[0:00] able and desire to do so. Will you join with me as we stand together and we will read the Word of God with one another starting in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 11 and in reading through the entirety of chapter 6. Now just to kind of get us up to date as to where we're at, the author of the book of Hebrews has been speaking of Jesus Christ's priesthood and how he has a right to that priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. That is found in Hebrews 5 verse 10.
[0:25] He will come back to that theme in chapter 7 but he has a pause and we find out why he has that pause here starting in verse 11. Concerning him, that him is not Jesus, that him is Melchizedek, okay?
[0:38] So concerning him we have much to say and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
[0:53] For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Therefore leaving the elementary teaching of the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and the faith towards God of instruction about washings and laying on of hands and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucified to themselves the Son of God and have put him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful for the to those who whose sake it is also tilled receive a blessing from God.
[1:54] But if it yields thorns and thistles it is worthless and close to being cursed and it ends up being burned. But beloved we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation though we are speaking in this way. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward his name and having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end so that you will not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made the promise to Abraham since he could swear by no one greater he swore by himself saying I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you. And so having patiently waited he obtained the promise for men swear by one greater than themselves and with them an oath is given as confirmation or as confirmation is an end of every dispute in the same way God desiring even more to show the error of the promise the unchangeableness of his purpose interposed with an oath so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Let's pray.
[3:23] Lord we thank you so much for this day which you have given us and God you have given us a great and glorious opportunity to open up your word with one another. And Lord as we have read your word and we have heard it God we now pray that our eyes and ears would be opened to it. Lord that we would see it as it truly is. That we would hear you and your voice speak to us by the power and presence of your spirit that it would not be the opinion or even the interpretation of man but it would be the very truth of the word of God which penetrates our hearts and minds. We pray that all things that would seek to cause a distraction anything that would call us to have our attention anywhere other than this text before us. We pray that it would be removed so that we could stand in glorious amazement of who you are and we give you all the glory the honor and the praise that you deserve and we ask it all in Jesus name.
[4:15] Amen. You may be seated. The author of the book of Hebrews is writing first and foremost for the intended purpose of showing that Jesus Christ is better. That he is better than anything that the author's intended audience is trusting him.
[4:31] That he is writing to these people to show them that Jesus transcends all other hope and all other things in which they are placing their confidence in. But as we have said we do not know who the author was.
[4:44] Not definitively anyway. We can speculate and there are some at least educated speculations but we're not going to get into that. But we do know definitively who the audience is. And the audience is those from which we derive its name. That is the Hebrew people. So it was the Jewish people. More than likely according to my interpretation it was people who were, and not just my interpretation but other interpretations, it was Jewish people who were of the diaspora. Those living outside of the vicinity of Jerusalem and also outside of the vicinity of what we would refer to as the promised land, the land of Canaan. And the reason being is because the text which the author quotes is not the Hebrew text but it is the Septuagint text which would have been the Greek translation of the Old Testament which would have been more familiar to the Hebrew people scattered throughout the world.
[5:29] Yet these Hebrew people who were scattered throughout the world were met in the missionary journeys of Paul and as Paul would make his way. And you remember Paul had a habit in which every major city he went to he would set up shop, so to say, when he first went there in the synagogues.
[5:46] And he would go into the synagogues and he would open up the text. Now God uses the dispersion of his people to establish these synagogues or these local meeting places of the Hebrew people so that they could come together and discuss Old Testament texts and they could be taught and shown more correctly, they thought, the way of God.
[6:08] And God uses this as an avenue for Paul to have for the proclamation of the gospel. And as the word begins to spread around, a number of the Jewish people are introduced to this person named Jesus Christ.
[6:22] So we find here, just like we do in other things of historical setting, that a number of Jewish people are caught in between two things. The Judaism faith, which they have grown up hearing so much about and their ancestors have trusted in, and is actually given to us and ordained by God in the Old Testament, something that was given specifically for the purpose of God calling his people to holiness and the person of Jesus Christ.
