Clough Hebrews Lesson 52

Fourth Warning Passage; Election – Hebrews 10:26-31

We are in the section of Hebrews 10:1-39, the content of which we have summarized by saying that knowing the person and work of Christ ought to encourage Hebrew Christians if they are true believers. And we dealt with the exhortation on how to exhort, the example given down through the end of verse 25, that there were three points in proper Biblical exhortation. The first point was that it begins with our position in Christ, that all true exhortations start there, it doesn’t start with a problem, it starts with our position first. Then it moves from the position in Christ to the problem but it doesn’t begin directly with the problem. This where Biblical exhortation and Biblical divine viewpoint counseling differs from human viewpoint counseling. Human viewpoint counseling always starts with the problem. Divine viewpoint counseling always begins with our position in Christ.

The second point that we found was that the second thing is a defense against the problem, an isolation of the problem, definition of the problem, whatever you want to say, and that was in verse 23, you identify what’s the big problem, label it and then in Hebrews 10:24-25 we dealt with the positive, step two being negative, step three being positive, and that is to get the local church functioning; the idea was for believers to assemble together and that exhortation takes place, that believers not neglect meeting together and the reason being that you can’t use your spiritual gift I isolation. That’s the fallacy of all isolationist believers. We need each other. You won’t go for long in the Christian separate and divorced from other believers. That was basically the content down through the end of verse 25.

Now beginning at Hebrews 10:26 we come to one of the most severe warnings of the entire book. Again, like all the other warnings, let’s pause here, think through things, what is a cardinal principle of interpretation when you come to the warning passages of Hebrews; what ought you always to remember by way of methodology? [someone answers] Okay, always relate one warning to the rest of the warning passages. You can’t handle these things in isolation from each other, it won’t work. If you come up with a particular kind of solution to one warning passage you’re going to have to have the same solution to the other warning passages. Remember that.

Now what are the three possibilities that you can have when you plow into one of these warning passages? There’s three [can’t understand word] ways you can it, theoretically. And we kind of… the problem of Bible interpretation is to choose among these three options. So let’s think of the three options and then narrow them down again. What are the three ways it can to? Okay, towards unbelievers, towards carnal Christians, and toward Christians in general. If it were directed toward unbelievers it would be a warning to what basically, if what doesn’t happen? If it’s a warning to an unbeliever it’s judgment about the gospel issue of Jesus Christ. If it is warning toward carnal Christians it is discipline and there is another option, though we theologically have trouble with it but there is another option, if it’s toward Christians it would be a warning toward what? [someone answers] Loss of salvation? Okay, those are the three ways you can handle the passage.

Now what we’ve got to do as we decide through these passages is that we have got to eliminate possibilities. Two of these are compatible with eternal security, one is not compatible with eternal security. One is an Arminian interpretation, that’s the third one. In order to prove the Arminian interpretation what two things do you have to prove, and we would deny that you can prove these, as a matter of fact, but if you wanted to hold to the Arminian position what would be necessary for you to show. [someone answers] All right, you’d have to prove that it is only believers, and you would have to prove what else that substantiates the Arminian interpretation? Only believers and… the Arminian interpretation would be that believers lose salvation, then what must you prove about the warning? That it’s referring to a loss of salvation and not just, say discipline. Now those two things have got to be shown to substantiate the Arminian interpretation. And it is our contention that no one has ever shown them on any of the warning passages.

Now in this particular warning passage, you start with verse 26 and as we do this what we want to do is…we battled out the interpretation problem in previous passages. Remember we’ve had three warnings; do you remember where in the epistle to the Hebrews these three warnings were the previous times we’ve had this thing come up. Where do I go in Hebrews to find the first warning passage. [someone answers] Now Hebrews 6, you can always remember that, that’s one of them, what else. [someone answers] Hebrews 2 and what else. [someone answers] All right, and there’s passages in 3-4. Hebrews 2, Hebrews 3-4, Hebrews 6. Those are three warning passage; this is your fourth warning. There’ll be a fifth one, there are five, I think maybe six warning passages, I’ve forgot right off hand but this is the fourth warning passage.

Hebrews 10:26, “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins. [27] But a certain fearful looking of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. [28] He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. [29] Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who has trodden under foot the Son of God, who has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, and unholy thing, and has done despite unto the Spirit of grace? [30] For we know Him that said, Vengeance belongs unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge His people. [31] It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Now that’s where the fierceness of this warning stops, verse 31, then verse 32 you can tell the author tries to cushion the fierceness with this word of comfort that begins at verse 32, “But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great fight of afflictions,” and so on and so on then in verse 39 a most significant verse, necessary to get the basics of the passage, “But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.”

