Clough Hebrews Lesson 20
Review – Hebrews 3:1-6; Introduction – Hebrews 3:7 & 12
I was in a meeting last night with an agricultural meteorologist and he just completed a survey and found out that most areas here, there’s no trace of moisture down to four feet and this requires a tremendous volume of millions of gallons of water, literally, to resaturate the soil because we’ve gone since September without any rain and we have a real problem, besides just needing a volume of water we need it in a certain form, as you can find out yourself if you just fill up a glass of water or something and go out and pour it on the lawn, particularly on a slanted lawn, you’ll see the water just is repelled from the soil just like it’s on cement and that’s just characteristic of soil in this particular part of the country. So the only precipitation is God’s own, snow, so if you have some friends that don’t like snow you’re going to be persona non grata but that’s about the most specific petition that we can make, to have a big, big, long lasting snow and the snow to last long enough for the water to leech into the ground and then when the surface layer is permeable again, then you can have heavy rain. That would be a wise, specific petition.
Let’s turn to Hebrews; since it’s been two weeks let’s go back and review the two large sections at stake. The first two chapters of Hebrew deal with the theme that since Jesus Christ is God’s Son, the only Savior, we must be careful of our response to this news. And you recall that in this section there is a warning passage and that warning passage is typical of exhortation. Whenever you have exhortation in the Bible you always have warning. Sunday night we’re coming upon Nathan’s exhortation to David and you’ll see the warning there. So exhortation biblically, and as I have said before, is full of warning and destruction of neutrality. It’s to eliminate fence-setting, when, of course, proper information is available.
And those of you who think you may have the gift of exhortation, for it is a gift, and in a group this large there must be at least a dozen or so people that have the gift of exhortation, whether you know it or not, you just haven’t exercised it or used it enough to become aware of it, but there must be at least a dozen people sitting here this evening that have the gift of exhortation. And just because you have a spiritual gift doesn’t mean it comes automatically. Spiritual gifts are capacities or potentials for capacity and they have to be developed. And if you have the gift of exhortation that means you ought to know how biblically to exhort. Your gift is very much needed; Christians all around you need your gift of exhortation. People need encouragement and people with the exhortation have a tremendous role to play toward their fellow believers. You’re the main, main brunt of encouragement to other Christians, so if you have the gift of exhortation please pay careful attention to the book of Hebrews. This man had the gift and this is the model way of exhortation.
Then in chapter 3, from 3:1 through
Last time we finished with verse 6, we said the first quality of Christ, He is faithful ideal high priest, is found in 3:1-6. And this is a review tonight, I’m not going to review all six verses, I want to start with the 6th verse again, there’s a lot of doctrine in Hebrews 3:6 and we ought to make sure at least that we have some understanding of it. Several people have said to me that Hebrews, they have discovered as they are taking notes on it has so much doctrine they are getting the tapes and going over again and they’re finding they’re missing a lot, so either that shows they are not paying attention or I’m going to fast. So if I go slow as we go on it’s because I’ve had numerous complaints, I’m trying to adjust. This really is, it’s pretty thick going through here and the only reason I’m trying to speed up is so you don’t lose the forest for the trees and fighting the battle between details and the overall.
In Hebrews 3:6, “But Christ as a son over His own house, whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Christ is being compared with Moses; Christ was faithful, Moses was faithful, and there are a number of differences which we covered last time. But notice he says in here, in a section we ended with last week called the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which says that those who are in Christ, when I become a Christian, when you became a Christian, you recognized your position in Christ. Part of that position is what the Father has done for you. The Son has done some things for you and the Holy Spirit has done some things for you, the Triune God acting in union. But the Father has foreknown you, He has predestinated you, He has called you, He has justified you and He has glorified you.
Now if, by the time you become a Christian you are at the calling stage, and after you become a Christian you’re justified, but you’re not yet in time glorified. Glorification occurs after you die, yet because you have those two elements, the calling and the justification, and through the illumination of the Holy Spirit you understand predestination and foreknowledge, you know that if He did those four things for you up until where you are not, he is certainly going to do the fifth thing which is glorification. The package is indivisible. You can’t separate it, and by the way, this is taught in one very clear, Romans 8:29-30, so part of the package can’t be taken without the whole package.
And the argument simply is this, that if you are truly in the package, that is if you are truly born again, you’re going to come out the other end, that’s what it saying, you will hold fast, and that’s why verse 6 can be stated, that that person who is a true believer, will endure. Now it does not say that the person won’t have ups and down. Verse 6 does not teach perfectionism because men are held up as examples of faith who we know aren’t perfect. Noah is held up as an example of a man who was faithful unto the end. The last picture we have of Noah is he’s being stripped by his son while he’s drunk; not a very enlightening position and not a very good example of someone who is supposedly faithful. But Hebrews says he is so who are we to argue with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit says he’s faithful, okay, he’s faithful, but he’s not perfect. So this isn’t arguing that you have to be perfect, it’s just simply arguing that there will be evidence of salvation all the way on down to the end.
