Doom of Apostates (Part C)

I've departed from the faith. I started writing books. I said goodbye to Jesus.

I don't know if that's the exact title, but that's either goodbye to God or goodbye to Him. He became a full-blown atheist. And you say, well, He never was saved. I hate to make these points over and over again, but then how do I know you're saved? How do you know you're saved? What is blessed assurance? Blessed assurance is this.

As long as I want to be saved in Christ, I am saved, and there is nothing that can take that away from me. 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. Doom of Apostates is Pastor Rick's title of the message today.

He'll be teaching in Hebrews, chapter six. This animal is a substitution. It's a substitutionary sacrifice.

In my place, the animal will be slain, this innocent animal. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Christ is the Lamb of God, though. He is the one that we touch. He is the one that we lay hold of, not some beast in our place.

Those things had their time, but they're spent, they're done now. And when he gets to the tenth chapter, he's going to tell them right out that if you still sin that way, you're done. It causes a lot of confusion to Christians, and we'll cover it a little bit this morning, but it is the Old Testament act of going to the temple and having the sin identified with the sinner through the animal who is about to be slain. Now, in the New Testament, as with faith and repentance and baptism, you see, these things have moved on in the New Testament.

They've developed. So, too, with the laying on of hands. In the Old Testament, they would lay hands on the new leaders that were coming up. Joshua, they laid hands on him, for example. In the New Testament, also, the Holy Spirit would single out his leaders and they would lay hands on them and pray for them, a practice that we still carry on to this day.

In chapter 6, speaking of the deacons, the servants that were raised up in the church, Peter said, bring seven men from among you, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. And then it says, they sat before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them. And so you have the Old Testament laying hands on the animal. You have the New Testament laying hands on the sinners for blessings. You had the Jewish Christians arguing these two points, trying to figure it all out and never moving past it. To this day, you have Christians that keep coming back to the same argument and never get it figured out, can never receive it.

It can become problematic if you're not careful. What did Jewish, the Hebrew laying on hands lack? They've been pointing it out for each one. It lacked Jesus Christ. They took that animal to the temple and they laid their hands on him. They were blocking Christ out. They were saying, your work, your death on the cross just wasn't enough. So I brought this sheep here to make you happy. I brought this sheep to you, Father, because the death of your son from me just doesn't quite do it.

So you have Christians that say, you know, the Bible just doesn't quite do it. We need to mix it in a little bit. We need some Freud and some, you know, Maslow.

We need some of these psychologists to tell us about how we should live in a sinful world because the Bible really doesn't do it. And lap, lap, lap, lap, lap. They lap it up, many of them. Don't you be guilty. You say, well, I did that once. I know, that's okay.

You're not doing it now. His divine word, Peter said, has given to us all things necessary for life. How to live. How we are to please God. The resurrection of the dead is next.

There's life after death. An ongoing topic with them is not a bad topic. None of these are bad topics but they wanted to know about the future, what was coming. So they stayed on these topics of resurrection and judgment. Well, the Old Testament taught on these things. David ended his 23rd Psalm with what? And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever.

Nothing wrong with that topic. But Judaism's resurrection lacked one thing and that is Jesus Christ. This eternal judgment is next. How are the dead treated? Well, the Scripture indicates that there are two judgments.

There is one judgment for believers, not the judgment of the soul. That's taken care of here. But as to your rewards, I think many of you have generous hearts. You get to heaven, God's going to bless you for that. And you should share some of what he gives you with me. Just trying to help you out.

No sense in being generous if you have no one to be generous to, so I'm volunteering. But back to reality. The second judgment in the Scriptures is one for the unbelievers and it is one to condemnation. There is going to be a degree of their judgment in hell but it will be hell nonetheless. This you can read further in Revelation 20 verses 11 through 15. I put those verses in because I know that some may find this very much of interest, more so than some of the other topics. So Judaism class, what does it do? It factors out Messiah.

