Hebrews chapter 5, and let's
begin there in verse 12. For when for the time ye ought
to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again, which
be the first principles of the oracles of God, and are become
such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every
one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness,
for he is a babe, The strong meat belongeth to him that is
of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses
exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving
the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on into
perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance
from dead works and of faith towards God, of the doctrine
of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of the resurrection
of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God wills
it. 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 crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put
Him to an open shame." I should have begun really in verse 11
of chapter 5 because this was one of the things that led to
their problem of digressing. He was speaking of Melchizedek
and he said, "...of whom we have many things to say and hard to
be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing." The Apostle here hints in different
places in these verses that I read to you what their problem was. And these verses are some of
the most serious verses at least in this book and probably the
whole New Testament. A lot of discussion on what these
verses mean and we will look at that next week. But it is
evident that he wanted to spur these people on. not only encourage
them really, but even stronger than that. He wanted to spur
them on. They had not only stopped, they
weren't advancing in their Christian life. And they were digressing. And He calls them here, as we
looked at last week, He called them babes. Babes. And so He encourages them to
leave in the beginning of the doctrines of Christ and go on
leaving. You'll notice how He said that
in verse 1. Leaving the principles, let us go on. Leaving, let us
go on. We don't leave them in the sense
that we forget about them and we surely don't despise them.
They're the doctrines of Christ. But I used the example last week
about a man building a house, and he finishes his foundation,
and you see him standing out there on the foundation, and
he goes no farther. But that's not the Christian
life, is it? The Christian life is building
upon the foundation, and the foundation's already laid, isn't
it? We don't lay the foundation. Paul said, I've laid the foundation. And another man builds their
own, but let every man take heed how he builds their own, for
no other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid.
So when we dig down, as it were, to Christ, the foundation, and
we fall helplessly upon Him, poor sinners needed to be saved
by Him, and He saves us, then what do we do? We don't stay
there, do we? We begin to build upon the rock,
Christ Jesus. We begin to build upon that foundation. And that's why he tells them
here in verse 1 to leave in the principles, the beginning of
the doctrines of Christ, and let us go on. Let us go on. And let me stress this. I want to stress this. There's
no way that we could forget when he says leave in. Now, that doesn't
mean that we forget. There's no way we could forget
any truth, any doctrine of Christ. But one of the beginnings of
the doctrine of Christ is the new birth. What was the first
thing He told Nicodemus when Nicodemus came to Him with a
knife? He said, Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must be born again. Why would
we call that doctrine the beginning of the doctrine of Christ? Well,
until you're born again, you can't see the Kingdom of Heaven.
Until you're born again, you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
You can't worship God or serve Him until we're born again. So that's why we would refer
to that doctrine as the beginning of the doctrine of Jesus Christ.
But we don't stay there. Peter said, As newborn babes
desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow. If you
are born again, then we begin to grow the sincere milk of the
Word. Paul uses this here in verse
1. He uses this twice, leaving the
principles. And this word principles is only
mentioned four times in the New Testament. Everywhere else it
is translated began or beginnings. leaving the beginnings. And he
used it different times in this book. And it helps us to understand
what he's meaning when he says, leaving the beginnings. And why
we have to go on. Look in Hebrews chapter 1. Two or three places where he
uses this word. Look in verse 10. This is the
same word. And thou, Lord, in the beginning.
That's the same word. leaving the principle. In the
beginning you have laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens
are the work of thy hands. Now, here's a very good example
we have that even the Lord Himself never began and then stopped. He never laid the foundation
of the world and just quit, did He? What did He do? Well, when
He laid the foundation of the world, He made the heavens. He
set the stars in the heaven and the lights to light the earth
of a day and of a night. And He made the grass and the
cattle and made man. He began and He never ceased
and rested until He had made all the creation and looked upon
it and said, It is very good. We have this same word mentioned
again in chapter 2 and verse 3. Hebrews chapter 2 and verse
3. How shall we escape if we neglect
So great is salvation, which at first began to be spoken by
the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him. He
began to speak it, and when He left, His apostles continued
to add to the words of Jesus Christ. And you know, we still
use His words today, don't we? So it's the beginning, but you
don't quit at the beginning. And he uses it again in chapter
3 and look here in verse 14. Same word. But we are made partakers
of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto
the end. So here's a good example here
of what I'm saying that we don't, when he says leaving the beginnings,
it doesn't mean we leave it behind, we just don't stop there. if
you hold the beginning of your confidence. Now, if He's given
you confidence that He saved you, that He's begun a work of
grace in your heart, then you don't cast that confidence away.