Now two words are used in verse 6 which now become the launching platform for the next big chunk of text and those two words… one is confidence and the other is boasting, these are very, very important words. The word “confidence” means openness when you can be publicly threatened, in other words, when you’re vulnerable. It’s not just being confident when you’re looking at yourself in the mirror; it means when you are out with a group of people you can be open with Jesus Christ and with doctrine and not feel threatened. And that is the confidence, that’s true confidence.
Boasting, looks like this in the Greek, and this is a particularly interesting word, for those of you who are taking Greek, just a little tidbit, when you see ma on the end of a word like this, kauche, this is a hard “ch”, kauchema, when you see that ma on the end of a noun, usually, I always say usually because 99% of the time it works and then there’s always 1% where it blows it, but usually when you see mental attitude on the end of a noun, the emphasis is not on the act but on the content of the act. So obviously this noun is built on the verb to boast. All right, does kauchema then emphasize the act of boasting or does it emphasize what you’re boasting about? It’s what you’re boasting about, not the act, it’s the content of what you’re boasting about. Now what would you suppose the author of Hebrews would have us boasting about, just judging so far, his particular pet thing. You know Paul has his, John has his, and the author of Hebrews has his, his center of focus. What is the center of focus of this guy? What would you expect him to expect us to be boasting in? [someone answers] All right, what about the humanity of Christ. What particular field… how has he so far worked around the humanity of Christ thing? [someone answers superior priesthood] All right, the priest’s work of Jesus Christ.
The priest is the one who leads the people in sanctification. Again, if you want a picture of a priest, a convenient one, it’s not that accurate but at least it’ll get it across in your mind if you want one, is to think of a priest offering a sacrifice with a bunch of people standing behind him. God is in front, the priest is here, he’s at his altar and he’s offering a sacrifice, somewhat like the format say, of a Roman Catholic service where the priest is actually claiming to do that. And he goes through the mass, or he goes through the sacrifice, his back is to the people and he is facing the altar and the reason is that… he’s right, he’s just wrong in the doctrine, but if there were a functioning priesthood like that the Catholic priest is standing in the right way, in that he stands representing the people before God. And the people are being sanctified in back of him.
Now the “boast” in verse 6 is simply that, that we all are sitting in back of Christ who is ahead of us, as a man, facing God, and the boast that we have is that His priesthood is perfect on our behalf. He is making perfect intercession for us, He is covering all of our sins, because what is the sacrifice that Christ, as priest is sacrificing? Himself; Jesus Christ is both the sacrifice and the priest that offers the sacrifice. So the boast, then, is in Christ’s finished work and not just His finished work but His finished work applied to your account, not someone else, your own individual personal dirty linen. That’s the boast, that Jesus Christ is perfectly applying His work.
The boast here, “the boasting of the hope,” now sometimes you can argue this in English or you can argue it in Greek but this is a point that is not limited to the Monday [Greek class] night crowd, when you have something like this and you see this, watch out in the Bible, not that you’ll be misled but there’s just truth here that’s waiting for you to come along and pick it and the trouble is most Christians just walk by and they never pick the fruit, and it’s real precious stuff.
“Boasting of hope,” now there are two ways that that can be read. Do any of you see how, do you see something about that phrase; you can take that phrase two ways? How can you? [someone answers] Okay, in other words, you have to hope and the hope leads to the boasting. Or, the boasting actually manifests itself in the hop. See the action can go both ways. Now judging the way this author is struggling with these people what is the essential problem of these believers. Did they have hope or not, most of them? They’re pretty hopeless, aren’t they. Let’s recall some of their problems, let’s turn to Hebrews 6:10, trace the history again just briefly here.
You see in Hebrews 6;10 what had these
believers been doing in the past? They
didn’t get [can’t understand word] with they, they weren’t unbelievers, they
were believers, they were functioning, they ministered to the saints in
Hebrews 12:4, this represents the upper limit, however, to their persecution, “You have not yet resisted unto blood,” what can you infer from that about the persecutions these believers faced? [someone answers] All right, here are a group of believers who have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, who have taken in the Word of God, who have given it out, who have been Christians for some time, have maturity, they’ve been knocked around, a lot. Now that’s their history and here’s their response to it, notice Hebrews 12:1, “Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about [with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset] and let us run with patience [the race that is set before us].” And in verse 3, “Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind.” See that, all right. Now notice that and see if you can recreate in your mind what you think these other, your fellow believer who lived at this particular local church where this epistle was preached, see if you can recreate imaginatively what was happening to that congregation. They were going on, they had taken in the Word, they were giving it out but they were becoming faint, they were giving up.
