We're going to open up today
back in the book of Hebrews if you want to turn to Hebrews chapter
6. Hebrews chapter 6 verses 1 through 6 are perhaps one of the more
thorny places of scripture. Thorny because it's difficult
to understand it, and it causes us great concern and trepidation
as we read through it, because if you're the Lord's, I think,
if you know yourself to be a sinner, it always gives you great sobriety
to read about what we're going to read about in Hebrews chapter
six, those first six verses. And so I've entitled this message,
Dire Warning and Extreme Comfort. dire warning and extreme comfort,
and I had purposely gone to the sermons before this, kind of
preparing, running up to this text of Scripture with you, especially
the one we had last week, so I pray that God was good to you,
as you considered His Word, from Jude chapter 1, verse 24 and
25, now unto Him. who is able to keep you from falling. I hope
those words resonate in your ear as you live your life. I
hope that we all find our refuge only in Christ. We find our foundation
only in what he's done, what he said, in his own person and
his goodness. And I pray that we would now
and forever come to him, come to the Lord Jesus Christ, Let's
pray. Father, receive us for Christ's
sake today. Lord Jesus, heal us, we pray. We are sinful, sin sick, and
helpless in ourselves. We cannot thrust ourselves, barge
into the kingdom of God. You have to bring us. We can't
take away one sin. You have to wash us with your
own blood. We can't produce, we can't conform to one command
from our heart. that you've given to us, and
we've broken everyone. We pray that you'd clothe us
with your own obedience, and your own beauty, that we might
appear before God, who can only accept your righteousness for
sinners. We pray that you would justify
us, Lord, our Savior and our God, for the obedience of your
Son. and our Savior. We pray, Lord,
that you'd send your Spirit now to give what you've done for
us, give it to us with saving faith, and cause us to ever look
and cry and to plead Christ alone in our heart and with our lips
to the praise of the glory of your grace. In his name we pray,
amen. Hebrews chapter 6, verse 1. Therefore, leaving the principles of the
doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying
again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith
toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of
hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
And this will we do if God permit. For it is impossible for those
who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift
and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the
good word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they
shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance, seeing
they crucify to themselves the son of God afresh and put him
to an open shame. dire warnings, aren't they? It
is impossible to renew to repentance those who shall fall away who
have tasted of these things who have been made partakers, who
have heard, have tasted the good word of God and the powers of
the world to come, if they shall fall away, it is impossible,
he says here, to renew them to repentance, because they crucify
to themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open
chain." That's a pretty fearful warning, isn't it? If that's
all I had to say today, that would leave you and me Very concerned, very concerned.
And you might not be able to sleep. You might go home and
spend the rest of your life wondering, how am I going to escape? Look
at chapter two of Hebrews. He says, therefore, verse one,
therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things
which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, in comparison, he's using this one, to the law
was spoken by angels, if that word was steadfast and every
transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of
reward, how shall we escape if we neglect? So great salvation,
which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed
unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness,
those who heard and spoke of Christ, bearing them witness
both with signs and wonders and with diverse miracles and gifts
of the Holy Ghost according to his own will. The Hebrews had
heard those who heard Christ and they had seen the miracles
God did by the Holy Spirit when those who heard Christ spoke
his word. They had heard them speak in
their own language, even though they didn't know their language.
They had seen them raise men who were lame. They had seen
them even raise the dead. And in one case, in the case
of Ananias and Sapphira, they had seen a husband and his wife
fall down dead at the word of the apostle. They had seen these
things and they had heard them from these. And so when he speaks
here in Hebrews chapter six, verse four, it is impossible
for those who are once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly
gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted
the good word of God and the powers of the world to come if
they shall fall away to renew them again to repentance. He's
speaking of people who heard, who heard those who heard Christ,
who saw the miracles that God did by them to confirm that word. But he says here in verse one
of Hebrews six, therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine
of Christ. What are the principles? Well,
we've gone over this in the past. I'm just going to summarize the
conclusion from that study with you. First of all, we can understand
it by what he said in the book of Hebrews. the book of Hebrews. Reading it, we see the message
of Hebrews is about how Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, is exalted on heaven's throne because God's eternal
will given to him to save his people was fulfilled. He completed
it. He perfected it forever. He finished
it. And in doing that will of God
to save his people, he also fulfilled all of the law. He fulfilled
all the shadows and types and figures of the Old Testament
law, ceremonies, the history, the events, all the things in
Scripture that were spoken by God as a parable were fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the book of Hebrews is about
that. Christ's work, Christ's person,
his office as our prophet, priest, and king, and his place in glory
because he actually did the will of God. He actually obtained
our eternal redemption when he offered his blood to God in the
holiest of all, not on earth, but in heaven itself. That's
what the book of Hebrews is about, and that's what perfection means.
It's the end, the consummation, the fulfillment of the law. And
so he says, when he says, let us, therefore leaving the principles
of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection, he's
saying, go on to Christ. Leave the shadows, go to the
substance, the one to whom the shadows pointed. the one who
made those shadows from eternity and which were given in time
to foreshadow his actual coming in time and history, which he
did. And when he rose from the dead
and ascended to heaven and sat down on the throne of God, he
completed that revelation of God and made it known. This is
what God has spoken in these last days, what the Lord Jesus
Christ has done by himself to purge our sins. And we're to
go on to this. This is the beginning of the
message. This is the middle and the end of the message. He's
the end of the law for righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ, the end. He is the termination. He's the
fulfillment of it. He said, I didn't come to destroy
the law and the prophets, but to fulfill it. And he did it.
