Clough Hebrews Lesson 35

The Faith Technique – 6:9-20

In Hebrews 6 we have been studying the third warning passage. This warning passage starts in Hebrews 5:11 and continues through 6:20. The object of this warning passage was to show that believers must go on with deeper doctrines. Those who have rejected the basics, those who have had exposure to the Word of God, those who have been evangelized, have experienced the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, and have turned their backs upon God suffer certain consequences. The believers who turned their backs on the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit in the first century of the Christian church were unbelievers that committed the unpardonable sin. And as this passage has so soberly taught, it was impossible that they ever could be renewed to repentance again. Far from teaching loss of security or loss of salvation, this warning passage teaches the impossibility of returning to a place where one can be saved in this time, this era, this first century.

And the principle, though we can’t apply it directly in our own day because we do not have living prophets and therefore we don’t have an inerrant infallible interpreter, it means that we have no right in our day to say one who has turned their back on the Lord Jesus Christ can ever be saved. That is not our sentence or our judgment to make. The most we can say is that if a person dies without accepting Christ, obviously they’re in trouble. But before death, any time before death, we can’t really say that, though it might be possible that a person who has had an extensive evangelization could have turned their back upon God’s common grace and thereby had his heart hardened. The principle, however, of this warning passage, comes over by way of application to us today and that is any turning against the Word of God does damage one’s soul.

I think this explains why in areas like this area, this part of the country which has had an exposure to the Word of God for decades, almost a century, the so-called Bible belt, and yet we have such ignorance. Christians who have been raised with so little instruction show a massive amount ignorance. The Word of God is never carried out to anywhere near five or ten percent of the way it should. People who are believers, apparently have no awareness that the Word of God teaches certain principles about economics and so they go along with all sorts of new deals and half deals and fractional reserve banking and all the rest. And these are simply heresies in different fields, the heresy in the field of economics. We have believers teaching in public schools who apparently have no idea that evolution and creation are totally incompatible, they are two different systems and you can’t put them together. But nevertheless they go on teaching them as if nothing were wrong at all.

We have this great lethargy and it can only be explained, I think, by the same principle that we’ve seen here. We’ve had a maximum number of people who at some time in their lives may have been on positive volition to the Word of God. And then somewhere along they went on negative and they’ve been asleep spiritually ever since; they go through the motions, they come to prayer meetings, they come to church services but basically they’re asleep and have not woken up to Bible doctrine. And therefore we see so little application in all the great areas of life.

Now in this warning passage we have seen the common grace ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is one passage that shows you the tremendous things that God the Holy Spirit can do for the unbeliever. Everything that we studied in verses 4-5 and 6 pertain to the unbeliever and you saw how much the Holy Spirit does for the unbeliever. So when the unbeliever continues in his rejection against the Lord Jesus Christ he is powerfully rejecting the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We also found in the study of this passage, this warning passage, that the Arminian interpretation of Scripture is wrong. We found that the Arminian interpretation requires that these five phrases that are given, each of these five phrases must apply only to believers, or at least one of the five phrases must apply only to believers. We found out that four of the five phrases were hapax legomenon, they only occurred once and no one in his right mind can possibly claim these phrases all refer to unbelievers, or one of them refers to unbelievers. And so we say in our analysis of each of the hapax legomenon we failed to find any one of them or parts of them that referred exclusively to believers. And thus the backbone of the Arminian interpretation of Hebrews 6 has been broken. Then last time we went to Hebrews 6:7-8 and we ended at the end of verse 8.

Now in Hebrews 6:9 we start a new section. “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. [10] For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. [11] And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end;” now tonight we are going to try and finish all the way down to verse 20. If you have some questions as we go through, raise your hand and we’ll stop there rather than wait to the end because we’re going to go through this sequentially and it’ll be completely out of my mind by the time I get down to verse 20 what you’re asking a question about. So interrupt if you have questions.

All right, verse 9, those of you with a Greek text will see something like this: de teri, this is an expression that is very important because that is the signal, usually in Paul’s letters but it occurs in Hebrews, that is the signal that there’s another logical segment to his argument. So he says “and concerning,” that’s the way you translate it, “and concerning thus and such.” So he sifts in his argument, so when you see one of these de teri’s, that is a sign, if you were translating it into English you’d make a paragraph break right there, always make a paragraph break on one of these points. The ancient texts of Hebrews were all broken at this point so obviously many, many men down through the ages recognized that there’s a transition here.

“But beloved,” the interesting thing about the word “beloved” is that this is the only place it occurs in the epistle. Can anyone suggest the reason why the word “beloved” occurs here but nowhere else in the epistle, just in light of the immediate context. Why do you suppose you would want to drop this thing down right here. [someone answers] All right, he wants to address believers but he addressed them very fondly and warmly here. [someone else] Okay, it’s a reassurance, and this very reassurance confirms our interpretation. You see, he wouldn’t be reassuring them if it was possible that they would lose their salvation because if it were possible that believers could lose their salvation the reassurance would negate his argument. But the very fact is that he is reassuring them, because as he says, “we are persuaded better things of you” than these things. We are persuaded of you “things that accompany salvation,” and obviously verse 9 can’t be teaching anything except that verse 4, 5 and 6 do not pertain to salvation. Why, then, would he put “better things.”