So verse 39 tells you immediately that the author doesn’t really think that any of the people to whom he addresses this epistle are actually going to be involved in this “fiery indignation” that he’s talking about. Which then raises another question, and here’s the question we’ve got to answer now. Why go through all this finagling if, as it seems in verse 39, that in fact no one to whom this was written was of these people. What is the argumentation…we haven’t covered this, in the previous times we’ve been in these warning passages I’ve been trying to concentrate on who it was to and why it was there; now we want to concentrate on what is the argument. This is the fourth time he’s used this one argument. It’s always used in exhortation. It’s kind of interesting why this particular things pops up right in the middle of an exhortation passage. There’s some kind of an argument that he’s using here and it looks like verse 39 drains the argument of its force.

What kind of a threat is it if after you’ve made the threat you turn right around and say, as a matter of fact, well, I know this doesn’t apply to you. Well why make the threat in the first place if you know it doesn’t apply to you? Can anyone think of what the argument….[someone answers] All right, he’s trying to show them the magnificence of the work of Jesus Christ and can someone then bring up therefore the moral implication of the magnificence of Christ’s finished work? It’s so magnificent that what? [someone answers] All right, but in these warning passages the theme of the magnificence of Jesus Christ is there and what’s he trying to show now. The magnificence of Christ is so magnificent that what? The magnificent work of Jesus Christ is so magnificent that to reject it involves eternal damnation. It’s that important.

Maybe said another way, the argument that seems to come up in all these warning passages is hey, the Word of God is deadly serious. That’s basically his argument. [someone says something] All right, he may have their acquaintances in mind too with these threats and these warnings, that’s a good point, because basically this is a national message. Remember when we said back in chapter 2 when he said “brethren,” he’s not using that word like Paul was using it. Here, the author of this epistle, is using the word “brethren” to mean just like Paul would speak before a bunch of Jews. In other words, brethren after the flesh. That’s the way he’s using the word “brethren,” fellow Hebrews, and incidentally Hebrew Christians.

[someone says something] Yeah, you’re right and this is talking about Christians here, and he’s urging the Christians not to fade out, to stick with it, to be loyal, his thrust of this argument comes up 85 different ways, but the main thrust of the argument always is you’re playing with high voltage when you play with the Son of God. You don’t play with Him, the Son of God has come and He has spoken. Remember how the epistle start? God has spoken it many times and the Jew would have respect to Moses, he would have respect to Isaiah because they were an ordained prophet, and now he says in these latter days He has spoken by His Son, thereby indicating now, by phrasing it that way, he’s pulling Christ up into the Jewish limelight so that he stands as high as Moses and all the other ones as far as His prophetic teaching, so Jesus Christ is pulled up as a prophetic authority and the fact that he’s worried about this and the fact he’s constantly doing this gives us a tip-off as to what the problem was these people kept having and that was they were tending to fade off and say well, you know, it’s nice, this Jesus came along but really our big basis is Moses. And he’s saying huh-un, you can’t go back on the finished work of Christ this way.

Let’s look at it in detail now, verses 26-31. “For if we sin willfully” those of you with a Greek text, you’ll notice this is genitive absolute in here, construction. There’s a bunch of genitives at the beginning of the sentence. And that’s another way in the Greek of handling conditions. “For if we sin willfully,” or “freely,” and the concept there is… the “freely” means the idea of without any hindrance in the conscience. “If we sin without hindrance after we have received,” and it’s an aorist tense, received at a point in time, or at least summarizing the times that they had received this information. Now when had they received this information?

Turn to Hebrews 2:4; it’s a little review but a review on an important passage. Hebrews 2:3-4 tell you how these people received the knowledge of the truth. It says, “…neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him.” See, they’re second generation; these people never heard Jesus of Nazareth but they heard those who did hear Him. Then it says in verse 4, “God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders….” Hebrews 4:2-3 show that the signs and wonders that had been given had ceased by the time that this epistle was written, at least for these people. Signs and wonders were all over, the aorist tense is used. So since the signs and wonders have stopped the miraculous attestation of the gospel had stopped. Now if the miraculous attestation of the gospel had stopped you can easily see why, then, under pressure, these believers were tending to kind of just say well, let’s go back to something that’s been more proved, we’re more sure, we’re more comfortable with our traditional Judaism than we are with this new stuff that’s going on and you know those miracles, they talked about those miracles 30 or 40 years ago but we don’t see too many miracles today. And so the argument then is that let’s just kind of fade out. So the author is talking about, for some time period, apparently say between 40 and about 60 AD, during those 20 years, these people had heard of Jesus Christ and His finished work, now it’s all over. They’re heard it, they can respond either way.

