R687 Once Lost Part 1

One is what I call the one foot club. Do you know what the one foot club is? It's a man who has one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom. That's the one foot club.

Just can't get it. The pull of the world is just so strong. I want you to know that I love you and I'm praying for you.

You've got to take that foot out of the world. Love not the world. Be devoted to Christ. Pastor, we have a remarkable topic today that is a little frightening, but it's quickening because it's straight from the Word of God.

It's called Once Lost, Forever Lost, here on the Encouraging Word with Dr. Don Wilton. Britt, we live in a very precarious world today with all kinds of theologies and ideas and personal preferences, and it's a good thing to open the Word of God and really study what God has to say about mankind. So listen carefully today. God will really bless your heart.

I promise you that. I want you to take your Bibles with me this morning and open them to Hebrews chapter six. This is a remarkable passage of scripture. So what I want to do is I'm going to read to you the first eight verses, and then we're going to take a plunge into this.

And I promise you, God is going to bless your heart today, and I trust that you are ready. Hebrews chapter six and verse one. Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, plural, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment, and God permitting, we will do so. Now, it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, for those who have tasted the heavenly gift, for those who have shared in the Holy Spirit, for those who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age. It is impossible for these, if they fall away, that they be brought back to repentance, because to their loss, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and are subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain, often falling on it, and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God. But land that drinks in the rain, often falling on it, that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed.

In the end, it will be burned up. May the Lord write his word upon our hearts. As we begin this study over the next two or three weeks, I want to share with you two very important points. I believe that these two points, if you were to say to me, Dr. Wilton, what is it that I need to know about this, about these things?

They would all center around these two important points and I'm going to remind you of these time without number. Point number one, once you are saved, you are always saved. Now, my friends, I believe that not because of what I believe or because of what I think, but I'm going to demonstrate, I'm going to show to you through the word of God this passage least of all and several other passages in God's word. I'm going to prove to you, if you may, from God's word that if you have given your heart and life to Jesus Christ, you are always saved.

In other words, you can never become unsaved. In other words, you cannot lose your salvation if, in fact, you have already given your heart to Jesus Christ. If you have repented of your sin and that repentance is genuine before God. If you have recognized your own sinfulness and confessed your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one who can forgive you for that sin.

If you believe in your heart that God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead, you were saved, you are being saved, and you will be saved present, past and continuous tense. There is nothing that you can do humanly speaking that can lose your salvation. Some of you may say to me, but pastor, I have sinned against God. I don't care what sin you've committed. There is not one sin that God will not and cannot forgive. You might say to me, well, pastor, you don't seem to understand for years and for years. I drifted away. I was disobedient to the Lord.

I didn't want to come to church. You can name to me every kind of felony sin, every crime against God. I'm going to say to you again, conditionally, if you repented of your sin by faith trusted in Jesus Christ, confess that sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and believed in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. You were saved. You are being saved and you always will be saved. That is what the preaching of the cross is all about. It is the power of God under salvation to those who are being saved. You cannot lose your salvation.

Now, I do want to issue just a warning here, lest anyone within sound of my voice might say, well, then it's just all right for me to live any way I want to. Paul says, what? Shall I continue in sin that grace may abound? Sometimes the continual habitual sin of a person who claims to know Christ is the indication that in fact they do not know Christ. And the question is not whether or not you can lose your salvation. The question or not is whether or not you were saved to begin with. But I want to say to you again, my brothers and sisters in Christ, point number one, once you are saved, you are always saved. You can take that to the spiritual bank of God's grace. You can write that upon your heart.

The reason is because of point number two. Once you are lost, you are forever lost. Now, friends, I'm going to submit to you today that that is the point of this particular passage of Scripture. This particular passage of Scripture is not talking about once saved, always saved.

This particular passage of Scripture is warning us, as God does by His Spirit, that once you are lost, you are forever lost. It is impossible for such people, and I'm going to show you this in the context of God's Word. It is impossible, according to the Scriptures, for such people to be brought back to repentance because what they are doing is they are crucifying the Son of Man over and over and over again.

