Clough Hebrews Lesson 29

Overview of Third Warning – 5:11-6:20

The famous warning, the third warning passage but most people aren’t aware it’s the third one, they think it’s the only one. And this is the one where people have a heyday who would love to undermine the doctrine of eternal security. And a lot of people feel very uneasy with Hebrews 6. It’s a very critical chapter.

But the overall section begins earlier, Hebrews 5:11-6:20 and on the mimeographed sheets, the work sheets for tonight, you’ll see an outline that sort of recapitulates what we have covered. You’ll notice under 2b 5:11-6:20: we must therefore go on to maturity. It should be W#3 off to the left margin but these are to show you that this isn’t the first warning passage that we’ve come across. There are many warning passages in Hebrews. Hebrews is an epistle that demands mature interpretation. It’s a very difficult epistle to interpret. And we have to be careful, we just don’t charge in here and so to speak, (quote) “let the spirit lead” because spirits can lead astray. So we don’t rely upon spirits to lead us; we rely upon the laws of hermeneutics or principles of Bible interpretation.

Now the first section, the first part, go back up to the top line of your worksheet and you’ll see where it says: The superiority of Christianity as the basis for exhortation to discourage Hebrew Christians. Now keep in mind that’s the overall objective for the whole section, so no matter what happens in between, in the little places, if we’re going to be correct in our interpretation it’s got to fit that overall theme. So if we interpret something and it doesn’t confirm or substantiate this overall theme then something’s wrong. Either our interpretation of the specific passage is wrong or our generalization of the whole thing is wrong, but something doesn’t fit. The successful interpretation will fit all the data.

Now under that part 1, which is the section that we finished a long time ago, we had a previous warning passage. If you’ll turn back to Hebrews 2:1-4, we’ll look at that one and see if we can come to some sort of an understanding of these warning passages so far. This will prepare us and help us when we come to the big one that we’re coming to right now. In Hebrews 2:1-4, “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. [2] For if the word spoken by angels became,” not just was, but “became steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, [3] How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, [4] God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with various miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will?”

Now that first warning passage, as we summarized on the sheet: We must therefore be more careful not to neglect the Son’s instructions than we did the Old Testament prophet’s instructions. Who are the “we?” The “we” refer to Hebrews Christians. But they are addressed as Hebrews, even though they are Hebrew Christians, the “we” encompasses the nation, “we,” thinking of themselves in their Jewishness, together.

Now we had a second warning passage and that began in Hebrews 3:7, and it said: “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, [8] Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness….” Verse 12, “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.” Verse 14, which we covered several times, “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end,” etc. etc. etc.

Those are the two warning passages. Now if you drop down to the bottom of the worksheet and: Notes on Warning Passages, 1, 2, 3, there’s a principle that you want to notice and the principle will help you understand the enigmatic passage of chapter 6 if you keep in mind that there has to be a unity in the epistle. [can’t understand words] a fundamental problem, a fundamental consideration, a lot of people don’t realize you’ve got to keep the unity of the epistle. You can’t interpret this part of the epistle, then interpret another part of the epistle, then interpret a third epistle and have three different things here. It’s all got to flow together.

So since the exhortation remains the same throughout the epistle, the warning passages must all be solved the same way. Now by that there are three possible solutions to the warning passages. You can say the warning passages are directed to a mixed group, that means mixed, believers and unbelievers, and the warning is against the unbelievers in that mixed group. That’s one way of handling the passage. Another way of saying is it is written to all believers and it is a warning against loss of salvation. On theoretical grounds, just considering the grammar, that’s a possibility. Or, it’s written to believers and it’s warning against discipline. Now those are the three possible ways of handling these kinds of passages wherever you find them in the Bible, not just in Hebrews. So one of these three interpretations has to be the correct one. But notice if one is the interpretation, then the other two can’t be correct. So we have to develop some approaches to find out how we can work with this, coming up with which of the three are to be followed.

Well on your worksheet I’ve outlined from that first warning passage that we just read through, 2:1-4: The Old Testament Law became confirmed by its threat upon disobedience coming through. In other words, when God revealed Himself in the Old Testament He said look, this is what I want you to do and if you don’t do it then this is what I’m going to do to you. And Hebrews 2:1-4, the first warning passage, verifies or confirms itself because those threats of discipline did in fact come true historically. That’s the argument of 2:1-4.

So if you look on the sheet again under the point on the first warning passage: Therefore, how much more so would Jesus’ revelation. Now let’s look at this, we’re looking at 2:1-4 to see how we can handle that warning passage, see if we can handle that warning passage and handle the second one and set ourselves up to handle the third one. That first warning passage speaks of God’s revelation, so you’ve got the revelation, the idea was it came in the Old Testament and it came true in the Old Testament, and it came true by the obvious discipline. But that still doesn’t tell us whether it was addressed to believers, unbelievers, or both and it doesn’t really tell us about the discipline. All it tells us is the principle, and the principle is that God’s threats become true.