Turn back to Hebrews 10:25, you can see another characteristic that was beginning to occur in that congregation, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is,” so there was a tendency no longer to come together for prayer, for study of the Word of God. See, fellowship was beginning to tube out. Mental attitude tube out, fellowship tube out. Then in Hebrews 5:11, another characteristic of this group of believers, notice what their attitude was now toward the Word of God, “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing.”
So now this is what’s happened, they had a group of Christians, they were rolling fine, facing pressure, rolling with the punch and now the pressure’s just got to them, or we should correct that, they’ve allowed the pressure to get to them. Can they argue they’re facing a trial or a pressure in their life for which God has not made ample provision? Do you suppose they are though? Sure are, that’s the reason why this epistle is written. They’re arguing with God that the pressure they face has gone on too long. God, I’m going to chuck it in because you’ve allowed the pressure in my life to last so long that I’m at the end of my rope, to paraphrase a popular version of the argument. So obviously does this congregation have hope right now? No, they don’t have hope, they’re discouraged, they’re disheartened, and they have no hope. So this whole thing is, the whole point of this epistle is how to get hope. And this is the thing that the man is trying to get across here.
While I was at Dallas Seminary a while ago Dr. Jay Adams gave us a little chart and he drew an interesting chart and this is going to answer a question that was turned in, might as well answer it now: I gather that despair, total despair such as Christ suffered on the cross is not sin and does not show one that He is not trusting God but only that He is overcome by the grief of the moment. All right, let’s get these words straightened around here, I shouldn’t have used the word “despair” that was a mistake the last time I taught this thing when I was referring to the fact that Christ experienced despair. This is the proper way to see it. Grief we all experience, that’s part of living in a fallen world. Everyone here, at some time or other in their life is going to experience grief. There’s nothing unspiritual about getting knocked around and crying legitimately in grief. But if you always link the grief to Biblical hope, even though at the moment emotionally you don’t feel like doing too much, you’re wrung out but you don’t go on the basis of your emotions. Hope is not an emotion, note that; hope is not an emotion. You can emotionally respond to hope but hope is not an emotion. Our generation specializes in trying to create hope on the basis of feeling. And we, as Christians, have to cut across that 100%; you don’t build hope on the basis of how you feel.
So the point is that all of us face grief, these believers faced grief but the author of this epistle… he’s not saying don’t grieve, they had losses, they lost their property, they’ve lost their loved ones, maybe by jail, it talks about imprisonment, he’s not saying just go through life like a zombie and hypnotize yourself and say it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt because it does hurt. That’s grief, grief is hurt but the difference is that grief is controlled, you don’t allow the grief to get out of control. Now if you don’t link the grief to hope it’s going to get out of control and send you into despair. So the trick of staying out despair is to always link grief to hope. And the question comes where’s the hope.
Now let’s get some examples of this thing, how grief or pressure is linked to hope and makes a difference. Let’s take a little simple thing, it’s mild grease but nevertheless to me it’s a remarkable illustration of the principle, a simple thing like witnessing. A person who has come into Lubbock Bible Church once in a while and been taught here is going to have lunch with the President of the United States tomorrow and obviously there’s a situation where you would be tempted to keep your big mouth shut and there would be a lot of pressure on you, even if the Lord opened a wide door, you know, Nixon hands you a Bible and says hey, give me some advice, even if that really happened I’m sure that if you were honest you’d go well, ah, uh, ah kind of reaction.
All right, now in witnessing, that is a boast, in order to witness you’re under a pressure situation and you can flake out or you can link it with hope and that hope is that the Holy Spirit is going to take what you say and use it in the heart of the person you’re talking to. And if you don’t have that confidence, and if you don’t have the confidence that comes based on your past training, so that you have hope that when you walk into that situation you can respond correctly and biblically; you’re not going to have that hope either if you haven’t got some spiritual training under your belt.
Another part of this would be that you have the hope, the confidence that the Word of God is going to prove out literally true in every detail, even those unanswered questions we don’t have answers to today. Now if you have that kind of hope, a hope that every word of the Bible will someday be vindicated literally and historically, if you have the hope that the Holy Spirit uses His Word in the hearts of men, it’ll change your whole approach in witnessing because it will make you a lot more relaxed and when you’re relaxed then you can talk to someone. When you’re so tense your mouth is dry and so on, you’re not going to be much of a witness, you can’t even open your mouth and say a word, you can’t do too much. So hope occurs and when it does in the witnessing process, you find people break loose and evangelize. And that is why it has been my contention all along that the reason we don’t do more evangelizing isn’t because people don’t know how, it’s not the question of the technique, it’s the question of hope. The simple thing is people don’t open their mouth because they have no hope that the thing is true and they’re not going to be shot down, the Holy Spirit isn’t going to use it, they’re going to be made a jackass over something. All right, hope, then, opens mouths in witnessing.
