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Well, if you would remain standing while we read our text for this evening, we’ll be looking
this evening at Hebrews chapter 6, and we’ll be reading verses 4 through 8.
Hebrews chapter 6, verses 4 through 8, hear the word of God, for it is impossible in the
case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and shared
in the Holy Spirit, and tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age
to come, and have then fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying
once again the Son of God to their own harm, and holding Him up to contempt.
For land that is drunk, the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to
those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God.
But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its
end is to be burned.
Amen.
May God add His blessing to that.
You may be seated.
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we ask that you would open up your word to our minds and hearts this
evening, that your spirit would be present, that you would illuminate this word that you
have inspired, and that your servant would proclaim the truth of it faithfully.
We pray this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Amen.
So I’ve entitled this, The More Enlightened They Are, The Harder They Fall Away.
Have you ever gotten stuck in a situation that you couldn’t get out of?
Maybe socially you got stuck in a situation that makes you feel obligated to agree to
something or affirm something that was said.
Or what about, have you ever made a wrong turn on the interstate and there’s no way
to turn around?
This happens to me all the time.
I get on the interstate, go in the wrong direction, and it’s miles before I can take an exit.
Callie and I were traveling to Niagara Falls last week for our anniversary on Valentine’s
Day, and our first afternoon there, we were trying to follow signs to the park to see
the falls.
We were in Canada, so the road signs are a little bit different, so I’m trying to pay
attention to a bunch of different things, and I saw a sign for a parking lot.
It had some gates, but it didn’t say that it cost anything, so I made a snap decision
and turned in the parking lot.
The gates went up for us no problem.
However, once we got in, I couldn’t find a way to get out.
It was a parking lot for a duty-free store with a one-way exit to the bridge across,
back into the United States.
I got out, I looked all over, but unless I was willing to smash my car through the gates,
we were going to have to cross the international border again.
Callie had apparently observed the sign that I missed that said, no re-entrance into Canada.
After I admitted my fault, we were forced to go back through that border line that we
had just been in a few hours before.
Everything turned out okay.
We spent a couple hours looking at the falls from New York before crossing back into Canada,
which is where we were staying that evening.
The truth is, I had seen the signs that warned about no re-entry, but I didn’t fully believe
them.
This may be news to Callie.
I thought there might be an exception for me.
And that reminds me, I think, a bit of what’s happening, what’s being warned against in
our passage.
The writer of Hebrews is warning his readers not to expect to be able to just turn around
once you go down the road of apostasy.
It’s a lot more serious than crossing back into the United States.
So we’ll look this evening at our passage under three aspects.
First is the impossibility of repentance.
Second, the presumption of apostasy.
But third, the implicit hope that’s held out.
So number one, the impossibility of repentance.
As we saw last week, this bleak language in our text of impossible to repent is meant
to be startling.
This warning is meant to strike fear into the hearts of those that hear it.
Now, Hebrews 6 is not quite the anomaly in scripture that it’s sometimes thought of.
We saw last time that there’s a precedent set in the Old Testament prophets for this
kind of harsh warning that’s intended to provoke godly fear, which will lead to repentance
and faith.
This evening, I want to highlight another passage in the New Testament where we see
slimmer bleak language.
A lot of people forget that Jesus spoke this way.
You can turn, if you want, into Luke 14, verse 34 and 35.
Jesus says this in Luke 14, 34, salt is good.
But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
It is of no use, either for the soil or for the manure pile.
It is thrown away.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
And of course, there’s parallel passages in Matthew 5, 13 and Mark 9, 20.
Jesus doesn’t offer possibilities or options for the salt to gain its saltiness.
He says once it’s gone, it’s gone.
So why does Hebrews 6 say that repentance is impossible in the similar way that Jesus
said this?
Well, when I was in seminary, one of the professors addressed the class with a very stern warning.
This was a class of only male students who were preparing to go into full-time ministry.
And he said, I’m not saying everything there is to say on this topic, but you need to hear
this warning before you enter the ministry.
He said to us, if you ever commit adultery, you are done in the ministry.
Your ordained ministry is over.