He did that. Heaven and earth shall pass away.
My word shall never pass away. The Lord Jesus Christ did that.
And when it says in Hebrews, Chapter 10, I won't have you
turn there, but you'll remember these words in Hebrews chapter
10 because we refer to them so often. He says, for what by one
offering he, our Lord Jesus, hath perfected forever them that
are sanctified. Isn't that a comforting promise
of God? A promise of accomplishment,
of perfection by the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Colossians 2,
9 and 10, he says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in our
Lord Jesus Christ bodily. All that God is, he is, in a
body, in our nature. And we are complete in him. Then go on therefore by faith
and lay hold on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he's saying
here, leaving the principles. The principles were the Old Testament,
prophets, laws, and all those things that foreshadowed Christ,
which are now fulfilled and complete in Christ. The revelation of
God that was hid from eternity is now made known. Christ has
come. Before faith came, we were under
the schoolmaster of the law, like servants, no different than
slaves. beat up and held in prison by
the law until Christ came. But now that faith has come,
we are no longer under a schoolmaster. Therefore, leaving the principles
of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection, go on
to Christ Himself. the end of the law. Christ, who
unlike the law in which there was nothing made perfect, has
made all things perfect in his work and by his reigning sovereign
rule in heaven. Okay, so that's the first thing.
That's the first thing we need to do. The Old Testament was
a shadow of the first principles of Christ, and though Moses wrote
of him, as Jesus said in John chapter 5 and verse 46, that
writing was to us but a parable. The disciples asked Jesus, why
do you speak to these people in parables? He was speaking
to them in parables for two reasons. One, because the full revelation
had not yet been given. Christ hadn't given it. But when
he gives it, it's complete and the parable is no longer needed. God made it known to us. But
he also spoke in parables to hide from those who were not
given to see, to hide from them the truth of the gospel. So then
he goes, he says here, not laying again the foundation. These foundations
are laid by the Old Testament laws and prophets. They speak
of Christ, but they're not the fulfillment. They're not the
end. But when Christ comes, then we have the real thing. The first
thing he says here is repentance from dead works. What are dead
works? Well, obviously they're works
that are done by spiritually dead people. They can't be living
works or good works if they're done by the dead. The flesh profits
nothing. Only what is done by the spirit
is profitable and is good and is living. So the flesh profits
nothing, therefore we put no confidence in our flesh and there's
no righteousness in our own personal obedience. All righteousness
is in Christ. Dead works don't produce life.
In Galatians 3.21, the Lord says that if there had been a law
which could have given life, no doubt righteousness would
have come by the law. But there is no obedience of
ours that can produce life, therefore our works are dead works, and
Christ's works alone have merit with God. This is fundamental. This is so opposed to our natural
thinking, so opposed to our pride. because we think that God must
save us, surely he's not going to let us die and perish. To
die and to perish is exactly what we deserve. If we really
saw the way we, the true nature of ourselves, we would cry out
with Job, behold I am vile, or with Isaiah, I am undone. Or
with Peter, depart from me Lord, I'm a sinful man. Or with Paul,
oh wretched man that I am. You see, the difference here
is that we don't think highly enough of God and we think too
highly of ourselves, but we need to repent from that. The Old
Testament taught this because the sacrifices were offered repeatedly. They never ended. Sin was never
put away. Righteousness was never established.
Not by the obedience of people to the law, it was only established
by the obedience of Christ to God's law. He was made under
the law, He fulfilled the law in His obedience, and He bore
the curse of God's law in order to take that curse from us. He
did it all. We did nothing except sin against
Him. So all that we do is dead works.
It can't produce life. It comes from a dead man, a spiritually
dead people, and it therefore is in itself a dead work. It
profits nothing. We have to turn from that. And
the Old Testament teaches that because it drives us into a state
of guilt before God. It says in Romans 3.19, whatever
the law says, it says to them who are under the law that every
mouth may be stopped. Shut up! You have nothing to
say that God can accept. Don't try to defend yourself
or justify yourself before God because you'll only dig yourself
deeper into the hole. That's the message of the law.
You can't do it by the deeds of the flesh or by the deeds
of the law. No flesh shall be justified in His sight. Obedience
to God's law is not the way. The way is narrow. It's too narrow
to find and it's too narrow to get into. Christ alone could
do it. And it's only in Christ that
we did it. So we have to repent from those dead works. Don't
go back to the Old Testament trying to find righteousness
by your own obedience. The Israelites thought they could
do that. And so they said so in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and
verse 25. Let me read this to you. They
said it shall be for our righteousness if we observe to do all these
commandments. They foolishly thought that their
own personal obedience would make them right before God. How
many ways does this come out in our own selves and in the
religious world around us? They set before you something
to do. It might be small, but you've got to do it. How many
times you find people say, well, I know that if I do this, God
will bless me, but if I don't, then he's gonna bring judgment
on me. Oh, he will. But we think that somehow, because
we got ourselves into the ditch of our own ruin and damnation,
that somehow we can undo what we did and get ourselves out.