[6:48] They are caught between these two things. Do I trust in Judaism or do I trust in Jesus Christ? Now some people during the days of Paul saw the best way to do this would be to blend the two.
[7:00] And I'll just go ahead and be honest with you, you cannot blend the two. We see this over and over again. We see it happening repeatedly in the New Testament. We see it specifically in the book of Acts. As a matter of fact, that's what eventually led to the arrest of Paul.
[7:14] Remember, he was going for the Jewish ceremonial washing and cleansing of an individual, and he paid their expenses. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll stay here. So as we see these Jewish people being confronted with, is Jesus really better than the Jewish faith?
[7:30] Is it better than Judaism? The great question is, is Jesus better than the law? The Old Testament. Because these are people who sincerely, we have to think, wanted to please God and were seeking to please God by fulfilling or attempting to fulfill the requirements which God had laid out for them in the Old Testament.
[7:55] And all of a sudden, they meet someone who says, you don't have to do it because one already has, and that is Jesus Christ. So with that in mind, we understand that the author's intended audience were those people who were kind of caught between leaning on the law and fully leaning on Jesus.
[8:15] So they kind of believed in Jesus a little bit. They heard about him, and they thought it was a good concept, but they were still trusting in their works and in their efforts because the law had commanded them to do so.
[8:26] And here we see in this passage before us, a call to a greater commitment. A call to a greater commitment. Now, before we dismiss this as saying if that is the intended audience, because we have to interpret the passage through that intended audience, before we dismiss this and say, well, I'm not of Jewish descent, I'm not trusting in the practice of Judaism, I'm not trusting in the keeping and the maintaining of the law, so this really has no application to me.
[8:55] Well, before we do that, we need to come back and look at ourselves and say, Jesus is calling each and every one of us to a greater commitment. It says very clearly in the book of Revelations, I wish that you were either hot or cold.
[9:10] He said either be all the way for me or be all the way against me, but don't be lukewarm. And what we find here for the author is he is writing to the Hebrew people.
[9:24] He says if it's Judaism you're trusting in, then go be the best Jew you can be. It's going to fail you and you're going to fall short, but go do it. But if it's Christ you're trusting in, then place all of your eggs, so to speak, in that one basket.
[9:40] Place all of your hope, all of your trust, all of your commitment in what Jesus Christ has done and completely forsake all that you can do. It is this call to being all in one way or the other.
[9:54] And it is a battle that our churches, I believe, face today over and over again. Because what was going on here with this audience is the same thing we see happening today.
[10:05] Number one, we see in this call to a greater commitment, there is an encouragement to move beyond immaturity. There is an encouragement to move beyond immaturity.
[10:17] Now, for the sake of the text, we have to understand that we're not speaking of immature believers here. Okay? We're not speaking of immature believers, though we could stretch the text and make that application to us, and we'll see it in just a moment.
[10:30] We're not speaking of those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. Rather, we are speaking of those who have heard and seen the forerunners and seen the pictures and the types of Christ, and he is calling them to move beyond the pictures to the person.
[10:43] He's calling them to move beyond the types to the fulfillment. And we see it here in verse 11. It says, concerning him, that is Melchizedek. Okay? He says, I've got a lot to say about Melchizedek.
[10:54] And he's coming back to it in Hebrews chapter 7. That's why we didn't flesh it out a lot last week when we looked at his mentioning in Hebrews 5. He's going to really flesh out this priesthood according to Melchizedek.
[11:05] But he says, concerning him, I have a lot to say. Now, he's writing to Jewish people. When the Jewish people thought of the high priesthood, they immediately thought of Aaron, not Melchizedek, right? Melchizedek is just some strange, mysterious character.
[11:17] We meet one time in the book of Genesis, and then we see him mentioned again in the book of Psalm. And we really don't understand why he is ever mentioned in Scripture until we get to Hebrews chapter 7. So put yourself in Jewish context.