That's what keeps it from becoming Christianity and Christianity, of course, embraces the Old Testament but it separates the moral code from the ceremonial code and the symbolism of Messiah and it puts everything in its place and it benefits from the whole thing because Christ is superior. Verse 3, and this we will do if God permits. And so he, again, he's not trivializing these topics.

He's just pointing out you need more. You can't stay here. And thus verse 4. Now verse 4, before we get there we have to introduce it.

This is where we would have the kettle drums beating fiercely. This is heavy now. He is saying to them, if you stay babies, you are going to find yourself on a pathway to apostasy, not because you're just staying babes in Christ but because as babes in Christ you are mingling in the faith that with which neutralizes the faith, cancels it out. And he's saying to them, I love you.

I care about you and I'm not going to pull any punches. I'm going to pull the teeth out of what is biting against the faith. And so now he starts, now that's why he is going to say what he is now saying. That, where he says, for it is impossible. That for is joining what he has said, beginning in the end of chapter 5 to now, for it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit. He's just easing into it with them.

It is impossible. This is a fact. They saw the light. They received the Gospel. They are believers. We've established that early on.

It will be established throughout the letter. For example, Hebrews 10 32, he says to the same audience, recall the former days in which after you were illuminated you endured a great struggle with suffering. They were being persecuted for Christ and they took it. Many of them did not want to be persecuted anymore. Because they were being persecuted by Jews at this point, not Christians.

The temple was still in existence. The Romans had not yet figured out that Christianity was completely separate from Judaism. The Romans believed that Christianity was a sect of Judaism, so they left it alone.

But once they were, wait a minute, it's not the same thing, so let me get this right. The pharaohs, the Nero, not the pharaohs, the Nero, the Caesars and his senate and people in Rome. So we can persecute the Christians and not offend the Jews? Actually, you can persecute the Christians and the Jews will applaud it. And that's when the persecution of the church ramped up.

But before the Gentiles started persecuting Christians, the Jews were persecuting Jewish believers and trying to block Gentiles who were proselytes to Judaism from receiving it also. In the Old Testament, it seems that apostates were still given an opportunity to repent. Balaam had a chance to repent. King Manasseh did and he repented and he was just out there. 1 Samuel, he says this, well he said, I'm going to read the result, he encouraged the people to give up their fake gods and come back to Yahweh. They were apostates.

And so we read in 1 Samuel 7, so the children of Israel put away the Baals, that's fake gods, the Ashtoreths, and served Yahweh only. So apostates were given a way back. But the New Testament church is a little different.

Because of the magnitude of the light and who it is that is the light, because of the giving of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer, everything has been increased as far as value and sentence. The New Testament, the New Testament appears less inviting for apostates. I'm not saying that there is no way back for the apostate, but I am saying it is extremely rare and it's not only rare because of what the Scripture teaches, but because of what we see. We see people who are hot in the faith become anti-Christ and go to their grave that way.

History has not lacked these characters and many want to put their heads in the sand over it and not face these facts. And so now we come to Hebrews 10 26. This is a verse that causes many Christians problems because they don't understand the letter. For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. And let me tell you how most Christians interpret that verse. That's why they stay away from it. If we willfully sin after we have received the knowledge of the truth, they think that if they commit some immoral act that that's it.

They've blown it. That is not even close to what this verse is talking about. The context cannot be lost. What he is saying in Hebrews chapter 10 is if you take sacrifices to the temple, as I've been saying this morning, if you take those sacrifices there expecting to find forgiveness for your sins, you actually commit a sin you can't be forgiven for. So that's Hebrews 10 26. It's not for you and I when we goof up and we commit an act of sin and God is not saying I'm done with you.

We have an advocate with the Father. There's no condemnation now for those in Christ Jesus. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins.

So again, the severity of mixing any error. Now we're not beating up on the Jews. We're talking about anyone, whether it is Judaism again or any other religion trying to mix Hinduism with Christianity, you know reincarnation or something like that. You're treading on the same cross.