You cannot. We can ruin ourself, but we can't
save ourselves. Hosea 13.9 says, oh Israel, thou
hast destroyed thyself. But in me is thy help found. It's only in the Lord. Only in
the Lord have I righteousness. That's what it says in Isaiah
45, 24 and 25. So our obedience and the cleansing
from our sin can only be found in Christ. So we have to leave.
We have to go beyond. Not that repentance from dead
works, that teaching is a bad teaching. It just doesn't go
far enough. What we need is repentance unto
life, and that's a gift of the Lord Jesus Christ from his throne.
He was exalted as a prince and a savior for to give repentance
unto Israel and the remission of sins, from Acts chapter 5
verse 31. And we need to repent towards
God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, Acts 20 verse 21. This
is repentance. This is repentance unto life.
It's repentance toward God concerning ourselves, abandoning all defenses,
coming to God in all of our sin, bare and naked and deserving
of damnation, having only one plea, the plea that Christ gave.
If he doesn't plead, if he doesn't answer God in all that God demands
of me and fulfill all that God requires of me, I have no answer. Behold, I am vile, and God has
to condemn me if he doesn't find me in Christ. That's repentance
toward God, and that same repentance is simultaneously and at once
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says here, not laying
again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith
toward God. Faith towards God as God the
Creator, or even as the God of the nation of Israel, doesn't
go nearly far enough. We must believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ to be saved. And that faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ is the gift of God. In Ephesians chapter two, if
you want to look at this, this is such a pivotal and important
verse. We refer to it almost every time
we preach. In Ephesians chapter 2, in verse
8, it says this, For by grace you are saved. By grace. That means God not only withholds
from you the hell you deserve, but he gives you the reward Christ
deserves. For by grace are you saved. Through faith. How do I know
I've been saved? because salvation is through
faith. If you believe Christ, then the Lord saved you. If you
did it, then you saved yourself. But he says, for by grace you
are saved through faith, and that, that faith, and everything
to do with salvation, but especially that faith, that is not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God. So we come to God through Jesus
Christ for everything, even the faith, we need to look to Christ. Eyes to see, what does the blind
man say? When Jesus came to Bartimaeus when he was crying, what did
Jesus say to him? He said, what do you want me
to do for you? Lord, that I might see, that
you might open my eyes. That's what we need, right? Not
the physical sight, We can go through our lives physically
blind and be perfectly content, for example, like Fanny Crosby.
But it's seen with the heart, the eyes of the heart. The Lord
opened Lydia's heart so she could see. And so the Lord must open
ours. So faith in God as God We can't
come to God as God. We have to come to him as our
mediator in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have to have faith in him.
And so as I was laying in bed last night thinking about this,
in my own heart I was going to the Lord Jesus. and praying to
Him, asking Him to save me, to have mercy on me. Because God's
grace comes to us only through Him. Do you? Do I? Do we go to Christ? Do we look
to Him? Jesus said, whoever comes to
me, I will in no wise cast out. And all that the Father has given
me, He draws, He teaches, and they come to me. This is the
evidence that we've been saved by God's work, by His grace. And so faith towards our Lord
Jesus Christ, not just faith in the God of Israel, not faith
in Abraham as Ramel mentioned earlier, but faith in the Lord
who is the author and finisher of our faith. Right? If he's
the author of it, then it began with him. If he's the finisher
of it, then he brings it to maturity and to perfection. And everything
in between, the sustenance, the sustaining of our faith is his
work. The giving of it, the sustaining
of it, the keeping of it, the preserving of it, the increase
of it, the maturing of it, the finishing of it, it's all his
work. It's not of yourselves. So do
we go to him for it. Lord, I believe, help thou mine
unbelief. Lord, increase our faith. That's
the way we pray from these texts of scripture that we've referred
to so many times. We find nothing in ourselves.
That's repentance toward God. I'm a guilty sinner. That's repentance
toward God. Lord, I come to you needing everything. Look upon the sacrifice you ordained
and provided and accepted in your son. the one that pleased
you, receive him, and in him receive me." That's faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the opposite of faith in
ourselves, very opposite of it. Anytime we mix anything with
what God thinks of Christ in our coming to him, it's unbelief,
it's self-righteousness, it's coming in the pride of our own
ignorant and willful, idolatrous heart that we would look to any
but the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lamb of God is all the glory
in God's kingdom. He gets all of the glory. At
the center of heaven's kingdom is the Father and the Lamb on
the throne because He accomplished our salvation. And all those
who encircle the throne give glory to the Lamb, you see. And if they don't, then they
aren't going to be there. Unto him who loved us and washed
us from our sins in his own blood. That's what they cry, Revelation
1.5. They cry these praises unto him who redeemed us by his own
blood out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation. That's what
we cry. And then he goes on here in Hebrews chapter 6. He says,
not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works
and of faith toward God of the doctrine of baptisms. Now the doctrine of baptisms
here sounds like it might be referring to our baptism in water
or some other baptism, John's baptism or baptism by the Holy
Spirit even. Is that the baptism spoken of
here? No, it's not. In Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 10, the same word is
used, and this is the only place it's used. He says, "...which
stood only in meats, and drinks, and divers, washings, and carnal
ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation." There
were lots of washings in the Old Testament. The priest had
this big laver that Solomon had constructed out of brass, and
they had water in it, and the priest would have to wash in
it before they could do the service. They had washing cups, washing
everything. These washings is the same word
here back in Hebrews chapter six. All those Old Testament
washings pointed to the fact that we needed to be cleansed
by God according to what He alone could accept. And what is it
that cleanses us from all sin? Isn't it the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ? 1 John 1.7, the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanseth us from all sin. And as I mentioned before
in Revelation 1.5, unto him that loved us and washed us, from
our sins, in His own blood. So the cleansing of our sins
is only by the blood of Christ. How is it that the blood of Christ
washes us from our sins? Because in His blood we see the
outpouring of God's wrath in order to make compensation to
God's justice, so that the sin that we committed, He removed
before God by suffering the penalty of it and taking it from us.