[11:29] You don't have the book of Hebrews yet, and you're a Jew of the times, immediately following the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You're living in that days of still Roman occupation, and you really don't know anything at all about Melchizedek.
[11:43] And when you hear of the high priesthood, you hear of Aaron. And that's immediately where your mind goes, and it probably would rightfully go there if you read the book of the Old Testament. And what the author is saying is, we have a lot to say about Melchizedek, but we can't say it right now.
[11:57] We can't really get into that. And the reason is, it is hard to explain. Now we can say amen to that. It's okay if a lot of Scripture is hard to explain. But this is why he says it's hard to explain.
[12:08] It's hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. You have become dull of hearing. Now, we need to understand.
[12:20] He is not writing to people who are hearing about Jesus Christ for the first time. Okay? He is writing to Jewish individuals who are considering Jesus Christ after being around the teaching of it, after listening to it.
[12:39] Remember, when Paul was imprisoned in Rome, that the Jews would come to him almost daily to hear him reason about the Scripture. And they would want to know, what does he say the Scripture says about this person of Jesus Christ?
[12:54] But one thing that is astounding here, is the author does not say, you are dull of understanding. He says, you have become dull of understanding.
[13:05] He says, you are moving in a downward direction. It's not that you're progressing in your understanding. It's that you have heard great things, and we have seen this up to this point in the book of Hebrews.
[13:18] You have seen that Jesus is better than Abraham. You have seen that Jesus is better than Moses. You have seen that Jesus is better than the angels. You have seen that Jesus is a great high priest.
[13:29] And having seen all of those things, you are becoming dull. You are digressing instead of progressing. It says, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and have come to need the milk and not the solid food.
[13:45] Now let's just bring this application to us. There are multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple people. Let's just go ahead and just bring it on down. Okay, let's bring it all the way down to all of us. We live in a day where we have more access to greater biblical teaching than any other time in history.
[14:07] I mean, in the times of Spurgeon, I've always said, if I always wanted to go back at one point in time, even though I don't know if I would want to live there, I'd have loved to have been in Europe during the mid to late 1800s when Joseph Parker was preaching in London and Charles Spurgeon was preaching in London.
[14:23] And then you had Hudson Taylor's China Inland missionary going. And you had all these great George Mueller's street boys. He's working in his orphanages.
[14:35] And you had all this great work that was going on there. But if you were in London at that time, first of all, the city would have been awful. That's why the pastors were going like three months sabbaticals. They would go out to the sea to get fresh air to cleanse their lungs so they could go back and preach in the cities because of the smog and all the smoke and everything.
[14:51] But if you were there on the right Sunday, you could have heard Joseph Parker, who was a great theologian and a great Bible student, though I don't necessarily agree with all of his doctrines. He was a great expounder of the word. You could hear Joseph Parker, or you could go right around the corner.
[15:04] You could go into Metropolitan Tabernacle and hear Charles Spurgeon preach, who is referred to as the Prince of Preachers. And any other day, he would preach on average of two times a day. But here's the thing, to hear any one of those, you would have to have a ticket to get into the building.
[15:19] But we live in a day where you can just click something and go listen to the messages, or you can open up the articles and you can read them. We live in a day of rapid access to the things of God, and we live in a day of rapid access to the truth of the Word of God.
[15:35] But what we also do is we live in a day of one of the most rapid, biblical, illiterate times in history. Having more access to greater teachers and professors of Scripture, we have less understanding of the truths and the facts thereof.
[15:55] And that, my friend, I think, rests in the pulpit. I'll put that blame on me. Okay? Not necessarily for all the world, but for here.
[16:07] But it moves from the pulpit to the pews. Because the author says, by this time, while you all ought to be teachers.
[16:18] Now what is he talking to? He's talking to Jewish individuals who had been around enough teaching of Christ that they should be able to teach others, yet they could not because they still needed to be taught themselves.
[16:34] There is this principle in Christianity, which we have neglected so often. It's this thing called discipleship. That we are all discipling someone else, right?
