About this sermon
Hebrews warns that anyone who goes on sinning deliberately after receiving the truth has no sacrifice left, only a fearful expectation of judgment. Such a person has trampled the Son of God underfoot, profaned the blood of the covenant, and outraged the Spirit of grace. Election and justification can never be lost, but some who profess faith in the visible church were never born again. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and those who cast themselves on his mercy in Christ will be saved.
Sermon transcript
Well, if you would remain standing, we’ll turn to the Book of Hebrews, we’ll be reading for our sermon text this evening, Hebrews chapter 10, and I’ll begin reading actually in verse 19, but our passage will start verse 26 through 31. So Hebrews 10 starting in verse 19 to give us some context, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace?
For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would give us your spirit, the spirit that inspired this word, preserved it through the centuries, that we might have it to read it, to learn from it. We ask that you would work in our hearts, open them, that we might hear as we ought, hear with faith, that your spirit might make this preaching and hearing a factual means of grace to us. Lord, we ask for your help. We are hopeless without it. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated. How important is it to believe in hell? When I was in seminary, I read a book called The Art of Pastoring by David Hansen.
He recounted his years of pastoring in a small church in Montana with much of prayer and sermon meditation for him happening while fly fishing. In one of the chapters, though, he talked about his complicated relationship with the doctrine of hell. There was a time in his ministry in which he felt as though it was out of step with God’s character. He couldn’t imagine how a loving God could square with the doctrine of eternal suffering. It didn’t seem to square with the God of love that he thought he knew. This rejection of hell by him went on for several years of his life, but ultimately and eventually, instead of arguing for interpretation of texts in his book, Pastor David Hansen recounts his own ministry experience. At first, it seemed like a big relief. He didn’t have the stress of thinking about the awful fate of those who have not repented of their sins being tormented for all of eternity.
But as Pastor Hansen continued to try to do ministry, he noticed something he hadn’t expected. Instead of ministry becoming more fulfilling and motivating, he found less and less urgency to do evangelism. If everyone’s going to be fine in the end, why should he get out of his comfort zone and tell believers, unbelievers the gospel? But then he also started to find his preaching on Sunday lacking urgency as well. If his congregation was going to be fine, whether they followed God’s word, believed his promises, kept the faith, fought sin in their lives or not, why get worked up? Even his weekly visits, ministering to the weak and hurting and sick and dying in the congregation began losing their urgency as well. And finally, he found his own life as a Christian faltering greatly. Pastor Hansen realized over time that by throwing out the doctrine of hell, he had gutted the motivation of pastoral ministry itself.
In an attempt to be more loving than God, he realized that he had lost his reason for doing ministry at all, and maybe even for being a Christian. Once he realized what he had lost, he reexamined what the scriptures had to say, of course, about eternal judgment and found his way back to the biblical position of the sober reality of hell. As uncomfortable as hell is for us to deeply contemplate, it is essential to keep its reality in view as it provides the urgency for ministry and even the Christian life. I think our passage this evening was written with precisely this sort of end in mind. The writer of Hebrews is building on his encouragement in the previous verse to keep the day of judgment in mind in order to maintain a proper urgency in holding each other accountable.
To make sure we understand this urgency, he goes into a very stern warning about what is at stake for those who are considering rejecting Christ and the Christian faith. We’ll look at our passage this evening in three ways. First, a pertinent warning, second, a persistent rebellion, and third, a personal judgment. Number one is the persistent warning. Now, persistent just means appropriate or right on target, suited for the occasion. What I have in mind here is partly the author’s inclusion of himself in the warning and his addressing this warning to the visible church. The warning in our passage comes right on the heels of the encouragement that the writer expressed in the previous verses, which we looked at last week. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, and let us then consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
The writer started out with encouragement, but he ended that verse with a reminder that he’s talking about serious stuff with eternal consequences. He wants his audience to start out by encouraging each other to keep meeting together, presumably in worship especially, but he calls attention to the coming day of judgment, and this flows right into the warning that we find in our passage this evening, verses 26 and 27, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. The Christian life is deadly serious. What we do throughout our weeks and in our worship on Sunday often can feel rather mundane. We get up, we go about our day, either going to work, going shopping, working on projects, cleaning, eating, and everything else.
