Heb 10:26-31 Woe to You
Notes
Transcript
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
I don’t know about you and how you observe the world as you get older, but in the few years that I have and the different cultures I have been part of I notice a steady progression throughout the years of desensitization and increase softness.
I was going to give you the official definition of desensitization, but it is too wordy, in practice desensitization is gradual exposure therapy. It is used to help someone to deal with a specific fear, it is the small gradual exposure to something. It could be used for good things, but I believe that throughout the years our society has been gradually exposed to certain sins and injustices that now our society is not shocked and is often silent to more and more unrighteousness. It is one of the greatest tools of the devil to bring small changes, small compromises, that over time bring great changes.
At the same time, we are a society of soft people. It seems like no one is able to accept hard truths. Everything, anything is offensive, to some even the mention of the word truth is offensive. The softer we get the farther away we get from reality.
“While most of the world watches death every day without morphine or any medical help, and deals with deep gashes and amputations with no antiseptics or stitches, we gag at the sight of a dead dog and grumble when 911 takes five minutes to respond instead of three. We are soft and we are presumptuous. And, what's most appalling is that when it comes to God, all we want to hear is the sweet side - the tender side, the warm side.” (Piper)
Most people today will turn their heads at the text we are studying today because it is too harsh. We want to hear about God’s grace, but not His wrath, His righteous judgment. If we don’t study Scripture faithfully, we end up creating a god that is not the God that Scripture reveals Him to be. All we will want to hear is only about God’s love and not about His righteousness, His holiness, and His wrath.
For example, a study shows that 3 out of 4 US adults believe that there is a Heaven, while it is only about half of US adults that believes in the existence of Hell. We cannot forget that Jesus talked more about Hell than any other person in the Bible. Jesus described Hell vividly in different ways to point to this horrible reality. There is no doubt that Jesus believed and warned against the absolute reality of hell. In the same manner, the passage we are studying today warns us of what is going to happen to those that trample over the Son of God.
We could summarize these 6 verses in one phrase. If you despise Jesus your end is hell. If you don’t remember anything else from today I hope you will remember very clearly that If you despise Jesus your end is hell.
Craig Groeschel gives a great illustration that is fitting here. He says “My youngest child's name is Rebecca Joy, but we call her Jojo for short. Recently we were at a friend's house for a party, and my buddy has a zip line in his back. But this is no ordinary zip line; this is a zip line on steroids. It is long and steep with no way to stop but to jump off, so we made a rule that a child must be fourteen or older to ride it.
By the end of the day, the parents had stopped paying close attention. Disobeying the rules, JoJo and her twelve-year-old partner in crime decided it was their time to fly. Her friend hoisted her high enough to grasp the handle, and off she shot. JoJo zipped across, squealing with joy, "Wheeeeeee!" My little Evel Knievel was grinning ear-to-ear, having the time of her life right up until she smacked face-first into the tree. The loud thud! her tiny body made when she crashed into the tree was sickening. Her small frame dropped to the ground, limp. Blood covered her face as she lay unconscious. Thankfully, she woke up. She only had to endure two layers of stitches in her chin, and she made a quick and full recovery. But the point is clear: it doesn't matter how much she enjoyed the ride she paid for it at the end.
So many of us go through life like JoJo on the zip line. Whee! we think, as we ride an unwise or sinful lifestyle. Sin can be pleasurable for a short period of time, but it always catches up to you. God doesn't want you happy when you're doing something wrong or unwise.”
The world’s message is to have fun, enjoy the day, don’t worry about tomorrow or death, don’t worry about the tree at the end of the zipline just enjoy the ride. Then suddenly death will come, and if you despise Jesus in your heart your end is complete destruction, no redemption, no second chances, no more grace, but only God’s wrath.
There are many that trust their eternity to one moment in their lives that they prayed the sinner's prayer. If all the confidence you have is that one time you came to the altar and repented. Then your confidence and assurance are in very shallow water.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:21:23 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Our confidence has to be in our relationship with Jesus, that we know Him, and He knows us, because we are walking with Him, we are daily trusting in Him, we are daily taking up our cross and following Him. That we love Him and daily obey Him. Every time we sin, we repent and turn to Jesus, but if we go on sinning deliberately we don’t know Jesus and we are heading to hell. 1 John 1:6 “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”
The Bible is not for soft people, the book of Hebrews is not for the soft either. We have seen great promises, and great exaltations of Jesus and several warnings, now we come again to another warning passage, one of the strongest warnings in this letter.
When we studied the warning in chapter 6, we addressed the question if these warnings mean someone can lose their salvation. Since we addressed this before I’m not going to repeat the argument here. The summary is I do believe that we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are followers of Christ, but in our hearts, we love unrighteous pleasures more than God.
For example, years ago I remember a time when there was a certain sin that I was fighting, externally I was very successful in that particular area. However, even though I would tell myself that I was doing it for God, deep in my heart, I wasn’t doing it out of my love for God, and it became evident to me that it was for selfish reasons, once I didn’t get what I wanted I fell again and again. In my heart, I loved the pleasure more than God. In a sense, I was deceiving myself. The warnings here in Hebrews should cause all of us to be shaken so that our hearts are tested, and any deceit is removed from our hearts. With that attitude let’s read v26.
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
For if we go on sinning deliberately. When it says deliberately it describes a conscious voluntary rebellion. The law of Moses distinguished between sins committed inadvertently out of ignorance and those committed “with a high hand” reviling the Lord and despising His Word.