You notice how verse 9 goes? “We are persuaded, beloved, of you things,” and we’ll write it this way, “things better,” now the sentence is elliptic, it eliminates what it’s better than, but “things better than,” this is all understood, “things better than those just mentioned.” And what is it that’s just been mentioned? Verses 4-6 are the illustration in verses 7-8. So this is one of the most powerful contextual indications that salvation has not yet been spoken of in this entire passage, that whatever it was that was being spoken of in verses 4-6 was something but it wasn’t salvation because he then defines by apposition, “things better than those just mentioned,” comma, “things pertaining to salvation.” So that obviously implies that the things just mentioned do not pertain to salvation, and thus our interpretation is confirmed by the immediate context. If you take “those things” as pertaining to salvation you’ve got a problem with verse 9. “We are persuaded” and notice too that the word “persuade” here is perfect, a perfect tense, which means he is persuaded in the past with results that continue into the present moment. It was a decision that was reached before he taught verses 4-6. Before he even got to Hebrews 5:11, the beginning of this warning passage, he says I have been persuaded, I have already been persuaded that such and such is the case. “I have been persuaded.”

Now how was he persuaded. We had some after class discussion when we were going through verses 4-6; well then how, if verses 4-6 are true and verses 4-6 don’t show salvation, then how under heaven do you tell whether one is saved or not. An here he’s going to show you one way he knew that the people to whom he spoke were saved people. And he’s going to tell us certain things. Now you wonder why, if he was persuaded before he started, that these people were saved, why did he address them in such hard tone as he obviously did, and the reason is the reason for the epistle, what is the central reason for this whole epistle. Remember we related this epistle to one particular spiritual gift and we said people with that particular spiritual gift have good reason to make this one of their favorite epistles, because in this epistle you will learn and be trained in how to use your particular gift. What was the gift? Exhortation.

This epistle, then, is the model of Biblical exhortation and Biblical exhortation can get very feisty at times. Biblical exhortation forces you to an either/or position. Biblical exhortation destroys neutrality and forces decision. Biblical exhortation always undermines the fence sitter. It always destroys the middle of the road. This is why the gospel is so offensive to many people because basically it drives them to a decision they don’t want to make; it makes them have to get off the fence, have to get out of the middle of the road. And by stating the truth as bluntly as he did in verses 4-6 the author was saying that the behavior pattern that was beginning to develop in their lives was reminiscent of the sin unto death. He wasn’t saying it was the sin unto death but remember back inverse 11 he said I was going to teach you basic doctrine but you are now “dull of hearing.” He said you act like people who have rejected the gospel. In other words, he used exaggeration legitimately. This is a legitimate use of exaggeration in Scriptural exhortation and it connotes the seriousness of what was going on, plus the fact there may have been unbelievers mixed in with the group that he was talking to. But as a group he said, “we are” or “have been persuaded things better of you, that accompany” or “have salvation, though we thus speak.”

So he himself, when he got the end of verse 9 was very conscious that it seemed incongruous for such a hard-nosed rock-em-sock-em type approach in verse 6 with what he had just said, “beloved” in verse 9. He said I am convinced you will stay, even though I have spoken like I have. Now that clause at the end of verse 9 is another contextual evidence that substantiates our interpretation because if verses 4-6 were talking about loss of salvation it seems a little difficult that he would see the tension between the two; he says “even though I speak thus.” So verse 9 is a very, very important one to substantiate in the context our interpretation.

[someone says something] How do you suppose the Arminian would handle verse 9, just knowing what he must do? If you were an Arminian and you believe that verse 4-6 taught the loss of salvation, how would you handle verse 9? [someone answers] Okay, you’d handle verse 9 as this but you would argue that verse 9 is talking about the fact that these particular people, believers, aren’t in danger of falling. In other words, there might be other believers out here but the believers here, that are the readers, those believers he is persuaded will not fall. That’s the only way you can handle it on an Arminian basis. You’d have to argue that verse 9 teaches that he’s at least convinced that his people wouldn’t fall. The problem I find with that is that what he’s going to argue in verse 10, the very next verse, depends on past history, not future history and if you’re an Arminian you’re not worried past, you’re not worried about the fact that you now salvation, you’re worried about whether at 12:00 o’clock tonight you’re going to have salvation, whether you’re going to lose it in the future. And the argument of verse 10 has no force on an Arminian base. And he’s just spinning his wheels, he can’t give assurance on the basis of past action; he can’t say I’m convinced brethren that you’re not going to fall because of your past behavior. See, that just doesn’t seem to hack it. Verse 10 just doesn’t have enough logic to it to handle the Arminian case load; it needs a lot more powerful logic than what verse 10 can provide. So the immediate context would give me a lot of problems, frankly. In fact, I would probably have more trouble with verses 9-10 as an Arminian than I would verses 4, 5 and 6. Verses 4-6 I could try to get around if my group didn’t know what a hapax was but in verses 9-10 I think I’d really have some problems. Most of the Arminian interpretations, by the way, of Hebrews go very, very fast over verses 9-10. The paper that I got from this professor that I had a debate with, he stopped his exegesis at verse 6.