Another illustration of hope, take an old person; an old person sees some problem in their life as a Christian, and they realize that God the Holy Spirit wants them to change but they say it’s useless, typical response, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And again, quoting Dr. Adams, the come back to that is you’re not an old dog, you’re a man made in God’s image and God the Holy Spirit says you can change. So here we have an old person, and if you stop and think of it, the greatest changes in your life always occur in old age. Compare, for example, a person at 25 losing their job, losing their health and losing their marriage partner, say within five to ten years. That would be considered a disaster for a 25 year old person, but it regularly happens to all people over 60. So who experiences the most radical changes, young people or old people? Old people, and why do you suppose God allows the old people to experience the greatest change? Because by that time the older people should have the wisdom that will give them the stability to face that kind of a change. The young person at 20 doesn’t have that stability.
So God graciously, as a part of His normative program doesn’t bring those kinds of big changes in your life, He saves the big changes for the old people. So old people, if they have hope that God the Holy Spirit can change their lives then they can hack it in these kinds of situations. Otherwise the grief of a loss of a loved one turns into despair and bitterness and resentment. I’m sure you’ve all met older people who carry grudges in their heart because of the way they say (quote) “life treated them,” (end quote). And they go through life bitter and the reason they go through life bitter like that is because they’ve never first had a basis of hope.
Another problem that you run into; people say I have an emotional problem. Now technically there’s not any such thing as an emotional problem. You talk to a person that’s having an emotional problem, the problem isn’t with their emotions, their emotions are working real good. The emotions can’t be healed, the emotions can’t be broken down, all those words are used of the physical body, you don’t break emotions down, you don’t heal emotions, emotions are trained responses and when a person is in a bind and they have all these emotional problems the hope centers on the fact that God has a plan of retraining that can change their emotional response, even theirs, no matter how bad it is, can be changed. Now that’s the kind of thing where you’re talking about hope. Otherwise the person experiences the grief of seeing themselves get out of kilter, fly off the handle, go into deep depression and all the rest of it, and they’re fed some bull by psychiatrists that because their mother dropped them on their head when they were a baby or something they’ve been warped since childhood and it’s all somebody else’s fault and there’s no hope for you except five years at $50 an hour on somebody’s couch. Now that’s no hope. The Word of God gives hope that the Holy Spirit can change.
All right, that’s what we mean by the hope. I hope those illustrations give you some insight as to the problem of the author and why he’s going to say what he’s going to say. So we’ve taken out of the first century, brought it down to the 20th century to realize that it’s just the old problem of hope and if you don’t have hope you can’t go very far in the Christian life.
Now Hebrews 3:7, from 3:7 through
Be careful not to neglect the promise of ultimate sanctification that underlies hope. Hope in the Christian sense is not the way… the word itself is dead incidentally, this is another word like love, you hesitate to even us it because people today… what do most people think when they think of hope? Think of something real solid and certain? No, the very word itself conjures ideas in your mind of something that’s uncertain, something you hope is true but you really don’t believe with certainty that it’s true and you use the word hope. That is human viewpoint, that’s not the way this word means. I can’t think of a word except confidence tonight to communicate what the divine viewpoint is. The Bible doesn’t use “hope” this way. It uses it in the sense we use the word “confidence.” In fact, you can almost use the word overconfidence; you say somebody is overconfident. It is impossible in divine viewpoint to be overconfident. You cannot be overconfident in Jesus Christ. And that’s the point that he’s making here, is that to get the hope it doesn’t hang in thin air, it hangs completely on God’s promises.
And so that’s why he’s saying look, if you want hope, here’s where you get it. You don’t sit and pray, Lord give me hope, because if that were the way there’d be an instruction here at verse 7, he’d say hold it, now everybody gather together next Sabbath and start praying for hope. But you don’t read that. In verse 7 you start to read… what does it say, read the Word, that’s where hope comes. “Wherefore,” now here’s the introduction to the passage and this gets kind of involved and those of you who have the King James will notice that after the word “Wherefore” there’s a parenthesis, and you’ll notice that there’s another parenthesis at the end of verse 11. Everything in that parenthesis is an adverbial clause.
