Clough Hebrews Lesson 30
Analysis
of Third Warning –
Hebrews 5:12, we’re on the warning section which is the famous warning section, made famous by people who dive into chapter 6 without studying chapter 5 but this section begins in verse 11. Last week we dealt with the fact that he had many things that were hard to interpret; these are different things difficult out of the Old Testament. “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing that you are dull of hearing,” and the word is “have become dull of hearing,” it was a perfect tense, dull of hearing in time past with results that continue into the present. You have “become,” it’s not the verb to be but it’s a verb, ginomai, and we showed how in verse 12, “When for the time ye ought to be teachers,” there was an extended time interval indicated by the word chronos, and this was also indicative of a time element of growth in the Christian life, we estimated that this was about ten years, which gives you some idea of how long Christian maturity should take. That doesn’t mean Christian perfection but it means that point at which the believer has a good solid grounding in the doctrines of the Word of God.
The rest of verse 12 dealt with going back to the first principles of the oracles of God, now that’s the phrase we want to pick up tonight and begin because beginning with this phrase we have a series of interpretations that are going to be made. And the outcome of chapter 6 depends on this series of interpretations. So as I go along we will point this line of reasoning out to you so you’ll not only know what the interpretation is but you’ll know why the interpretation is as it is. And this will also give us a good exercise in exegesis besides, principles of interpretation. “You have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.” Now the oracles of God, if you’ll turn to Romans 3:2, Paul uses this expression; the oracles of God is an idiom for the Old Testament. So our first guide to interpretation is how these expressions are used and you want to be careful to define how these expressions are used because before we finish tonight I’m going to show you an illustration of how some well known Bible teachers plunge in here without looking at the context, and make some real good cases of what we call isogesis, reading into the text.
The oracles of God in Romans 3:2 refer to the Old Testament Scriptures. [1, “What advantage, then has the Jew? … [2] Much every way, chiefly because unto them were committed the oracle of God.”] Now this isn’t too much of a big point but I just want to show you the methodology; “the oracles of God,” look in a concordance, find out where else it is used, find out where else that it is used what it means, and it means Old Testament Scriptures.
So coming back to Hebrews 5 we know something about these oracles of God, namely that these believers were taught out of the Old Testament, at their beginning follow-up, because he’s talking about back to teaching them the simple things, “the first principles of the oracles of God,” these are the primary things of the Old Testament, that would be such as our divine viewpoint framework, that some people think is so heavy in detail. The divine viewpoint framework is just considered the ABC’s, that’s just the beginning. After you get through the divine viewpoint framework you’ve got the framework, now you start into the picture. So the framework is just the simple stuff and that’s the creation, the fall, the flood, the covenant of Noah, the call of Abraham, the Exodus, Sinai and a number of other points in this framework. These are the first principles of the Old Testament.
The author goes on
to describe these believers, “you have become,” again it is a perfect, second
person perfect, indicative of ginomai,
“you have become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat.” Does anybody know another place in the New
Testament where this same imagery is used?
In Peter, it is “desire ye the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow
thereby,” and if you haven’t had babies in your house you can’t appreciate that
very anemic little statement, “desire ye the sincere milk of the Word,” have
you ever seen a little baby desire milk?
They yell their head off, two or
Another place this imagery of babyhood is used in the New Testament, it’s a common imagery for infantile believers. Do you know another place, it’s very much related to this one. Let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 3:1, this is the other place where a certain kind of carnality is explained. It says in verse 1, “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.” Now the word “carnal” in the Greek in verse 1 is different from the word “carnal” in verse 3. The word “carnal” in verse 1 refers to a believer, not out of fellowship, but one who… here’s the top circle and here’s the bottom circle, one who has such a small bottom circle that their production is very limited compared to the production of their old sin nature. So looking at these people from the outside we call them “carnal” not because they’re out of fellowship but because they haven’t become spiritually strong enough to overcome and put out a spiritual testimony bigger than the testimony of the sin nature. So that’s why the word “carnal” is here used for new believers.