He took it on Himself, He bore the shame and guilt of it and
bore the punishment of it, and therefore it's removed and washed
from us. This is what the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16
is talking about. He laid his hands, the high priest
laid his hands upon the head of the scapegoat and confessed
over that goat all the sins of all the children of Israel and
then by the hand of a fit man sent that goat away out into
the wilderness. And before that he had come into
the holy place and he sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat and
then he came out. And when atonement was made,
it says that our sins, or the sins of the people, were cleansed.
The high priest did it all by himself. It was on that day that
the Lord cleansed them from their sins. And so the cleansing, the
washings all pointed to what? The Lord Jesus Christ and his
obedience of offering himself so that in his offering of himself
he took our sins away before God. He washed us from our sins
in his own blood, amazing grace, It says in Hebrews chapter 9
and verse 24, it says this, Christ is not entered into the holy
places made with hands, Hebrews 9.24. He's not entered into the
holy places made with hands, not those Old Testament ones.
You see how the book of Hebrews is about the fulfillment of all
those things here? It's laid out for us here in
Hebrews chapter 9, for example. So he has not entered into the
holy places made with hands, but which are the figures of
the true. It's sort of like the stage in
a drama. You create a town or trees or
these kinds of things. It's just a figure of the true.
It's not the real thing. Those sacrifices they offered,
they weren't the real thing. They never took away sins. And
so the Lord Jesus Christ didn't come. He didn't come into that
tabernacle in the Old Testament. He wasn't made as a high priest
under that law. He was made a high priest under
a different Oath by God, a different word, a different order. And
he actually did accomplish the function of a high priest because
he offered himself as the Lamb of God. So it says here, he didn't
enter into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures
of the true, but into heaven itself, the true, now to appear
in the presence of God. What did the next word say? For
us. Why is the Lord Jesus, what is
he doing there? appearing before God for us. We can't appear before God, but
he can and he does. And he does it for us because
he is our mediator who offered himself in substitution as our
surety to bring to God all God demanded from us and to release
us from our sins and bring us again to the Father. And so in
verse 25 he goes on, nor yet that he should offer himself
often as the high priest entered into the holy place every year
with blood of others, animals, for then must he often have suffered
since the foundation of the world. But now once in the end of the
world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself. And as it is appointed unto men
once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once
offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him
shall he appear a second time, at the end of time, without sin
unto salvation. You see how our sins are put
away? How are they washed from us? How are they cleansed? What
did all those washings point forward to? The Lord Jesus, who
by himself washed us from our sins in his own blood. And then
in Hebrews chapter six, again, going back, he says here, Well, let me just add this one
last thing about a note on baptism. Because there really is a baptism
that believers are baptized with. There's a physical baptism in
water for every believer, and we must be obedient to that because
the Lord says, preach what I've given to you to his disciples,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost. And that baptism in water by
immersion is the only valid baptism, and it points back to our union
with Christ in his own baptism in death and burial and in resurrection. when we were then one with Him
in His death, burial, and resurrection, so that His death was ours. Our
sins died with Him, the body of our sins. And His burial was
ours. Our sins were forgotten by God.
in his death, and his resurrection was ours so that we're justified
before God. All that is shown in our water
baptism. But even our water baptism isn't
spiritual. It's just an outward emblem of
what we believe in our heart that truly happened because God
said it. And it is by the baptism of the
Spirit of God that we're actually in our experimentally, in our
lifetime, put into Christ. So that when we are put into
Christ by the Spirit of God, then we eat, we believe Him,
we rely and live upon His crucified body and blood for us. We go
to Him, we're drawn to Him, and we continue with Him. And that's
a baptism by the Spirit of God. In 1 Corinthians, I'll read that
to you, just so you know where it's at. 1 Corinthians 12, verse
13, he says it this way. For by one Spirit we are all
baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether
we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one
Spirit. This refers to our trusting Christ. We see Him, we take of Him by
faith, we live upon Him, we eat and drink of Him. This is so much spoken of in
Scripture that we can't take time now to even start to begin
to explain it. But here, baptism is, in the
Old Testament, pointed forward to our being washed by the blood
of Christ. Our water baptism points to our
hope. and our confidence that in Christ
we died to sin, our sins were put out of God's mind, remembers
them no more, we rose justified by Him. And also it points forward
to the time we believe that because Christ rose, our bodies are going
to rise to. So in our baptism we express
our hope of the resurrection of our body because we're raised
in our soul. The body is dead because of sin,
Romans 8, 10, but the spirit is life. The spirit is life because
of righteousness, Christ's righteousness. And that's what we confess in
our baptism. We live because of Christ's righteousness. We
were given life by the Spirit of God and therefore faith in
Christ because we were justified by what God received from Christ
for us in His death. And that's all of our hope. That's
what we confess in baptism. And that's the result. That conviction,
that persuasion, that assurance in our heart is the result of
the Spirit's baptizing us into Christ. We don't believe of ourselves. This is a miracle, and it's a
miracle of grace. The Spirit of God has done this,
not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. Zechariah 4, verse 6. So back
to Hebrews chapter 6, what does he say? not laying again the
doctrine of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
of the doctrine of baptisms or washings that pointed forward
to the Lord Jesus Christ and His blood, and laying on of hands."
