Don’t Do It! (Part A)

Did they make, did they come to that conclusion on their own will?

How do you get to that? What is a free will offering? What is this right here, if we willfully sin?

Yeah, we have a say. So don't for one minute think that when you become a Christian you lose free will and you're now a robot. You are a human being. You are intelligent.

You have all the resources to utilize your intelligence for the King or not. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Hebrews.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, here's Pastor Rick in the book of Hebrews chapter 10 with a brand new message called Don't Do It. If you have your Bibles, let's open to Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews chapter 10. We will take verses 26 through 39. If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Of how much worse punishment do you suppose? Will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with sufferings.

Partly while you were made a spectacle, both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated. For you had compassion on me and my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and an enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. Therefore, do not cast away your confidence which has great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise for yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith, but if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul."

Well, there's a firestorm for you. This is the strongest warning in the letter, this passage we are considering this morning. The writer is telling these Christians, don't do it.

Don't do what? Don't go back to the religion you had before Christ, to the life you had before Christ, and don't try to mingle those things that Christ has forbidden with the Jesus of your faith. There are five warning passages in this Hebrew document. In Hebrews chapter 2, and that's the first one. In Hebrews 3 and 4, that's the second. In Hebrews 5 and Hebrews 12, and in this tenth chapter, there are the warnings given by the writer.

But this one is the strongest. And as mentioned earlier in our studies, he's not holding back. It's a very serious matter. Here he talks about, if you willfully sin, you're done. There's no more forgiveness. A fiery indignation. A worse punishment. God's payback. That's what vengeance is, payback.

Or payday, however you want to look at it. A fearful thing, he says. He's not holding himself. He's not restraining the truth. He's letting it out. He's giving the warnings. He's giving the advice, and he's giving the encouragement. Now we've got to put all this in context, lest we come away supposing that God is this angry judge just looking to wipe people out.

Well that is not the case. God is a God of grace and love, but make no mistake, he is also a judge, and he will not take lightly the trampling of the blood of Christ, or dismissing all that Jesus is, and what he has done for us, and what it cost. And so we look now at that first verse, and it is a very easy verse to understand. It is not one of the hard verses of the Bible, and I'll explain why in a moment.

Verse 26, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. Well if you take it out of context, you're terrified by what these words say. If you take it out of context, you say, that means if I have committed through impulse, through the weakness of my flesh, some sin, there's no forgiveness for me. So that's taking it out of context.

That is not at all what it means. The context shows the danger of defection from the faith. He's saying this built on everything he's been saying since the first verse of the first chapter. In particular, in verse 12 of this chapter, he says, with this man, speaking of Christ, after he offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. He's saying to the Jews that were wanting to go back to Judaism, and they were wanting to go back for several reasons. One was the pressure put on them by their own, within their own culture, by their own people, to avoid that persecution and that pressure. They sought to, well I'll still offer sacrifices and still go to church and claim Christ as Messiah. And then others were just thinking about just abandoning it all together and going back to Judaism. The writer makes it clear these were saved people.

I don't care what others might say, the evidence is right there in plain speak scripture. And so again in verse 23, he says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised his faithful. He's saying, hold it. Hold to your faith.

Don't let it go because that is what they were thinking about doing and some were already deep into it. So to take this verse and to yank it from its original intended meaning is to contradict the New Testament. It's to go against everything that grace preaches. You cannot amputate the verse from everything that has been said in this letter and the rest of the New Testament.

That would be to depart from the rules of reason, from analysis, and from throwing to the wind, reading comprehension. But because we tend to be emotional when we are confronted by something frightening, we look at that verse, for if we sin willfully, after we've received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice, i.e. forgiveness of sins.

That is not it. If they go down to the temple and offer a blood sacrifice, now there remains. That's what he is saying. You cannot receive the salvation in Jesus Christ, his blood offering, his death as forgiveness for your sins, and the blood of bulls and sheep and birds and whatever else. If you do that, you're done.

You've mocked him. You've said, you know, your death is not all that. It needs to be supplemented with a beast, with the blood of a beast.

That will improve my situation. So he warns them. We today, we don't have an identical problem, but we have still the same issue. We have those who think they can mix horoscopes with Jesus Christ, or psychology with Jesus Christ, or some other thing. Let's just take what the unbelievers are doing and let's just wrap it into Christ.

Put a bow named Jesus on it and it will be acceptable. That is heresy. And so he mentions if you willfully, if they by free will, there is a such thing as free will. I don't care what the best commentators, not all of them, but some of them actually teach there's no such thing as free will. Did they make, did they come to that conclusion on their own will?

How do you get to that? What is a free will offering? What is this right here? If we willfully sin, yeah, we have a say. So don't for one minute think that when you become a Christian, you lose free will and you're now a robot. You are a human being. You are intelligent.