And notice what
Paul says, verse 2, “I have fed you with
milk, and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, and neither
yet are ye now able to bear it.” See, they were too busy speaking in
tongues. These are the people that spoke
in tongues, by the way, and you’ll notice how high on the spiritual totem pole
they were. They couldn’t even take in
any advanced doctrine. They were still
messing around with two plus two is four, put the nipple on the bottle and do
something else. So that’s the spiritual
situation in
You see it in 1 Peter; by now it might suggest to you that sure enough, this is something too that comes out of the Old Testament, and if you’ll turn back to Isaiah 28:9 you’ll see that it’s grounded in Old Testament imagery. You see, so much of the New Testament is grounded on the Old Testament that the more you know of the Old the less new the New Testament seems to be. And the more you know of your Old Testament, then that which is really new in the New Testament stands out but you can’t appreciate what is new about the New Testament till you realize what’s old about the New Testament, and in Isaiah 28:9 here is the centuries old imagery of young believers compared to babies. “Whom shall he teach knowledge and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast.” In other words, they have to get to a point of maturity where they can start to digest regular food. If you’ve gone through the experience of raising a child you’ll know that there’s a problem in their digestive system when you start in with solid food, and especially when you change the diapers you’ll know real quick. So the transition between drinking milk and eating food involves a change in the whole digestive track of the infant. Now that’s the same way with believers. When you pass from simple things, like the divine viewpoint framework into more advanced material then it involves a whole big step in your ability to sit and concentrate and to think through doctrines. And the rabbis, continuing the tradition from Isaiah 28:9, by the time of the New Testament, had a term that they used for young students and they called them not suckers but “sucklings.” And it was a rabbinic tradition. So when you read in 1 Peter 2, in Hebrews 5, in 1 Corinthians 3, you’re not reading anything new, the author was talking that language to a Hebrew audience, or Hebrew audiences who were used to this terminology all along. It would have been well understood, nothing new about it.
Let’s turn back to Hebrews 5, these are the babies, and these people who have become Christians a long time ago, ten years or so ago, their spiritual growth, they started growing and then they tabled out, they plateaued out and he said they have retrogressed, they’ve become once again as those needing milk. Now this should tell you something and should warn you about something. If you do not constantly, in the present tense, take in the Word of God, you will retrogress. I don’t care how many years you’ve spend under the finest Bible teachers, it doesn’t make any difference, if you are not in a church that is directly ministering the Word of God you will see yourself go down the drain, and we have seen it the city of Lubbock, people who have had a chance to hear the Word of God and they go around and mess around in the tongues movement or something else and you no longer see them in this congregation. And they are people who are in compound carnality, they are people who have decided to put something else first besides the Word of God and they’re paying a price, I’m not. I’d get rid of them as fast as possible, the less of these people we have the less trouble we have in the congregation, so I encourage them quite freely and quite frankly to just take off and leave and if you’ve noticed the membership roll recently you can see its effect.
All right, in verse 13-14 we have one of the marks of the mature believe. Notice in verse 13, this is by contrast “For every one that is using,” present tense, “that is using milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a” nepios or “a baby.” Now notice that the word “unskillful,” the idea here is… it’s apeiros, it means untested; peiros is related to the word to tempt or to test, with a little alpha in front of it you have this as a negation so it’s not testing, or the person has not been tested. And by that, the picture is, here’s the conscience and here’s the mind. The mind has absorbed the Word of God, God-consciousness, some of the Word of God has come over and has lodged there so that they have a standard, but because they have this Bible doctrine that has come over into the conscience and kind of jelled, but when they come to a practical situation they have refused to apply the norms and standards of the conscience. And because they do not apply the norms and standards of the conscience they are called the apeiros, those are people who are untested they haven’t met the test, they haven’t used it.
Now this is why you have occasional pain in the Christian life, suffering. Remember the six categories of suffering. Category five was to learn and when we have these suffering experiences they are to teach us the Word of God. And we have a chance to learn or we have a chance to flub; we have a chance to take the easy and convenient way around the test and trial and we still remain like these believers, apeiros, they have not been tested. So, “everyone that uses milk is untested in the word of righteousness,” that is they haven’t applied the Word of God which they have already learned. “For,” it says, they are babes,” now the word babes is a word which in the Greek was used to translate our old friend out of Proverbs, peti, and you remember that word had a special connotation in the book of Proverbs. Every time we saw that Hebrews word, peti, it referred to a person who was naïve. It did not refer to a person who was carnal. It wasn’t referring to someone in rebellion. It was just simply someone that didn’t know any better and the danger of the book of Proverbs, or the danger the book of Proverbs warned against was that people who are peti won’t stay peti, they’ll either go on negative volition and become rebellious or they’ll get with the Word of God and become positive and move on. But you can’t stay in this state. So the book of Proverbs emphasizes a dangerous state to be in because you don’t have norms, standards and stability.
Now, that’s the kind of person described in verse 13, it says the one that would normally be using the milk is untested in the word of righteousness, he hasn’t had experience yet, he’s inexperienced in the pressures of life. He is naïve, in other words. So if you want to summarize the thought of verse 13 he’s simply saying if you’re still in the basics you are where normally a naïve person would be.