Maybe we don’t get everything that we were hoping to get done that day. Maybe we get to enjoy some time off and go on a trip away. We go about our lives making plans for the future, saving our money, spending time with people we love. When things are going well and relatively comfortable, eternity can seem far away. Even Christians can lose sight of what’s at stake. This passage is a wake-up call, a reminder of the deadly consequences of rejecting the Lord. Once we’re saved, sometimes it can feel like we’re safe. Nothing more to worry about in terms of our soul. Justification once and for all. As long as we can avoid doing anything really big and bad, we’re in a good place. Now this warning is not meant to make all believers nervously asking themselves whether they have committed the unforgivable sin.
The Bible is clear that the only sin that will not be forgiven is that which is not repented of. All repentant sinners will be forgiven. But the warning ought to make us remember the seriousness of this life and the next. The writer of Hebrews is doing his best to convince us that the stakes could not be higher. Failing to gather for worship might have felt like skipping a family reunion for those in the first century. But the author of Hebrews is warning that it can be the beginning of a wavering and even eventually a repudiating of the faith. His warning is directed towards those who quote, go on deliberately sinning after receiving a knowledge of the truth. But notice how the author continues to use the word we, if we go on. He’s including himself in this warning.
And this is because what he’s talking about in this passage is apostasy. This is not a mere breaking of God’s law, high-handed rebellion that characterizes the lives of unbelievers and which believers sometimes fall into as well. Apostasy is a sin that only members of the covenant community can commit because it is an abandoning, a rejection of what was once held onto, participated in, and committed to. Those who never join a covenant community, the church, can never commit apostasy. And the problem is that apostasy, after seeking out and clinging on to the remedy of Christ, abandons it in search of something else. That’s why the author says there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment. We’ve been reveling for chapters now in the truth that Christ’s sacrifice is the only one which can provide real cleansing for our sin.
And this is what provides the beneficiaries confident access into the holy places, God’s own presence. But now we are reminded of the other side of that reality, that if you reject Christ you have no remedy for sin. Forget about access to God’s presence, you won’t survive what’s coming. The writer calls it a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. The word translated fury of fire here is actually zealos from the Greek, which is where we get our word zealous. It is God’s holy wrath against sin. God often manifests his presence throughout the Bible by fire. God shows up to Moses as a burning bush. He leads the Israelites out of slavery and through the wilderness as a pillar of fire and descends on Mount Sinai, igniting the mountain.
Of course, God is a spirit and he does not have a body. His relationship to his creation is exclusively on his terms. His choice to create such a thing as fire and then associate himself with it is meant to reveal something about him. He does not repel sin the way oil and water repel each other or the way opposing magnets might repel each other. God’s relationship to sin is like a fire which consumes it with an unending appetite. God will never tire of destroying sin and it takes no effort from him. And of course, while God does nothing involuntarily, his fury against sin is necessitated by his character and sin’s nature. I have never been close to a wildfire or even a house fire that was out of control. I’ve watched some videos of people that were very close and I’ve seen the aftermath of some very bad house fires.
But I can only imagine the terror one would experience when facing an immense raging blaze. My understanding is that with forest fires, it isn’t possible to put out the fire. The firefighters simply do their best to contain it until it burns itself out. Once a blaze gets that big and gets that hot, all they can do is let it run out of fuel. They cut down trees and dig ditches in an effort to control its spread, but in the end, the only solution is to let it burn what it’s already ignited and to try to keep new stuff from catching. There’s no stopping God’s wrath against sin on your own. It would be like a single firefighter attempting to put out a wildfire with a household fire extinguisher or a bucket of water. You don’t stand a chance.
Without Christ’s sacrifice, you are God’s adversary and left with the dreadful prospect of his consuming wrath. As verse 27 says, a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Adversaries are those opposed to God. They are his enemies. And so secondly, we see that those who reject Christ are in a persistent rebellion. Verses 28 and 29, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace? We have a rather terrifying description of those who have or are in the process of rejecting the faith. What might have been unclear in verse 26 with the phrase go on sinning deliberately becomes clear in verses 28 and 29.