Now in the New Testament how do we take that analog. If in the Old Testament God said you do this or you’re going to get blasted, and the blasting came true, obviously the thing to do to apply it in the New Testament is to say what is He saying in the New Testament do and if you don’t do you’re going to get hit? Well, the gospel announcement in the New Testament is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And as I quote here, John 3:18 and 3:36, this is why John and his Gospel, “He that believeth not is condemned already.” “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life.” The idea is in the New Testament, it’s very clear what God wants people to do; He wants people to receive His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And if they don’t, then the big blast is permanent eternal rejection. So there’s a finality about the decision in the New Testament. Now that decision in the New Testament, whether or not one accepts Jesus as the Messiah becomes the great divider that is going to cut through the Jewish community, whether or not they’re going to go along with Jesus as the Messiah. So it’s pretty well concluded that 2:1-4 is a threat directed towards those who would reject the Lord Jesus Christ.

And therefore we would conclude that this warning is directed to a mixed group or at least a potentially mixed group, and he is saying that those who reject Messiah and let these Messianic claims of this Jewish carpenter go by the board, you are going to lose out on so great salvation. And part of the blasting is not just eternal ejection but in this era of history it would be even a more immediate blasting and that is that in 70 AD Titus, Vespasian and later his son Titus, would destroy Jerusalem. So there was a near temporal discipline and a far eternal discipline that would come upon those who rejected Messiah. So that’s the first warning passage. Notice we did not solve, and this is the key point, we did not solve the question of believer or unbeliever directly from the Old Testament, because in the Old Testament we didn’t know that; it was just the principle in the Old Testament that if you reject whatever God tells you you’re going to get hurt. So we take that principle, forgetting whether in the Old Testament you were dealing with believers or unbelievers, forget that for a moment and just deal with the principle, that rejection of God’s Word leads to condemnation, bring the principle over to the New Testament, see what is the chief claim of the New Testament, and then as we approach it that way the other problem solves itself because the central claim of the New Testament is “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now let’s go to the second warning passage, the passage that began in 3:7 and went through 4:13. That was that famous rest passage, if you don’t enter My rest you will be excluded and the point that was made, if you look on the worksheet: The Old Testament revelation of rest excluded those who turned back, just as the sword of the cherub excluded Adam and Eve from the tree of life. Now, back in the Old Testament, again… we’ll put the Old Testament and the New Testament, forget whether the Old Testament was dealing with believers or unbelievers and just look at the principle. What was the principle back in the Old Testament era. The principle was God offers a rest on the condition that you have to enter it by faith. So the rest was a “by faith” entrance. Remember Caleb and Joshua, the men that had the faith that God would do what He said and they went ahead and used the faith technique and so on, they entered the rest.

So the principle is that faith is needed to enter the promised rest. Now you can argue about exactly what the details of the rest are, we’ll cover that in a moment but forget the details and just look at the principle, the big picture, that is, in the Old Testament that you are excluded from God’s promised rest if you don’t believe. That, simply stated, is the Old Testament principle illustrated 55 different ways but still that’s the one principle. Now in the New Testament a rest is offered and the rest offered in the New Testament is the eternal rest in Jesus Christ; the rest from works of self-justification, the rest of all human good and so on. This is the central rest offered in the New Testament and thus if one does not have faith to enter into that rest, he too is excluded. So this again would point to the fact that we are dealing here with a mixed situation in which He is warning that there may be those present, hearing the Word of God, who will not exercise faith and appropriate God’s promises.

Now we come to the general principle of interpretation on your worksheet. In the historical progress of revelation God first reveals concrete, easy to see, details, then later He reveals more general harder to see viewpoint. In other words, we’ll start off with a simple thing. What did God tell Adam to do? Till the Garden, now that’s a very simple command, but that was his calling in his day in very simple terms. That is analogous to the calling that God has given every man down through history, and let’s take the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father told Jesus Christ not to till the ground because Christ had a greater minister and Christ’s ministry was to fulfill Messiahship. But in principle Jesus’ command and Adam’s command were the two same commands, it’s just that Adam’s command was naïve, simple, easy to see, very simplified, no complexities, no detail. But the calling is the same thing, it just so happens Christ’s calling is a lot more complicated, but God didn’t give Adam this calling. All he gave Adam was one simple thing: take care of My Garden.

Now that’s why you want to master the early chapters of the Bible because it’s in those early chapters where truths are presented without all the mess that comes in later on, and you get yourself firm on the simple pictures in the Old Testament, come forward in time, then you can understand the New Testament. But the New Testament cannot be understood in these difficult sections without an adequate understanding of the Old.