Paul said, cast not your confidence away. It's got great recompense
of reward. You take that beginning of confidence
with you and build upon it, don't you? And hold it fast. The confidence. Confidence. You know, it's not always easy
to hold your confidence steadfast, is it? Right in the midst of
your Christian walk and advancement, in the midst of trials, sometimes
it's not easy to hold that confidence. It takes effort. But I tell you,
it's impossible to hold it steadfast if we're not advancing. If we
just stop and do what these Hebrew Christians were doing, digress,
It's utterly impossible to hold confidence that the Lord is working
the work of grace in our hearts. The sure way, one man said, to
become doubtful and fearful and even useless is to become dull
of hearing and lazy at using the means of God's grace that
He has provided us to advance in our Christian life. We must
go on. We must leave the beginning and
go on, build upon the foundation. I thought this week, last couple
of weeks, I thought about the lesson that Brother Larry taught
last Sunday and the lesson that Brother Wayne taught Sunday before
that. The last two weeks have been
a blessing to me. What you fellows have taught
over the last two weeks, not only me, but everybody else that
listened to them. But you know something? Wayne
and Larry, They can't dwell too long on that lesson. They've got to study again. They've
got to come up with more lessons. They just can't say, man, that
was it. We've arrived. We've arrived. Ain't nothing
else to be said and just quit. No. They went home and started
studying again. Studying again. That's the way
the Christian life is, isn't it? It's advancement. When the
Lord Jesus Christ was here, you know something? You seldom, only
one time, do we ever see that he stood still. Of the four Gospels,
only one time it said Jesus stood still. And that's when Barnabas
was crying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And
he stopped and stood still. He was always on the go, wasn't
he? He always had his mind, his heart set for Calvary. And the Bible says he endeared
such contradiction of sinners against Himself. For the joy
that was set before Him, He endeared the cross. And that's what the Apostle here
is giving us. You leave and you go on. There's an endurance in this
way. Endurance. He gives these six
truths that He calls the foundational. or he calls the beginning of
the doctrine of Christ. Now, I imagine that you and I,
for the most part, we don't understand some of these six beginning doctrines
he calls the beginning of Christ. We don't understand them as clearly
as the Jews did. When he was writing here about
repentance from dead works and of faith towards God and of baptism
laying on of hands, They understood the laying on of hands very much
better than you and I did. It was very prominent in their
day all of these things were. But you and I can understand
them, I think, a little bit. Why He just limited to six, I
don't know. I imagine there's more. But He
gives us these six and He calls them the beginning of the doctrines
of Christ and says, Don't stop here. Go on. And the first one
He mentions here is in verse One, is not laying again the
foundation of repentance from dead works. Foundation of repentance. I remember, and you do too, when
the Lord began repentance in your heart. When He laid the
foundation of repentance from dead works in your heart. I remember
that so well. And He laid it, and I'm telling
you, He took him a while with me because he was pleased to
work that way. Others, not so long. There are
some of us here that our repentance had a lot to do with open and
profane sins. We just lived open and profane
lifestyles. That was the issue with some
of us. Some of you, your foundation of repentance from dead works
was religion, a false religion, dead works. However it was and however that
whatever He brought you out of, He brought repentance in your
heart. And I tell you what, that's not
a foundation that we want to go back and lay again, is it?
We don't want to go back to our false religion. We don't want
to go back to our open sin. We don't want that foundation
to be laid again. Foundation from dead works. What
is dead works? It's done from a dead heart.
It's done from an unregenerate heart that has no faith in God
and faith in Jesus Christ. Dead words. And the second one
he gives is a faith towards God. Don't lay that foundation again.
There was a time when we didn't have faith in God. Somebody said,
well, I've believed in God all my life. Most people believe
in God all their life, but I'm talking about saving faith. I'm
not talking about an historical faith. I'm not talking about
a temporary faith or faith devils have. I'm talking about saving
faith. Newton wrote amazing grace, how
precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. I
used to thought I knew the moment I first believed. But I'm not
for sure anymore. I'm just not for sure. I don't
know really when God began this work of faith in me, that I really
believed in Him. I believed God. I believed the
Son of God, the Word of God, the promises of God. But I know
I believe Him now. I believe Him now. But that's
a foundation we don't want to ever lay again, is it? Paul said,
If a man denies Christ, if a man leaves God, there's a reason
that he does. That evil heart of unbelief. That's a foundation. When we
believe Him, when He gives us grace to believe Him, then we
go on then. We go on. Never lay that foundation
again. And then he says here, and probably
the Jews, as I said, probably know more about this than we
do in the doctrine of baptisms. And it's plural there, the doctrine
of baptism. And this word is not used, but
one time as the word baptism, it's always used as worship. Let me show you a place here
in chapter 9 of Hebrews where he uses the very same word. And
this is why I say these, the Jews, these Jewish believers
probably understood more of what he's talking about than we do.