He said, I’m putting this warning ringing in your ears so that if you ever go down the
road of temptation far enough that that sin even becomes a prospect in your mind.
That perhaps this thought will be able to hold you back.
Now he wasn’t saying this sin was unforgivable or impossible to find healing or restoration
from it.
As the counseling professor, he was used to counseling singles and couples through very
difficult circumstances.
And he wasn’t making a ruling on whether it’s possible for a former minister to ever be
restored after such an egregious violation of his marriage vows.
There may even be some cases in which an individual circumstances allow for extraordinary restoration.
But the rule and warning that my professor wanted us to feel was the expectation, if
I go forward with this, there’s no coming back.
While one’s soul, eternal soul is certainly much more important than a vocation or a job.
My professor wanted those intending to go into pastoral ministry to have in our hearts
and minds the extra warning that it would permanently disqualify us from the ministry.
And I think something similar is going on in our passage.
This is a warning that’s meant to sound definitive in order to impress upon us the seriousness
of falling away.
It’s not trying to say everything that can be said on this subject.
Another example that comes to mind is King David.
If we turn to 2 Samuel chapter 12, we find the account of David and Bathsheba.
David’s moral failure to the end of his reign is rather infamous.
He committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged for her husband, his prized fighter,
to be killed in battle.
And many times this story is used to highlight the grace of God who forgave such atrocities.
However, a closer look at the remainder of David’s reign shows that though he was forgiven
based on the future work of Christ, David’s sin permanently damaged his family.
It probably ought to be used more often to dissuade men from moral failure.
With great privilege comes great responsibility.
And David was never his old self after this catastrophic moral failure.
We find in 2 Samuel 12, 9 through 14, this warning from the prophet Nathan after he confronts David.
Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight?
You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with a sword and taken his wife to be your wife
and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised
me and taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife.
Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.
I will take your wives from your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie
with your wives in the sight of this son.
But you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the Son.
David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.
Nathan said to David, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die.
Nevertheless, because you have done by this deed of utterly scorn the Lord, the child
who is born to you shall die.
For the rest of David’s life, his family was never the same.
Not only did David’s child die immediately, but later his son Amnon raped his sister and
then was killed by his brother Absalom.
Absalom then tried to take David’s throne and kill him, but was later killed himself
in the civil war that broke out.
The rivalry and treason amongst David’s own children continued even after his own death.
It ought to have known better.
But notice that David did not repent of his own accord.
It was many months, possibly even a year, of remaining in this sin before Nathan finally
confronts him on the eve of his child’s birth.
By God’s grace, Nathan’s warning prompted David to repent and ask for mercy.
But David didn’t just get forgiven by God and live happily ever after with no consequences.
He and his family were never the same.
And if it weren’t for Nathan’s bold confrontation, David might never have repented at all.
So returning to our passage in Hebrews 6, we ask, how is this repentance impossible?
That it says it’s impossible.
How is it impossible for those who have fallen away?
This question can bog people down sometimes.
Impossible for whom?
Impossible for God, the ones who are trying to restore the apostate, or the apostate themselves.
In the end, each of these have the same result.
The apostate is unrepentant, and unrepentant sinners are not pardoned.
Whether it is impossible for God, the community, or the individual, they all leave the individual
without hope.
Since verse 3 of chapter 6 says, this we will do if God permits, for it is impossible, some
are inclined to see verses 4 through 8 as speaking to God’s lacking ability, his inability
to grant repentance, suggesting that somehow he’s prevented from granting salvation in
this case.
But this flies in the face of the teaching of the rest of scripture, which teaches that
God makes the dead sinners alive.
Restoration itself requires God’s sovereign spiritual resurrecting power, which overrides
human inability.
So as Jesus said to his disciples, what may be impossible with man is possible with God.
Luke 18, 27.
Others have picked up on the passive phrase, restore to repentance, in verse 6, to suggest
that this is a reference to the community’s inability to bring about restoration.
But the reason given in verse 6 as to why repentance is impossible is that it would
require re-crucifixion, it’s not a lack of community persuasion.