You “…have received the knowledge of the truth,” and the word knowledge that is in verse 26, epignosis, and it means knowledge that’s directed toward a particular item; epi, looking at a particular item. And therefore it means thorough knowledge of that particular item, whatever it is, and we know what the item is; the item is what Jesus Christ has done in history. So the fact that epignosis is used in verse 26 shows you the extent of illumination that these people had. They had received the knowledge of the truth, it’s no case that they hadn’t gotten sufficient doctrine; they had plenty of doctrine, but something was happening, the spirit was going out of the whole thing, they were running on two cylinders and things just weren’t moving.

You “… have received the knowledge of the truth, and there remains,” “if you sin willfully… there remains no more sacrifice for sins. [27] But a fearful looking for judgment,” now this is a typological interpretation of the Old Testament. I want to show you the principle and then I’ll show you the passage. Remember, typological interpretation is not spiritualizing or allegorizing. That’s what the amill always says you should do with prophecy. This isn’t a prophetic passage, it’s typological; this is what it means. You have a physical drama or a physical enactment in the Old Testament. You have some ceremony, something that people do, something people look at, there’s a physical tabernacle built with certain colored curtains, certain dimensions, certain pieces of furniture, all that’s physical. The typological interpretation simply argues that the structure of that physical thing points to a future spiritual reality. And it doesn’t intend to say that this future spiritual reality is necessarily not physical, either. We don’t know there isn’t a physical tabernacle in heaven; Moses saw something. So it’s just emphasizing that this past thing out of the Old Testament did point to something else. And this is a typological interpretation and the typological interpretation comes from Numbers 15:27.

Turn to Numbers 15, here’s what the author has on his mind; this is the passage he’s using to illustrate his doctrine. It’s kind of a simple illustration, but nevertheless, one which has some interesting applications in the Church Age. Numbers 15:27-31, “And if any soul sin through ignorance, then he shall bring a she-goat of the first year for a sin offering. [28] And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that sins ignorantly when he sins by ignorance before the LORD, to make an atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him. [29] Ye shall have one law for him who sins through ignorance, both for him who is born among the children of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them.” The word “ignorance” there just doesn’t mean I our sense of the word ignorant, but kind of accidental, in other words, sin is sin but there are two classes of sin here. This is sin that is considered to be sin done by a person who accepts the authority of the Law but just, in that situation, didn’t do what they were supposed to do, that kind of thing, versus the second category of sin, verse 30. “But the soul that does ought presumptuously, whether he be born in the land or a stranger, the same reproaches the Lord and that soul shall be cut off from among the people, [31] Because he has despised,” and there’s the key, remember because the whole argument of these four warning passages was don’t despise the Word of God, the Word of God is important, Christ’s work is magnificent, all right, here’s the category that he’s picked out, “because he has despised the word of the LORD, and has broken His commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him.”

So you have a situation here where he’s using out of the Old Testament Numbers 15. Now Numbers 15 is talking about something in the every day world of jurisprudence. It’s talking about something physical, it’s not talking about salvation, necessarily, both the people in verse 30 and 31 might be saved and the person in verses 27-29 might be saved. But in the Old Testament economy they’re emphasizing the physical every day courtroom procedures. If you have a person who’s attitude is negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative and he will not respond to the authority of God’s Word, and he’s just a rebel all the way down and He won’t respond at all, at any point in his life, then just get him out of here, and getting him out of here translated means cut his head off, capital punishment. So capital punishment was used against those who would not respond to the authority of the Word of God. This was done to the juvenile delinquent, kids who reached their teenage years that wouldn’t accept the authority of the parents were just eliminated, that way they got rid of a lot of troublemakers. So capital punishment was used on people who could not accept authority of the Word. A person was on trial, so to speak, for the first 16 years of their life. If after 16 years you couldn’t how handle authority, the inference is that chances are you’re never going to learn how to handle authority so let’s just get rid of it. Instead of coddling them they just purified the society of the dregs.

Now the other group, verses 17-19, that group was people that would sin, obviously every one sins, but the idea is that they sinned, you know, like David sinned, they sinned but I know “my sin is always before me,” that kind of thing, there’s always concern on their heart that they’ve sinned. So there’s that thing and that’s a real thing that was used in the Old Testament; there would be sacrifice for this.