Let’s remember something from English, if that’s possible. Adverb modifies the verb; the verb, where’s the verb? “Wherefore” starts the sentence, it breaks at the parenthesis, it stops the break at verse 11, now where’s the verb? “Take heed,” that’s the verb. Therefore everything between verse 7 and verse 11 describes how you are taking heed; taking heed is your verb, that whole section deals with what it means to take heed and how you take heed. And he’s going to give a concrete historic illustration, with all empirical evidence so you’ll base and be very clear on how to take heed. So the sentence begins with “Wherefore,” by the way what’s the subject of this sentence? You, understood. That means every believer take heed or look out, and the adverb clause will explain how. For purposes of tonight with a limited time we’re going to go from verse 7, the first part, skip the adverbial clause, pick up the main verb in verse 12 and work into verse 13, so that’s our agenda; study part of verse 7, go to verse 12, verse 13, skip the adverb clause, bring it back next time because it deals with a whole bunch of history. tonight we don’t have time for the history so we won’t have time for the whole adverbial clause, we’ll just have time for the connective, the subject and the predicate.
Let’s look at “Wherefore,” those of you who are looking at your Greek text and I hope the Monday crowd uses your Greek text, don’t sweat all that stuff if you’re not going to use it. It’s dio, and you wander what dio is, it is a contraction of dia plus your pronoun, ho, this is “on account of, on account of something and it became contracted through usage. So, “On account of” this, now what is it on account of? What is the pronoun here, what’s it referring to do you suppose, on account of what? [someone answers] Okay, verses 1-6, but in particular the last of verse 6, right? Remember what he just got through saying, if you’re a believer what are you going to be doing? You’re going to be having that hope. Now the hope has got to come somehow, these people don’t have it, they should have it but they don’t have it. So where’s the hope going to come from? All right, here’s how. So this passage develops how to get hope.
“On account of this,” on account of the fact that as believers hope should be your possession, and it isn’t actually in history for this group of believers. So now we skip to verse 12, pick up the main verb, blepo, “Take heed, brethren,” you’ve probably had this in first year Greek vocabulary, blepo, to see, it means look out. And it is present, it is present imperative which means continually look out for this thing. This is not a once and for all thing, this is not something you do once in a while, this is to be a habitual pattern… a habitual pattern. This to be a +R learned behavior pattern. It is something you have to train yourself to do.
How do we know, by the way, you have to train yourself to do it and it won’t come naturally. What about this verb tells you that, that this is a pattern in your life that will not come naturally, even though you’re born again, even though the Holy Spirit indwells you, even though you have the new nature of Christ, you can’t expect this just to pop up by itself. It’s an active, it’s an imperative, it’s a command to do something, so if it’s a command it must imply that it doesn’t come naturally. So the imperative mood of blepo teaches us that this is a godly pattern of behavior that is not going to come autonomously into your life. God will not tie it on the end of a parachute and drop it on you. This is something you have to develop yourself, and it takes time but it is a key to hope.
“Take heed, brethren,” that identifies the group as believers, primarily, though there may be unbelievers in amongst them, “lest,” “lest” is a negative purpose, it implies what; what was going to happen if you don’t habitually take heed. Just think it through a minute; the very fact he’s put this in this kind of a construction as a negative purpose, turn the negative purpose clause around, the idea is if you take heed, then something will not happen. Those of you who have had logic and you remember, there’s a little thing, T implies Q and the corollary is not Q implies not T. And translated theologically at this point what it says is: if you take heed this won’t happen to you; conversely, if you find unbelief in your heart the kind of unbelief you see here, it is due to a violation of this principle. Now right there you have a diagnosis of a lot of problems we’re finding among Christians, that if you find a case where a person is completely tubed out and departing from the living God, and we’re going to get into what that is, but if whatever this problem is that’s coming up, and you’ve already got an inkling of what it is that’s coming but because what has been the situation of these believers? They’ve tubed out under pressure. They finally are drifting away, they’ve maintained spirituality for a while and then blah, they’re just discouraged, they’re disheartened, they have no hope. Sound familiar.
All right, that’s the kind of situation which this passage says is due to a violation of something; you haven’t been doing something you should have been doing, and this tells you what. “Take heed,” and it’s going to be explained a little bit what’s involved in taking heed, but right now it says just continually watch it, “lest there be in any one of you,” now those of you who have been in the Greek class, have you got into the conjugating eimi yet? Have you got into anything other than the present? Well this is the future use of eimi here. “Take heed, brethren, lest there will be in any of you,” what does that tell you about how badly these believers were off at the time he wrote it? Were they totally apostate? It was yet future, he was warning them, all right, you’ve lost your hope, you’re not thrilled any more at the teaching of the Word of God, you don’t open your Bibles any more, don’t bother to read it, fill your mind with a lot of stuff but don’t have any time to read the Word of God, that’s a characteristic of your life. Another characteristic is that you’re just generally blah, you don’t want to be around other believers, trying to lone ranger it, that kind of stuff.