But Hebrews 5:14, the contrast, “But strong meat belongs to them that are of full age,” now those who are “of full age,” and I want you to notice this word, we are going to encounter it again, teleios, that is the word that will be encountered later on in chapter 6, “Those who are of full age,” those who are grown up, or those who have reached manhood, not those who are perfect, those who are mature, that’s the correct translation, “Those who are of full age, to them belongs strong meat,” strong meat refers to the advanced things beginning in chapter 7 of this epistle, the detail of the typology from the Old Testament. “But strong meat belongs to those,” now qualifying, in verse 14 what follows is a set of characteristics describing spiritual manhood. Here is the definition of spiritual maturity. Very important, I know of no other place in the New Testament where you can get such a tight definition so quickly, good verse to remember when you need a definition of what spiritual maturity is; come to Hebrews 5:14.
Let’s look at the characteristics, “even those who by reason of use” now literally it reads “on account of the habits,” not this tells us something immediately. All of life in humanity is made up of learned behavior patterns, animals have instinctive behavior patterns. What was the difference? You remember when we clarified the difference between a learned behavior pattern and an instinctive behavior pattern, we made the point that man is a peculiar creature, because man lacks instincts where animals have them. Man is the only creature that cannot drink enough water, for example, a simple thing like drinking water, we have to learn how to do it correctly because we have no instinct that controls our intake of water. So a man can be dehydrated and still not drink enough water. Or a person can drink too much water but the flow of water and your thirst in response to the water is not directly instinctive in man, whereas it is in animals. Animals have instinct where we have learned behavior patterns.
Now why is it then, it seems like man is the most stupid creature then, because starting at physical birth the animal is all equipped to handle many things by instinct. When we’re born we’re not equipped at all. We have to learn everything. Why is that? Because we’re God-conscious. God wants us to bring simple things, even like eating food and drinking water under the principle of submission to Him, that we learn everything, even the common things like that, as unto the Lord. Animal, not being God-conscious are just, so to speak, preprogrammed, they have instincts. But man is not, thus habits are necessary. For example, if I asked you which shoe did you put on that you’re wearing, which shoe did you put on first, did you put on left or right? And most of you couldn’t tell, the reason is you didn’t think of it when you did it. Now that’s great that you don’t think about it, imagine if your day was spent thinking of which shoe to put on, which button to button first or unbutton, which foot to put ahead of the other one, when you stepped out to drive your car you were like the first time you ever drove the car, thinking of how am I going to steer, how am I going to shift how am I going to get my foot on the brake, and all these things had to be consciously thought of. You can imagine you would be very, very limited.
So God has built us to take a bunch of action, take for example the obvious action of eating with a fork, there’s all sorts of things, a mathematician at MIT once developed cybernetic theory and the thing that made him think of it was how people eat and get the fork, and he developed all sorts of things about feedback and everything else from this idea of putting a fork in the mouth, and knowing how he used to eat his food in the cafeteria I can imagine why he must have thought of it. But there were about five or six points of action that are tied in with getting that fork to your mouth. All sorts of feedback effects; feedback is that you make a move and then you test whether the move is correct or not. And so then you get corrected on it. This is why exams, you have exams in the educational process, that’s the act of the feedback effect. You take all these things together and finally you learn a pattern so that now when you come to this initial act, oh you may be conscious of it but you don’t think. This, then has transformed itself into a habit. Why is that good? Because you can’t exist effectively and efficiently without habits. You’ve got to have habits; habits enable you to go through this and think of something else. It frees your mind for something else to have habits.
All right, so everyone has habits. Now the issue and the great issue in Christian spirituality is whether you’re going to have habits that are grounded on human viewpoint, minus R learned behavior patterns or +R learned behavior patterns, and that’s the perennial issue because our sin nature is such that whenever we link a set of actions together we link them together in conformity with human viewpoint rather than divine viewpoint, it just comes easier. We have to work to fit the things together to conform to divine viewpoint. It is an effort because it goes against our nature. But there’s something tremendous about it in that once you develop godly patterns of behavior in a certain area the habit principle carries over. Now you are free from that and you can move on and do something else in the Christian life. So the Christian life, the progress in the Christian life can be conceived of building a set of habits, one on top of another. And you can’t go on any further than the number of habits that you have established.
For example, now you can sit down at the table and eat and carry on a conversation and think and so on and be free to do what you want to at the table without thinking of how the fork gets to your mouth. Same thing in the Christian life, there are certain basic habits, such as confession of sin, such as reflection on the essence of God, such as going over certain areas of divine viewpoint framework and certain promises in the middle of pressure situations which should become by now habit forming for you. Then when you form the habit you can go to more complicated habits. So if you can think of the Christian life as a series of layers of habits, this is what you want to develop. You’ve got to, you can’t constantly think how to live the Christian life any more than you can constantly think how that fork gets in your mouth. You have to go beyond that where you can do things in the Christian life without thinking. They become habitual with you.