Now here’s the typological interpretation. He takes something out of the world of every day jurisprudence and moves it up here and now he’s going to make two other categories that are spiritual. And these two categories are going to be mirror images of these two back here. He’s using Numbers 15 as the control and he says Numbers 15 gives you the idea of these two broad categories of sin. Now he said they’re going to be those who sin, in the David sense, and then there are those who are going to sin and they just sin, hell-raise all the time, that concept. Now it’s that second category of sin that he is talking about in Hebrews, the person who is in utter, complete rebellion against the Word of God. So let’s turn back to Hebrews 11, having gotten the Old Testament picture from Numbers 15.

In Hebrews 10:26 when he says, “There remains no more sacrifice for sins,” he’s talking about the fact that Jesus Christ’s work will not apply to that second category. Now it’s going to be interesting because this is where this old thing of limited atonement and unlimited atonement and all the rest of it comes up. Jesus Christ’s work is not applied to the second category; he’s going to later on, as he shows in verse 29 if you look ahead, down at the end of verse 29, “the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified,” so it shows you Jesus Christ’s atonement is unlimited in the sense that it provides potential provision for all men. All men have their sins paid for by Jesus Christ’s finished work. But Jesus Christ’s finished work is not going to be applied to those who are in rebellion against His Word. And the people, who in this case, these are the unbelievers who are in rebellion against this new revelation that Jesus Christ has died for their sins; that the Mosaic dispensation is over and they’re going to move to the new. This is the same, these category two type people are the same people that in Matthew 12 committed the unpardonable sin, and since that one always comes up, let’s hold the place and make sure we understand the unpardonable sin for a moment.

Matthew 12:31, there is an unpardonable sin, but it is not what most people think it is; most people think of some socially repulsive thing that’s repulsive particularly to them, and they make that the unpardonable sin, but in Matthew 12:31 the unpardonable sin has nothing to do with what most people think is unpardonable. “Wherefore, I say unto you,” Jesus says, “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall to be forgiven men.” Now why? Well, it’s very simple when you think of it. It really… just back off for a minute, instead of straining at the passage, just relax and just look at it a moment. Here’s the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity says the Son is always the center piece of all revelation. When there’s anything being revealed it’s not going to be focused on the Holy Spirit, it’s going to be focused on the Son. The Son of God always occupies center stage. The Holy Spirit has come to glorify Christ, not the Holy Spirit.

So the Son is always the center of bona fide revelation. But who does the revealing? The revealing is done by the Holy Spirit. So therefore a person may look at the Son and say I don’t believe it, and so forth, that’s fine, but when the person has got to the point of rejecting every approach the Holy Spirit has used with them, as by Matthew 12, they had rejected John the Baptist, before Him they rejected the Old Testament, they rejected Jesus’ works, they rejected the apostles, at least four ways the Holy Spirit tried to reach this generation and four times this generation rebelled against the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus says this generation is in trouble because they have turned off every approach that the Holy Spirit has used to clarify the issue; they have said no, no, no, no, four times and so they are sinning and blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. And it was this generation that Jesus Christ condemned in a unique way. It doesn’t mean the Jews are more to blame than the Gentiles for the death of Christ, but conversely it doesn’t mean that they can have a trial like they’re going to in Rome and say that the Jews didn’t have anything to do with it.

[someone says something] That’s right, a believer cannot commit the unpardonable sin. The only person that can commit the unpardonable sin is the unbeliever because the unbeliever has rejected the witness of the Holy Spirit to the person of Christ. Now as far as today is concerned we don’t even know whether an unbeliever can commit this thing. We can’t know unless we’re the … obviously at the point of death, when somebody dies and they have not received Christ, obviously they’ve committed a sin that they can’t be pardoned for and that is rejection of Christ. But as far as saying before they die that that person over there has committed the unpardonable sin, we don’t have that kind of information. If we had living prophets today who were writing canonical Scripture we could say that, but in the Scriptures when the Holy Spirit operates there were some men who did it. Pharaohs was one who committed the unpardonable sin before he died. The people of Jesus generation were another group that committed the unpardonable sin before they died. The Canaanites were a group of people who committed the unpardonable sin before they died. In the tribulation there are certain people who receive the mark of the beast the mark 666, and they’re going to receive the mark because they’ve committed the unpardonable sin.