He's talking here about the tabernacle. where the priest went into and
offered sacrifices for sin. And he said here in verse 9,
we'll go back up to verse 8. The Holy Ghost this signifying,
chapter 9 verse 8, that the way unto the holiest of all was not
yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.
And that tabernacle, Paul said, was a figure for the time then
present and which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that
could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining
to the conscience, which stood only in meats and drinks and
divers warshins." That is the same word he translated baptisms
in chapter 6 and verse 1. Different warshins, various warshins
and carnal ordinances imposed on them at the time of reformation
of all things. Under the law they washed everything.
They just washed everything in water. They washed the sacrifices
in water. When the priest went in to offer
the sacrifice, he had to come back out and wash his body in
water. He had to wash his uniform that he was wearing in body.
They washed the pots and pans in water. They kept everything
clean. And the reason for that is no doubt is because of what
these things signify. They signify Jesus Christ. He's
our high priest, and He's clean, isn't He? And the sacrifice that
He offered was Himself. He was pure. He was clean. So
I imagine they had to perform all that washing, not just for
health reasons of getting rid of all the blood and everything,
but because of what these things pictured. But when you come to
the New Testament, the Pharisees especially, boy, they abused
washing. They may have been the ones that
come up with this saying, cleanliness is next to godliness. I heard
that when I was growing up, and I looked for that in the Bible,
and I couldn't find it. And it wasn't in there, and I thought,
man, they told me wrong. It wasn't in there. But the Pharisees
probably thought that because, you know, one day the Lord's
disciples was going through the grain field, wheat field, and
they were hungry, so they plucked off some wheat and rubbed them
in their dirty hands, and they were eating them. And the Pharisee
says, You're defiling yourself. You're sinning. And they went
to the Lord and told the Lord, Stop your disciples from defiling
yourself. And that's when the Lord said,
Oh, you Pharisees. You Pharisees. When you come
home from the market, you won't eat unless you've washed your
hands. You're always washing. You're always washing. You're
washing your pots and your pans and your tables. And you remember
what He told them? He told them two things. He said
it's not what goes in the mouth that defiles a man. It's what
comes out. What goes in passes right on
through the draw. What comes out of the mouth comes
from the heart. That's what defiles the man.
And he said you cleanse first that which is within the cup
and then the outside will be clean also. But they concentrated
so much on these washings, washings, washings. That's all they did.
But if we look at this as baptisms, not laying again the foundation
of baptisms, the doctrine of baptism, if we look at it as
that, we can understand something from that too. The New Testament,
I'm sure, understood better about baptism than you and I do. There's
so much talk today and so much controversy and so much discussion
about baptism. And I think that they understood
what he was saying better. You know, Paul said there was
one baptism. Now this is my understanding.
There's one baptism. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
And I think that baptism is water baptism. There is one literal
baptism. And that's water. And the early
church understood what that signified. When Ananias was ready to baptize
Saul of Tarsus, he said, Arise and be baptized, and wash away
your sins. Did he mean his sins were going
to be washed from his conscience? Will water wash sins from your
conscience? I think they understood the concept
of baptism so much better than we do. He was simply saying this,
Paul, what does water baptism do? What does it prefigure? It prefigures a washing. It prefigures
a washing of the conscience. So rise and be baptized in water
and let that answer what really has happened in your conscience,
the washing away of your sins, water. But there's another kind
of baptism that the Scripture talks about, and that's spiritual
baptism. By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body. John the Baptist said, I baptize
you with water. But there comes one mightier
than I, and He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." There's
a spiritual baptism. Now I said we've got all this
discussion in our day and some of us understand this different,
but I don't think the early church did. I think they really understood
what the Apostle Paul was saying. And so if he's talking about
washings, or if he's talking about baptism,
whatever he's talking about, they understood that we can't
stop there. We can't stop there. We've got
to go on. Leave in this. Let us go on. And then the fourth one he gives
us is this, the laying on of hands. Now, we don't practice
this today. If there's any practice of this
at all, and I have did it because I was asked to do it, it would
be in the ordination service. when we went over and ordained
Dave Mitchell for the ministry. Ben Wayne laid our hands upon
him. Most people don't do that anymore,
but he desired we do that, to identify with him in the ministry.