And also the analogy in verses 7 and 8 focus on those who fall away rather than the community’s
failure to restore them.
The land that is producing bad fruit despite its blessing from God is in a dangerous place.
So I think the focus of this passage is on the individual being unable to return simply
whenever he wants to.
This is not a prohibition of repentance, but a warning that the more you know and experience
of God’s salvation and still reject it, the less likely you will be able to repent.
So on the one hand, all sinners, being dead in their sins, completely reliant on the grace
of God for salvation, are equally unable to be saved.
And yet the scriptures still speak of people being nearer or further from salvation.
This is because God works through means.
While salvation is supernatural, it cannot happen from God’s intervening grace.
It happens through rather ordinary faith through hearing.
God’s word is proclaimed, sinners hear and respond in repentance and faith.
A cynical professor of religion who’s read the scriptures backwards and forwards without
faith is much further from salvation than the child who has never heard the gospel.
God builds barriers with whatever is available, whether knowledge, experiences, power, money,
or comfort, to guard against the humility of repentance.
The least likely person of all to repent is not the one who has never repented, but the
one who has embraced faith, intimately engaged with God and the covenant community, tasted
the life-giving power of salvation and scorned it all and rejected it.
The only thing more dangerous, our text says, than never repenting is repenting of your
previous repenting.
Perhaps you can see why the writer of Hebrews would speak of this as impossible.
The writer of Hebrews is saying that those who are in faith and leave it behind can never
rightly expect to recover what was lost.
He’s warning against a perspective that might assume we can just re-repent whenever we want.
So we’ll look at, secondly, the presumption of apostasy.
The presumption of apostasy, leaving behind the Christian faith after deeply experiencing
the genuine reality, involves presumption.
Since no one in their right mind would be hoping to suffer for eternity, by leaving,
they’re presuming first that there’s an equally effective, preferable means of salvation.
And second, if it doesn’t work out, you can always come back.
Now there are two passages later in the book of Hebrews, which I think can help us understand
the author’s thought process in Hebrews 6 to combat this problematic presumption.
And the first is in Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 26 through 27.
This is widely seen as a somewhat parallel passage to Hebrews 6.
Says for if we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving 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 language of finality here is similar to that of Hebrews 6, but in this case the
slightly different phrasing can shed some light on what’s meant in Hebrews 6.
The phrase sinning deliberately in chapter 10, after receiving knowledge of the truth,
parallels in chapter 6, those who have once been enlightened, if they then fall away.
This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill stumbling that Christians normally do this side of
glory.
It’s walking away from what you know.
And then we see the reason.
In chapter 10, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, which parallels in chapter 6, since
they are crucifying once again the Lord of glory.
Taken together, it looks like his focus, which has been the author’s focus the whole book,
is on the fact that salvation is not available outside of Jesus.
So if you abandon him, you’re not going to find remission of sins anywhere else.
You can’t crucify him again.
The binary options for all of us are to die in Christ or in our sins.
Now the second passage that can help us is Hebrews chapter 12, verses 16 to 17.
Hebrews chapter 12 says this, it’s kind of starting in the middle of a sentence,
that see that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright
for a single meal.
For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected.
For he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.
Now we’re not going to get into all the questions that this passage has raised in people’s minds
until we get to it later in our series, but the main point is that after rejecting his
birthright, which in this example represents salvation, membership in the covenant community.
After rejecting that, Esau found that repentance wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be.
Repentance wasn’t just something he would have on hand any time he wanted, or something
that he could even muster up within himself by himself.
So the assumption being made in both Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 12 is that repentance is an
indispensable component to salvation, and when a person is born again, this is accompanied
by a true repentance for sin, but it’s not something we can just have on hand and do
for ourselves.
Esau’s problem was that he took covenant membership, including his repentance, for granted.
He thought that he could always just get it back whenever he wanted.
He was wrong.
Hebrews 6 is warning its readers not to presume on an opportunity to repent.
Why do we need this kind of warning?
I still remember a young man that I spoke to on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey
in 2013 or 14, who wanted to know if he would be able to repent later if he sold his soul
to the devil.