So there are groups in time and history that have committed the unpardonable sin and when you have a group of people that have got so negative to the Word of God and they reach a point in their life where’ve committed this unpardonable sin, from that point on it’s judgment, judgment, judgment, judgment all the way on that generation. God just is merciless with the execution of these kind of things. You know how He wiped out the Canaanites; viciously wiped them out. And the reason is that when people reach the point where they reject finally, all approaches that the Holy Spirit is making for them, at that point they become to the humanity, to the corporate humanity, like a cancel cell which eats at your body, and God apparently in history, what we can deduce from the way He handles these people, is He always a surgical approach and destroys them. People who get to this point are just considered to be beyond hope, beyond redemption. But we can’t make that, that’s a judgment God makes; you can’t go out of here and say well, I know so and so, boy they committed the unpardonable sin, I’m not going to witness to them any more, throw them out. Now you’re going beyond your authority there. I don’t have the authority, you don’t have that kind of authority because you don’t have information. You can’t look down the heart, hey, have you committed the unpardonable sin? There’s no way we can do that.

[someone says something] Well sure, because he can’t be pardoned after he dies. [more said] No, because all of his sin has been paid for, this is a case where somebody sends you the pardon and you don’t want to accept it, I mean, if you want to argue that way okay, there is one sin that isn’t covered, but I don’t know how else you’re going to think about it. I mean, if I hold you out a pardon and you don’t accept it, now whose fault is that. [someone says something] But the person is still excluded from the kingdom of God because of his rejection.

[more said] Right, he’s refused it. Jesus Christ’s atonement is potentially available for all men but the point is that like… go back to the Old Testament analog of Numbers 15, in Numbers 15 just think of the physical picture first. Here’s a guy, suppose this is a teenager who’s grown up in the home, in Deuteronomy, I think it’s 18 or 16, he’s grown up in the home, and he’s reached this age now, his parent’s cant deal with him, he’s incorrigible, so now what happens? He comes before the judges and there is no sacrifice applied to his situation. In the theocracy no sacrifice could be made for him. He just stands therefore a brute force of justice. And that’s the ominous kind of threatening, cloudy, stormy background for this Hebrews passage. He’s saying look at who you’re playing games with; you’re playing games with a man, the God-man, who has given you all your redemption. You say no to Him and you “ain’t got any other recourse.”

[more said] This is a big long detailed thing which we’ll get into in the family training program. We’re getting around with election and amillennialism and premillennialism and I’m juggling too many balls here to get into that one right now, so let’s go back to Hebrews. [more said] Apparently because this is when… this Matthew 12 passage, where the unpardonable sin is committed, if you’ll mark that in the gospels as you read it’s right after that that he starts quoting Isaiah, “Woe to these people,” preach the gospel so they won’t hear it. In other words, after this point is reached a very interesting thing happens. Up to that point the Word of God comes to the person always with the hope that the Word of God will change them. After this point is reached it’s a spiral down because then the Word of God is given to these people in order to damn them. And this sounds like very mercilessness, but in Isaiah there’s no other way of interpreting that passage, he commissions them, go ahead and preach so they’ll deliberately harden their hearts. I know every time they hear the Word of God they’re going to tune it out so fine, give them a steady diet of it, so they’ll tune it out completely, they’ll get stuck tuning it out. So after that point is reached there does come something in the soul when the Word of God just damns a person, damns a person, damns a person, damns a person, he’s worse off every time he hears the Word from that point forward.

But you don’t have to worry whether that’s going on right today because these examples are given during the age of Jesus, they’re given during the age of the tribulation and they were given during the conquest of the land. Apart from those there’s not too many other evidences that this goes on. As I say, we’re just without data at this point as far as determining… we cannot make the choice, we have to presume that X out there has not committed the unpardon-able sin, you have to continue to teach the Word, always, it’s not up to us to judge, the last order we got fro the Lord was to preach the gospel to every creature and that’s the last order we follow and we keep following it until we get a new order and the next order we’re going to get is “come up.” So just keep following the last order.

Now in Hebrews 10:28, “He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses.” See, there’s the despising of the authority. The word “despise” means abrogate the authority of, so again the emphasis on this passage is respect for the authority of the Word of God. “He that despised,” forget it. Now verse 29 is where he makes his transition, see, here’s his typology working out. Verses 26-28 are all about the Law.