He says setting aside the law. Setting aside the law is not merely breaking the law. While in one sense all of sin is rejection of God’s law and his authority, what’s in view here is a wholesale repudiation of the standing or even validity of God’s law. When a follower of Christ falls in a moment of temptation, although he is believing the empty promises of sin and rejecting the promises of God in that moment, he has not repudiated the law entirely. It is one thing to knowingly break a standard, but it is another to assert that there are no legitimate standards. The argument here is from the lesser to the greater. From the law of Moses, how much worse punishment, he asks, is deserved? And this is similar to his argument that he gave us in chapter 2 of the book of Hebrews.
Chapter 2 in verses 1 through 3 we find the author warning against drifting. He says, therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? The threat in chapter 2 is led into by a warning against drifting away. Jesus spoken a parable of three kinds of soil that did not bear fruit from the seed of God’s Word which was planted in them, and one was a soil of thorns which choked out the growth of the Word to the point of unfruitfulness, and he explained the thorns as the cares of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things.
The point made in chapter 2 is that the roots of apostasy can start small. Even misplaced priorities can lead to dangerous desires down the road. But then the phrase to die without mercy in verse 28 we find this is most likely a reference to Deuteronomy chapter 13 verse 8 in which it says, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. And the context there is idolatry, its requisite capital punishment stoning to death without mercy. So in the law of Moses to engage in blatant idolatry, encourage others to do the same, which was tantamount to setting aside the law of Moses, the penalty was death. And then the author asks a question. He wants his readers to answer the question themselves, how much worse punishment is deserved?
And he piles on the indictments. He says trampled underfoot the Son of God, whereas in Psalm 110 the Son of God himself tramples his enemies. He says that those who are rejecting have trampled underfoot the Son of God. Then he says profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified and insulted or blasphemed or outraged the spirit of grace. He doesn’t let his readers define or describe their own rebellion. He provides the indictment but invites his readers to consider the punishment that was due. And the author leaves the question hanging without answering it directly for maximal rhetorical effect. He’s seeking to grab their hearts to show them the seriousness of this. What our author has in this passage is not mere deliberate sinning, breaking of God’s commands, which warns God’s wrath all on its own.
But what he describes here goes further. It rejects the system of doctrine and faith altogether. And this is what we call apostasy, rejecting the Christian faith that you once professed. And this is why the author of Hebrews especially describes it as profaning the blood of the covenant which was sanctified. Rather than regarding Christ’s blood as holy, as the thing that you must have to enter God’s presence, regarding it as common, worthless, as nothing. But this description is not an example of a saint chosen before the foundation of the world losing his election and justification. The Bible is clear that salvation in Christ is secure. Election cannot be revoked and justification is never reneged. But one can be part of the visible church, appearing to others to have faith by making a believable profession of faith, but never have truly been regenerated.
The test of a genuine profession is not something that can be ascertained on the front end by intense questioning. Only time will tell whether a profession was genuine. As the faith of each person is tested by the fiery trials of life, it becomes clear that either it was genuine all along or it never really was. 1 John chapter 2 verse 19 gives us a diagnosis for understanding those that leave the covenant community, those that profane the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified. This is speaking of an outward visible sanctification which apparently never touched the heart. 1 John 2 19 says, the Antichrist went out from us. They were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out from us, that it might become plain that they are not of us.
It’s the aftermath, the sticking power, the perseverance of faith that reveals whether it’s genuine. And verse 29, the phrase has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, not only speaks to the way that things appear from the human perspective, but also to the reality that entering the covenant community, becoming a member of the church means something. Even if one is never truly regenerated, entering into the church, becoming church membership entails greater blessings when one keeps it and greater indictments when one, if one is to reject it. Apostasy is a sin uniquely available to those that are a part of the visible church. Unbelievers who reject God all their lives cannot apostatize. They will go to hell for other sins, but not, but they cannot commit apostasy. They never joined the church and so they are not able to leave it.