[16:47] That I disciple others, others disciple me, and those that I'm discipling are discipling others, and we continue to disciple and continue to disciple and we continue to disciple. Rather than placing it all upon one individual, it is to be a multitude of individuals.
[16:58] This is why we find it, 1 Peter, the priesthood of the believers, that we are all called to be those disciple makers. But we're looking at their immaturity because it says you need someone to teach you. How did they get there?
[17:10] Because it says in verse 13, For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food, look at verse 14, but solid food is for the mature.
[17:21] Here it is, Who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Let's go ahead and say this. And we say this over and over again here, that truth without application is just a gaining of useless information.
[17:37] That if we understand a truth but we don't apply that truth, it just becomes useless information. Well, here's a greater danger. When we know the truth, yet fail to apply the truth, we move further back from the truth.
[17:51] We digress. Because when we don't take the truth which we learn about Christ, and we don't take the truth which we learn of Scripture, and directly apply them to our lives, that is, we don't practice them, then we will become dull of understanding.
[18:12] Now that is a very overarching theme, and I know it can seem somewhat intimidating, but we need to understand this. That when God reveals something of himself to us, he is not revealing himself to us just so we can go, oh, that's pretty cool.
[18:30] The revelation of God always comes with the expectation of God for us to transform our lives based upon what he has shown us. Go to the book of Isaiah.
[18:43] Isaiah chapter 6. In the year of King Uzziah's death, Isaiah saw a vision of heaven. Right? Remember that? Isaiah chapter 6. And he sees God on the throne. God revealed himself to Isaiah.
[18:55] Now he didn't do that so that Isaiah could say, man, that was an awesome thing I saw. I'm going to go back to living my life. He did that because he was looking to send Isaiah to his people for a purpose.
[19:09] John on the island of Patmos. He sees the revelation of Jesus Christ on the Lord's day. Jesus didn't reveal himself to John on the island of Patmos just so John could feel better at the island of Patmos.
[19:20] He did it because he wanted John to do something over and over and over and over and over again. We see these truths happening. We see it even with Balaam, the false prophet who is riding on his donkey and the donkey keeps going one way or another because the angel of the Lord is standing in the way.
[19:34] All of a sudden, the donkey talks to Balaam and Balaam's like, well, this seems a little bit messed up. And then his eyes are open and he sees the angel of the Lord. Why did God reveal himself to Balaam? Not so Balaam could understand why his donkey was doing what it was doing.
[19:47] He did it so that Balaam would be fearful of not clearly and accurately, even as a false prophet, proclaiming the blessing which God was calling him to bless rather than a cursing. We see this truth in Scripture that when God reveals a truth and God shows us something that is accurate, he expects us to apply that to our lives or we will go backwards.
[20:10] What was going on here is these people had heard so much truth of Jesus Christ yet never applied them in their lives. They were stuck in this pattern of immaturity and they were stuck in this pattern of not really understanding.
[20:23] Now he goes into chapter 6 where it says, therefore leaving the elementary teachings about the Christ. Now these are not the elementary teachings of Christ. These are the elementary teachings about the Christ.
[20:35] This is why we know that these are non-believers. Okay, stay with me. Let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation. It's going to speak of the foundation stones. John MacArthur says there's six foundation stones here and I think he's accurate in that.
[20:48] These foundation stones which are rampant in the Old Testament. We don't have time this morning to go through them but this is the author's writing because the Jewish people have a great advantage. They start out with a foundation already laid which we have in the Old Testament.
[21:01] Those of you that are with us on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights we see that foundation pointing to Jesus Christ and he speaks of it here. Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead words of faith towards God of instruction about washings and laying on of hands and the resurrection of dead and the eternal judgment.
[21:16] All of those are Old Testament realities. All of those are things that point to the fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And what is he saying?
[21:29] You're still holding to the type and not moving to the fulfillment. Here's what we find in immaturity is we like the concept of Christ but we don't necessarily want to grab a hold of Christ.