He had heard of musicians and other celebrities who had gained talents through pledging themselves
to Satan.
He seemed to be toying with the idea himself.
I told him for starters, Satan’s a liar, and it’s a terrible mistake to make a bargain
with him.
Then I said, it’s not that God can’t forgive you for that specific sin, but take a
moment and look at your situation.
You’re about to spit in God’s face and reject him, whilst trying to simultaneously ask him
to take you back.
That’s a pretty bold move.
You’re going to throw yourself on God’s mercy in a minute after you spit in his face.
But the real problem, the real thing Satan lies to everyone about, is that once you’re
in, you may not find within yourself the will to repent.
Satan tries to use the same type of logic with temptation to any type of sin, not just
apostasy.
Yeah, it’s wrong, but you can always just repent afterwards.
Many a Christian has fallen to this grace-exploiting lie.
But is it a lie?
Isn’t it true that as 1 John chapter 2 verse 1 says, my little children, I’m writing these
things to you that you may not sin.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.
So where’s the lie in suggesting that you can sin now and repent later?
The lie is that while it might be possible to repent after sinning, it becomes less and
less likely.
The very nature of repentance is to hate sin and love God, and the very essence of choosing
to sin is to love sin and hate God.
God compares sinning to spiritual adultery.
Choosing to sin doesn’t make it more likely that you’ll hate it later, it only makes it
less likely.
It might even become impossible.
And beware, Satan will even use a reformed theology against you.
After all, repentance is a free gift from a sovereign God.
You only repented because a sovereign God gave you the gift of repentance.
So even if you become hardened in your sin, nothing is impossible with God.
He can overcome any hardness of heart, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Sin yourself silly and God can just bring you back and make it all better.
Satan will tell you it’s actually a form of trusting God.
I’m going to let God bring me back to repentance if he wants, it’s up to him.
Nothing is impossible with God, right?
So this is putting God to the test.
Attempting to force God’s hand to save you, whether physically or spiritually, is not
an act of faith.
Satan told Jesus, jump off the temple to see if God will keep you from dying.
Force his hand.
Putting God to the test is presumption.
Instead of humbly asking for God’s undeserved mercy and grace, it demands that undeserved
favor be dispensed.
It attempts to force God into a corner so that he has to save you.
Repentance on the other hand is completely the opposite.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism summarizes in question 87 an answer.
What is repentance unto life?
Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and
apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin, turn
from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience.
God only offers salvation to the penitent.
Repentance is the only way to access God’s mercy and grace.
And this leads us finally to look at the implicit hope that’s held out in our text.
So thirdly, the implicit hope held out.
Look at Hebrews chapter 6 verses 7 and 8.
For land that is drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to
those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God.
But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless, and near to being cursed, and
its end is to be burned.
Last week we looked at how there’s a very strong word of reassurance in verse 9.
But before we even get there, I think there’s even hope in this warning passage in verse
8.
First, as we saw last time, the warning itself is a kindness by God, since if he intends
to bring judgment, he doesn’t give warnings.
And so the warnings serve as a means of offering mercy.
But second, we see that in verse 8, look at that little word near.
This is a very intentional word.
The author could have said, it is already cursed.
Instead, he said, it is near to being cursed.
The end is to be burned.
He doesn’t mince words.
But while there is life, there is hope.
Clearly, though he speaks of impossibility, he does not intend it to be taken as a prohibition
against repentance.
Remember where and when the warning is given.
The warning is given on this side of apostasy, before it happens.
He assumes he’s speaking to people that this has not happened to yet.
God never rejects repentant sinners.
The danger is that you will not want to repent.
And the further you travel from faith that you once embraced, the longer you prolong
your unrepentant rebellion, the harder your heart will grow.
The added dimension at play here is that unlike those who have never embraced Christ, those
who are part of the Christian community and then leave it are not only failing to take
hold of the remedy for sin, but they’re actively rejecting the one and only remedy.
This passage is not a directive for how believers ought to treat those who apostatize.
I feel like I have to say this because Christians in early centuries of church history appealed
to this passage to warrant a rejection of repentance of those who had under duress of
persecution previously renounced Christ, but then sought to return.