Now he starts shifting and in verse 29 he says, “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who has trodden under foot” now “sorer punishment” goes back to the fact that category two, those people that were despising authority of Moses’ Law received capital punishment; that was a physical death. But he’s saying how much sorer punishment are you going to go get if you’ve “trodden under foot the Son of God,” so the category two here is the second death, the lake of fire. That’s the comparison, the physical death to the spiritual death. Capital punishment is the max physical punishment there is; the second death is the max spiritual punishment there is. And so that’s why he’s saying “how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who has trodden under foot,” and this was, in the oriental world, considered the worst kind of insult, to walk over somebody, and so he’s deliberately using vocabulary here to get across to them that failure to respond to what Jesus Christ has done is to tread Him under foot, just step all over Him.

And now he cites three things, and he uses inflammatory vocabulary in verse 29, you can say he’s exaggerating but he’s trying to get across a point. Number one, you tread under foot the Son of God, the second thing is you count “the blood of the covenant, wherewith He was sanctified, and unholy thing,” now the word “unholy” is koinos, from which we get Koine Greek, common, this is the word common. Now look what they’re saying: if you count the blood of the testament common, you’re counting the death of Christ as just the death of an ordinary man so Jesus Christ’s death in way. That’s what it means to count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, just a common thing, He just died. But here’s the problem, God so engineered the death of Jesus Christ that you can’t do this without getting in trouble immediately. It’d be nice and religious skeptics would love this if there was only some way of saying well, yeah, I know there’s some good things Jesus taught but I don’t buy this Jesus is undiminished deity and true humanity bit, and I just accept Jesus as a prophet, He lived and He died. Now that would be all great until you run up against the force of the Old Testament Law and the [can’t understand word] method by which Christ died. It’s told in Galatians, it’s told in Deuteronomy that hanging on the cross is the death of a criminal who was under Jehovah’s judgment and the body would be suspended, the man who died of capital punishment, his body would be hung by the roadside until sundown. So the display of the body was the sign of the death of a man who had incurred the special judgment of God.

Now here’s where the early Christians faced a problem; they turned a liability into an asset. It was kind of embarrassing to walk around and say hey, you believe Messiah’s come; yeah, He’s the guy who’s body was hanging by the road. Oh, somebody that knows the Mosaic Law says: body, hanging by the road, you know what that is, that means He was not a Messiah, he received the judgments of Jehovah. And so this, if you didn’t think it through, would be very embarrassing to go around and say your Messiah, of all things, who was supposed to represent Jehovah, was in fact a criminal who received Jehovah’s judgment. But one step further, what judgment… Jesus did receive a judgment of Jehovah, didn’t He. In a greater way than they were thinking. See, the skeptics laughed at the early church, ha-ha, your carpenter Messiah, yeah, he received the judgment of God. And so the Christians would just take it one step further, He sure did, in fact He received your judgment; the judgment that was due you, the judgment that was due me, the judgment that was due all men; that’s the judgment He received. So the Christians extended their skeptics argument by a length the skeptics didn’t like, and showed that Jesus Christ’s death on the cross was the substitutionary atonement.

Now, you see, with such a death, with a death that was criminal by the Mosaic Law you haven’t got much room to maneuver here. You’ve either got to go along with the skeptic of Christianity and say the guy was a crook, or you’ve go to go along with the Christians and say that He was one who died for the sins of the world in a special unique way. So these people, who are counting the blood of the covenant as koinos, are essentially trying to say I just believe Jesus died. But you see, they can’t do that because of the method was executed by. The moment you try to make Jesus Christ non-unique you wind up making Him a crook and a fake and a phony. Jesus doesn’t permit you the latitude of this; like C. S. Lewis said, man has just no option here, you either confess Jesus as the Son of God or He’s a lunatic. But you don’t have the in between neutral ground of saying that Jesus was some sort of a western Buddha. Jesus couldn’t have been that, He was either who He claimed to be or a phony, and we might as well just [can’t understand words] call him a phony but be honest about it.

“… who has counted the blood of the covenant … an unholy thing,” Now let’s go back in there, that little clause that’s stuck in the middle there, “wherewith he was sanctified,” now who was sanctified? Who was sanctified is this person who was apostacizing from the faith. The same expression, the same truth is taught in 2 Peter 2:1, the same concept. Again, I refer you to the third framework pamphlet, we’ll get onto unlimited atonement and that problem but right now I have all I can do to handle what we’re into. “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily [secretly] shall bring in damnable [destructive] heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, [and bring upon themselves swift destruction.]” Now these people in the context are unbelievers, and yet 2 Peter 2:1 says “the Lord bought them,” there’s the unlimited atonement of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died for the sins of every member of the human race, past, present and future. It was a complete atonement. If it wasn’t a complete atonement we can’t go out and honestly say to somebody, hey, Christ has died for your sins. Really, we have some hyper Calvinists that go around saying we really can’t do that when we witness, maybe Jesus died for your sins. They believe in limited atonement. What kind of gospel is that, maybe Jesus died for your sins, flip a coin and find out. Jesus died for all the sins and these are the verses that you use to substantiate it.