Numbers 15 described in extension how the unintentional sin could be atoned for, but then in Numbers 15:30-31 says “But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people. 31 Because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be on him”
Just to clarify that this language of cut-off did not mean to only remove someone from the camp, Deut 17:12 makes it clear about the outcome of deliberately or presumptuous sin. It says “12 The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 13 And all the people shall hear and fear and not act presumptuously again.”
For if we go on sinning deliberately, it is to profess that we follow Christ and at the same time we are consciously living like Jesus is not our Lord, then we are walking in darkness just like what John says:
1 John 1:6 “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”
This verse says that this practice of sinning is not out of ignorance, but it is conscious, deliberately, presumptuous because it says “after receiving the knowledge of the truth” The problem with sin is not a lack of knowledge, but we sin because at that moment we have a greater love for self or pleasure instead of love for God.
When Paul is talking about the end times and the increased corruption, he says in 2 Thess 2:12 “in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Here Paul contrasts truth with pleasure in unrighteousness. This means that deliberately sinning is not because someone rejects truth and believes a lie, but at the heart level, there is a greater love for self and for pleasure in unrighteousness.
If you love yourself and have greater pleasure in unrighteousness instead of loving God and you received the knowledge of the truth, you have been exposed over and over to the gospel, maybe you have been coming to church for many years, but you love the gifts more than the giver then sadly there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.
This might sound harsh, but later in v29 it tells why because living this way is to trample underfoot the Son of God, to profane the blood of the covenant. If you reject, practically, and continually, the only way of salvation then there is only left for you a fearful expectation of judgment.
27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
The adversaries of God, those that are openly and strongly against God, those that follow the powers of the present darkness, will have one outcome which is God’s judgment, His wrath.
There is a day coming when what is foretold in the book of Revelation will be a reality
Rev 14:9b-11 says 9 “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
The fury of God’s wrath will be upon all of God’s adversaries and their torment will have no end, will be forever and ever. It will be what the author of Hebrews says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, in these verse the author compares the judgment to come with the judgment in the Old Testament.
28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
As we mentioned previously the Old Testament law had provisions for unintentional sin, but presumptions sins had to be faced by death.
The declaration that anyone who violated a precept of Moses had to die “without pity on the evidence of two or three witnesses” blends two passages from Deuteronomy. In Deut 17:2–7 the death penalty is the punishment for idolatry, provided that the commission of the act is proven by at least two or three witnesses, Num 35:30 brings a similar commandment in the case of murder. The detail that the offender must be put to death “without pity” is drawn from Deut 13:8 which instructs the death penalty for someone who sought to draw others away from the Lord.
Then the author makes the argument from lesser to greater. If deliberate disobedience to the Old Testament received physical death without pity, how much greater is the punishment for deliberate disobedience and disregard to the Son of God, but eternal death, God’s wrath, that He will pour in all of God’s enemies at His coming.
If you are on that wild zipline enjoying life and the pleasures of unrighteousness, woe to you for what is to come is far worse than what you can imagine. At God’s judgment, it won’t matter if you believe or not in hell, because then it won’t be a matter of believing but a reality and eternal experience.
This passage of Scripture, or the Bible in general is not for the soft. The Bible doesn’t ask your permission to tell the Truth, God as our creator, out of love tells us the Truth. What matters is how we respond to the Most Holy God, are we going to say no this is not my god, because my god is only love, or are we going to submit to the True God who revealed Himself through His inspired word?
I believe many of you truly know Jesus and follow Him and believe that Heaven and Hell are real. Even though this is not easy to hear, you know and believe that this is what the Bible clearly teaches. However, it is one thing to say you believe, the other is to live it out each day, to be living by faith.
Paul Trip brings a good insight when he says “Faith surely does engage your brain, but it is fundamentally more than that. Faith is something that you do with your life. True biblical faith doesn’t stop with thought; it radically rearranges the way that you approach everything in your life
• You can be amazed by the grand sweep of the redemptive story in Scripture and not be living by faith.
• You can be amazed by the complex logic of the theology of the Word of God and not be living by faith.
• You can be amazed by the great worship music you participate in every Sunday and not be living by faith.
• You can be amazed by the love of your church and not be living by faith.
• You can be amazed by the wonderful biblical preaching and teaching that you hear and not be living by faith.
• You can be amazed by the grace of the cross of Jesus and not be living by faith.[1]”
The question for us today is, are we deceiving ourselves by saying something but not living it out? Are we living it out because we love something or someone else and not Jesus?
You are all in with Jesus or you don’t really know Him. God sees our hearts, I know these are hard truths, but if we despise Jesus in our hearts our end is going to be a lot worse than being smacked against a tree, but eternal hell.
This calls for all of us to repent and cling to Jesus more and more, He is the way, the truth, the life. No one, no one come to the Father except through Jesus.
The difference between a sinner, and a follower of Christ is not the one sin and the other doesn’t. The difference is that the follower of Christ repents and hates sin because of what it means to God. The unrepented sinner might hate sin when it is exposed and what it does to him and his image.
If you are following Christ, you are not continually walking in darkness, you are not a lover of pleasures. You will keep on repenting and turning to Jesus. It is with God’s help and His strength, we will walk in the light, if we keep on repenting.
1 John 1:7-9 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.