That is spirituality and that’s habit and that’s what he’s talking about here, “strong meat belongs to them who are mature, those who by reason of habit,” now what habit, he hasn’t defined it, he’s just brought up the issue of habit. Okay, let’s read further, “have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” Now the word “exercised” is the word from which we get gymnasium from in the Greek; it is a perfect participle used here and it is a passive voice, “their senses have been gymnastized.” In other words, they have been exercised, the word “exercise” is a proper translation but I want to remind you that the word “gymnastic” lies behind that so get the idea that it’s a physical type exercise. And it means repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, over and over and over and over again, and remember this man is talking in terms of ten years of repetition.
Now do you see why we lack maturity in the Christian life? In the average evangelical circle if you’ve been a Christian more than six months you’re considered mature. Now look at that; the author of Hebrews wouldn’t consider you out of the infantile stage. And it’s because you don’t have time enough to build habits. And I think this is why verse 14 is such a good definition of spiritual maturity because it brings in this habit thing and when you have habit as part of Christian definition of maturity then that will force you to think in terms of long time period because it takes long time periods to build up habit patterns.
Think of a more complicated arrangement, other than the fork getting to your mouth. Think of the habit of just driving your car and think of the number of things, just take it apart, you’d be amazed to think how many things you do without thinking about it. From the time you put the key in the door to unlock the door to get in the car, to make sure that the breaks release, to start the car, to start the engine, to get in gear or if you have an automatic put it in the right selection, and so on. All these things, looking to the left, looking to the right, clear and so on to move out. Now all of this is accomplished… you could probably name and it would be interesting to try, to take down on a piece of paper every step you do to just simply start your car and you would find there’s probably 25 or 30 different things you do that you’re totally unaware of. Now you were at one time, aware of all of them because when you first learned to drive you were really aware of them.
So something has happened since that time and that’s the point about habits and that’s the thing you want to remember. Here you are and suppose God is making a big demand on you. Here’s a big +R learned behavior pattern, a thing that He requires of you and it looks like it’s a monstrous thing, but look at it the same way you’d look at learning how to drive a car. That was 25 or 30 different things, and that looked monstrous to you at one time, but everybody else learned to drive a car, why couldn’t you. Same thing in the Christian life, every other Christian down through the ages has learned these things, so can you. And even though it may look big and it may look complicated, you can do it. There’s no reason why you can’t do it. Now it’s going to take some time but once you master it you won’t even think of it any more.
Now what specifically about these habits does he have in mind in verse 14? They “have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.” Now of all the habit patterns and the clusters, there’s one thing this author emphasizes above all else, and that is the habit of when your mind entertains all sorts of things and alternatives and options, to check it out by what you know is right and wrong. As an exercise to further this in your own mind, you can do it by constantly over compensating until you get the picture. Am I doing what is right or am I doing what is wrong in this matter, whatever that matter may be? Is this right or wrong; force it upon yourself daily. Is this right or is it wrong? Is it right or is it wrong? Is it right or is it wrong? And you force your mind to keep going back to the conscience. Now that’s the key habit behind all the other habits. Is that the mind is the servant of the conscience; the mind comes before the bar of the judgment of the conscience. And this is one of the areas where you can get rid of a lot of compound carnality, incidentally, by breaking through at this point, constantly saying don’t care what, before I’m going to stop and say is this right or is it wrong, is it right or is it wrong, not whether it’s useful or whether it’s going to make me happy or not.
So the tendency that we have, because of our old sin nature is to ask whether it works. We’ll call that pragmatism. We’re always saying is it going to work? That’s the first thing that hits the mind, is it going to work. Or another thing, is it pleasurable? These things you’ll find hitting you mind, hitting your awareness first. Well, what the author of Hebrews says, no, no, no, no, no, is it right? And that should be there. Now these other things are not wrong, obviously you’re interested in whether it works and obviously you’d be interested in whether it gives you pleasure, those are legitimate questions but what is illegitimate is the order of the question. The key question always is, is it right or is it wrong, then we ask whether it works or not.
If you want a good exercise in this since everybody is talking about it, look at the Watergate tapes. They’re published in the paper, you just read one of those tapes and ask yourself the question, whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong ever entered the discussion, or whether it’s what somebody’s going to think or in effect it’s pragmatic. What is it that people are going to think about us? Will the papers find out about us? And if the papers find out about us what will the American public think about us? In other words, decision after decision after decision after decision is not being made on the basis of conscience. And this of course tells us a lot about the whole national leaders, it’s not just the President, it’s everybody. So you can see how far away we have drifted from this tremendous ideal of verse 14. It’s not an ideal in the sense you can’t reach it, it’s just the model, the paradigm of Christian maturity.