What is He talking about? Friend, listen to me. It is impossible for a saved man to crucify Jesus Christ over and over again. Because when I come to know Jesus Christ, there is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in union with Christ Jesus. What does my sin do for me as a believer? It does not crucify Christ over and over again.

What it does is it robs me of the joy of my having been crucified with Christ. This passage is not talking about Christian people. It's talking about non-Christian people. This passage is not talking about believing Jews.

This passage is talking about unbelieving Jews. There are two positions, two points that I want to make to you again in case you've missed them. Number one, once you are saved, you are always saved. And number two, once you are lost, you are forever lost.

And that is why I have entitled this miniseries in chapter six, Once Lost, Forever Lost. We're going to look at this from three different perspectives. I don't know how far I will get this morning. I have promised the Lord that I'm not going to rush through this.

This is too important. This will radically change your life. This will provide for you a solid foundation upon which you can stand. This will strengthen your faith.

This will drive your resolve to go out into the world and to teach people. This will bring to within your heart and soul the same cry of the Lord Jesus Christ who wept as he stood and he looked over Jerusalem. Why did Jesus weep over Jerusalem? Of all the places to weep over, Jerusalem was packed from wall to wall with religious people. Some of the most religious people that you and I could ever imagine and yet Jesus stood there and he wept when he looked upon them. When he looked upon the crowds, he was moved with compassion.

Why? What was the message that Jesus had to save time without numbers to the Sadducees and the Pharisees? These astute people, these learned men of God, these people who understood the very minutest details concerning the elementary doctrines about Christ. Why was it that the Lord Jesus looked upon the face of a man like Nicodemus who was imminently qualified to lead the Jewish people in theology and looked him in the face and said to him, Nicodemus, you must be born again. May I respectfully rephrase what Jesus might have said to Nicodemus when he looked at him? What Jesus might have said to him was, Nicodemus, you are a student of the law. You are a teacher of a religion. But I want to remind you, Nicodemus, despite all your knowledge and all your understanding that once you are lost, you are forever lost. You must believe. You must be born again of water and of the Spirit.

Otherwise, you will not enter the kingdom of God. And so it is that we find ourselves here in chapter six. We're going to try to analyze this, this week and next week and maybe the next in three different dimensions.

The first may be the shortest. Number one, I think in order to understand these things, we've got to understand that it is time to look at the facts. And in order to look at the facts, we've got to go back to chapter five, verse 11 through 14, not the least of which Hebrews chapter one through chapter five, verse 14.

I love the therefores of Scripture, don't you? That's why in Romans 8, one which I quoted a moment ago, there is now, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in union with Christ Jesus. You will remember back in chapter two, we must pay more careful attention, therefore, to the things which we are hearing. Concerning the supremacy of Christ, we must pay more careful attention to these things which we are hearing, lest at any time we should let them slip. Here's the condition. Here's the condition of our salvation.

For if the word which was spoken by angels was steadfast and every disobedience received a just recompense of reward. Here's the warning. How are you going to escape so great salvation? Please forgive the interruption. I know there are many of you going, looking at your radio right now going, why are you doing this?

I was just in the middle of that. The pastor has asked me to do this because he knows that many of you are busy and are going to move on. You're not going to hear the end of the program where we remind you how you can get connected with us, how you can receive free resources like the daily Encouraging Word Bible Guide or a copy of Dr. Wilton's testimony or his book. Call See You at the Finish Line, all available free for the asking.

How do you do that? Well, you visit us online at theencouragingword.org or pick up the phone right now and call 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673. I suggest you jot it down or put it in your phone, not necessarily because you need the resources 24 hours a day, but one of the resources we consider our greatest ministry. And again, we're a part of a church that's been around 175 years and over 10 years on the radio and television. Actually, we started our television locally some 60 years ago. We've been here and we believe God has called us not just to the broadcast but to be available 24 hours a day, and we do that on the phone.