So we did that. They did that in the early church. When they chose out the deacons,
the apostles laid their hands on them and blessed their office. But they laid hands on people
for different reasons. Even in the Old Testament ceremonies,
when they brought the scapegoat on the dead atonement, the priest
would lay his hands upon the head of the scapegoat and transfer
the sins of Israel to that scapegoat. And then they would lead the
scapegoat out into a land that was not inhabited. It would never
come back. We know what that typifies, don't
we? That is the transfer of sins
from us to our Lord and Savior, our Substitute. But they laid
hands for different reasons. We are told in different places
in the Gospels that mothers brought their children to the Lord Jesus
and desired Him to put His hands on them and bless the children. So they did that. And they looked
upon it too as they healed this way. When Iris came and told
the Lord Jesus, said, My daughter is even dead. Come and lay Your
hands on her and she will live. So there was different reasons
laying on of hands. And if it's still done in any
sense in the ordination service, that's where I'd put limits on
it. That's where I would put limits
on it. laying on of hands and healing
people, even laying hands on people and them receiving the
Holy Spirit. That was done by the apostles and those apostolic
gifts have ceased and we don't practice those things now. We
just don't practice those things. So laying on of hands may have
been something that ceased altogether in any sense, but they understood
in the New Testament, these Jewish believers, that we can't stop
there. We can't stop there. We leave
that and we go on to maturity, laying on of hands. These last
two I think you and I can very much relate to. Fifthly and sixthly,
he says here in verse 2, of the doctrine of baptism, laying on
of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. These are fundamental truths
that still just as much the first principles of Christ as they
were back in this day. Scriptures everywhere and in
the Old and New Testament talk about these two things and so
often they're joined together. The resurrection of the dead
and eternal judgment. And I can bear witness to my
own experience when I was lost, these are the two things that
afflicted my conscience. These are the two things that
kept me up at night sometimes thinking about these two things.
My dad had told me about these things. I don't know if I ever
read the Bible about them, but I tell you, a lot of nights I
laid down thinking, what if the Lord God comes tonight and the
dead are raised and I appear before the judgment? And that
used to really concern me. The Apostle Paul was preaching
there at Athens. You remember this where he is
talking about the unknown God to us. And in chapter 17 and
30 of Acts he said, God has appointed a day in which He will judge
the world in righteousness, the judgment. Therefore He has given assurance
unto all men by Jesus Christ, He's appointed today a judge
of the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ, were unto He's
given assurance unto all men in that He hath raised Him from
the dead. There you've got those two joined
together. The fact that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead
assures this world of a day of reckoning. He will judge this
world at the last day. The Apostle Paul was preaching
before the council there in Acts chapter 24 before the Pharisees.
And he says, I have hope towards God, which they also allow, that
there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just
and the unjust. So there we have it, the resurrection
and the eternal judgment. He preached to Felix. Remember
when he preached to Felix and he reasoned with him of righteousness
and temperance and judgment to come. And Felix trembled. And
Felix trembled. This is a doctrine that is taught
throughout the Old Testament as well as the New. Daniel chapter
12 and verse 3. Many that sleep in the dust of
the earth shall awake. There is the resurrection. Some
to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. The resurrection and eternal
judgment. And listen to how the Lord Jesus said it. He said the
hour is coming. in which all that are in the
graves shall hear His voice, and come forth, they that have
done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done
evil unto the resurrection of damnation." And how does the
book of Revelations close? But with these two things, the
resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. Listen to Revelation
20 beginning at verse 11. I saw the great white throne I saw a great white throne, and
Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens
fled away, and there was found no more place for them. And I
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books
were opened. And another book was opened,
which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those
things which are written in the book according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and
hell delivered up the dead which were in it, And they were judged
every man according to his works. So all six of these things that
he calls the beginning of the doctrines of Christ, that they
understood very well, he said you're not to stop here. Don't
stop at these beginnings, but let us go on into maturity and
to perfection. And it's this way with every
truth you and I learn and everything that you and I experience in
our Christian life. We don't stop, do we? We don't
stop as though we've arrived. We go on. We go on. We're always
leaving and we're always going on and persevering and pressing
towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus. What do we persevere in? When
we talk about persevering, that we never quit, well, we persevere
in prayer. The Lord Jesus said, Pray always
and faint not, did we? Persevere. Pray in all ways with
all prayer and supplications in the Spirit. We persevere in
the faith. We continue grounded and settled
and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel. We persevere
in patience. Let us run with patience the
race that is set before us. We persevere in looking, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We persevere in
coming to Him. We're always coming to Him. Coming
to Christ is not a one-time thing, is it? We're always coming. We have come. We are coming.