You mess with those things. They have nothing for you. You have everything in Christ Jesus when it comes to your salvation.

Nothing is missing. God has been so thorough with saving sinners that it is unforgivable for them to thumb their nose in his face. And thus Jesus said, there's one sin that's unpardonable and that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What is the work of the Holy Spirit to draw you to Christ to fill you with the Spirit of Christ to teach you about Jesus to empower you to witness Terry in Jerusalem until I come and you shall receive power from on high and you will be witnesses to me.

If anybody wants to go ahead and pickle around with that, you risk damning your own soul. He says as, and have tasted the heavenly gift. Fact, they benefited from the work of God. They were persecuted for Christ. They were believers.

I have to say this because it's embarrassing on how many people will come, well they really weren't believers. Hebrews 2, verse 9, and he, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. When Christ tasted death, he gobbled it up. And so where he says here that these Christians had tasted the heavenly gift, they gobbled it up. That's why they were being persecuted for Christ. They were adhering.

But now they were abandoning. And have come, become partakers of the Holy Spirit. Fact, only a Christian born again can have the Holy Spirit like this. Jesus said receive you the Holy Spirit and he breathed on his apostles and they received it. Verse 5, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. Again, fact, they were saved. You cannot say that about someone who has never received Christ. Verse 6, now here it comes.

Here is what he's been building toward. If they fall away, it is impossible if they fall away to renew them again to repentance since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame. This therefore, if, if is not the if of impossibility or hypothetical this or that, it is the if of possibility. He's saying you can do this. You can depart from Christ.

No one will ever snatch you out of his hand. But if you want to say to God, hands off me, he'll take his hands off you. Again, Charles Templeton is the poster boy of our, most of our lifetimes. There's a man that was preaching salvation, saving souls on the level of Billy Graham. And he departed from the faith. Started writing books. I said goodbye to Jesus.

I don't know if that's the exact title, but that's either goodbye to God or goodbye to him. He became a full-blown atheist. And you say, well, he never was saved. I hate to make these points over and over again, but then how do I know you're saved? How do you know you're saved? What is blessed assurance? Blessed assurance is this.

As long as I want to be saved in Christ, I am saved and there is nothing that can take that away from me. That's the work of God. It is magnificent.

It is not something to be paranoid about. Oh, I sure hope I don't mess it up. Shouldn't you be focusing on opportunity to serve instead of tremble? Do you want it hung over an epitaph, hung over your tombstone and his knees smote one against the other? He lived a life in total faithlessness because he just would not trust the one who says, I love you. It doesn't mean faith is easy in a cakewalk.

It certainly is not. The more you serve, the harder it will become. Christianity does not get easier serving as you get older.

It gets more difficult because the wounds pile up. The weight of service adds up, but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tried beyond that which you are able to bear. What should I be preaching to you? Should I be saying, oh, it doesn't mean what it says?

It says what it means and it is totally right. Now, those who fall away, that is an apostate, not a backslider. A backslider is someone who is morally struggling but still knows who Jesus Christ is and loves him and wants him. An apostate says, I don't want you anymore.

That's the difference. That apostate is doomed. That's what the writer is telling him.

What should he say to them? Oh, no, you can reject the terms of God and write your own terms with him. So he is telling us that Christian immaturity is dangerous because if you don't progress in the faith, something else is going to try to creep in and steal your affection away.

Have we not seen this? Have you not seen people give their life to Christ and now they're not interested at all in him because they never grew and they never put up the fortifications? Should I not say what the scripture says because it makes the guilty uncomfortable? Should I not say what the scripture says because it makes the immature panic? Should I not say what the scripture says because otherwise good men of God are not saying it? That they're not saying it, that's on them. But it's right here in front of us and this is why we go verse by verse through the Word so we don't miss it.