[21:47] We like to hear about him. We like to listen to him. We think it's pretty cool. We think it's amazing what he can do but we're not willing to take that step and let him do it.
[21:57] So there is the encouragement to move beyond immaturity. Secondly, we see there is the caution against the level of impossibility. Now this is where we get difficult.
[22:08] This is where it gets steep. So we're going to put on our waders and we're going to jump right in here, right? There is this caution against the level of impossibility. Verse 3 says, and this we will do if God permits.
[22:19] So what he says is we're going to press on to maturity if God permits and he does. He does that in chapter 7 as he begins to make his transition and to explain to Mechizedek a little fully. So verses 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are the ones that are very difficult for us but that's okay.
[22:34] We see this is a caution against the level of impossibility. Now, before we read this, I told you last week of a passage you needed to hold on to that would help us to rightfully interpret this passage and that passage was in Hebrews chapter 5 who says that Jesus comes to offer us eternal salvation.
[22:55] Right? Jesus comes to offer us eternal salvation. He eternally saves those who trust in Him. Now, the Scripture never contradicts Scripture because this text that we have before us some say that it would seem to imply that one could lose their salvation.
[23:13] Now, if that is the case then it is a direct is going directly against what has previously been said in one chapter back where it says Jesus offers eternal salvation that He can eternally save.
[23:25] because if He cannot eternally save if we are willing to lose that salvation then that is not an accurate statement. But if what is said in chapter 5 is accurate and He does eternally save those who trust in Him then we cannot interpret these verses as stating that we can lose our salvation.
[23:45] But they are are a dire warning. My words will catch up with me in just a minute. because this is a warning for those who like to play around with the things of Christ.
[23:59] It is probably one of the scariest warnings that we find in Scripture. This is a warning for those who like to be near and around the things of Christ but don't necessarily want to give Jesus Christ their entire life.
[24:15] It is a caution against the level of impossibility. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.
[24:30] Here is where most people say that these definitely have to be believers who lose their salvation because they say there is no enlightenment without salvation. We cannot taste of the Holy Spirit or be a partaker of the Holy Spirit without the reality of salvation.
[24:43] Then we cannot understand the word of God and the powers of the age to come without the reality of salvation. But I would say that that absolutely is an inaccurate statement because I know from testimony of my own life.
[24:55] Okay? No one comes to the Father lest he be drawn to the Father and conviction is the work of the Holy Spirit. Right? We understand that. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit was given to convict the world of sin and righteousness and lawlessness and this is to show us what we do wrong.
[25:07] So if I have a conviction a presence of conviction in my life it is because the Holy Spirit is working in my life and one of the greatest places where the Spirit seems to convict people yet people resist that conviction is in the assembling of God's people which we call the church.
[25:21] I remember very personally and even today I remember before I was a non-believer sitting in the back pew of a church and being so convicted by the presence of the Holy Spirit that I needed to repent and turn from my sins yet not a believer but definitely tasting and feeling the work of the Spirit.
[25:49] You know why we should invite non-believers to church? It's because this is the one assembly which Jesus has promised He will be present. It's an amazing thing.
[26:03] And if we understand that if we understand Martin Lloyd-Jones used to say it's a very spiritual exercise that the gathering of God's people together where the Spirit of God is moving among His people is a very spiritual exercise and people non-believers are greatly influenced by that.
[26:21] We see this here that they are very near these things. It is He says in the case of those who had once been enlightened those who had been accurately taught the truth now this is not for those who had never heard the gospel.
[26:33] Okay let's just go ahead and put it here. This is not for those who had never heard the gospel. This is for those who heard the truth of the gospel who had seen the heavenly gifts so they could testify to the fact that they had been partakers of the Holy Spirit and known that the Spirit was working around them and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.
[26:50] We would describe it like this these are people who knew that God was real and active and alive and moving in the lives of others. They had been so around the people of God that they could see the testimony of God in their lives and they could see God moving and working.
[27:05] It says in verse 6 and then have fallen away that word fallen away is apostatizer to become apostate and then have fallen away here it is it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.