So that’s the general principle, now let’s take it and give some illustrations. In the Old Testament respect for God’s Law was taught by judgments upon everything from murmuring to not looking upon the raised serpent. And I cite Numbers 21, so if you’ll turn to Numbers 21 let’s look at that raised serpent because I want to show you a way Jesus had of interpreting the Old Testament and applying it to Himself. Here’s our problem; there’s such a thing as a type and then there’s such a thing as an antitype. That means there is something in the Old Testament, an Old Testament picture or image or event, and then there’s something in the New Testament that corresponds to that image or event.

Now what Christians inevitably do is they take this Old Testament picture and they compare it with the New Testament picture and they see, oh, there’s a similarity, look, there’s a type/anti-type relationship, then they assume that every point comes over and corresponds. Wrong. In typological interpretation there is not a one to one correspondence, and if you try to press typological interpretation to a one to one correspondence, you always get in trouble. The reason for that is history is non repetitive in the Bible. You’ll never have a one to one correspondence because every moment of history is unique. So there can’t be a simple one to one mapping from the Old Testament to the New Testament. This you’ve got to put out of your mind. There are only similarities.

Now let’s look at the Numbers 21:5 passage, then we’ll come to John 3 and see how Jesus this very same typological interpretation. “The people spoke against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, there’s no water, our souls loathes this light bread. [6] And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many people of Israel died.” Now that’s the real life situation, lethal snake bites. [7] “Therefore the people came to Moses,” notice what they did, they “came to Moses and said, We have sinned; for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that He take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. [8] And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looks upon it shall live.” By the way, those of you interested in medicine, that’s where you get the symbol for medicine from. It comes out of Numbers 21. [9] “And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that, if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”

Now let’s see if we can spot some elements in this type and then let’s get a lesson personally from the Lord Jesus Christ as to how He interpreted this type and this will set us up to get some good authoritative Bible commentary. What is one of the things? Do you suppose these people involved here were believers or unbeliever? It would seem from verse 7 that these people were mostly believers because they’re confessing their sin, they acknowledge they’ve done something wrong. So one point in the type is that it involved believers; to the best of our knowledge it involved believers; for all the world these people looked like believers. A second thing about the serpent is the serpent is a sign of evil in the Old Testament. So we’ll put snake equals evil. Now on the pole the snake, the symbol of evil is [sounds like: impinioned] on this pole, and then held up in front of the people. The snake is not real, it’s a statue or a stand-in for evil. So you take the symbol of evil and hold it up on a pole, and then we’ll say that the fourth element is that the people have to look up. So we’ve got four elements in this type: one, it involves believers; two, it involves the evil symbol out of the Old Testament; three, it involves a symbol, or we’ll put a stand-in using the evil symbol; and four, it involves personal appropriation because the people, once they are bitten they have to exercise their volition to look up and be healed.

Now come to John 3:14 and see Jesus uses this as a type, but watch what He doesn’t use about it as a type. I’m sure if you were looking in the Old Testament for types of Christ this would not be one of the types you’d pick, the very symbol of evil but much to our surprise in John 3:14 what does the Lord Jesus Christ use to teach about Himself? The symbol of evil; He says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, [15] That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Now, if Jesus believed in this one to one correspondence theory that so many Christians appear to, first of all we’ve got a problem because the first point of correspondence would be that in the Old Testament it involved all believers, so immediately you’ve got a problem because Jesus is interpreting this for unbelievers. So in the antitype Jesus sees no correspondence, He applies it to unbelievers, not believers. These aren’t believers who are under discipline that must look to Christ to have their sins forgiven. These are unbelievers that must look to Jesus Christ for salvation. So the first element in the type Jesus refuses to carry over into the antitype. He drops it.

Let’s look at the second element; the second element in the type is that the snake was a symbol of evil. Now Jesus isn’t explicit, He doesn’t even mention the snake bite, but by the way He does it in verses 14-15 what do you think would be legitimate? Do you think, from what you see in verses 14-15 that Jesus probably had the snake bite on His mind and if so, what was He investing the snake bite with now in the antitype. What became the analog of the snake bite? The snake bite in the type was that which hurt the people so they had to look up. [someone answers] Sin or evil, so it appears to [can’t understand word] point two because this would be evil and the bite of the serpent would be, of course, Satan, and it would be the picture as a person was poisoned physically in the Old Testament because the snake bit them and the poison went into their blood that poisoned their life, so all people are poisoned before God by sin. So it appears that the second point Jesus did carry over.