Back here is the same concept, “wherewith he was sanctified,” the concept that this sanctifying work of Jesus Christ has been made available, has gone on, it’s come into existence but… but here’s a person who just doesn’t buy it, he treads under foot.

And then finally the third thing in Hebrews 10:29, “and has done despite” it’s the word to mock, he “mocks the Spirit of grace?” And notice one of the titles of the Holy Spirit in here. Can any of you think why the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit of grace? Why of all titles is that one used at this point do you think, based on what you’ve seen of the whole argument of this epistle. [someone answers] All right, and the whole issue of the epistle is where does grace come from anyway. The whole story is that the Mosaic Law never gave grace, it’s through Christ that we get the grace in the atonement. So the Holy Spirit of grace, it’s all the finished work of Christ is what he’s saying here in verse 29. These people are rejecting the finished work of Christ.

Now in verses 30-31 he is going to approach it from the standpoint of election. Verses 30-31 come out of Deuteronomy 32, Moses song of election. So turn back to Deuteronomy 32 and see what the song was all about, and then come back and finish up. Deuteronomy 32, the song that every Jewish citizen had to memorize. It was their national anthem. It was a strange national anthem, unlike The Star Spangled Banner, Deuteronomy 32 gave a review of the history. The Star Spangled Banner gives a nice view of history also, by the way, if you’re familiar with the War of 1812, and the bombardment of Fort McHenry and so on, it gives a very nice picture of that.

But Deuteronomy 32 goes far beyond just one little incident in history; Deuteronomy 32 is an outline of the entire history of the nation Israel. So think what a fantastic thing it was; every time people sang the national anthem they’d have to review their own national history; even history that hadn’t happened yet. And every person, every time they had a football game, they played the national anthem, they’d have to go through the history and each football season they’d go one more chapter through the history. They’d go on and on that way. And they would be forced into seeing how their God worked in history. Now while this whole thing goes on, Deuteronomy 32, when you get to Deuteronomy 32:35, get to that time when Israel is going to come under judgment, and in verses 35-36 the theme of God’s judgment upon the nation comes out but yet it’s tempered.

Notice verse 35, “To Me,” God says, “belongs vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time. For the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. [36] For the LORD shall judges His people,” but then notice, immediately there’s softness, “and He will repent Himself for His servants, when He sees that their power is gone, and there is none shut up or left, [37] And He shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted.” See, there’s mocking, God’s mocking them, He says oh, you trust in your little idols, where are your idols now, Israel. [38] “Which ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you,” see? Verse 39, ‘See now that I, even I, am He and there is no god with me: I kill and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand. [40] For I lift up My hand to heaven and say, I live forever. [41] If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, and will reward them that hate Me. [42] I will make My arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour flesh,” wouldn’t that be a beautiful hymn to sing, “… of the captives from the beginning of revenges upon the nations.” Now the warning, verse 43, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people, for He will avenge the blood of His servants,” in other words, don’t get to big for your britches, Gentiles, because although God is going to use the Gentiles to discipline Israel, that is not going to mean that God isn’t going to redeem Israel after it’s all over.

Now the same analog holds true of the Church in a different way. Here are the Christians; the Christians are God’s elect people in a different way than Israel is and I’ll show you in a moment but before we get worried about election, just look at this one thing. Look how God administers discipline; how did God administer discipline on Israel? He administered discipline by letting the Gentiles clobber Israel, didn’t He. Basically the method of discipline is that. Now think a moment, in the Church Age who are the enemies against whom the Christians always struggle? The principalities and the powers of darkness.

All right, then, who are the agents of discipline against Satan, demon forces? Just as the Gentile nations would be allowed to clobber Israel, so discipline in the Church Age is basically by a process of demonic forces, the principalities and the powers are unleashed. But again, just as God says to the Gentiles, don’t get too rambunctious about this, I’m giving you a little latitude to use you to spank My people but that doesn’t mean that you have unlimited freedom to clobber them, because they’re My elect and they’re not going to be erased from history. I allow you some room but I do not allow you room to totally clobber them; you and your autonomous rebellion would love to clobber the Jew out of history and I’m using that attitude you have to hurt them a little bit, but it will stop and I will not permit you to do this, and that’s why the warning at then of Deuteronomy 32. Same with Satan; Satan is allowed a little bit to clobber Christians, but God again warns him, as he does in Job, a little bit Satan, I release you a little bit to clobber Christians but you’re not going to destroy them because they’re My elect and they will survive, and they will ultimately be victorious just as Israel was.