866-899-WORD or 866-899-9673 and of course, online at theencouragingword.org. Now let's get back to it, back to the message from our pastor, Dr. Don Wilton, on today's edition of The Encouraging Word. Now what were these facts if we just simply limit them to chapter 5, verse 11 through 14. In fact, number one, they had been taught. They, that is the Jewish people. Remember, there were three groups of Jews to whom the letter to the Hebrews was addressed. Number one was to unbelieving Jews who refused to even consider Jesus as the Messiah.

Number two were unbelieving Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. They came to faith and trust in God through Christ Jesus, but they were being pulled back. They were weak.

They weren't growing. They were being tempted back into the wilderness. And the third group were believing Jews who were growing in the grace and knowledge and admonition of the Lord Jesus. I believe this passage is addressed to unbelieving Jews who even though they were unbelieving Jews had been taught.

Well, they had been taught all right from before they were born. Jewish tradition tells us even to this day, our Jewish friends grace the synagogues and the hallowed halls of theological learning from the youngest of age. They are very sincere, very deep religious people and they were in the time of Jesus. They were prior to that, even when they were in the desert and the wilderness. It was of paramount importance that they erected altars and they carried their synagogues around with them in the form of tents and they worshiped God and one day they were up and the next moment they were down. They were a people. They were led by the Levitical priesthood and they were a people who had been taught. But the fact of the matter is that God is looking out across that vast audience and looking into our hearts and lives, even in the year 2003 and he sees people in the United States of America who have been taught.

I'm a case in hand. My father came to know the Lord Jesus Christ and my father and mother are here in the service today when I was just five or six or seven years of age and I was still a very young person. I grew up under the most dynamic preaching and teaching of the Word of God and yet my friends, when I came to that age of 15 and 16 when I was in the military, you would have had every right to walk up to me at any time and say, what is the matter with you, son? I know who your daddy is and I know what church you went to and I know how many Sunday school lessons you've sat under.

I know how many youth groups you've been on, how many places you've traveled. I know what you've been subject to and yet you do not believe. They had been taught. Number two, the Bible says that they were slow to learn in verse 11. We looked at this last week of chapter five and we discovered that spiritual sluggishness produces multifaceted consequences. The writer to the Hebrews here is issuing a warning such of which we cannot begin to even contemplate within our hearts, especially at our advanced state of understanding.

What do you mean that you cannot explain the mature things of God to a group of people like this who were so astute in their learning, who had learned so much? Well, we know why they couldn't explain it to them because all they had done was related to the third fact and that is that they only wanted milk. Second part of verse 12, you need milk.

You don't need solid food. Now who wants milk? Babies want milk. You can go up to a baby and offer them a nice sirloin steak with all the trimmings and they're going to have a real problem and what's more, Mommy's not gonna be very happy with you. Many times, folks, I try to force feed my little ones in my house with chocolate cake.

It's got all the ingredients in it. It just didn't work too well and Mommy wasn't very happy when I did it. And you know something, babies reject solid food. Besides that, they're not supposed to. They cannot digest the mature things. I want you to just see what God is doing here and where he is going in that he is looking at this incredible group of Jewish people who were so astute, they were slow to learn.

They were spiritually sluggish. They only wanted milk, but fact number four, they were not acquainted with righteousness. You say, Pastor, where do you get that from?

Look at it right there in the Word of God, verse 13. Anyone who lives on milk being still an infant is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. Now, folks, that word acquainted there is literally the same word that we get our word possessed by.

Now, I wanna tell you something here and I want you to listen carefully to this. The only person who can be possessed by the righteousness of God is someone who has repented of their sin and by faith has trusted Jesus Christ and has become indwelt by the Spirit of the living God. It is impossible for an unbeliever to be possessed with or by the righteousness of God. It is called God's imputed righteousness. Now, I'm not going to explain this to you today, but when I give my heart and life to Jesus Christ because of what Jesus Christ did upon the cross, I am, and I'm simplifying this, I am endued, empowered by, given God's righteousness. And it is by virtue of the indwelling of the righteousness of God that I am declared just in His presence.