Let’s continue because Hebrews 6:1 continues right on, in fact the proper chapter break should be at Hebrews 5:11. Notice the word “therefore,” and I’m going to stop here and ask a question. What’s wrong with the word “therefore,” if you’ve been following from verses 11-14 there’s something very incongruous about “therefore.” Can anybody see with it is; just looking at it, imagining the man, imagining the people to whom this was written, their problems, what he’s just got through doing, chewing them out for a particular thing, immaturity, now what seems at first glance to be incongruous about what he does in verse 1? What is the connective you would expect to find instead of the word “therefore.” Let’s put it that way? Let’s connect the “therefore” to the main verb, “therefore, let’s go on to perfection.” What’s incongruous about that? [someone answers] All right, he suggests instead of the word “therefore” it should be “but” in the contrast to what’s gone on, “but,” “nevertheless” or something like this.
In other words, the point is that he’s proposing in spite of what he’s just said in verse 11, when he said, you know, I’ve got my brakes on, I’ve had to slow down because you guys can’t stay with it, and then he turns right around in 6:1 and says “therefore,” let’s get going, because you’re so stupid let’s on with some advanced doctrine. In other words, what’s on his mind that moves him to use the word “therefore?” He’s just got through saying these people are stupid spiritually, they’re slow, they can’t understand the stuff, so “therefore” let’s go on and try it. Contrast this with Paul in 1 Corinthians 3, that passage, what did he say? I can’t feed you meat and I still can’t feed you meat. Yet this man right here says “therefore,” let’s have some meat, let’s pass the plate. Why do you suppose he’s adopting this strange tactic. Keep in mind this is going to have a lot to do with how we settle the problem later on in chapter 6 so this is why I’m moving slowly here. [someone says something] Okay, he brought up a point that’s definitely involved in this, that the readers, the original readers or the hearers of Hebrews were a special kind of people by way of background, that they had obviously had an in depth presentation out of the Old Testament. They had thoroughly known the divine viewpoint framework out of the Old Testament. That was thoroughly imbued with them. That’s true, we can infer that very safely from everything, the context, the historical situation, and so on.
Now can someone bring in another element, it has to do with teaching. [someone answers] Oh, that’s a good point, I wasn’t thinking of that but that’s a good point, bringing up the idea that here we’ve got a situation, there’s a lack of time, this man is writing against the 11th hour, this nation is coming down to a decisive point and he can’t turn around and fiddle, he’s got to move on. Definitely a good point. But I was just thinking in terms of a teaching situation. [someone says something] Okay, involved in this process what this author is trying to do at this point is he is admitting, and this becomes critical later on, that’s why I’m pausing with the word “therefore,” what he has just admitted to us by the way he is teaching this group is he’s admitted that the tactic of 1 Corinthians 3:1-2 had failed; he is admitting to us that he can’t go back, that to go back to those basics again wouldn’t do the job. Whatever it is these people have, they’re on negative volition in some area of their life, they’re getting phased out and to pull them up sharply he cannot go back to review those basic principles in this situation with this group of believers it would be the wrong strategy, to try to get them out of their carnality by reviewing basics again. To get them going he is going to have to force them ahead; he cannot go back.
So the whole part of this chapter 6 begins with a particular teaching tactic that must be noted from verse to verse as we proceed. He has got a group of believers that he’s trying to push along and he realizes they’ve got their brakes locked; he realizes the tremendous friction, but he refuses to adopt Paul’s tactics of 1 Corinthians 3 of saying well, you guys, you’re strong here at this point in your Christian life, you’ve gone through the divine viewpoint framework four or five times so let’s go through it the fifth time and we’ll just stop. He does not do that; he says you have been through this doctrine so often, so thoroughly that nothing can be gained by repeating it again. This tells us something about Bible teaching. This tells us that people, and it explains a lot of things that we see and observe. People who have heard elementary things of Christianity over and over and over and over and over and over again and still do not grow can only be forced into growth by bombing them with doctrine that’s over their heads. You have got to force them by using doctrine that is even above their vocabulary, far above their capacity.