Today in our culture has become popular to refer to the serious sin of apostasy as merely deconstructing. People all over are deconstructing. They’re leaving their faith. The idea is that faith is simply each person’s personal structure of belief. And some people are just in a stage of tearing down their systems of thought that they used to believe that maybe they got from their parents or the church they were raised in. Like the enlightenment philosophers, these former believers are deconstructing their faith. They’re demolishing their beliefs in things like biblical inerrancy, Christ’s divinity, God’s sovereignty, and looking for something better, more stable to build their life on, which is of course a fool’s errand. Now while doubt is a common struggle within the Christian life and it should be treated with compassion when it arises, there’s a big difference between struggling with doubt and actively dismantling your system of belief.
Doubt is a wavering conviction, but it presents a crossroads. Will the doubter seek out truth at the source and seek faith from God or will the doubter give up, convinced he already knows enough not to believe, enough to know that he doesn’t and won’t ever believe? The best way to discover the truth of God’s Word is to read it, not those claiming it is false. You have to go back to the source, the source of life. But mere doubt is not what the writer of Hebrews is concerned with at this point in the passage. He’ll address doubt next time in verses 35 to 39 and arguably all of chapter 11, the chapter on faith. But here in this passage he is concerned with the ugly fruit of doubt run wild to its fullest end, which is apostasy.
The writer of Hebrews is hoping in this passage to ignite healthy fear in his readers so that if there are any on that path they will stop. But also that the other members will be motivated to pray and pursue those who are apostatizing, who are distancing, walking away from the faith and the church. They’ll be energized to pray, understanding the seriousness of what is in store for them. The writer would never want this warning to be taken as a warrant for merely throwing up our hands, since whatever will be will be. God’s Word always gives threats so that the certain outcome described might not happen to those that heed it and change. And the final description he gives is outraged the spirit of grace. The word outraged or insulted the spirit of grace is related to the word, the Greek word hubriso, from which we get our word hubris.
This was a special form of pride in Greek culture which was attempting to overthrow or reject the gods themselves. And very likely some of that is in view here in this passage. Jesus warned the Pharisees against blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And the author of Hebrews seems to have something like that in view here with this outrage or insulting or blasphemy against the spirit of grace. Jesus warned the Jewish cities in which he preached. Sodom and Gomorrah would have a less severe punishment in the day of judgment than Capernaum and Bethsaida. He said that if Sodom and Gomorrah had received the warning that these Jewish towns received, they would have repented. And that is why the judgment on apostates is so harsh. They were fully warned of the judgment of God against sin and still turned their back on salvation.
Apostasy represents an egregious offense to the entire three persons of the triune God. While God is not injured physically or emotionally or mentally in any way by this apostasy, nor is his self-esteem affected by the belittling efforts of creatures he made. Yet the offense is personally and objectively heinous, particularly heinous for those that had joined themselves to his church and then reject that faith. The smallest sin is such an offense to God’s holiness that it requires an eternity of damnation, but that does not mean that all sins are punished equally. And the writer suggests that to apostatize, to turn your back on such a great revelation, deserves a greater punishment. The personal offense of sin and apostasy, in particular, results in a personal judgment. This is number three, a personal judgment. As the writer moves through the passage, he stresses the personal nature of the offense as well as the personal nature of the judgment.
Verse 29 is the offense. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who is trampled, underfoot the son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace? All sin is ultimately against God. David says in Psalm 51 verse 4, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. It sure looked like David had sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba and many others. Is David shifting blame, copping out, ignoring the other injured parties in his blatant disobedience? No. Of course, we start with the fact that as an inspired writer of God’s Word, David was speaking the truth in Psalm 51. But then we consider what it means.
David hurt, even killed people, many people, with his dreadful affair and the attempted cover-up. But it was not Uriah’s law that David broke. David did not violate Bathsheba’s commandments. David broke God’s law. It was God who said, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. And Uriah and Bathsheba were collateral damage in David’s rebellion against God. God as the lawgiver and creator was the ultimate target of all of David’s sin. The writer of Hebrews is highlighting the personal nature of sin, especially apostasy, as targeting God. Sinners try to deceive themselves of the reality of their own sin. They even tell themselves that God doesn’t even see. Apostates might tell themselves, they’re just rejecting a bunch of baloney, a pack of lies, moving to a more enlightened, superior position. God doesn’t see it that way.