That is not anything that is dependent upon myself. It is solely and completely and utterly dependent upon the superiority of the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. Now, evidently, there is something that is said here that we must not miss because what God is saying to this group of unbelieving Jews, my friends, He is saying, just unless you mistake what I'm trying to say to you, not only have you learned all kinds of things and been taught all kinds of things, not only are you slow to learn, not only do you just simply demand milk all the time, but the reason why you do that is you are not possessed with the righteousness of God. You have no relationship with Jesus Christ. You have never been washed and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. You are not saved.

And I wanna make something quite clear does the Spirit of God announce because in chapter six, we have the third of the most critical warnings in the letter to the Hebrews. There is no more clearer warning that is set out because we are about to discover, my friends, that God by His Spirit looks upon the hearts of such people and says, I don't care if you are Nicodemus. I don't care if you have all the knowledge and understanding. I don't care if you've been on choir tour 10 times. I don't care if you're a minister of the gospel. I don't care if you sing in the choir.

I don't care if you're a Sunday school teacher. You can be the most astute theological learner in the world if you have not come to the point at which you believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah because God raised Him from the dead. You are lost.

And if you are lost, you are going to be lost forever. Now let's look at chapter six and verse one. Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ, point number two. Point number one, it is time to look at the facts. Point number two, it is time to abandon the elementary teachings about Christ.

Now, my dear friends, when I read that I nearly had a heart attack. I thought certainly God cannot mean that I've got to leave the teachings about Christ. That's not what He's saying. Surely the things about Christ are of paramount importance, they absolutely are. What does He mean to leave the elementary teachings about Christ? Well, if we're gonna understand that, let's try to understand it. First of all, we've got to look at the word leave.

And folks, I'm gonna show you some things here that are remarkable. Did you know that that word leave, I know we've got some linguists here in the congregation. If I was to give it to you in the original text, it's the word a-fi-mi, A-P-H-I-E-M-I, I'm transliterating the word, a-fi-mi. It's the word leave and it means six things. It means to forsake. A-fi-mi means to abandon. A-fi-mi means to put away, to disregard completely, to become totally detached from, to be done with.

You may be interested to know there are a number of usages of that word a-fi-mi. One of them is the word forgive. You can read about that in the scriptures. Matthew chapter six, Matthew chapter nine, verse two, Romans chapter four, verse seven, when Jesus Christ forgives us, what does He do? He takes our sin and He casts it as far as the east is from the west and He remembers it.

No more. He a-fi-mies our sin. You can go to Mark chapter one when Jesus spoke to James and John, those two jolly old disciples and He said, listen, if you wanna follow me, you need to abandon your father Zebedee.

That word there abandon is the word a-fi-mi. You need to totally disregard. Can you imagine Jesus telling somebody to turn His back completely upon His own father or mother? Jesus said it's impossible for you to follow me unless you are willing to lay aside these things that are preventing you from following me with all your heart and soul and mind.

Do you know that your religion can prevent you from coming to know Jesus Christ? As we share God's word here with Dr. Don Wilton, we all discover the beauty of repetition and sometime I've listened to some of his messages more than once, two or three times. If you would like to repeat this message, you can get your own copy by calling us at 1-866-899-WORD. Of course, the resources are also available online at theencouragingword.org and perhaps as you visit there, you'll discover a number of the resources available that Cheryl's gonna tell you about right now. Does prayer really make a difference? How do I know?

How can I be sure? Dr. Wilton's series, When God's People Pray, will answer these questions with timeless truths for your ever-changing world. In this series, you will learn how to pray in faith, how to make and follow a plan that God rewards with answered prayers, why God's people must pray in every circumstance, and many more truths about what happens when God's people pray. For the complete series, When God's People Pray on CD or DVD, please call 1-866-899-9673. Thanks again, Cheryl.

We've seen that series, When God's People Pray, affect many of us a great deal and we appreciate the opportunity to share these series with you. Let me remind you one more time, our phone number, that's 1-866-899-9673. Those last four digits spell out word.

That's 1-866-899-WORD. We'd love to hear from you. We'd also be thrilled to read your mail if you want to write to us at The Encouraging Word, Post Office Box 2110, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 29304. That's Post Office Box 2110, Spartanburg, South Carolina. Again, we would love to hear from you this week.