You have all the resources to utilize your intelligence for the king or not. Men are capable of ignoring facts to protect their own theology, the doctrines of men. Many are well meaning. Some get caught up.

It happens very quickly. I'm sure that there's something I get wrong in my, no, no, no, that's not right. We all have to be careful and I don't want to sound harsh on my brothers who I don't agree with, but I don't agree with them on this point.

Those that do not believe in free will and those that think that once you become a Christian, you no longer have free will. I don't agree with it and I don't feel a need to. I feel very strong in the things that the Bible declares. I don't need to put a rabbit's foot in my pocket to make me feel better about the warnings that are in scripture because I'm not going to do them. I'm not going to violate the warning. I walked high steel for years. It was the risk of falling off a beam to a certain death. Or you could jump.

I never once thought about jumping. And so, let us be sober minded. He says after we have received the knowledge of the truth, you catch that, received it. There's nothing unclear about this. If you've received the faith and you want to go back out of the faith, you're doomed.

So don't do it. That's what he's telling them. They knew the gospel. They surrendered to it.

They suffered persecution for the gospel. See, apostasy is something that is intellectual. It is intentional. It is not by mistake. People do not accidentally become apostates.

They consider the information and they reject the information. That is how they become an apostate. And it's a biblical word and it means to fall away from it. You can only fall away from that which you once held to. You can't fall away from something you weren't holding to. And again, the sin of going back to the religion they had before Christ, and today it is just as serious. You want to backslide away from Christ? That's dangerous enough. You want to then reject him?

You better watch out. Their own religion, and he's writing to Jews, the application extends to Gentiles, their own religion spoke of this life of Christ, this virtuous life, the virgin birth, the voluntary suffering, the vicarious death, and the victorious resurrection. See the alliteration, all the Vs involved with that? The virgin birth, the victorious life, the voluntary sacrifice, the vicarious death, and the victorious resurrection. It was in their writings, and to this day it's there. You can take a Jew to Isaiah, a practicing Jew, Isaiah chapter 9. Unto us a son is born.

Unto us a son is given. You can speak of the prophetic verses from Psalm 22. You can say, hey, how could you ever show that you're from the line of David? Now it's too late.

The window's closed, but it was once opened 2,000 years ago and Christ walked through it. You can show them all these things, and they won't submit. You can show proofs from the scripture of the prophecies all day long to even non-Jews. Being born again is a miraculous event. Our role is not to interfere with it, but to contribute to it, to be used in the process. It takes courage, it takes knowledge, it takes patience and endurance, and it takes love.

And it is very difficult. And so he says there no longer remains a sacrifice for those sins. Now you're done. As he wrote these words, the forces of horrors were already on the horizon approaching Jerusalem, the unseen forces. Not long after this Hebrew document, and we have time stamps in it, we have one in this chapter. Not long after this document, the 10th Legion of Rome will completely level the Temple Mount and destroy the city and kill millions of Jews crucified, and so many Jews that they ran out of wood to crucify them on. Jesus said, these things which you see, talking about the Temple, the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down. Again in Luke's Gospel chapter 21, but when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.

Well those prophecies have been fulfilled. And this visible evidence the archaeologists have uncovered today, you can walk and you can go to the Temple Mount, to the western wall, a little to the right of it as you're looking at it, and there is the Herodian, sort of it was a mall, if you would, there were shops, places to buy goods, Herodian Street. The archaeologists have unearthed it. And there is a pile of stone the size of cars and trucks, piled up in a heap. How did they get there? The Roman 10th Legion threw them there. There are the stones that made up the Temple buildings, the precincts, the Temple itself. The proof is there. The evidence of Jesus wears not one stone will be left upon another, not in structure form.

But in a heap there they are. And so should you find yourself doubting your scripture, remember the prophecies. That's a spiritual feature. That's a feature of our writing, of our scripture, that no one else has. All the other ones are the writings and the conclusions and the ideas and the insistence of men.

But there's no spiritual feature. The Mormons have their Book of Moroni and they make these outrageous claims with not a shred of evidence to support it. But the scripture has tons of evidence to support what it has declared to be true. And so Galatians 2.18, where Paul was dealing with this identical problem with the Jews, he says, For if I build again those things which I destroy, I make myself a transgressor. If I come out of sin, if I come out of thinking wrong about God, then I go back into thinking wrong about God. I am where I don't believe in the eyes of God.

I am in sin. And if you are an unbeliever and you're listening to me, you may be saying, that sounds harsh. It sounds narrow-minded. Broad is the way, wide is the gate that leads to perdition, that leads to hell. And there are many who go and buy it because narrow is the gate, straight is the path that leads to everlasting life, and few find it. Men are capable of getting a chip on their shoulder with God for daring to be God. How dare you judge me? How dare you lay out what is morality?

We're watching it in the time we live in. They're trying to reinvent, redefine the word morality so that perversity becomes morality and purity becomes immorality. It's spiritually psychotic. And they resent being told that it is so. We'll get back to this, I hope, and much more.