Okay, now Hebrews 6:10, “For,” now here’s how he could tell his readers were believers, so here’s a bona fide first century authority telling you can tell whether someone’s a believer or not. It’s not anything strange, it’s no different than today, if you had an evangelistic campaign and you had people, all sorts of people profess Christ, how would you tell the ones who made genuine professions and the ones that made spurious ones, and the only way you could tell would be to look at their performance. That’s the only thing you’ve got to look at. So verse 10, not surprisingly goes directly to performance.

Hebrews 6:10, “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.” Now at this point we’re in a category of basic doctrines, the faith technique. And let’s review the four points of the faith technique. Get used to these categories, we’ll just review them every time we get a passage where they occur. This way it’s a chance for you to review the basic doctrine, a chance for you to associate it once again in your mind with an event of Scripture.

The four points of the faith technique. Number one, it depends on the divine viewpoint foundation. You have to have the Biblical kind of God and the Biblical kind of nature and the Biblical kind of universe or you can’t have a revealing God, you can’t have a miracle-making and so forth. And you also have to have some sort of revelation, you have to have something to believe, some promise has to be given so you can trust in it. So that’s the first point of the faith technique. You need the divine viewpoint foundation plus some verbal revelation.

The second thing about the faith technique is that faith is, and this is the point of this verse, is only indirectly observable through behavior modification. Behavior modification is the only way you can observe faith. You can’t take a stethoscope and hear it, you can’t take a temperature and measure it, you can’t take it by blood pressure or anything else, the only way you can measure faith is by the modification it brings into the life. And remember that faith has a resting side and a doing side. Furthermore, faith is orientation to grace, it is God-centered, not man-centered. Faith is never occupied with the feeling of faith. It is always occupied with the object of faith. Now we’re going to see many of these points. And by the way, just to show you how, when you get your basic divine viewpoint framework set up it helps you with Scripture, what is the event that you have learned to associate with faith? The call of Abraham, and who is the man mentioned in the rest of this chapter? Abraham. There’s no accident, the topic is the faith technique so as other places in the New Testament, whenever the faith technique comes to the fore, Abraham comes to the fore. See, this is a natural link between a doctrine and an event; master that link, use it over and over and over and you’ll see it appears again and again in Scripture. It’s not accident that I’ve associated certain doctrines with certain events; it was done originally through concordance research, of watching how many time the doctrine would be associated, occur in Scripture and how many times an event would be associated with it. That’s why we’ve made the link.

[someone asks question] The only way you can see faith is by something in their life. You can argue that to you as an outside observer it doesn’t look like they’re a saved individual, yes, but you have to be careful until you know enough about the person, because oftentimes you can jump to a premature conclusion. For example, if somebody came waltzing into Scripture real quick and looked at Saul, they’d have to conclude, man, the last part of his life I don’t see too much that really turns me on. You could go to 2 Samuel 19 and watch David’s miserable performance and you’d stand by as an external observer and say boy, there’s no faith in that guy. But you see what would eventually correct your false diagnosis would be as you gathered more and more data you would say oh yes, there is faith there. If you’re studying… see, this is why it’s important to link faith with Abraham because Abraham is very clearly lapsed in his faith; there are two times, for example, that he passed his wife off as his sister, which was simply a lapse of his own faith and the protection of God. Abraham’s messing around with Hagar was an obvious lapse of faith in the promise of God. So he had many, many lapses of faith and if you were there and just looked at that part of his life you would begin to conclude he wasn’t a believer, until you enlarged your data and then you’d begin to draw a more correct conclusion.

So the point is, don’t be hasty. On the one hand you can’t be hasty about concluding whether a person is a believer or unbeliever; that’s one error to avoid. On the other hand, you have all the right in the world to question somebody who’s raised their hand and supposedly accepted Christ and showed no interest whatever in the Word of God, never has, never any sign of prayer and so on, you can just simply say I’m not convinced he’s a believer, that’s all, just put it that way, you don’t have to say he’s an unbeliever, just say he leaves me unconvinced, and that’s the way to handle that problem. Faith, if we’re not talking about something that’s a mystical experience in the heart, has got to be expressed historically. The Bible is not a heart-centered thing, it’s a history-centered document.

So verse 10 is talking about something historical, what was it that was historical here, what is this “ministry” in verse 10? It was giving money. This church, and remember when we began the epistle, what did we say were the two leading candidates in the ancient world as addresses of this epistle? Jerusalem and Rome. Jerusalem was a leading candidate and Rome was too, and since the epistle doesn’t tell us we can’t be dogmatic. We just have to infer and make a probably decision and here is one of the verses that swings the vote in favor of Rome. Why? Anybody know your history a little bit about the Jerusalem church? [someone answers] All right, and you have a big collection taken up in Corinthians, remember, to send money to the saints in Jerusalem. All right, the Jerusalem church was poor, it never had the reputation for giving money but in the earliest documents of the Church the church at Rome had a reputation in the early years for being one of the most charitable churches in all Christendom. So it would tend to favor that Hebrew was… and remember, where is the earliest manuscript of Hebrews. Where is Hebrews first mentioned? It’s mentioned in a letter by Clement who wrote from Rome. And where is the only place in all ancient Christianity where the Melchizedek priesthood is an issue? Roman Catholic liturgy. So Romanism evidently preserved some of the early Roman tradition, not that everything in Romanism is correct but it has preserved some of it.

