you are one who at one time professed faith in Christ and who demonstrated your faith in the company of the church, God's anger will burn brighter and hotter against you because it is always true: "To whom much is given, much will be required." All who have sinned against the glory of God in ignorance of Christ and the gospel will go to hell because they willfully ignored the overwhelming display of God's glory in creation but those who turn against a full and complete revelation of the glory and grace of God in Christ can expect terrible judgment to be poured out upon them. I warn my children all the time because it is true: if they do not respond to Christ and to his offer of salvation when they have been given so much in comparison to most of the children in the world, they will suffer in hell far more. I say the same thing to all you young people who are growing up in homes where the gospel is talked about. The more grace offered to you and experienced by you, the worse hell will be for you if you do not respond or if you reject it after professing faith in Christ. So I urge you, out of concern for your own souls to not despise Christ and his church. Do not play games with God. He is paying attention and he will certainly take vengeance upon all who spurn him and his grace. We must remain faithful to Jesus by remaining faithful to his church because…
© Copyright 2007 John Swanson.
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