It’s like, for example, the opposite of what is usually taught in homiletics; to pitch your deal at the 12 year old level because the media, the public media actually operates on that assumption, incidentally, your TV news and all the rest operate on the basis that the average American has the mentality of a 12 year old and the concentration span of a 12 year old and the programs are written for that span of concentration, in case you haven’t noticed. But if you go above that what has to happen now. Let’s look at it. Here you have a person and let’s just pretend the 12 year old here represents the state of these people in Hebrews. They’ve got the spiritual understanding of a 12 year old. And now the author comes along and he says I don’t care whether you’re 12 years old or not, I have taught you math, I’ve taught you how to write, I’ve taught you cursive and so on, I’ve gone through all these things over and over and over and over with you, there is no solution to your problem except I’m going to start feeding you stuff that 15-20 year olds should have, should have to handle. I’m just going to pull you along.
So this is
interesting because it shows a pedagogical type situation that existed in the
first century that could only be solved by pressuring the student ahead of
himself. And that is the way the New
Testament people were handled who had had enough of the basics. Now in Paul’s situation, the Corinthians were
different. Why were they different, do you suppose? Well, obviously the
Corinthians had not been as well taught as these people had. These people a much richer background than
the people in the church at
Now watch how different that is from the approach you read in certain evangelical circles, which says something like this: here we have believers, they’ve been in a fundamental church for 10-15 years, they haven’t done anything, and so therefore Bible teaching is not the answer, we’ll abandon Bible teaching, we’ll wipe out all teaching because they’re fat, they’re spiritually fat, they’ve been over fed, and so on, so that’s not the solution we’ll go on to getting them out hustling. And by that we mean…that’s our term for knocking on doors and all the rest. And that’s the way to move on. Now some people that come in here have another connotation to the word but I’m telling you the way I intend it. To hustle is to simply go and abandon the whole concept of Bible teaching and go over to gimmicks.
Now interestingly that this author faced the same problem. He faced people who were in the equivalent situation, 10 or 15 years exposure to sound Bible teaching who were unproductive and what is his solution? Less teaching? No, more teaching. Now, Bob Thieme didn’t write this and others who emphasize Bible doctrine didn’t write this. This isn’t something made up in the 20th century, this is something the author of Hebrews is telling us. And therefore it’s very serious because this is the norm of how to handle that situation. Not retreat to gimmicks and hustling and all the rest of it, that doesn’t solve the problem.
Let’s go on and see what he is going to abandon. He says, “leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on,” let’s look at the first verb, let us go on, it’s phero, to carry, and it is in the middle voice, the subject is participating in the action and if you’ll look at the context of the verb in verse 1 this is a good verse to remember the middle voice by if you want to kind of visualize what the middle voice is doing. So you could say let’s go on, just in the active voice, let’s go on, let’s carry on. But by putting it in the middle he’s saying let’s carry ourselves on, you see, it’s more forceful, let’s carry ourselves on, let’s move on. And he says “let’s move on to perfection,” and the word “perfection” is a word that is very much related to our friend in 5:14, except this word looks like this, teleiotes, you can see that first part is the same as that word for “full age” in verse 14. So he’s telling us, “let us go on to the state of maturity,” one is an adjective and the other is a noun. So this is the state of being mature, “let’s go on to the state of being mature.”
How are we going to get there? Well, the way we’re not going to get there is to review the basics again so he says “leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ,” it’s kind of reversed here, it should be literally, “the doctrine,” this is logos for those of you following, “the logos of the beginning of the Christ.” So he’s going to say there are a certain basic core of doctrines, see, these are the fundamentals, the basics, that’s the word doctrine, “the doctrine,” the logos, “the doctrine of the beginning or the Christ,” arche can mean beginning or the chief part or the principle part or the root, or I prefer the word “the foundation.” So what is he saying? He’s saying I am not going to review that whole area of doctrine which had to do with the foundation of Christ.
Now, what is “the foundation of Christ?” Okay, remember back in verse 12 we used a very similar expression, where you see “the first principles of the oracles of God” and what did we say “oracles of God” was? “Oracles of God” is a term referring to Old Testament. So since we know those people were taught out of the Old Testament, what is he talking about right here? The doctrine of the beginning of the Christ; the doctrine of the beginning of the Christ equals the Old Testament. He’s going through the Old Testament; he says I am not going to go through the Old Testament key areas that concern the Lord Jesus Christ again. All right, so far it’s all Old Testament.
Now you’re going to see six things listed in the rest of verse 1 and verse 2. Let’s look at those six things: “foundation of repentance; faith toward God; doctrine of baptisms; doctrine of laying on of hands; doctrine of resurrection of the dead, and judgment. Do any of you sharpies observe something about that list of six? Can you categorize that list? Do you see something about that list that you can break it down into subcategories? Start with the first two terms. You don’t necessarily have to say what it is, can you group these, there are six terms here, can you group them into subgroups. The first two, repentance and faith, forget whether it’s mental attitude or salvation, all I’m interested in is that they are associated, aren’t they, those frequently in Scripture: repent and believe, repent and believe, repent and believe. Those you see time and time again in Scripture.