All that’s going on but he says listen, I’ll tell you, if you don’t get straightened out on this principle there’s worse coming because you are going to find developing in your heart the following conditions: unbelief, that’s yet future to this group of believers, there will be in some of you “an evil heart of unbelief,” and that’s what’s going to happen and if you see that happening it’s because someone hasn’t done what this verse says they are to do.
What is this “evil heart.” Again, the word “heart” in the Scripture which means that which is at the center, that which is deep, physiologically the heart is superior to the brain in that you can remove the heart from the brain and the heart still beats; the heart supports the brain, not the brain supports the heart. Therefore, by analogy the heart in Scripture refers to more than just mind. In the Bible, in our slide, we have the spirit, the body and the soul. The heart covers part of this. The heart includes, if you study in your concordance, what we call mind and what we call conscience is usually linked together under the overall general term heart.
Now what does the heart do physiologically in the body? It supplies blood. And what is blood in Scripture? The life. So the heart is the picture of that which gives you life, that which gives you the energy and the power and so on to go on living. And when it says here “an evil heart” it means that that heart is constantly, instead of cranking out real life, it’s cranking out all these bad attitudes, –R learned behavior patterns, and –R learned behavior patterns can include not just overt behavior, it’s that too, but it includes mental attitudes. Mental attitudes can be included as learned behavior patterns, you can learn to train yourself to respond unconsciously to things. Coming up in Psalm 51, I’ve reworked it for Sunday night, David is going to confess his sin nature in Psalm 51, and what is he confessing his sin nature for? And I’ve struggled with that a long time because it sounds crazy to be confessing your sin nature.
Well, one of the things that’s going to come out, that solves a problem many have had about this problem of guilt, you’ll confess a specific point act and still fee guilty after you’ve confessed it. Now I used to think that that general guilt was necessarily all of Satan. I’m no longer convinced of that. What has happened is that say you confess some act, it was a point act out of a general pattern. Let’s take an innocuous thing so we won’t be accused, somebody goes out here and steals something. All right, you have kleptomaniac type –R learned behavior pattern, that’s ingrained in your soul. Now you go out and you steal something, and you confess it, and it leads to restoration and so on, but you confess that one act of stealing.
But somehow you still feel guilty. The reason you still feel guilty is because the Holy Spirit is telling you, you’re just a thief without a job. You’re between jobs because you’re the same person that stole and you know you’re the same person that did that act. So even though you confess the act, you’re still guilty because you’re still aware of the fact there’s something in you that will cause you to steal it again so the guilt remains. Now why does the guilt remain? Because that’s the nudging of the Holy Spirit to say look take care of this pattern before it busts loose again. And the feeling of guilt is removed when you begin to initiate certain overt behavior which starts to change that basic materialism lust. And then that nagging kind of shadow guilt also goes away, and it’s it that that David is fussing about in Psalm 51 when he’s confessing his sin nature; he knows there’s part of that within him that’s going to break out again, as it did against Uriah and Bathsheba, so he confesses the act that he did, but then he’s also confessing the fact that he’s got this –R learned behavior pattern that he’s got to untrain, and if he does that then he’s got full restoration, but full restoration doesn’t come just because you confess a point act. You’re back in fellowship, yes, but the Holy Spirit’s not satisfied, He’s nagging you to change it so you’ll be permanently out of a job as a thief in this case.
Now here this heart, this “evil heart of unbelief,” is something that creates, mushrooms, all of these –R learned behavior patterns that are going to develop out of this. You can imagine some of these, just use your imagination. Here the Hebrew Christians are, they’re discouraged, they’re down-hearted, so they have unbelief. There’s the sin. But that sin isn’t going to stay there; what’s that one historic event we studied in the divine viewpoint framework that gives you the model for the psychology of sin; chapter of the Bible, in that one chapter you’ve the basic elements of all sin, where is it? [someone answers] Genesis 3, it’s in 4 too but most of the principles are in Genesis 3. In Genesis 3 you have certain things happen; in Genesis 4 the first part you have some patterns there so don’t laugh too hard, some of you couldn’t think of either one.