So let’s watch what’s happening now, He didn’t carry the first point in the type across. He’s carrying the second point in the type across. Now let’s look at point 3, do you suppose the Lord Jesus Christ is carrying the third point across? And if so, how do you explain the fact that Jesus Christ is an antitype of the symbol of evil out of the Old Testament? [someone answers] Exactly, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible points out, became sin for you. In other words, before the Father on the cross Jesus Christ was one big glob of sin. That’s what He was sweating in the Garden of Gethsemane because He didn’t like that. So Jesus Christ became identified totally and completely with sin on the cross. So that element is carried.

Now is the fourth element carried across? What does He say in verse 15, “That whosoever believeth in Him,” in other words, whoever looks upon Me, so that is carried across. So the fourth element is carried across. Now look, of the four elements one of them is dropped, the very one that we’d love to be curious about, because in the Old Testament it was a situation that historically involved believers, Jesus maps it over into the New Testament and now it becomes something to do with unbelievers. Now that freedom that you just observed is the genuine freedom allowed in God’s Word by typological interpretation. Typological interpretation is free to draw limited parallels, not comprehensive parallels. So be aware of stretching points to make types fit antitypes. Be careful.

All right, that over with let’s now check something… by the way, what do you notice about God’s method or His pedagogy in history? Which came first? The simple problem of physical snake bites or the more complicated problem of total depravity. Do you see how God first, in the progress of revelation, how He first gave just a simple, easy to understand thing, a snake bite, everybody can understand that. But then the theologically complicated thing of eternal life and eternal death is saved for centuries later. Do you notice how God works; He moves from the simple, the physical, the easy to understand to the more complicated and more theologically sophisticated problem.

There’s a second in your worksheet under the rest; we saw that happen. The same kind of progress. Rest was first shown very simply in Genesis 2, God rested the seventh day. Now the point is that God worked all the other days and He rested the seventh day. Easy to understand concept, but it is a concept that forevermore defines what rest is. Rest is done only after the six days of work are finished. So forevermore in Scripture, in history, when you see the word “rest” you should hear also Genesis 2:1-3, rest is after the job is done. So the rest is always going to come at the end of something. Later on the rest is identified with the land of Canaan. They come into Canaan and after they come into Canaan and God gives them a rest from their enemies they are in the rest. That’s simple to understand. Did the resting period come during or after the conquest? It came after the conquest, so the land of Canaan was at the end of the conquest of Joshua. Now it’s true the conquest was imperfect so the rest was an imperfect rest, but the principle was the same. David conquered the Philistines and when David conquered the Philistines, 2 Samuel 7, it says God gave him rest from all his enemies; after he conquered the Philistines God gave him rest. So the rest again was something which followed a work of God. And then finally during the millennial kingdom we have the millennial kingdom, the millennial rest, but even that isn’t the final one because we have the eternal rest.

Now, how can we account for the word, that one word, “rest” occurs as God’s rest, it occurs as the Sabbath rest, it occurs as the land of Canaan rest; it occurs as David’s rest, it occurs as the millennial kingdom rest and finally it occurs as the ultimate eternal rest. There again is the progress of revelation. God has this in mind all along. What God did after His six days is that He finished His work and He wants us to join and share in that eternal rest. But how many centuries have gone by since creation that we haven’t yet participated in God’s eternal rest. God, so to speak, is simply sitting, waiting for us to enter into His rest and it’s taking us a long time to get to the point of entering into His rest because we haven’t finished the job which we’re doing on the earth like He told us to do. But when we finish, then eternal rest is there; it’s always been there, from the very moment and hour of creation God’s rest has been there, and that’s the destiny, the eternal destiny of the redeemed, to share God’s rest.

Now look at what’s happened? Who were those who were excluded from the land of Canaan? Were they believers or unbelievers? We don’t know. Obviously believers must have been excluded from the land of Canaan. Moses was a believer and he was excluded from the land of Canaan. So whether back here believers or unbelievers were excluded isn’t the issue; you can’t tell very easily from the Old Testament whether they were believers or unbelievers. Just like in that serpent thing, they were believers but it didn’t make a difference whether they were believers or unbelievers, when Christ pulled the principle over He made it right down the line for the gospel, believer and unbeliever. Same here, who is going to participate in the ultimate rest? Believer or unbeliever? Obviously only believer.

So when you get down to the last stage in God’s revelation of all these terms, whether you want to deal with the snake on the pole, if you want to deal with rest, you want to deal with anything, when you get down to the end it’s the believer versus the unbeliever because that’s the ultimate category in eternity. Ultimate categories in eternity aren’t between carnal and spiritual Christians. That category is a temporary one that’s erased before the end of history. In eternity future the ultimate category that forever separates is the believer and the unbeliever. This is why in Sunday morning service we are going to deal with the imprecatory Psalms, they’re coming up, I’m going to show you that “love thy neighbor” is not a moral absolute. “Love thy neighbor” is a command given only for the period of grace; in eternity we are commanded to hate our enemy if he happens to be an unbeliever, and that’s the eternal absolute command because there’s always a moral separation, forever and ever and ever between believer and unbeliever and it must be one of perfect hatred. So “love thy neighbor” is only a command given during the period of grace; the ethics of eternity are different than the ethics of today because of grace.