In his view, this is trampling the Son of God, profaning the blood of the covenant and outraging the Spirit of grace. This personal offense of apostasy invokes a personal judgment from God. This is what we see in verses 30 and 31. For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The quote in verse 30 comes from Deuteronomy chapter 32, the Song of Moses, particularly verses 35 and 36, which is part of the long song that we read earlier in our service. We tend to be most familiar with the use of this quote by Paul in Romans chapter 12 verse 19, where Paul says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
In that case, Paul is urging Christians to show restraint, rest upon God’s vindication on their behalf. In Romans, it almost carries a comforting ring. But in Hebrews 10, it is used as a threat towards apostates. This use of the passage is drawn directly from its original context. God is speaking to Israel when he predicts, whom he predicts will rebel against him and incite him to judge them. As their God, the target of their rebellion, God asserts his exclusive right to bring proper retribution. The expectation after the delineation of the extremely offensive and personal nature of the offenses in Hebrews 10 is that the judgment will be unbearable. Rather than God letting his people off easy, he declares that his judgment upon his people is certain. And so for the apostates, having a former association with God, with God’s people, possessing greater knowledge of him and his ways is rather a liability than an advantage.
Because as it says, the Lord will judge his people. There is a certain sense in which a greater scrutiny and judgment comes for those who are nominally part of the covenant community. As we close, we need to consider the bigger picture of this warning. The writer of Hebrews just came off a climax, reveling in the glory of Christ’s sacrifice for sins and the unbelievable access into God’s presence. And he urged those, urged encouragement for those who were drifting away, failing to meet together since the final judgment looms over this life and spells doom for those who reject God’s salvation in Christ. In our passage, we have seen the writer of Hebrews really drive home the terrifying prospect of judgment, which looms over a life of rebellion. Fear of hell alone is not enough to give someone a love for God, but we are told of God’s terrifying judgment for a reason.
It is meant to give us a healthy fear. Sodom and Gomorrah were given no warning because their doom was already sealed. When God declares his judgment beforehand, like in our passage this evening, it is for the precise reason of giving his hearers an opportunity to avoid it. This is one of God’s sovereign predestined means of keeping his present and future saints on the path of life. By considering the terrifying alternative to salvation in Christ. As Mr. Beaver said about Aslan, he is not safe, but he is good. I talked through the book of Jonah at the Machen Science Camp two weeks ago for Bible lessons that week, and one of the things we talked about in the story of Jonah was the response of faith versus the response of unbelief. Jonah, when he was sinking down into the heart of the sea, suffering punishment from God for his running away, could have thrown up his hands, declaring his punishment was just.
Instead, he called out to God for mercy, which he did not deserve. Similarly, the Ninevites could have responded to Jonah’s message of judgment, 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed by throwing up their hands. Whatever will be will be. God’s it’s up to him. He’s allowed to do what he wants to do. Judgment is coming, nothing we can do about it, but that would have been a response of unbelief. Instead, of course, they called out for mercy. Who knows? Cloaked sometimes in the language of humility, unbelief hears God’s judgment and either laughs it off in disbelief or also resigns itself to the inevitable reality. Faith, on the other hand, acknowledges God’s righteousness in bringing judgment, but pleads for mercy nonetheless. As the King of Nineveh said, who knows? God may have mercy. What the King of Nineveh did not know, we know far better.
We know from the book of Hebrews alone, let alone the rest of the Bible, already the mercy available to those who seek it from God. We do not face an impersonal force of karma or the Greek fates of judgment. The judge of all the earth is a person and we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. We also know that he is the same one who sent his son to be the sacrifice for sins. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but it is a comforting thing to cast yourself upon those hands for mercy in repentance and faith. And because of the sacrifice for sins by the Son of God, who sanctified us by his blood and gave us the spirit of grace, we can have absolute confidence we can have absolute confidence that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord for mercy will be saved.
Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us your word, even this warning of judgment. Lord, we ask that we would hear your judgment and we would take it to heart. We would live our lives in the light of the alternative to salvation in Christ, that we would live in holy, righteous fear, godly fear that would drive us to repentance and faith, greater faith in your mercy, greater faith in your mercy, greater appreciation of your salvation for us. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. On response, let’s stand and sing hymn 387, hymn 387, Day of Judgment, Day of Wonders, 387.
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