[27:18] Some try to soften this and say that word impossible really means difficult. That is not an accurate translation or an accurate interpretation of scripture because in just a few verses it's going to use the same word impossible to say that it is impossible for God to lie.
[27:32] So if we're going to say that this is difficult to renew them again to repentance then we would say well it's difficult for God to lie and it's not difficult for God to lie because it's impossible for God to lie because God cannot lie. So the word impossible here means impossible.
[27:45] So here let's just put it down in layman's terms. Those people who have been so near the moving and the power and the working of Christ who have been in the presence of his people and have seen accurately without a shadow of a doubt God moving among his people yet decide to walk away from that.
[28:04] Decide not to give their lives to that. decide to deny that and to apostatize that is to turn their back. It is impossible to renew them again to repentance.
[28:16] It says for they have crucified for themselves Jesus Christ. They have cut off their only hope of salvation.
[28:29] Now that's hard. And what we see here in the text is he is not speaking of genuine believers. I'll show you that in just a moment. He is speaking of those who have been so near.
[28:44] He even felt that gut churning moving. D.L. Moody used to tell a story of a gentleman. He went to go visit him in a hospital. The gentleman was very, very sick and he went to go visit him and he said, Mr. Moody would you pray for me?
[28:57] He said, yes I will. He said, Mr. Moody my life has not been right. I need to turn my life around. I need to repent and when I get out of this hospital I'm going to repent of my sins and I'm going to give my life to Christ. He says, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to walk into Chicago Avenue Church, which is today Moody Church and I'm going to give my life to Christ.
[29:15] Mr. Moody prayed with that gentleman. That gentleman ends up getting better. He gets out of the hospital and he forgets his vow. He does not go into Chicago Avenue Church. He does not even come to see Mr. Moody. He never gives his life to Jesus Christ.
[29:26] He continues living his life as he should. God had shown him the truth. The truth was that he needed to repent of his sins. The truth was that he needed to turn his life over to Jesus Christ. He knew it emphatically and yet he decided not to do it.
[29:40] He once again ended up in the hospital and Mr. Moody went to go see him in the hospital and Moody said, can I pray for you? He said, it's too late Mr. Moody and God cannot save me. He said, there's no man beyond the reach of salvation and the man kept telling Moody, he said, it's too late, you cannot pray for me.
[29:53] I have made and he said, Mr. Moody you cannot pray for me, it's too late. Moody said, I'm going to pray anyway. Moody testified and said, I got down on my knees on that hospital floor and it felt like the heavens were an iron curtain and my prayers would not ascend beyond the room and I realized very clearly that I could not pray for that man.
[30:14] And that man died a Christless death and was buried in a Christless grave because he had made his decision. He knew what he should do yet decided not to do it when he had it within his power to do it. Because friend, let's just say this, God will not be mocked.
[30:29] And we don't know how long that's going to be. I can't tell you and because somebody's going to ask me when you leave here and the man says, I don't know. God is patient. I understand these things.
[30:39] But I also know that God also says that God will eventually give man over to his way. So here's the caution. How long do you play around with Christ before God says, okay, that's far enough?
[30:57] I don't know. But the text says that for those who know the truth and are not willing to surrender to the truth and they turn their back from that, it's impossible to renew them again to repentance for they have denied Jesus Christ.
[31:15] I don't know how long that takes because the text doesn't tell us. But to caution is this, beware lest you tread upon the level of impossibility. Beware, lest you tread upon the level of impossibility.
[31:31] Third and finally, we see how are we going to move forward to this greater commitment. It is a challenge to live lives of imitation. There is the encouragement to move beyond immaturity.
[31:42] There is a caution against the level of impossibility. And there is the challenge to live lives of imitation. I do not think that I have time to flesh out all of these verses. But I want you to see some truth that is here and maybe we will come back to them next week if the Lord wants us to.
[31:56] Verse 9 says, but beloved. Now referring to beloved. Beloved he is speaking to people who are saved. So he is making a transition. So stay with me here. But beloved we are convinced of better things concerning you.