So these things change as they move toward this final culmination. So final application and this hopefully will give some principles. The issue is not whether in the anticipatory forms believers or unbelievers were involved. Believe me, I’ve tried and tried and tried to figure this one out and the text of the Old Testament doesn’t give you enough data to find out. The issue is the boundaries of God’s plan of salvation. What is the characteristic found in all the anticipatory forms: enduring faith. And that’s the principle the author of Hebrews is trying to say. He’s saying I don’t care what you point to in the Old Testament, nobody was counted in on the blessing who did not have just a point faith but an enduring faith. That’s his point. The characteristic of salvation is faith that endures, not just faith for a moment.

So, what do we come to? We come to a division, a parting of the way, that the author of Hebrews is setting up. Those who have faith for a moment and those who have enduring faith. And he says that those who are part of God’s plan for all eternity, by virtue of every single type you can pull out of the Bible are always those with enduring faith. Faith for a moment doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in Scripture. Now you say, isn’t this getting into salvation by works? Isn’t this saying that you have to earn your salvation? Not if you understand it correctly. Let me give you maybe an analogous way.

Turn to Galatians 5, Paul is doing the same thing but he does it in a different way. Galatians 5:21, it’s just as clear as can be, “Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and the like; of which I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” So he is saying these are habitual sin patterns; it’s not talking about isolated sin, point sins, it’s talking about these become life dominating patterns and Paul says a person who has these life dominating patterns will not, is not, and never shall be part of the kingdom of God as long as they have these life-dominating patterns. So you have those who are, what we will say they are saved, and those with these habitual life-dominating sin patterns. And Paul warns us that he has told us before and he tells us again, don’t twist and distort God’s gracious plan of salvation to get around it, you can’t because the genuine people who are saved will be dealt with by the Holy Spirit to bust up these sin patterns before eternity. In other words, if a person is a real believer and they are involved in these sin patterns, God the Holy Spirit will take action in this life to begin to break the back of these patterns. It may be painful, he may have to physically kill the believer to do it but God’s children will not be permitted to be left in the clutches of these habitual patterns of sin.

The same principle comes out in Ephesians 5:5, “For this ye know, that no whoremonger [fornicator], nor unclean person, nor covetous man, (who is an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” So he talks about here the idolater which again is a life-dominating sin pattern and then he contrasts that with the category of the saved. Do you see what Paul has done? He is simply saying that these life-dominating patterns can’t remain. This is why in John’s epistle he says we who are believers have the seed of God in us and we cannot habitually sin, that’s what John’s talking about, same thing.

Now what I have tried to do since tonight we’re just going to get into the beginning of this major warning passage in Hebrews, I’ve tried to give you a field for typological interpretation, and I’ve tried to show you that there’s this ever enduring repeated over and over again category in the Bible. Now I’ve already told you in effect how I’m going to handle Hebrews 6; I’ll leave it to your imagination, but turn to Hebrews 5. If you paid attention to what we just did you’ve got the answer, I’ve just given it to you.

Are there any questions before we start the verse by verse exegesis of this passage. Are there any questions about typological interpretation or anything we’ve done. [someone asks ?] Yes, except our problem is that we’re finite observers, and we can honestly say as far as we see Lord, they don’t seem to be believers to us. God looks on the heart, not on the appearance, and sometimes you’d be real surprised. It’s really going to be interesting who we meet in eternity, but as I say I think it’s a general observation because of these passages. What do you do, when Paul walked into Corinth, when he walked into Galatia, he wasn’t going into some theoretical thing, he was just saying look people, if these patterns are in your life you just haven’t been in touch with the Spirit of God because you would have done something about it, you’d be miserable, something would be happening, you’d flat on your back, He’d be dealing with it or something but you can’t sit there and claim to be absolutely unchanged in a very fundamental part of your soul and then turn right around and claim that you’re regenerate. See, this is the correspondence, the Bible does have to fit reality and reality is the empirical reality that we observe. This is where the Jewish mind just doesn’t tolerate this platonic thing, you know, oh, I’m saved up here in the realm of the ideas, but down here I’m free to spin my wheels. There’s none of that dualism in the text.