So this is a verse that tends us to believe that they were ministering, notice it’s two tenses in verse 10, they “ministered to the saints,” in time past, and “do minister,” in present tense, they are still ministering. They are still giving. And it is that work that the author calls “showing toward His name,” notice that phrase in the middle of verse 10, that’s a very neat doctrinal way of correct good works. “Showing,” forget the work, “and labor,” “your labor,” and some texts read “and your love, which you have showed toward His name.”

Now in the doctrine of the faith technique, for those four points, can you pick out the one that would be involved in showing something toward God? Orientation to grace, right. They’re God-centered, they do things as unto the Lord, not as unto men. So here you see part of the faith technique in the vocabulary of this author, you have showed this to God’s name. In other words, you have focused upon God’s essence, upon His character. You’re not doing this for brownie points among… you’re not having a context, see, in the Mediterranean. Can’t you see Paul going around saying listen, if you church out does this other church I’ll come and I’ll eat raw goldfish in front of the group or something. I heard one recently if you bring somebody to Sunday School you get a kite and if you come on time you get the string to go with it. So can’t you just see Paul with all the gimmicks, keeping a ledger as to how many churches sent how many dollars to so and so. None of that! This was done as unto the Lord, period!

Hebrews 6:11, “And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end;” now fine point for those of you who have a Greek text. You will notice the thing is separated from “diligence” here in the text. When you see something like this remember that in the Greek they didn’t have underlining. If you were to write a letter today and you wanted to emphasize a point in your correspondence you would underline that point. But when you get into something like verse 11, where you want to emphasize something in the Greek you can’t do that, and so you will have “the same,” that’s ten auten, and then you see “diligence” comes later on in the sentence. The word for “diligence” here is that word spouden, before the pros. All right, now the separation is to emphasize “the thing,” so if you were to translate this by writing it in English you’d put “the thing diligence,” the emphasis then is not on the diligence it’s the same kind of diligence. And so he’s just saying in verse 11 that “as you have been active” and not passive, “you have been active in your ministry, I desire that every single believer continue to be active in that same way.”

Then it says, “to the full assurance of hope onto the end,” or “as far as the end.” Now the way that can also be… the sense of that is this: that you show the same diligence which pertains, which you would expect of, “the full assurance of hope.” In other words he’s saying look, the same thing where we said faith technique, second point, faith is only indirectly observable. Look, inside you can have hope but that’s inside; nobody can see inside at the hope so the only thing they can do is look outside, and outside they see this diligent ministry. So what he’s saying is that “you would continue to have this same diligent ministry which is,” “belongs to,” or “is associated with, the full assurance of hope as far as the end,” in other words, at the end of your life, keep it up, you’re doing great. [someone asks question] Yes, it’s very possible that believers are going to phase out, he’s going to tell us very shortly what happens for believers when they fade out of this kind of thing; we’re coming right on that. In fact here it is, verse 12.

Hebrews 6:12, “That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” When you first look at verse 12 the tendency is to say oh-oh, loss of salvation again. No! Let’s analyze verse 12 carefully. “That,” in the Greek you see the hina, there is the purpose clause, so he is telling you, we desire that you Christians do …dot, dot, dot, dot, “in order that …” dot, dot, dot, dot would happen. So you’ve got a purpose clause, “we desire you to minister in order that” something not happen and something happen, a negative and a positive. In order that something not happen and in order that something might happen. So at the beginning of verse 12, “In order that you be not slothful,” now the word “be” can be a translation of two Greek verbs, eimi which is the verb to be, or ginomai, which is the verb to become. Which one is used here? To become, ginomai, “in order that you not become slothful,” in other words, he says, I hope and I want you to have an active faith because if you don’t you’re going to turn into a state of slothfulness.

Now what is this state of slothfulness. That’s the same word used back in Hebrews 5:11, when he started teaching the doctrine of Melchizedek, “of whom we have many things to say, hard to be uttered, seeing you have become slothful,” the word “dull” is the same word “slothful.” So judging from that we can say that Christians who aren’t active in application of doctrine gradually lose out in their perception. It’s like we’ve so often drawn up here, the chaos in the heart concept, go on negative volition, the next thing that happens is the Holy Spirit doesn’t…isn’t giving you illumination any more so you’re wandering around, and then after that the next thing that happens is that doubt begins to come into your soul, you start in drafting human viewpoint and you’re in chaos. The next thing is you begin to hate God and then you live in perpetual frustration. Well, that’s the kind of state he’s saying to avoid and he’s saying if you don’t continue to walk with the Lord, applying the Word of God, that’s the way you’re going to wind up, slothful, in a state of apathy in other words. The word can also be translated apathy.