Laying on of hands. Now a lot of people will say,
well this means that when you join a church, people lay their
hands on you. That's not what it means. In the Old Testament,
the priest would lay his hands, and the one who came to worship
God, who was a sinner, would lay his hands on the sacrifice,
and they would confess on the sacrifice, the head of the sacrifice,
those sins, and laying their hands on them signified transferring
their sins, as God would impute them, to the sacrifice. and God
transferring the acceptance of the sacrifice in imputation to
them. So that the imputation of our
sins were made by God on Christ, He charged Him with our guilt
and placed the penalty for our sins on Him, brought it upon
and poured it out on Him. And he not only did that, but
he credited us with his obedience and his satisfaction. Look at
2 Corinthians and chapter five. This is amazing, amazing grace. And if you want to read a commentary
on this, read Isaiah 53, for the transgression of my people
was he stricken. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray. We have turned every one of us
to his own way, but the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity
of us all. That's what it means to commit
iniquity, to go out of the way. Denise was showing me a little
video online. The sheep was stuck in a ditch.
And the shepherd comes over and drags this sheep out by his feet.
And as soon as he let the feet of the sheep go, he charges off
in another direction. And you know what happened? He
fell into a ditch. It was amazing. We saw one like
that where the sheep had gotten himself like a gopher in a hole. And all you could see was his
back legs. So the shepherd pulls him out of the hole. This is
what we did. We each one went our own foolish
way, opposed to God in our heart, foolishly seeking after our own
destruction. The Lord has laid on him the
iniquity of us all. Listen to it here in 2 Corinthians
5, verse 21. For he, God, hath made him, Christ, sin for us. He imputed our sins to Christ. That doesn't mean there's some
less than actual charging of them to him. They became his.
He confessed them as his. Mine iniquities have gone over
my head as a heavy burden. There are too many for me. From Psalm 40, verse 11 and 12. But here he says, God has made
him sin for us. He who knew no sin, that's the
Lord Jesus Christ, that we, obviously, who knew no righteousness, might
be made the righteousness of God in him. God looks upon Christ
and sees his obedience, and he says, that's righteousness. And
he didn't do it for himself. He already was righteous, but
he established an everlasting righteousness in his own obedience
on the behalf of his people, because he stood as surety for
them, to give to God all that we had taken away. Psalm 69,
four, then I restored that which I had not taken away. That's
what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. Do you believe it? Do you believe him? I do. By God's grace, I can say from
my heart, this is all my hope, all my salvation, all my delight,
all my joy. is what the Lord Jesus has done,
what God has said concerning him. Now, this is what it means,
the laying on of hands. It's pointing, it's going back
to the Old Testament and looking at what they did there in the
priesthood and pointing forward to the substitutionary work of
Christ for us that was a complete success because he actually satisfied
God and obtained our eternal redemption. And then notice,
He goes on here, he says, not laying again the foundation of
these things, and after the laying on of hands, what does he say?
Of the resurrection of the dead. Now, the Old Testament saints
believed Christ, like Abraham, but they had a limited view of
the resurrection. Remember, the Sadducees and Pharisees
were always arguing about this. The Pharisees said, no, there's
gonna be a resurrection. And the Sadducees said, no, there's
not. And so back and forth, and there was a big dispute, and
the Pharisees were lost, eternally lost. Jesus said, woe unto you,
woe unto you, woe unto you, you blind guides! And they were lost. They believed there was a resurrection.
Did it save them? No. Because their view of the
resurrection was that God was just going to raise the dead.
And that was clearly taught in the Old Testament, and a lot
more of that was taught. Remember how Jesus answered the
Sadducees? He says, but you think that when
you ask about the resurrection of the dead, don't you know what
God said to Moses from the bush? I am the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. He said, that proves the resurrection.
God said, I am the God. And God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living. So there were many things like
that in scripture that proved the resurrection. But what they
didn't understand was what Jesus taught Martha in John 11. She
said, I know that my brother will rise again at the last day.