The first thing that you notice, go back over the story in your mind now; this is where the divine viewpoint framework will help you, this is the technique that I’m trying to teach you, that when you get into these situations, think, crank it though your mind again the story, and pull out the doctrine again from it. In the story, just think of what happened in Genesis 3; the first thing, Satan comes and what is the guts of Satan’s approach to Adam and Eve there? That God is not a good God, God does not have your best interests in mind and therefore you shouldn’t obey Him, because God isn’t looking out for your personal welfare, He’s a meany, he’s got a club. So the first thing about sin is it’s always identified with some negative attitude toward the doctrine of divine essence, some distortion of the attributes of God. That’s always the way Satan appears to you and it usually comes in this same way it did in the Garden, God’s a bad God. And you get too out of it you stick to the Word of God, look, you can enjoy yourself outside the Word of God, forget it, the Word of God isn’t that important. That kind of thing. After they sinned they become aware of their guilt, so the next thing is guilt. So are these Hebrew Christians experiencing guilt? You bet they’re experiencing guile because they’re involved in the mental attitude sin of unbelief.
So we can tell a lot about the psychology of this congregation that is being addressed in this epistle and we haven’t gone to one psychiatrist for help. No how do we do that? Because the Word of God gives us the principles of how the soul works. So already we know that congregation is guilt-ridden. That’s why there’s so much talk about the cleansed conscience going on in this epistle; look it up in your concordance and find out how many times the word “conscience” occurs in here, all over the place. Why? Because this congregation is loaded with guilt, from one side to the other. Why? Sin of unbelief.
What else about the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 3 gives you the psychology of sin, after they were aware of their guilt what did they try to do? Cover, don’t you know the fig leaves. Do you suppose these believers were covering up? Sure they were covering up, they were covering up with some sins mentioned later on in the text. See their first sin was mental attitude unbelief, and they had that sin so rather than deal with that sin, just like Adam and Eve they went out and got some fig leaves to hide their guilt because now they’re guilty about their unbelief. So what is one of the sins that we mentioned tonight that this congregation is doing that’s just another sin that they’re using to cover up the first one. What aren’t they doing any longer? Fellowshipping together; see what guilt has done, blown the fellowship, so no fellowship. Why do you suppose that’s starting? Because the other believers remind them of their mental attitude sin, every believer is a conscience to every other believers. So you’ve got one sin started here and now you’re going to have a whole bunch of series of cover up sins.
What’s something else this congregation is doing as a way of covering up, do you suppose? [someone answers] All right, they don’t want to listen to the Word of God. Isn’t that a vested interest; no Bible study. Why don’t they want to study the Bible? What are they reminded of every time they come to the Bible? They don’t believe. So obviously they’ve got a vested interest not to study the Bible. They stay away from the Word of God, every time the Word of God is taught they’re staring off in outer space or something, staring at the roof of the synagogue or something. They didn’t have blinking fluorescent tubes in those synagogues.
What else do you suppose this congregation was doing to cover up their mental attitude sin of unbelief? One further thing. [someone answers] All right, they’re going to have an excuse but basically we can just say that in the fainting, you can infer from Hebrews 12 that you have a lot of complaints because Hebrews 12 is written as though its written to a complaining group of people. See, isn’t that common, complaints.
All right, see, that’s a lot of noise, this is all the smoke. Now just look at this for a moment because this is how you can apply it in your own personal life. When you start seeing patterns like this develop in your group or in yourself, these are flags saying hey, something’s wrong. But they’re not necessarily what’s really wrong; they can be just cover-up signals or evidences that all of a sudden you’ve laid layer upon layer, just like an onion, one layer on another and finally it gets big enough so you notice it. All right, you start to notice it and you say now just a minute here, what’s going on. Why do I want to have fellowship with other believers; you start praying about it. Ask God, what is wrong with me right now? Why is it that I don’t want to have fellowship with other believers? Why is it I sit at the Bible and I don’t get anything out of it? There must be a reason I don’t get anything out of if, I’m not going to blame it on somebody else, I must be responsible for that. Now where am I responsible, and so if a believer in this congregation did it he’d go right back to that, mental attitude sin of unbelief, that’s why. And that sin has to be confessed and when that sin is dealt with this pattern is broken up, but that pattern can’t be broken up until the mental attitude sin is dealt with. Now sometimes you have to deal one at a time and peel it away but the point is that’s the cover-up.
Now there’s another thing from the Adam and Eve story about the psychology of sin. What did they do when God confronted them? Passed the buck, blame-shifting, I’m not responsible they are. Who’s “they,” oh, I don’t know, somebody on down the line, not me; I can’t be responsible. Now we’ve got a hint that blame-shifting is going on in this congregation and we get the hint in Hebrews 13:17, verse 7 and 17, “Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.” Verse 17, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief,” now does that give you a hint about the blame-shifting that’s going on in the congregation. What is this congregation doing? [someone answers] Right, the elder’s fault, gotta get a new elder around here, that’s our problem, see, blame-shifting. That’s all it is.