And this is the answer to someone who comes waltzing up to you saying you know, over at Lubbock Bible Church they give you too much Bible doctrine, there’s too much teaching, you get spiritually over fed. If anyone has an apathetic attitude toward Scripture the answer is not that they’ve been eating too much; the answer is they haven’t been believing what they have been taught; they haven’t been interacting with the text of the Word of God. This verse is a very clear reply. The faith technique has to be used daily over the area that you know to be true. When you become a Christian and you have a position in Christ, remember you also have a position in time, this is your position in eternity, this is your position in time. That position is… this is the known area of the will of God for you at any given moment and you are obligated to stick it out; that’s what God’s will is and if you know God’s will, for example God may have called you to do some job and you know that’s God’s will for you, you don’t have to pray about that any more. There are some things it is blasphemy to pray about and the things that are blasphemy to pray about are things that God the Holy Spirit has clarified to you time and time and time again and you pretend that you’re not clear so you pray about them. That’s another way of going on moron trail, which is basically what he’s talking about here.

“In order that,” negative, you lose out in your perception, that you go the moron route. And he doesn’t want any of these believers to wind up idiots. This city has enough idiots in it to last us for the rest of the 20^th century. Lubbock is full of believers who have had a chance to hear the Word of God and could care less. So this is the idiot route, “that you become not idiots, but,” contrast, plus, “in order that you might become followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Now notice what he does not say in verse 12 and it’s the key to the whole verse. He does not say that you be not slothful but partakers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promise. What would that verse teach, if instead of the word “mimic,” and by the way, in the original language it is the word from which we get mimicry or mimic. Now if he hadn’t put that word in there and had put instead the word have hope, what would it be teaching? [someone answers] You would become… become partakers on the basis of your past behavior, in other words you’d be saved by works. You see, this is why vocabulary is so important. If verse 12 had read that “ye be not slothful but become partakers with them,” that means you gain status, you gain a status or you gain the position with Abraham and the rest of the faith people if you’re a good boy. And that would be salvation by works. Well, he’s not teaching salvation by works so instead of using the word partakers, he says “that you might become,” remember it’s not being, it’s not eimi, it’s ginomai, “that you might become mimickers.”

Now to mimic someone refers to the outside, external behavior pattern. So what he’s saying isn’t the inside, here’s Abraham, Abraham has faith inside; here’s another person, they have faith inside. He’s not talking about the faith inside, he’s talking about Abraham’s behavior, outside, and he says be a mimicker of Abraham’s behavior pattern and you become a mimicker of Abraham’s behavior pattern by constantly submitting to the Word of God that you now know, if you’re in fellowship with the Lord, that’s what. So he says, “that you might become mimickers of them, who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Now that’s a general principle, it’s given in the present tense, this is a gnomic present, continually inherit the promises as a general principle. [Tape turns]

Sure enough, that suggests something. What is a very famous chapter in God’s Word, in the New Testament that is the place of faith, the hall of fame for faith? Hebrews 11, and when you get to verse 12, and the very end of verse 12, you’re almost ready for chapter 11. Well, he’s going to just give one of the characters out of chapter 11 and then he’s going to go on. And so it doesn’t surprise us that beginning in verse 13 he concentrates of the hero of faith in the Bible, the man, the event associated with the faith technique, Abraham.

Now let me give you the argument of Hebrews 6:13-20 first and then we’ll go to the details but I don’t want you to lose the forest for the trees. So I’ll give you the argument first and then you can check as we go along. The argument is this: Abraham, from Genesis 12 down to Genesis 22 used the faith technique over and over and over. Can anyone give some illustration of Abraham’s use of the faith technique up to 22; 22 is the famous crisis with his son, sacrificing his son, but before that happened, before he was called upon to sacrifice his son, let’s have some illustrations of the faith technique.

[someone says God said get up and move so he did] Okay, so he exited from Mesopotamia. That was one thing, God told him something, he did it and it was by faith because he didn’t have an inkling what was out there. And if you want to get an idea of Abraham’s faith, just remember something, Abraham was a wealthy business man, whose business was cattle raising. And his business depended on that land being fertile enough to keep his business. So what God was asking that man to do was to take his whole business, all his capital, and move it over to a place where Abraham wasn’t even sure that he could continue with his business, why he might not lose his shirt, lose everything that he had accumulated by way of capital. So the faith is very much here, even though people say Abraham was wealthy, he could have survived. No he couldn’t, his business depended on fertile land and that’s why Abraham took time to move over to Mesopotamia, he had to drive these herds with him.

Okay, any other illustrations of Abraham’s use of the faith technique. [someone answers] Okay, can you tie that to how that shows faith? [more said] Abraham built altars. Well, it was just the fact that he built the altars by faith that that land would one day be his. In other words, you don’t go investing and building monuments on land that’s somebody else’s. Those were investments on land that he didn’t really have clear title to yet. See here, if you understand some things in the business world, you understand Abraham’s tremendous faith. He didn’t have any clear title; the only clear title he had was in God’s Word, that gave him clear title but as far as the human point of view he had no clear title to the property. But nevertheless he acted, as he walked across it, he acted as though he had clear title. That was the manifestation of his faith.