What did Jesus say? I am the resurrection and the
life. They fell so far short of understanding
the resurrection because they didn't know him who is the resurrection. They had to leave the principles
of the doctrine of Christ and go on to the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, you see. This is the point. This is the
point of this here. And the resurrection is seen
in Christ's work because he says, he told his disciples, he says,
because I live, you shall live also. Because I live, just because
I live. I am the resurrection and the
life. That's from John 14, verse 19. And so the truth of the resurrection
has to terminate on the perfection. Remember, going on to perfection,
which is the Lord Jesus Christ. And the resurrection of Christ
means that we will be raised, and we are raised if we trust
him already. He says, he that believeth on
me. Jesus said this, let me read that to you in John chapter five,
in verse 24, he said, Verily, verily, I say to you,
he that heareth my word, here's the word, the voice of the Son
of God speaking with power, and what can resist that? All of
creation couldn't resist it out of the nothingness and the darkness
of the void of creation. The Son of God spoke and it leaped
into existence. And how much more? when he laid
his life down and rose again for us, and we being in him,
when he sends his spirit and speaks his gospel, and we hear
that voice in the gospel of the Son of God, in our spirit, what
happens? Bam! He raises us to life with
himself. Verily, verily, he said, I say
to you, he that heareth my word and believeth as a result of
hearing that word on him that sent me, has everlasting life
already. You already live if you believe.
You even have eternal life. That's how powerful. This truth
is, you have to go on to Christ. Only in Christ is there this
resurrection and life in our spirit and then in our body.
He's the first fruits, it says in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 20,
the first fruits of them that slept, or that sleep, because
all in Adam died, all in Christ shall be made alive. We have
to go on to perfection. It is being in Christ that we're
raised. because He rose again from the
dead in conquering our sins. He put away the sting of death
in His own death, and therefore death has no power over us because
it has no power over Him, and He lives and reigns for us. I
live, the Apostle Paul says, because Christ lives in me, and
I live by the faith of the Son of God. It's not enough to believe
that God will raise the dead. We must believe that Christ is
our life and that our life is in him. This is the true God. Speaking of Christ, John the
Apostle said in 1 John 5, 20, this is a true life, the true
God and eternal life, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is it. This
is it, people. This is what God is saying here,
leaving the principles, going on to Christ. The Hebrews had
heard the gospel. They had even seen the miracles.
They had experienced the the mental awareness of what
was going on, but some of them did not truly believe. And so
they needed to go on. Those that did, they needed to
go on to Christ, go on further. And then he says also of eternal
judgment. Now, eternal judgment was taught throughout the Old
Testament in many ways. Remember, Cain had a mark on
him. He says, everyone that finds
me is gonna kill me. It's more, my punishment's more than I can
bear. And God said of the whole world before the flood of Noah,
every thought and every imagination of the heart of man is only evil
continually. I'll destroy them all. But then
he said, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And
God told Noah, take yourself and your wife and your three
sons and their wives into the ark and there God, instructed
Noah to pitch it within and without, which is the atoning work of
Christ. That's what the word pitch means in the Old Testament.
It's atonement. And God saw that ark, and the
flood of God's judgment upon the world of the ungodly was
poured out, but the ark was lifted up, and all in the ark were preserved. They were saved from the flood
because they were in the ark, which is Christ. And so the flood
destroyed all those outside of Christ. but the flood also saved
all those in Christ." That's eternal judgment. That's picturing
it. And we read last week in Jude, verse 7, how Sodom and
Gomorrah were set forth as an example of suffering the vengeance
of eternal fire. So the Old Testament spoke of
this eternal judgment. Remember the sacrifice that Elijah
offered? He said, Lord, hear me." And
he prayed and the fire of God fell down and burnt up not only
the sacrifice but the wood and the stones and licked up the
water that was in the trenches. That's picturing the eternal
fire of God poured out from heaven and this time upon the sacrifice. So all those things are teaching
that eternal judgment is the due reward to men for their sin,
for their wickedness, their imaginations of their heart. It's only evil
continually. But we must see eternal judgment
in a different way. We must go on beyond that and
see our judgment poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
something that the Hebrews needed to understand. He suffered the
outpouring of eternal wrath in himself. He's cried this in Psalm
88, two times at least there. He says, thy wrath lieth hard
upon me. And in Jonah chapter two, Jonah
said the same thing, which we know was a figure of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He says, thy wrath lieth hard
upon me, the gates of hell. I'll read that to you because
I'm not getting it even close to right. And Jonah, if I can
quickly find it here. In Jonah 2, in verse 1, then
Jonah prayed to the Lord his God out of the fish's belly.
Again, picturing the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, as Jonah was
three days and three nights in the heart, or in the whale's
belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
spoken of in prophecy by the prophet Jonah. So he says again,
then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly,
and he said, I cried by reason of mine affliction to the Lord,
and he heard me out of the belly of hell, cried I. This is not
talking about Jesus going into hell. It's talking about him
suffering under the wrath of God, which is hell. Thou hast cast me into the deep,
in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed me about.
All thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said,
I am cast out of thy sight. And what did Jesus cry? My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Yet, Jonah says, I will look
again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about,
even to the soul. Thou hast made His soul an offering
for sin. The depths closed me round about. The weeds were wrapped
about my head. I went down to the bottom of
the mountains. The earth with her bars was about
me forever. Yet hast Thou brought up my life
from corruption, O Lord my God. This is the prayers of our Lord
Jesus Christ. He is pleading with God while he's under the
punishment for our sins, with our sins, helpless and in the
hand of God's mercy. And his prayers either prevailed
or they didn't. God would either hear him or
he wouldn't. And if he didn't hear him, then
all of us would forever perish under the judgment of God. But
God heard him. and he raised him from the dead
because he had justified him. And so the eternal judgment of
God is seen in all the Old Testament describes, in Sodom and Gomorrah,
in the destruction of Pharaoh with his armies, in the Red Sea,
in the opening up of the earth and the swallowing of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram, all these things, the flood, Jonah, and
yet we must understand that it's because the Lord Jesus Christ
had our sins that he suffered that eternal judgment, and we
must go to him. We must find the curse due to
us, borne by him, and so fall on our face and say, like Thomas,
when he saw the prints of the nails in his hands in that place
where the spear pierced his side, my Lord, the God, the Lord of
me, That's a different view, isn't
it? We have to go on to Christ. And he says here in Hebrews chapter
6 now, he says, and this will we do if God permit, we can do
nothing, we can go no further than God permits. You see how
this puts us right back to where we start? Jesus convinced Nicodemus
that he had to be saved by the sovereignty, the sovereign will,
the sovereign work of God. The Spirit, the wind blows where
it pleases. You hear the sound of it. The
wind blows where it pleases. You hear the sound of it. So
is everyone that is born of the Spirit of God. You and I cannot
escape the judgment we deserve. We can't Our sins cannot be put
away, our heart cannot be changed, we cannot believe God unless
God does something, unless He is moved out of motives found
within Himself from eternity that never change and that never
fail, and that always come to pass unless He does that. and
He does it through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and
by His Spirit working in us. We are in His hand to do with
as He would. And so what do we do when we
realize that? What does it do to us? How do
we feel? We feel low, don't we? And we
feel helpless, except there's another thing that happens. We
feel that finally there's a ray of hope, a bright ray, a bright
light of hope, because we see then that if our salvation depends
only on God, who cannot fail, who can do the impossible. and
it doesn't depend on us, and that he has given and provided
and accepted his son for sinners, now I have cause for hope, don't
I? I, no matter how sinful I am
and helpless I am, can confess what I am in all that God has
said, and I can take God's word concerning Christ and say, my
Lord, my God, who has provided your son, receive me for your
son's sake alone. And we never pretend to come
with a defense. We never pretend to come with
something else, but what God has, therefore, if God permit,
if God permit. God must show us his glory, as
Moses said. Lord, show me your glory. We're
utterly dependent upon God disclosing himself to us. We can't know
God unless he does that. Queen Esther typified this. She
said, I can't go to the king unless the king invites me in.
You don't barge into the kingdom of God. You don't force your
way in. If you think you can get yourself
saved, then you're going to get yourself unsaved. If you think
that you somehow did what's needed to get saved, then you're gonna
undo what you did and get unsaved. But if God saved you, then you're
saved forever. And that's what he's teaching
here. I want you to see what he says next here, if God permit.
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and
have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the
Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers
of the world to come if they shall fall away to renew them
again into repentance. There's a whole subject here
we need to cover and it's a little late to do that. But let me just
give you a very short sense of this so that you can go away
and think about this and maybe next time I'll continue on this
theme. First of all, all the things
spoken of here, notice, enlightened, heavenly gift, the Holy Ghost,
the good word of God, what comes to your mind from scripture when
you read those things? But the gospel of Christ. With
the gospel of Christ comes enlightenment, comes the realization that Christ
is the unspeakable gift of the Father, comes the confirmation
of the gospel through the work of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes
in the Old Testament, I mean, in the New Testament, in those
days, there were signs and wonders, there aren't anymore. And then
also comes the good word of God, the good word of God. It's always
good, but it's especially sweet when the gospel is preached.
There were many who heard the gospel, many in Jesus' day who
heard the gospel. Remember the 5,000 that Jesus
fed when he multiplied the loaves and the fish? And the men who
saw that, you know what they said? This is truly the prophet
that has come into the world. And you know what they did? They
tried to force him to be their king. And Jesus said, you didn't
follow me down and chase me across the sea because you saw the miracles,
but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. These people
who saw Christ perform this great miracle, they didn't believe
him. Now think about that, that's
what he's talking about here. They saw, they heard Christ himself,
and yet they didn't believe. They were partakers of what Christ
broke, that bread and that fish, but they didn't see beyond the
physical elements of it. They saw a miracle, they thought
he was a prophet, they didn't understand he was the son of
God and the savior of sinners. And so, I just lay those things
out to you to consider what he says in chapter two, verse two
through four in this book here, Hebrews. That these people heard
those who heard Christ and they saw the miracles. God, by his
own will, by the Holy Spirit, confirmed their word. And yet
some of them truly did not believe. Jesus said in John chapter 2
verse 23 through 25 that many saw the miracles that he did
and they believed on him. They believed the miracles. But
Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew what
was in man. He knew all men and he didn't need man to testify
of man. So he didn't commit himself to
them because they only saw the miracles. They were not the objects
of his special saving grace. The point here is that you can
have all kinds of outward apparent benefits from hearing the gospel. Your life might be reformed.