Any other questions? [someone asks] Oh, that’s a different story, all of us have habitual sin problems of which we’re not aware but in the progress of sanctification, 1 John 1:8 talks about that and admits, “If we say we don’t have habitual sins patterns we lie,” but the idea there is that as we grow spiritually the Holy Spirit brings these to our mind and at least deals with a significant portion of them. The point is making in these other passages was these were blatant things that were mainline obvious things that God the Holy Spirit showed no evidence of dealing with. And these people were aware of them, these weren’t some unsophisticated thing; I mean, everybody in Corinth, the playboy city, knew what those sin patterns were. It wasn’t any theoretical academic problem. But I agree there … it’s good you asked this question because this is not teaching perfectionism. It’s not saying you have to be perfect to be saved; that’s not the teaching of Scripture. All Paul is saying is that all of us are touched by these sins, there’s got to be evidence of some change somewhere to claim salvation. In other words, you may have 48 different sin patterns going all over the board. Well what Paul saying is golly, there’s got to be some of them that are being changed, somewhere along the line. Or else it’s futile to turn right around and claim that the Holy Spirit’s at work; where is He at work? Where do you tell that the Holy Spirit’s at work? The only test we’ve got, and this is a significant corollary to this whole concept, how do you tell when the Holy Spirit’s working. Let’s see how anybody draws a conclusion.

[someone says something] All right, can you make it more simple based than what this pattern that we’ve just observed. How can you tell that God the Holy Spirit is working just considering what we’ve just said. What’s one thing that’s got to be happening. There’s got to be a hungering for righteousness and a dissatisfaction with the sin pattern, at least there’s got to be that. It’s not claiming you’ll always master them but there’s a dissatisfaction with them; that right there is a sign that the Holy Spirit is working, and the other thing is, to make it broad and more encompassing, the rule is you can tell where and when the Holy Spirit’s working because He will be bringing people into conformity with the Word of God. There will be a change moving the trajectory of the path of life over toward the standards of the Word. There’ll be increasing conformity to the Word of God. And that’s why, and you may have asked the question, we’ll ask it and answer it in the morning series, why does God the Holy Spirit make canonical Scripture? Why, as a matter of fact, doesn’t God the Holy Spirit give prophets in every generation? Why doesn’t He repeat Himself with the same revelation through living prophets in every generation? Why is it that as a matter of fact there have only been three periods of world history where you’ve had prophets in concentrated form? Mount Sinai, in the time of Moses, the time of Elijah and the time of Christ and in between you’ve had relative periods, centuries long of silence with no living prophecy, no living voice, nothing, just the letter of the Word of God’s Law. Now why does …

[Tape turns] … indicate a drying up of spiritual resources? Not at all, it indicates a normative occurrence. God gives His Law and He expects us to be ruled by it. And when He’s going to make a big change, then the fireworks start up again, lots of miracles and everything else because He’s going to add a new area to His Law. But if He’s not adding a new area there aren’t any fireworks, there aren’t any great miracles or anything else, this is just normative, it fits in history; prove it yourself by reading the Bible and just chart the frequency of miracles.

So there’s always this…why, there’s just a dead letter, so to speak, of the Word, it’s not dead, it’s the guideline, the marker, the Holy Spirit’s gone down the highway and put signs down the road and left them there and He’s not going to repaint them every year, He’s just going to leave them there so we’ll know where the road is, that’s the point.

Are there any other questions on this area? [someone asks ?] All right, the question is what about the man in 1 Corinthians 5 who had a particularly spectacular form of fornicating. And even for Corinth it was spectacular which is really saying it’s spectacular because they had everything in the world. Some day for some of you gentle souls I’m going to get a book and you can see for yourself some of the statue art of the Old Testament and I’ll show you what the high places were and everything else and you’ll be surprised. But the point is that when you see this stuff go on you’ll understand what the prophets would by crying against. Talk about our day, our day doesn’t hold a candle to the good old times of the Bible. But fornicating patterns of this man in 1 Corinthians 5:5 were such… apparently Paul knew he was a believer, how he know I don’t now, maybe Paul knew him personally or something. But Paul definitely says the man’s a believer but he sees the problem that this problem has not been dealt with and Paul is so emphatic that this pattern be dealt that he goes to the extreme of an apostolic excommunication to put him under areas of intense satanic attack until it just burns that whole thing up. Even to the point of physically killing the man; Paul risks that because he says if that doesn’t happen, apparently the idea is, theoretically at least, he could lose his salvation. We’re not for sure how all this works together except for the fact that [can't understand word] that his spirit may be saved and it’s a perfect clause, so the salvation of our spirit for eternity depends in some way upon the Holy Spirit working in our body right now. Now obviously the Holy Spirit today right now is not developing perfection in us so it can’t be that the Holy Spirit has to perfect us to save our human spirit but in some way He’s got to begin to bust up the behavior patterns that are unscriptural now or else we are thrown into eternal jeopardy. It is that serious, the linkage between these patterns of behavior and our eternal salvation.