We benefit from it all. He says it's impossible to renew them again in the middle of verse 6 to repentance. It would be pointless for him to write this unless there were a genuine threat. This is not again not a high. Let me just give you a story.

This is not a story. He's telling them right out. He says to renew. That means to bring back that which was once new.

You had it once. Words are supposed to mean something. They're not supposed to just be these abstract ideas.

They're supposed to bring us to a finish line, to a conclusion. And that's why when we confess Jesus Christ, we're born again. It's serious stuff. And that's why if you renounce him, you damn your own soul.

Serious stuff. Don't go blaming God if you reject him. So this fact taught throughout scripture, we'll just take two verses. Old Testament first, Jeremiah 17. Thus says Yahweh, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes his flesh his strength, whose heart departs from Yahweh.

To depart is to once be at. Then Colossians, New Testament, verse 21 and verse 23. And you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet he is now reconciled. All right, so sinners that were against Christ come to Christ.

He embraces your friends now. Verse 23. If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded, steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Stick with the faith. Abide in me, Jesus said. Again, they were ruling out the fact of Jesus Christ, and Christ would rule them out in consequence. Since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God.

What on earth does that mean? It means that they lined up with those who crucified Christ originally. To walk away from Christ, to leave him, and to go to Judaism is to say he's not our Messiah. He's a false Messiah. He deserves to be the victim of the cross as he was. And so he's warning them.

You see how serious this is? If he was looking at them, they would melt under the glaze. The gaze, not the glaze. That would be a donut. I guess.

I'm kind of like wanting a donut. Anyway, therefore, he says, and put him to open shame. They would judge Christ so. He needs to be judged. He's not the Messiah.

And it was a shameful act. It says he endured the cross, despising the shame. We'll get to that later in Hebrews 11, I believe. Well anyway, back to this. This is what Jesus said about apostates.

Well, no, let me hold off on that and give you this one instead. For those, again, who cannot distinguish between backslider and apostate, let me give you some encouragement in Christ. There is sin leading to death.

I do not say that he should pray about that. All righteousness, pardon me, all unrighteousness is sin. And there is sin not leading to death. And so the backslider will commit sin and will not find themselves in hell because of the struggles that we go through. And that is not a promotion to sin, not at all.

That would be really bad. Verse 7, for the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated receives blessings from God. Well, rain in Scripture is an emblem of blessing.

Now, this is important. They are receiving the rain, thus the cultivation. These Jews were not being cultivated anymore. They were becoming, what ground was broken up and what was planted and brought fruit was being abandoned and in its place would come the thorn and the thistle, the weeds, the tares. And so verse 8 closes up his illustration.

But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near being cursed whose end is to be burned. He's not talking about grass. He's just using it as an example. He's talking about human beings. The whole point of this.

He's saying this is a collision course. Get off of it. And there's no reason why they couldn't say, yes, you are right and we are off of it. And many of them probably did.

The letter survived, so evidently it wasn't ripped to shreds and said and he wasn't turned on. This is what Christ says. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me.

That means to stay with. Doesn't mean to be sinless, though we try. He who abides in me and I in him, that's fellowship, bears much fruit.

For without me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered and they gathered them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. And so, again, the serious nature of our salvation. The word holy does not mean humor. We have to understand that. There's humor with God, of course.

I can look at you and tell. You're saying, brother, never mind. There is humor with God, but his holiness is the top. It is high and we need to be very serious about these things. Next session, we turn to the believers, but only for a little while.

He's going to get back to this dangerous business. If there are any lost souls here today, if there is anyone here and you've not opened your heart up to Jesus Christ, are you honest enough with yourself to ask why? Why have you closed your heart to him? Has someone told you to? Maybe somebody in the university, somebody in the workplace, in the family.

Maybe you're just bitter at life. Whatever it may be, you're being chumped by Satan. Christ says, you come. You come first.

You come to me and I will take you in and no one will snatch you from my hands. 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.