You might be able to do things that contribute on a material
level to the kingdom of God. You may even be able to preach
the gospel and cast out devils and do many wonderful works and
yet be lost. What should you do then? What's
the response of the child of God if this is possible? Think about many cases in scripture. I'll just name a few. Balaam,
for example, he prophesied of Christ. By the spirit of God
he did. And his ass spoke to him. Neither his ass nor Balaam were
Christians. He was not born of God, nor was
the donkey. And King Saul spoke by the Spirit
of God, and they asked, is Saul among the prophets? He did it
a number of times, but he was not among the prophets. He was
Saul, a man of flesh, never saved. So you can't see someone's religious
activity or works or even the benefits of their life and make
a conclusion about them. Certainly not about yourself.
There's a modern day example of this. I just got this in my
email a couple weeks ago. Let me just read this to you.
These things should shock us. There's a man named Paul Maxwell.
I don't know him, never heard of him, but he was a writer for
John Piper. and he wrote something called
Desiring God. He announced he's no longer a
Christian. I'm no longer a Christian, he says. He says this in his
post, what I really miss is connection with people. What I've discovered
is that I'm ready to connect again, and I'm kind of ready
not to be angry anymore. I love you guys, and I love all
the friendships and support I've built here. I think it's important
to say that I'm just not a Christian anymore, and it feels really
good. I'm really happy. It's good that he's free of that,
isn't it? He was under this, this is a prominent modern day
guy who's alive today. He didn't explain the reasons
why he departed from the faith. He's still figuring it out, I
guess. Then there's this other guy named Josh Harris. We've had some of his books when
we were homeschooling our kids. He has a best-selling book called
I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and he made this statement in 2019. I've undergone a massive shift
in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is
deconstruction, he said. The biblical phrase is falling
away. By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian,
I'm not a Christian. These are people who knew a lot
and wrote books. We're preachers. We're examples.
And they fell away. Someone named Marty Samson. I
don't know this guy. In August of the same year, Marty Samson,
a popular Christian songwriter for Hillsong, wrote something
similar. He said, I'm genuinely losing
my faith and it doesn't bother me. Like, what bothers me now
is nothing. I'm so happy now. So at peace
with the world. It's crazy. How many preachers fall? Many,
he said. No one talks about it. How many
miracles happen? Not many. No one talks about
it. These people don't know Christ. They never knew Christ. Where
God starts a work, he finishes it. God's work is eternal. Eternal
life is eternal life. My sheep shall never perish. No one is able to take them out
of my hand, the Lord Jesus said, and my father who's greater than
all, no one can take him out of his hand. I laid down my life
for them. God is not going to receive the
life of his son without actually saving those for whom he died. God didn't deliver up his son
for us and then not with him also freely give us all things.
If he gave his son for us, he will give us all things with
him and has given us all things. But it's easy for us to commit
these sins that would make us tremble and fear and wonder if
we've fallen away. Remember that little maid that
made Peter deny Christ three times the very night of his crucifixion,
when he knew that soldiers had come to take him, and even drew
his sword out to cut off the head, but he missed and only
cut off the ear of the high priest's servant? Peter denied him, and
he said before, I am not going to do that. Jesus said, before the cock crows,
you're going to deny me three times, but I have prayed for
your faith. That's the only way we can be
held up. That's it. And so the child of
God, when he hears these things, as I do, we tremble, but what
do we say? Lord, say unto my soul, I am
thy salvation. Because unless he is our salvation,
we have no hope, we will fall, we will perish, and deservedly
so. So this is meant to make us tremble in order that what
we talked about last time from Jude might come home with the
greatest joy and praise to God. Now unto him who is able to keep
you from falling and to present you, not barely, but faultless
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Not one thing
of all God determined will be lacking. Nothing is gonna fail. Nothing will be lost. All will
be recovered. He will fulfill all his will.
perfectly, and then in the ages to come, he will show forth the
exceeding riches of his grace towards us in his kindness in
Christ Jesus. And we're gonna look back when
he does that, and we're gonna wonder, oh, wow. How in the world
didn't I damn myself right then? Oh my, look at the enemies of
my soul, my own sin, so dark and foolish and ignorant and
proud. I would have plunged myself headlong into perdition had not
the Lord God himself reached down and rescued me from myself
damning sin and pride. God has to give us faith, life,
in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we say, oh, unto Him,
unto Him, who be glory and majesty, dominion and power, because He's
able, because He is able, He receives the glory and majesty,
dominion and power, it all belongs to Him, He's able to keep us
from falling and to present us faultless. All these things speak
of the work of the gospel coming to us and our hearing it and
even having some effect on our lives and yet not having a saving
effect. And that should make us tremble.
But our only hope is to go to Christ onto perfection and look
to Him forever. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that
you would save us for your name's sake. You won't find any reason
in us, only reason to judge us, but in the Lord Jesus Christ,
if you look upon him, you will find every reason, every delight
of your soul, every manifestation of your glory,
all of your righteousness, All of your satisfaction fulfilled
by him. And he did it for sinners. We
know this from your word. You said it, Lord. Lord, save
us for your namesake and present us to yourself as you've promised
to do. without our works, but by Your grace, faultless and
blameless, in the very presence of Your glory, unsullied, unfailing,
all set forth in glorious splendor in our Savior, the Lord Jesus,
to whom belongs all glory and majesty and dominion and power
forever, now and forever. Amen.