[someone says something] I don’t see that any minister today has the authority to do what Paul did because Paul was an apostle and we’re not told that a pastor-teacher has that kind of authority but I just say from observation that God in His sovereignty can do it to individuals; that apparently is a graphic illustration like Ananias and Sapphira. I mean, good night, if everybody who gave falsely to the church were disciplined the way Ananias and Sapphira were the church population would be significantly lower. So the thing is that God at the beginning of each dispensation God is real hard-nosed about His Laws and it’s because He’s trying to generate a historic respect for this new revelation. You have, for example, Moses comes out with this tremendous of gobs of revelation, utterly new, just think of what the people had been living in for 400 years under Egypt. Now what they’ve got to do is they’ve got to get this new revelation and then God immediately right behind comes in with very nitpicky discipline, over every little thing. And what He’s trying to do is He’s real hard on the first generation of believers that receive the truth because they’re suffering under category five and six type suffering, they’re suffering for the generations of believers yet to follow them, that must have respect for God’s Word. But in every dispensation the level of discipline drops with time and you can see that happen again and again.

[someone says something] In justification? All right, in justification what we have is that God the Father makes a decree that we share God the Son’s righteousness, that God the Son’s righteousness is credited to our account. Justification is a work by God the Father confirming a work by God the Son. But notice the doctrine of justification doesn’t directly involve the Holy Spirit’s work in our life. Now the plan of God is a unity, not a diversity, and so when we’re talking about the Holy Spirit, we’ll just say breaking up the learned behavior patterns in the life, that too is part of the one big salvation package. Now on theoretical grounds it seems to create a stress because you say well if this work is done over here, God the Father, God the Son do their work, then why do this work? Well, let’s take it and amplify it a little bit more. What about Christ and His intercessory ministry. If it’s true that just justification isolated artificially from the rest of the work of the Triune God is an all sufficient thing, in the sense that God the Father, God the Son, operate independently of these other things, then obviously there’s no need for Christ to intercede for us either. Why is He interceding for us if the other thing doesn’t count. The idea is that Jesus Christ is interceding for us to bring forth and make effective this justification. The Holy Spirit is busting up these learned behavior patterns to bring forth and to make actual justification. Remember, justification is a decree in heaven, it has to do with the top circle, but not that which has to do in the bottom circle. You can’t artificially split off eternity in history this way. Now the Reformers were not doing that, if you’re thinking about the Protestant Catholic thing, that was another problem. That was not… the argument there was theological precedent of the work, not whether you could split one off from the other.

The point is that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit have to perform all their works as a team. And you can’t visualize the plan of salvation as God the Father doing His work, God the Holy Spirit not doing His. That would create diversity inside the Trinity. That’s the point there, the Trinity always operates together as a team.

All right let’s to Hebrews 5:11, what I’m tiring to do is get a lot of the air cleared so when we get to the vocabulary, see, we’ve got to do a lot of vocabulary in chapter 6, there’s a tremendous amount of vocabulary study coming up on these words and I’m afraid you’re going to lose the forest for the trees if we don’t lay out the big picture first.

Verse 11 is the first part of this section. Now you’ll observe something. Look at Hebrews 5:10 and compare it with Hebrews 7:1. You see, we’re looking at this one section, 5:11 through 6:20, and I’m asking you to look at 7:1 and 5:10. These are the verses immediately preceding and immediately following this section. Do you notice something about those two verses? If so what do you notice about those two verses? The subject that he was talking about before he stopped at verse 11 was Melchizedek and Christ’s correspondence with Melchizedek. Melchizedek was the type, Christ was the antitype. What is he talking about in 7:1, the correspondence between Melchizedek and Jesus Christ. So he’s involved right in the middle, and he stops. Hebrews 5 beginning at verse 11 is an interruption in the flow of thought. The thought progresses very nicely with Christ and Melchizedek, Christ and Melchizedek, stops at verse 11, goes into all this other stuff, then comes back, Hebrews 7:1, Christ and Melchizedek, Christ and Melchizedek, Christ and Melchizedek. So we’re involved in a parenthesis here. And this is a warning passage where he stops the progress of his teaching to pause to warn believers again.

Now what does he do? “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing that you are dull of hearing.” Now this is the most insulting warning that he has so far. Now when you take homiletics and they try to mess you up with all the gimmicks from Time Magazine and three points and a poem and everything else is substitute for the Word of God, any time that someone doesn’t pay attention to the Word automatically it’s the speaker’s fault. But this author apparently never had a homiletics course because he says that the problem isn’t in the speaker, the problem is the hearers. So he says, “we have many things to say,” or literally, Melchizedek and this analogy with Christ is the center of our discourse, and then the next one, “hard to say,” those of you who have a little Greek you’ll notice a word there, dus, that’s the preface on this word, and then it is ermeneutos, now if you put an “h” right there in front of the “e” you get the word “hermeneutics.” And that is the science of the interpretation of literature, and the preface, dus on the word, means difficult to interpret. So this author at least has graced us with the understanding that he did consider what he was getting into a bit difficult to interpret.