Okay, do you see anything about the remaining four; take the last two, are the last two associated? Resurrection and judgment, those are the last two things. Now we’re going to make a starting assumption in our interpretation and it’s tentative but I want to show you how we start. If these two are related and these two are related, it pretty well says those two are related, whatever they are. Now that’s a central problem in this passage, what those two words mean, what do those [can’t understand words] mean. But before we even tell what we mean, can’t you tell by the overall context, the way the guy’s listing, he’s listing pairs: repentance and faith, baptisms and laying on of hands, and resurrection and judgment.
So let’s work from the known to the unknown and see how we can go from here. Let’s first say, back in verse 1 where it says “leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of,” and now he’s listing. He’s talking about the foundation, divine viewpoint foundation, “the foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God.”
Now, since this is an advanced group let’s have some educated guesses what “repentance from dead works and faith toward God,” what’s he talking about there? I’ve already heard salvation but can someone be more specific, considering to whom this was originally written. When would they have heard this? [someone answers] All right, good point; if they were Old Testament people they were witnessed to, someone came and told them and the [can’t understand words] of the gospel was “repentance from dead works and faith in God.”
Now in a situation like this we’ve got to define, what are “the dead works.” [someone says something] All right, tied in with religion, very definitely, “dead works.” Now he’s not arguing the way Paul is; Paul’s arguing was theoretically, you can’t be saved by works. But the dead works here aren’t just theoretical works, they’re particular concrete works. We’ve got to pin down what category do you think? [someone answers] You preempted me, turn to Hebrews 9:14. That’s go to the context where the expression “dead works” is used by the same author, simple principle of Bible study.
If you get stuck,
get a concordance. If you want to give
someone a present who is a serious Christian, or you want to get a present
suggest a concordance if you don’t have one.
And don’t get one of these little things, these Cruden things, if you’re
going to get a concordance get a big one; the little ones will frustrate you,
they always have the words that you’re not interested in and the ones you are
they don’t have; it always will happen. Get one that is complete, a Young’s or
a Strong’s. Either one of those two is
geared for the King James, I think the RSV also has a concordance out for
it. You’ve got to get the concordance to
fit your translation, remember that. Don’t try to get one translation and
another concordance it won’t work; concordance and translations have to be
together. It is the most basic Bible
tool you can have, it will cost $15.00, you could spend $15.00 on junk and not
have half the blessing you can get from a concordance. You can sit down with your Bible and a concordance
out in the middle of the
All right, Hebrews 9:14 is where this man uses “dead works.” Now let’s look at the context of Hebrews 9, look at verse 14, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” Now in the context what’s he been talking about. Look at verse 13, “For if the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, [14] How much more shall the blood of Christ…. So what’s verse 13 talking about? The Old Testament modus operandi. But why is it called “dead works,” they were quite alive in the Old Testament. Why is the word “dead” in here now. [someone answers] All right, they weren’t dead works were they, until Christ came because the man in the Old Testament expressed his faith by doing that. But now they’ve come dead works because in these latter days God has spoken unto us by a Son. Remember that, Hebrews 1:1. So what we might say if you want to get it is obsolete work. So “repentance from obsolete works.” You see the smack against Judaism there, we’ve placed the epistle solidly in its historical context. Repentance means change all the way down to the basic presuppositions of your thoughts. Repent from these obsolete works, change your whole viewpoint, that’s what the word “repent” means.
[someone says something] The modern Jew mostly doesn’t even know the Old Testament and he isn’t involved in a lot of this temple stuff either, because he doesn’t have a temple
Now the other expression, I want to finish all these six tonight. “…repentance from dead works, and faith toward God,” those of you who have your Greek text what is the preposition after the word faith, before the word God? Usually you have eis, which is into, but this is not eis, what is it? It’s epi, which is usually on or over; this is one of these little fine observations but if you took the way epi is often used in the New Testament, believe on God, it’s the idea, and it’s just a very fine line, the idea of believing into is trusting Him, so to speak, with all your weight, but trusting over the matter of God is like trusting over the matter of how God is running history. In other words, don’t argue with the fact a new dispensation has just come about. Trust on the God of history, He has ushered in a new era, trust Him.