[someone says something] Right, you remember what happened when they fought over the land? Lot had a falling out with him and he Lot take the… of course Lot took the best, you know, like two kids, you choose first so they take the big piece and the poor kid that’s second gets the second piece. Well, that’s a good illustration, by the way, if you’re a kid, fight over cake or something at the table just pick one of them as Abraham and one of them as Lot and then let the selfish kid pick the big piece of cake and say okay, you’re Lot, and then the poor kid that got stuck with the little piece, he’s Abraham so you come along and give him the bigger one, see, that shows grace. And that’s what God did to Abraham. God did that to Abraham because God turned right around within a couple of verses of the time that Abraham let Lot choose the big piece and He gave Him a bigger one because that’s when He gave him further details on the Abrahamic Covenant.

So these are some illustrations of Abraham’s faith; I’ve already mentioned, though, there are a lot of negative examples of Abraham’s lapses, so when some of you who in the last four or five weeks, as we’ve gone through Hebrews, have been much exercised about whether Hebrews is teaching perfectionism, it isn’t, because if it was it wouldn’t be picking Abraham since Abraham has these obvious lapses. And anyone who read Genesis knew that Abraham’s faith was not a perfect faith, yet isn’t it interesting that the Bible still insists that Abraham’s faith is model faith. Now if Abraham is held up as a model of faith and Abraham’s faith is imperfect, how then can the Bible teach perfectionism? It’s not teaching perfectionism. Just because it’s talking about Abraham as a mature faith, or Abraham has strong faith, the Genesis text is very precise to cut off anybody who thinks Abraham was perfect.

All right, so we have Abraham used as an illustration, Hebrews 6:13, now when God makes this promise, now up through Genesis 12, God has promised all the way down to Genesis 22… now to get the scene let’s turn back to Genesis 22, and look what happened just after Abraham got through sacrificing his son, because this is the passage the author of Hebrews has on his mind. From Genesis 12 through Genesis 22:14, that’s one period of Abraham’s life. Now the author of Hebrews picks up at Genesis 22:15 through the end of that chapter and he’s going to divide Abraham’s life in two parts. Look what happens in verse 15.

“And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,” the first time was to stop him, [16] “And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD; for because you have done this thing, and have not withheld thy son, thine only son,” and by the way, that’s the first case in the Bible where the only begotten, the phrase “only begotten son” occurs, there it is, “thine son, thine only sons, [17] That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven…. Verse 19, “So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together…” etc. etc. etc.

Now at verse 22, verses 15, 16, and 17 God does something unusual and what it is that He does unusual strikes the ear and the fancy of the author of Hebrews. He’s going to build a whole type of the Christian life out of what is unusual in verses 15-17. What it is that’s unusual is God oathing, God making an oath after the manner of men. So this strikes the fancy of this man, so he’s going to say ah, here I want to show you something about how God works. So he’s going to take this period of Abraham’s life, from Genesis 12:1 to Genesis 22:14 and he’s going to say that’s the time of Abraham’s patience. That’s the patient period of his life. Then he’s going to take this period of his life as acquiring the promise.

Now I want to spend a few moments on this because it’ll confuse you, and he himself later on teaches that Abraham really didn’t get all the promise and he won’t get all the promise until eternity. That’s true, but at this point, in Genesis 22:15-17, he got a near fulfillment of that promise. He got it because, number one, as he started to slit his son’s throat and the angel of the Lord suddenly came down and said stop, it was as though his son had come from the dead; his son was that close from death, and the fact that the angel of the Lord miraculously intervened in space/ time history and stopped it, he put a stop to Abraham’s motion, at that point Abraham, so to speak, received his son back again. See when he walked up there he committed his son to death, but when the angel stopped him and gave him a green light to go without sacrificing Isaac, his son had been given back to him.

Then you have the oath of verses 15-17 in which God goes as far as a God can go in making a promise, and this so touches the author of Hebrews, that God would go so far to make a promise by oathing to the promise after He’s made the promise, that he says this is as good as though he had already inherited that promise. In other words it is so dogmatic in verses 15-17 that it’s just as though right there Abraham received a whole package. Now it’s this insight from the text that the author now uses to develop his point over in Hebrews. Now he’s fond of doing this and from this point on in the exegesis of Hebrews you’ll see him do this again and again. We saw him do this once in Hebrews 4 where he’ll take some little detail out of the text and he makes all these big conclusions out of it. He sets it up as a big type and draws all sorts of deductions from it. Well, here goes again.

Hebrews 6:13, “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swear by himself, [14] Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. [15] And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. [16] For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. [17] Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath; [18] That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us; [19] Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil; [20] Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Now let’s train the line of logic that he uses; Beginning at verse 13, “For,” for is an explanation, it must be an explanation of verse 12. What was the point of verse 12? Believers, keep with it and mimic those who inherit the promise. All right, mimic; mimic who, you’ve got to have a model to mimic; going to mimic Abraham. What about Abraham are you going to mimic? Abraham’s behavior from Genesis 12:1 through 22:14, that’s what you’re going to mimic, all those positive examples and you’ll have your own negative example of the use of the faith technique. He says I want you to mimic Abraham, because after Abraham believed and believed and believed, bang, he got the promise. He’s using a near fulfillment of the promise to show that patience is rewarded, that the believer is not going to be asked to believe forever; that the believing will come to an end when you won’t have to just believe any longer, the hope will be fulfilled. So he uses this as a mimic. He says that’s what he wants in verse 12, to mimic those who received the promises. In other words, the idea is you can sustain yourself if you know your trial is going to come to an end. What thwarts you is if you face a trial in life and you can’t see the end, it just seems to go on and on and on. That is what drains you. It isn’t the intensity of your trial, it’s the unendingness of the trial that psychologically immobilizes you.