So now we are face to face with election. And it’s this doctrine that is used two ways and you have to be clear on how it’s used. First, how it’s used for Israel, then how He’s using it for the Church. The election of Israel includes believers and unbelievers because the election of Israel includes all the physical seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now obviously only believers receive the spiritual benefits of the covenant, that’s true, but as far as the nation goes, it would have been better for you, if you’re going to be an unbeliever it would have been better for you to be an unbeliever out in Philistia some place than be an unbeliever in Israel.

Do you know why? Because as an unbeliever in Israel you had to live up to the divine viewpoint culture; out there you could raise all the hell you wanted to and get away with it. But if you lived in Israel and you had the genes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in you and you were an unbeliever and rejected God’s grace and tried to raise all the hell you wanted to, then God’s judgment would come down upon you, not only you, on your neighbor, on the whole country. So it was very hard to be an unbeliever in Israel, but the election included this. So here are these people, going on down through history and eventually of course the believers will predominate, the unbelievers will be removed, but right now the idea of Hebrews is look, here are these two people, the believers and the unbelievers.

Now God loves this nation and this nation is going to survive because it’s elect. It’s in God’s plan, it will survive. So therefore, unfortunately as in the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, God, can’t you choose someone else for a while. Well, that’s a beautiful rendition of the idea. God, why can’t you, it must have been the attitude of these Jews, again and again, why is it that we have to get stuck with this God in history to keep spanking us, why can’t we raise cane like everybody else and get away with it? Because you’re the elect, God has certain plans for His elect and He cares for them in a certain way. It’s frustrating for the elect to be cared for in this way but that’s the price you pay for being loved by the God of the Bible.

So now when we come to Hebrews and we finish this passage and he’s talking about all this coming down upon you, Hebrews 10:30-31, he’s talking in this imagery of the election of Israel. Remember he’s talking to Hebrews Christians, and he’s going to quote Deuteronomy 32:35-36, “For we know Him that said, Vengeance belongs unto Me, I will recompense, [saith the Lord],” that’s verse 35, “And again, The Lord shall judge His people,” that’s verse 36. And we just saw in Deuteronomy 32 the national anthem. And then he says, [31] “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” And “the living God” has reference to his election. When God has elected something that something is going to meet what it was elected to do, period. You will never find an election of God in the Bible thwarted. Never.

So what is the application that we can draw as believers to this whole concept. It’s going to be drawn for us when we get to chapter 12 but basically what it is is that we are locked in God’s family by regeneration, that God is our heavenly Father and He is the perfect Father who will not permit His children to stray without using forms of discipline to restore them because He loves them. So the agony, then, and the application is this: let’s trace the thought now, we’ve gone through verses 26-31, that’s the real heart of this whole warning passage.

The argument is this: God’s Word is to be taken seriously. It is to be taken seriously because in the Old Testament he who didn’t take it seriously received capital punishment. God’s Word is to be taken seriously because now if you don’t take it seriously you go to hell. So, the third thing, one is the type, in the Old Testament, not taking God’s word seriously you get capitally punished, as far as salvation goes if you don’t take God’s word seriously you go to hell, and then as far as the everyday Christian life goes, and he doesn’t draw this conclusion right here but he’s going to later, as far as our application goes, because we are loved by our heavenly Father, because we are loved by our heavenly Father, we receive discipline.

And this is hard for a lot of people to understand because in our day for some reason we’ve grown a dichotomy between love and discipline, and some people have an awful hard time understanding that God loves them when He’s belting them. [can’t understand phrase] against me and this is the attitude that so often comes up in counseling. God’s got it in for me, I’m having all these problems, as though God, you know, of all the people in the world He’s so concerned that you might get out… oh, He’s got to clobber you. No, that’s not the way it is, God loves you and you’re His child, you’re marked. God looks down from heaven just at the top of your head it’s got a mark on it, you’re His child. And so you get hit and you get hit again, but the hand that’s hitting you loves you. Now I know when it hits that doesn’t sound very relevant, but the point remains is that in the long term the discipline was designed for your long-term good and a fact that we have to give thanks for.

Father, we thank…..