This is the trust, for example, go back to Hebrews 1. I want to take you some verses of Hebrews to show you this ongoing thing, don’t get jammed, in other words, in the past dispensation; let’s go on, trusting in the God of the overall program over all the dispensations. Notice how the epistle began, “God, who at various times and various manners spoke in time past by the prophets, [2] Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.” Notice in 2:4, every time the word God is mentioned here in this epistle, “God also bearing them witness,” see, that was the dispensational shift. Then the next time you see a lot of talk about God is in Hebrews 4:9, “There remains a reset to the people of God.” He’s talking about the eternal rest that now has become available in the person of Jesus Christ, the new dispensation and all the way into Hebrews 11, as I went over in the morning service, remember I said “Faith is the evidence of things not seen,” “He that comes to God must believe that He is and that He’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” Every time he’s using this it’s the idea that God is the Lord of history and he’s just made a big move, now trust in the big move. Says John the Baptist “Come” and he announces that now the kingdom of God is at hand, repent of your works, be ready to make a big change, God is about to start something new.
So the first pair here in Hebrews 6:1, “not laying again the foundation” in other words, he’s been over this point, “repentance” and we’ll put “from the Old Testament dispensation and trusting in the ongoing program.” Okay. You can imagine he’s probably taught this to them and taught this to them and taught this to them and taught this to them and it’s not going to do any good to repeat it again.
Now let’s skip that problem pair and go to the last two; “of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” Now the resurrection of the dead, this was taught in the Old Testament, Isaiah 16:19 and Daniel 12:2. Resurrection was also implied earlier as Jesus interpreted the Old Testament in Mark 12:26. So resurrection was there in the Old Testament. The doctrine of eternal judgment was there in the Old Testament, Daniel 7:9. Now I’ve just made a point about those two doctrines, what was the point? They’re both found in the Old Testament. Now keep that in mind because the first two pair is a new announcement; the last two have to do with Old Testament doctrine. Before we hit the other pair now, think about one more item about these last pair. Why do you suppose that this would have been considered basic, basic, basic material for a Jew who was trusting that Nazarene carpenter to be the real Jewish Messiah. Why would the issue of resurrection and judgment be brought up and made such a federal case of? Why do you suppose those two doctrines would be hauled up out of the Old Testament and taught and taught and taught. [someone answers] Okay, yes there’s an impending judgment but here he says eternal judgment. It’s this isn’t it, you’re on the track; if Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited Messiah there is no more sense of believing after Him; there’s not going to be a new Messiah come along. Jesus is the last word. If Jesus is the last word, and you reject Christ, you’re going t be faced with eternal judgment. John 3:36, John 3:18, “He that believeth not on the Son is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son.” If you grant that presupposition, Jesus is the last word, there’s no further recourse, you’re damned or you’re blessed, depending solely on your attitude of the person of Jesus Christ.
To see how he brings this out turn to Hebrews 9:27, it comes out right here, “As it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment,” see, that’s the eternal judgment, not just the judgment of Jerusalem in 70 AD, [8] So Jesus was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” What’s that? Resurrection. So you see the theme of judgment and resurrection, it reappears in the epistle. So we can now understand items five and six in the list as basic. You all see why that would be basic doctrine. That would force the ultimacy of the claims of Jesus Christ upon the Jew: decide now because the guy you’re going to face at resurrection is that Jewish carpenter. He’s the guy and you’re going to have to face Him eyeball to eyeball. So these two doctrines he brought up.
Now we come to that central pair and here is where a little experience in exegesis pays off, instead of driving in here at 50 miles an hour and see the word “baptize,” let’s look at it. Hebrews 6:2, “Of the doctrine of baptism, and of laying on of hands.” Now we have one of the prominent charismatic teachers Derek Prince in his book, one of his basic books, I have all of them, he goes in here and he says this refers to the baptisms, the water baptism, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, you’ve got to get that in there, and the laying on of hands is the giving of the Holy Spirit. Now that all sounds very sweet except two problems. The first two pairs have to do with the Old Testament and the things there from. The last two pairs have to do with Old Testament doctrine. Now the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not taught in the Old Testament. John announced it, but it’s not a central doctrine. Furthermore, nowhere else in the epistle does this thing ever come up again. And furthermore, if you will look in the original language it is not the word usually used, baptismo or baptismos, or baptisma, it is not that word used here; it is the word baptismoi, plural, “baptisms” singular.
Now instead of
trying to ram, cram and jam the baptism of the Holy Spirit in there because
it’s just got to be there, instead of doing that let’s just relax and look at a
concordance and find out where baptismoi
would be used and it occurs two places in the New Testament. The first place is in this epistle, Hebrews
9:10, we’re studying baptismoi, the
baptisms, plural. Hebrews
Now let’s to the other place where baptismoi occurs, Mark 7:4, [tape goes blank]