[32:09] This is why I say that these things which were previously spoken of in verses 4 through 8 do not apply to those who are saved. Because look at what he says. We are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation.
[32:23] Though we are speaking in this way. So what he said? These are not things that go along besides salvation. These are not things that accompany salvation. These are not things that are present with the saved.
[32:35] These are things which are present with the unsaved who are so near the things of God but rather do not want to give themselves completely to him. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown towards his name and having ministered and still ministering to the saints.
[32:49] And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end. This is what I want you to see here. It is absolutely possible to live with an assured hope until the end.
[33:03] Not that, well, I think I'm right or I hope I'm right. No, an assurance of hope until the end so that you would not be sluggish because when we have assurance, if you remember many, several years ago we went through 1 John and the reason for 1 John is so that you may know, that you may know, John writes that letter 1 John, that you may know that you are saved.
[33:23] And the reason Satan goes through so much efforts to cause you to doubt your salvation is because an assurance of salvation is a great motivation for a life lived for his glory. If we spend the bulk of our time doubting our salvation then we are no longer given our time to work out our salvation with fear and trembling among those around us.
[33:42] When we are assured of our salvation, when we know that we are his, all of a sudden now we can move forward confidently and be his people among this world. So here we see that we will not be sluggish, here it is, but be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promise.
[33:57] How do you live with the full assurance of hope? Imitate those who went before us. Hebrews chapter 11 is the heroes of the faith chapter. Hebrews chapter 12 says, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, since we can look at those who went before us and God has given forerunners in Jesus Christ, but he's also given those people who have labored and strived and we can imitate their faith.
[34:19] We can trust and we can see. And I'll go ahead and tell you, it's very simple. You say, well I cannot live the life of Noah. There's no way I'm going to build an ark. I cannot be Abram. I'm not going to be called out of the land of the Herodic Chaldeans. I'll never be Moses.
[34:30] I'll never meet a burning bush, though I thought I met one the other night. I'll tell you that another time. I'll never meet a burning bush and it will not be consumed. I'll never be David. I'll never be Joshua.
[34:40] I'll never be all these people. Well, it comes down to this one thing. How did they do it? How can we imitate their faith? Look at what he says. So that you will imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promise.
[34:54] For when God made the promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you. And so, look at this verse 15. Having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.
[35:07] promise. Here's what we do. We imitate the faith of those patriarchs who went before us, who did this. They trusted the promises of God.
[35:22] They said, if God has said it, that settles it. And they believed his promises so much, they staked their lives upon it. Noah built an ark for 130 years.
[35:35] Why? Because God says, it's going to rain. At that time, it had never rained on the earth. But when God says, it's going to rain, Noah said, well, that's a promise.
[35:49] He means it so much, I'm going to spend the next 130 years of my life doing something based on that promise. See the full circle here? That's maturity. God has promised something.
[36:01] I'm going to believe it. And by faith, I'm going to live as if that promise, which I do not yet see, is a reality that is completely transforming people.
[36:13] To be imitators of those who went before us, we literally follow the example of trusting what God has promised he will do. And that moves us forward to a greater commitment and a greater walk for his glory.
[36:29] We will probably have to pick up the rest of chapter six next week as we tie it in to going into chapter seven. But we want to move forward to those who are longing and living a greater commitment for his glory.
[36:42] Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for this day. God, I'm so thankful for the opportunity we have to be here. Lord, I pray that you would speak to our hearts. I pray that you would speak to our minds.
[36:54] And Lord, that you would draw us closer to you. Lord, may we not be those who play around with the things of Christ. May we be those who are drawn by the power and presence of the spirit to a total commitment and a surrender.
[37:11] The work of Christ in our lives for your glory. We ask it all in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
[37:29] Thank you.
[38:28] Thank you.
[38:58] Thank you.
[39:28] Thank you.
[39:58] Thank you.
[40:28] Thank you.
[40:58] Thank you.