And we shall continue to come until we come to Him in heaven
in the Father's house. We persevere in laying aside
the weights and sins which do so easily beset us. We persevere
in increasing in the knowledge of God. We stay on the battlefield. We endear hardness as good soldiers
of Jesus Christ. We hold fast our profession of
faith without wavering. We're to fight a good fight.
We're to finish our course. We're to keep the faith until
the time of our departure. from this world. So there's a
perseverance. There's no place to stop. You
know there's a place sometimes to rest. There's places that
the Lord Himself has designated for us to rest. And thank God
for it. But I tell you, rest for me is
not going off to preach this weekend. I don't know why people
get that in their head. Going on a vacation? I hope you
enjoy your little trip. I like them going in there to
sleep or something. I'm going down there to preach,
to work, you know. But there is a place for all
the Lord's children, little places, little nooks that He's got that
you hide out in for just a bit. But we can't go there and go
to sleep. There was a time when the Lord's
apostles, His disciples, boy, they were worked to death. Everybody
was coming and going and they didn't even have time to eat.
And the Lord said, come apart and rest yourselves. a while. I had a friend of mine, Paul
Hebner, he said, in times like that, he said, you either come
apart and rest yourself a while or you come apart. And that's
about it. But then what do we do? We go
on, don't we? We go on. We go on. He tells
us here in verse 12 of chapter 6, be not slothful. That word
means sluggish and lazy. Boy, it's dangerous. Brothers
and sisters, that's dangerous. We're on a battlefield. Our enemies
are very dangerous. There's many. They seek to work
us woe, as Luther said, and to grow slothful, to grow lazy on
the battlefield is dangerous. Clarence can tell us something.
Clarence used to be a sniper in the Army. And he can tell
you when you're out there watching, you don't go to sleep. You go
to sleep, you can get your throat cut, can't you, Clarence? Be
not slothful, don't be lazy, but followers of them who through
faith and patience inherit the promises." Look how long Abraham
waited for God's promise to be fulfilled that he'd have a son.
Twenty-five years he waited. But he persevered in faith. He
kept believing, God is able. I believe He's able. So what
happened? He obtained the promise. Paul
said, Be followers of Abraham. Obtain these promises. But he
says it is going to take some persevering. You are not going
to be lazy and gain these promises. And we will quit here at verse
3, but look what he says here in verse 3. And this will we
do if God permits. We will leave and we will go
on if God permits. Now he is not saying that it
may not be God's will for them not to mature. He said it may
not be. What he's saying is the same
thing James told us, that we should always say, if God wills. If God wills. Why should we always
say, if God wills? Because we ain't going to do
nothing if God don't will it. Now we're not, are we? We're
not going to do anything. We can't do anything if God doesn't
will it. We're Christians because God
willed us to be Christians of His own will. Begot He us with
the Word of Truth. And if we advance in the Christian
life, it's because He's willed it to be so. He's worked in us
to will and to do of His good pleasure. I think you and I can
be assured that it's God's will for us to leave where we are
and go on and advance because He's revealed this in His Word.
that this is what we should do. Next week, we're going to look
at verses 4 through verse 6, and I don't know what we'll call
that for next week, but this is a good study, and we'll deal
mainly with the different views of this. There's different views. The Armenians have of this, and
this is probably going to surprise you. I'm probably in agreement
more with them than I am with the Calvinists. Most of the Calvinists
think these men weren't saved. But I can't see that for nothing.
And I'm very careful when I say that because when I say I'm not
in agreement with some of those men, I'm saying I'm not in agreement
with John Owens. John Owens was the greatest theologian
probably Christianity ever had since the apostles. And John
Gill. some of the others. But we'll
look at this next week, and we'll see. This is a warning, and it's
also encouragement for us. So we'll begin there next week,
the Lord's willing, and look at that.