So when he asks that you be a mimicker of those who inherit the promises, the way you mimic is you know in your heart that you won’t have to believe forever. It is a temporary state in which God is asking you to trust Him, trust Him, trust Him, but just at the last agonizing hour, when Abraham, with his knife and with his wood went up the mountain to sacrifice his son, when there were just minutes left, and he had to, at that point so passionately trust that God’s Word would come true, just at the last minute, if it was a split second longer his son would be dead, but God stopped it, and at the point when the angel of the Lord said all right Abraham, it’s enough, at that point Abraham could breathe a sigh of relief and no longer would he have to believe, at least in that trial. The belief was over because the hope was delivered, his son was received. So he says that’s what he said I want you to mimic about Abraham. When you use the faith technique you’re not facing a hopeless situation that’s going to go on interminably, never to end. Have the same confidence based on Abraham’s past experience that it will come to an end and the trial will be finished.

Let’s watch how he develops this. [13] “For when God made promise to Abraham, He could swear by no greater,” now this promise in verse 13 was made after Abraham was faithful; remember this promise, this is the Abrahamic Covenant but it was reiterated in Genesis 22:15 after Abraham finished with his son, “because He could swear by no greater, He swore by Himself,” verse 15 is the principle, “so, after he,” that’s Abraham, not God in verse 15, after Abraham “had patiently endured,” notice “patiently endured” is aorist, that’s the period, Genesis 12:1 through Genesis 22:14, that is “after he endured, he received…” he received. Now Abraham, when he walked up the mountain had a certain mental attitude in his heart. See, he has the faith technique and underneath the faith technique was a mental attitude. And the mental attitude is explained in many passages, I believe we went through it Sunday morning, the mental attitude was I don’t know how God’s going to pull this off, but I know within a matter of hours me and my son, or I and my son will come back to you people. Remember, he told the men down at the bottom of the mountain that. Now that shows you that in the mental attitude of Abraham while he was trusting and using the faith technique, along with the faith technique there was a mental attitude this isn’t going to go on forever, I know my God, and He is not going to permit this to go on forever. So with the use of the faith technique is this assurance that the trial is temporary. No that’s the point the author is trying to get across to these readers who face this great trial.

“…he obtained the promise,” it says in verse 15, he received the promise. What did he receive in Genesis 22 at the end? He received a spectacular confirmation, a near fulfillment of that promise. [16] “For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.” Verse 16, by the way, refutes the Quaker interpretation of Scripture that you can’t take an oath in God’s name. Obviously the author of Hebrews sees nothing wrong with taking an oath just as long as it’s legitimate. [17] “Wherein God, willing” now here’s a very personal note, here’s where those of you who take the time to master the divine viewpoint framework, you read verse 17, you understand God has a purpose in this and a special blessing for those who put in the time. “Wherein,” now “wherein” means in Genesis 22, in other words, in the event of the Old Testament in Genesis 22 God, “willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise” now who are “the heirs of promise? You, the heirs of promise are all believers, not just Abraham. So what he’s saying here in verse 17 is that God wrote Genesis 22 for you, today, and we live 30 centuries after that event. But he said God engineered that whole event so if believers would open the Old Testament they would get the blessing out of it. And the blessing is God gives historic proof unto the heirs of promise of “the immutability of his counsel,” that by the way is one of your proof texts for the immutability of God, obviously a mutable God can’t give immutable council, so there’s a reference for the immutability of God; “the immutability of his counsel, he confirmed it by an oath.”

Now in Hebrews 6:18, two immutable things, what are the two immutable thing? The two immutable things are: number one, the promise, and two, the oath. See normally we just have the word, the word of promise. That’s immutable, God can’t lie, if God promises something He never goes back on it, but God, and this is the only time He did it in history, gave an oath to Abraham. And at that point, and it’s the only point in all of history He’s ever done this, He gave two immutable things, He gave an oath and He gave His promise, “in which it was impossible for God to lie,” that Abraham might have strong encouragement? It doesn’t say that in verse 18, it says that we… WE, believers today who take the time to become familiar with the event of Abraham, that “we might have” and the word “consolation” means encouragement, “that we might have encouragement.” Encouragement to do what? To stick with the faith technique, that’s what; to keep using it, because just as Abraham’s trials were not interminable, they had a definite conclusion and an end, so our trials are not interminable.

“…who have fled for refuge to lay hold,” now let’s take that apart so you see the point, “to encourage us,” and then he describes us, to do something, “to lay hold of,” now that’s your main sentence, “to encourage to lay hold of,” “lay hold of” is aorist, it means that… this is a gnomic aorist, over and over and over and over and over and over an over and over and over, in other words, that should be an habitual use of the faith technique at point after point after point after point in your life. And to do that you naturally have to be encouraged because after a while you tend to get discouraged. Now how can you avoid getting discouraged? By going back to Abraham and kind of reliving the event of the sacrifice of his son. That will give us courage “to lay hole upon the hope set before us.” See, Abraham had a hope set before him, we have a hope set before us, and the hope, in verse 18, is not the subjective feeling of hope in the heart, it is the objective promise of redemption, full redemption in Jesus Christ, that the bottom circle will one day match the top circle. That’s what the hope is.