So know your story and here’s where, those of you get these elements, these fixes in the divine viewpoint framework, I’m trying to teach you, you’ve got creation, you’ve got fall, tonight we have shown you how to use one of those points; we’ve pulled out the fall story, we’ve said look, here are these four points on the fall that you can now apply and you can psychoanalyze yourself biblically. I hate to use the term but that’s as good as any other. You can look at yourself and there’s the model for sin.
Now let’s turn back to Hebrews 3:12, unbelief is defined in the context as departing from the living God. Now we’re going to conclude by taking you on a little tour of certain texts of the Old Testament and after we take you on this tour I’m going to ask you what is common to every one of these citations of this title: [he writes something on overhead] So as we go through this kind of make notes on observations of these texts. I’m going to take you through about six or seven occurrences of the living God, and every time this title is used of God something is in the air, there’s a certain environment, there’s a certain context, a certain situation and when we spot that context that environment, that atmosphere, then we’ll understand why the author of Hebrews uses that choice for God. He had a choice of about 158 different titles for God, why did he pick this one.
Deuteronomy 5:26, “For who is there of all
flesh, who has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of
the fire, as we have, and lived?” The
historical context is Exodus, when
Joshua 3:10, the second place where this phrase, “the living God” occurs. “And Joshua said, Hereby shall you know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Hivites,” and so on, and that was the crossing of the Jordan, when the waters parted and there was a tremendous miracle occurred at the beginning of the conquest. That’s the historic context, the beginning of the great conquest, God gave them this piece of evidence.
1 Samuel 17:26, David at Goliath, “And
David spoke to the men who stood by him, and said, What shall be done to this
man that kills this Philistine, and takes away the reproach from Israel? For
who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the
living God.” And the context
historically is that
2 Kings 19:4, Hezekiah, when the Rabshakeh
from
Psalm 42:2, David, one of his most famous psalms, I want you to notice both parts of verse 2, it gives you the hint, there’s something in the background here. Obviously verse 1 is the context, psychologically that’s David’s state. In verse 2 he says, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? [3] My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is your God?” Where is your God, where is your God. That’s the situation of David in Psalm 42.
Psalm 84:2, “My soul longs, yea, even faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. [3] Yea, the sparrow has found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. [4] Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house,” etc. etc. etc. This is not a Davidic psalm, this is a psalm of the sons of Korah.
Jeremiah
And finally one more, Daniel
Now, to conclude tonight, consider the
situation historically of the readers of this epistle of Hebrews. What is it
that you notice about all those references, some characteristics where the
term, “the living God” was used and why you think the author of Hebrews picked
that title to help believers who were in despair. [someone answers] All right, the first thing you notice about
all those things, absolutely despairing situation; the Jews crossing the
Jordan, look, my God, look at the pressures we’ve got, look at the job we’ve
got ahead of us, they needed encouragement.
Moses was supposed to be called to lead the people out of
But what else is also true of all these verses; did you notice something God does? [someone answers] All right, there is a challenge to the doctrine of divine essence, to God’s character, there is always a challenge to it. The Rabshakeh, huh, your God gonna save you? David in Psalm 42, they keep saying where’s your God, where’s your God, where’s your God? There’s always a challenge to God’s character and what else do you notice about all these verses. [someone answers] What about God… now the Jews don’t think abstractly, you’ve got it but let’s develop it a little bit. The Jews don’t think abstractly, the concept of truth means nothing unless it’s filled up with some concrete material. What is it about their God that makes Him true? He acts and he speaks. So God’s acts and His Words.
Now do you see why departing from “the living God.” Now here’s the real knocker if you’ve been following the whole thing. I want to turn back to Hebrews 3 and I want you to notice, in preparation for next time, how these people are departing from the living God. What is it that he has just quoted between verses 7 and 11. What mechanically has the guy quoted? That’s a quotation, where is the quotation from? The Old Testament. What’s the Old Testament? God’s Word. God’s speech, God’s Word. And how are these people with an evil heart of unbelief, what are they doing? They’re apostacizing from what God told them to do. That’s how they’re departing from the living God; a god that is dumb and immobile and they’re handling the God of creation as though he’s like one of the idols, he’s dumb and immobile. So he’s emphasized the point, he’s hit the theme of hope, he’s linked the theme of hope, tried to solve it, not just psychologically but to tie it in with God’s very essence and character and plan for history, magnificent way this man has worked. He solved a psychological problem theologically by going to Bible doctrine and saying look, your problem, the reason you don’t have hope, your problem is that you’re neglecting the very character and essence of God Himself and you’ve got to get tuned with it and get back with it and he’s going to give some more on how to do it later in this chapter.