I don't know how I'm going to get this in, so I hope you brought your lunch. Verse 27, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. And the adversaries hate hearing this. It's so narrow-minded, it's so draconian, it's so over-the-top, it's so intolerant, it's so loveless. No, it's not. You are. You're all those things against your maker. And you have the audacity to accuse those who have seen him with being villains. They've done you no harm.

You're willing to do harm to them. We don't find true Christians persecuting anyone, but we find true Christians being persecuted. And so, people believe in many gods. Paul says, I've got a God for you. Because even if you don't believe in a God, that's your God. Because God, by the definition in Scripture, includes that controlling influence in your deepest heart.

That is your God. The one that you submit to. You may not be strong enough to comply with what you submit to.

For instance, we Christians, we believe we're supposed to always be loving. We submit to that, but we don't always pull it off. Somebody is just going to pull on your cape at some point and challenge that commitment. It does not mean you have abandoned God.

It means you're struggling in the flesh. The world doesn't get this. God has left it for us to explain it as best we can. So Paul says, I've got a God for you. He's the God that blinds, spiritually blinds people. He is the God of all blindness, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, whose mind's the God of this age has blinded. The God of this age, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. Satan is the world's God of spiritual blindness, says the word of God. And you, as Christians, better not be ashamed of that. You better not back up one speck of an inch away from that belief. All the forces of hell will try to get you to do that.

Well, the force is a sign to you. So when Jesus said, he who believes in the sun is not condemned, but he who does not believe in the sun is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the condemnation that the light is coming to the world, and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They resent God dictating to them what behavior should be. They hate it, and they hate him along with it, and you and me also.

He says fiery indignation, which will devour the adversaries. Many scoff at this. In fact, a lot of them are already in hell.

I'm not making light of that. You believe the scripture, you can't get away from this. How do you make truth acceptable to a people that reject truth? I don't know.

What I do know is this. I can pound them with the truth. I can live my life as correctly as possible to the word, and I know that makes a difference. That does contribute to the salvation of souls, because when I watch the God haters launch in their debates and their books and wherever they get to speak, they're always pointing to Christians that I look at and say, I'm not so sure those are Christians you're pointing at. You're justifying your atheism with make-believers, not true believers. I don't believe those things. Why don't you pick a fight with a real Christian?

Why don't you find one that truly believes and understands the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament? I also don't believe that debates are very effective. There are those that are very good at debating and never coming into the light.

There are those that their whole purpose is to not agree with you, and they launch all of these half-baked arguments to which no one can answer. It's the same old thing. It goes back to the days of Plato.

You see, that's pretty old. How can a loving God—how can a loving God what? How can He love you?

But He does. And so we have to have these things solid in our hearts or else we will be in jeopardy. When Andrew and Philip met the Christ, they wanted to bring Him or bring in front of Him others whom they loved. Andrew brought Peter.

He didn't debate. We found the Messiah. You know Peter. Peter's the kind of guy that if he didn't think it's fake, he's not going to have any part of it. And then there was Nathaniel.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said, let's debate it. He says, come and see. My brother didn't debate with me when he witnessed to me. He just looked at me, and I got saved. Not by the look, but that was the catalyst.

That was the spark that lit the keg. How dare you not argue with me? How dare you look at me with love when I am mocking your Savior? And so this is for those who don't know and maybe you've got similar stories. So I went and got a Bible and I was going to prove Him wrong and got saved. Verse 28, anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. The word of God is fierce and His law is no nonsense, and that was the old economy.

And in the old economy, if you broke the law of Moses, if it were a capital crime, you were to be stoned to death in most cases without mercy. He tells us that right here on the testimony of two or three witnesses. He dies without mercy.

Achan, when Achan caused the death of those troops, they're at the battle of Ai. Joshua was gentle. He said, son, tell us, what did you do? And he told him, he said, well, you're going to die. Leviticus 24, I'm not going to take time to read it.

You can reference it yourself. Verses 11 and 23, there was a mother who had a son who blasphemed the Lord. He cursed the Lord and they brought Him to Moses and they stoned Him. The atheist doesn't understand that. The Christ rejecter doesn't understand.

They think that this is God and all there is to Him. But there's a lot more to that story and we need to tell it. We need to make the distinction of the dispensations of God, the different periods of how God ruled in the lives of men. We are in the age of grace right now. The kingdom age is next. Well, the age of grace and tribulation period then the kingdom age.

They're not going to figure it out on their own, not intellectually. Verse 29, he says, of how much more worse punishment do you suppose He will be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified, a common thing, and insulted the spirit of grace. He's writing to Christians. He's saying, how much more punishment? You think Moses had a tough rule? If you blasphemed God, if you gathered sticks on Sabbath, you are stoned.

This is worse than that. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews right here on Cross Reference Radio.