Now he describes believers by this phrase, “who have fled for refuge” that’s a very interesting word, to flee. Now you don’t often think of people as they come fleeing down the aisle in the middle of an evangelistic service, you don’t normally think of the word “flee” in connection with evangelism, but the word “flee” as it is used here in the rich context if you study it in the concordance, is the fact that when there’s going to be judgment, the people would flee into the hills and the caves, Qumran, where the scrolls were found, were deposited there by people who had the Scriptures and they fled into those caves for protection. All right, that’s the picture here, that you have a great bluff with these caves in the bluff, and the believers get up into those caves where they safe from catastrophe. And the point is that in a fallen universe you are under damnation unless there’s a rescue vessel coming into the fallen universe from outside the fallen universe and that rescue vessel is the Lord Jesus Christ and you flee, as the people fled in Noah’s day into the ark for protection, because that’s the only place where there is freedom from the curse and the damnation that can any moment break out upon the fallen world. So the word “flee” has a richness to it here that you might not realize unless you study it’s use.

“… who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us;” and then he describes it in verse 19, “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,” in his commentary on this verse John Calvin had a very interesting point about the anchor of the soul. And I’ll just read this section to you, you might as well get exposed to one of the great church fathers. “It is a striking likeness when you compare his faith leaning on God’s Word to an anchor. For doubtless, as long as we sojourn in this world, we stand not on firm ground but are tossed here and there, as it were, in the midst of a sea, and that indeed very turbulent, for Satan is incessantly stirring up innumerable storms which would immediately upset and sink our vessel were we not to cast our anchor fast in the deep.” And then he goes on to point something peculiar about an anchor: “For nowhere a haven appears to our eyes but wherever we look, water alone is in view.” In other words, here’s the point, when you’re out on the open sea and the vessel is out there there’s no visible sign of anchoring; the waves are like this, and that’s all you see is waves, particular if you get high amplitude waves, you can barely see over them, even for a short distance. So all you see is waves, water, water everywhere. But the anchor drops down into that which is sure, but what it is that is sure is not visible. The anchor is out of sight, in other words. The stability isn’t in the vessel, the stability is in the anchor that is beyond your sight.

And so Calvin continues: For nowhere does a haven appear to our eyes but wherever we look water alone is in view, yea, waves also rise and threaten us, but as the anchor is cast through the water into a dark and unseen place, and lies hid there, keeps the vessel beaten by the waves from being overwhelmed, so must our hope be fixed on the invisible God. There is this difference, the anchor is cast downward into the sea, for it has the earth as its bottom but our hope rises upward to soar aloft, for in the world it finds nothing which it can stand or ought it to cleave to created things but to rest on God alone. As the cable also by which the anchor is suspended joins the vessel with the earth through a long and dark intermediate space, so the truth of God is a bond to connect us with Himself so that no distance of place and no darkness can prevent us from cleaving to Him.”

And the point is that as the anchor goes through into place, the believer in this world can’t see the throne room, it’s outside of sight, but we have something that locks us in up there, and we can’t see the anchor, we can’t see where it’s anchored but this verse teaches that the anchor is there and it says that it is “an anchor of the soul,” and notice the anchor is not inside the soul, the anchor is outside the soul, and the emphasis of verse 19 is not on Christ in the heart, it is on Christ in heaven, please notice, because that’s the place where the stability is. “We have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, which enters into that within the veil,” in other words, I can’t see inside the veil, it’s invisible like the anchor is invisible under the water.

Hebrews 6:10, “Whither” or “to which place the forerunner has for us entered,” “entered” is aorist tense, the forerunner is the man who goes in to… the pioneer, the one who establishes and stakes out the claim, and by the way, can some of you from that verb deduce why Jesus appears the way He does here? Remember, when Jesus, the word “Jesus” alone appears, His humanity is emphasized. What in the immediate context emphasizes Christ’s human nature versus His divine nature? He has gone before somebody that is like Him, and so He is the first member of the human race to reach the goal, and the fact that He has…He was a member in Adam, remember Christ has the genes of Adam, He was a member solidly of the human race, true humanity, and he has made it into that throne room, therefore, Jesus Christ is that anchor. That’s his whole point and he’s talking to these Hebrew believers, if you will concentrate upon the humanity of Christ, not in your heart but at God’s right hand in the throne room of heaven, that is where your anchor is; you can’t see it any more than you can see an anchor in the water, but you can feel the grip on the line and the grip here is the Word instead of the line. And so you can feel the grip, the Word of God comes true because at the other end Jesus Christ is at the helm of the universe, His promises have to come true.

And then finally at the end of verse 20 [“even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”] he concludes where he was at verse 10, remember when we started this section in verse 10, he was talking about he was going to deal with something about the order of Melchizedek, verse 20 he comes right back to the subject, now he’s going to deal with Melchizedek, and now beginning with Hebrews 7:1 we deal with the deeper things.