They sought to use this passage to block them from entrance.
Thankfully, that interpretation was eventually abandoned by the church in subsequent centuries.
But I know of Christians today who believe that this passage directs us to not expect
or even pray for apostates to return.
But that’s not the way this passage is intended to be used at all.
Not only have we seen in the rest of the passage itself that it’s speaking of allowing back
but because the view of this passage in that light would contradict the rest of scripture.
Think for a moment.
If we turn to Luke 15, in Luke 15, Jesus speaks of his mission and God’s heart in three tales
of a lost and found coin, lost and found sheep, and lost and found son.
His story ups the ante and the final story of the lost and found son puts the focus on
the son who’s unwilling to accept his brother’s return.
In all three cases, the coin, the sheep, and the son start out in the possession of the
owner or the father before then becoming lost.
This doesn’t sound like someone who was never in the covenant community.
So those who find themselves in the position of the lost son ought not doubt the welcome
that they will receive if they do turn and in repentance ask for mercy.
To drive home this point even further, consider Romans 11 that we read earlier this evening.
There are various views on what exactly Paul has in mind with the restoration of the Jews.
But what is clear is that the former members of the covenant community will be more than
welcome to rejoin.
In fact in Romans 9 and 10 as well, Paul says it’s his constant desire and prayer that the
apostate Jewish nation return to Christ.
He says it’s even his entire mission to the Gentiles is to ultimately save the Jews by
provoking them to jealousy, prompting them to return and repent to their heritage of
faith.
With these realities in mind, it seems clear that Hebrews 6 is not setting itself up to
be a prohibition against prayer for apostates or a reason to forbid the reentry into the
covenant community.
It’s intended as a guardrail to prevent believers from tumbling to their death.
No warning on a cliff would say, high probability of dying if you fall, but not in absolute
certainty.
Exceptions exist, but a warning doesn’t need to offer all of those caveats.
God’s warnings in scriptures are intended to prevent the outcome they warn of.
The author of Hebrews knows the heart of Jesus, which is to welcome back repentant apostates.
He doesn’t want his hearers to think that they can presume upon God’s grace, like a
safety net that will just always catch them even if they reject it.
Walking away from Christ is walking away from life.
Consider finally, very briefly, Judas Iscariot.
Jesus warned him in Matthew 26, 24.
He says, the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son
of Man is betrayed.
It would have been better for that man if he had never been born.
He was looking Judas in the eyes when he said that.
Jesus was warning Judas one last time before he took that last step of apostasy, betraying
Jesus himself.
But even Judas wasn’t prohibited from repentance.
He simply refused to return to the source of salvation, which he had turned his back
on.
He had remorse after seeing Jesus get arrested and sentenced to crucifixion, and that led
him to seek forgiveness.
But instead of looking to Jesus, the one he had betrayed, his only hope, he sought forgiveness
from the priests, the Pharisees, tried to give back the money to undo what he had done.
He didn’t need to ask their forgiveness.
He needed to ask forgiveness of the one he had betrayed.
Judas should have followed the example of the thief on the cross, and he too would have
found mercy.
The warning in this passage centers around the fact that there’s salvation found in
no other place.
Jesus was crucified once for sins.
If you flee from him, you won’t find salvation anywhere else.
No one else has paid the price, and no one else has the righteousness that you need.
No one else died for your sins, and no one else can give you new life.
So no matter where you find yourself, remember that Jesus is the only source of salvation.
Abide in him, and the blessings of God will produce a rich crop which abounds to God’s
glory.
While there’s life, there’s hope, and God will not turn away any repentance sinners.
He says, call on him while he may be found, so that you may be found and remain in Christ
forever.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we thank you for even the difficult warnings that you give to us in
your word.
We thank you for the good and wise purpose that you have in them, and we thank you that
this is not all you say, but you show us clearly you are a God who welcomes those that do not
deserve mercy, because you are a God who is long-suffering and abundant in mercy because
of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.
Well, in response, let’s turn to hymn number 480.
I have no other comfort, hymn number 480, and if you would please stand as we sing.