In other words he said up to now I’ve dealt with Melchizedek and Christ but I’ve got a lot more things to say, that is chapter 7 and following, that are even harder to understand. So I’m going to give up right now and give you a warning that you’d better pay attention because what’s coming is even harder than what has gone before. Hard to understand because, and the last clause in verse 11, proves that the reason the difficult… it was hard to interpret was on the fault of his listeners, “because you all,” plural, and now we’re back to that verb that he also uses, ginomai in the Greek, some of you Greek scholars do you notice what tense it is? Perfect, it means you have become dull of hearing with the result that I’m trying to fight right now. So they have become dull sometime since they became Christians. Now you look at this because this shows you it is possible for you to become a moron spiritually, after you have become a Christian it was possible for you to degenerate into moron status. This is why churches today are filled with people that cannot stand the Word of God, and I am convinced as a practicing pastor the best treatment is to ram the Word down their throat until they get mad and either leave or get with it. But you can’t diddle around with spiritual morons. And if you have them in your group the faster you get rid of dirts like that the better off you are because it just clears the air for everybody else and you can get on and talk about things that are worthwhile.

“…you have become dull of hearing,” and this means apparently there was a process of time and he’s going to tell us how they got stupid in a little bit. But this is a plain flat clear assertion that believers can become stupid.

Now verse 12 and we’ll do part of verse 12 and then we’ll end for tonight, “For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and have become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat [solid food].” Now it’s interesting that there are two words in the Greek for time that are used in the Bible; one is chronos, and the other is kairos. The first word refers to duration of time; the second word refers to a special season or special quality of time. And in verse 12 when it uses the word “time,” which one is used here? chronos, “when for the time,” so therefore what’s the emphasis he’s talking about. He’s not saying now is the hour because I visited your synagogue and you should be teachers because I’m here, that’s not… it’s not kairos, it’s chronos, and he says in other words you have been delinquent for so long I expect you to be teachers by now. Now that tells you something about the first century Christians, that they expected Christians, not the fact that everybody had the gift of teaching, that’s not true, but they expected every believer to be a teacher in some degree.

That’s a powerful expectation, just like the expectation every Christian should be able to witness and evangelize for the Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t say well I don’t have the gift of evangelism. Fine, the Bible doesn’t say you have to have the gift of evangelism to evangelize. The gift of evangelism is just a simple special [can’t understand word], just like you’re not going to believe unless you have the gift of faith? Obviously not, the gift of faith is an extra amount of concentrated faith. Not going to serve unless you have the gift of helps. Obviously not, none of the gifts mean an exclusive thing. Same here with teaching, this author expected… now we can perform a little deduction here, and let’s look at the chronos period and see if we can evaluate what the time expectancy of believers from the time they became Christians until the time they should be teachers was in the first century.

If we assume that the epistle of Hebrews was written in 68 AD, that is before Vespasian really got going on Jerusalem and since Jesus Christ died in the 30s, and since, according to Hebrews 2:3-4 these people had been witnessed to not by Christ but had been witnessed to by those who heard Christ, and if were written from Rome and again there are a lot of if, if and we know this one, but if it was written from Rome, say we get the gospel to Rome by 40 AD and suppose these believers had about 25 years maximum. Now probably it’s a lot less than that because a lot of them are more… median age here would be about 10 years. Now that gives you some idea of the quantity of time that the New Testament authors operated under, what kind of a schedule of Christian growth. They expected that by 5 to 10 years, say around ten years, a Christian should be a qualified teacher. Now that’ll do two things for you, it’ll show you, number one, that people who were witnessed to six hours ago are not going to be teachers. If you’re in some group that leads you to Christ and then five minutes later wants you out witnessing, there’s something wrong.

On the other hand, we have people who have been in the pews years and decades and they don’t know how to teach their way out of a bag and the reason I know it is because they’ve never taught their children and I have to teach them in counseling. And if they have a teenager and they’ve been Christians from the time before they were teenagers, obviously it doesn’t require a genius in math to realize that they’ve been Christians at least 15 years or they couldn’t have had a teenager. So we have a massive amount of believers who have had the Word, had the Word, had the Word, had the Word and just like these, still needing someone to tell them how to be saved and what justification is all about and everything else. So this gives you an idea of the expectancy of growth in the early church.

Next week we’ll finish out that verse.