Hebrews - Part 14 Can Believers Fall Away (Hebrews 6:1-9)

Well, good morning. We are coming to Hebrews 6, and so for those of you who have not been with us the whole time, I know one guy, this is your first week, and I know Stephen's had a few weeks he missed. The previous episodes are all available. I'll call them there because they're all on my podcast as episodes. And so some of the things we'll do in this study build upon what we've already discussed.

And so, of course, there may be things I say that will seem like, wow, he jumped pretty far on that one. And sometimes it's because we've already built a launchpad for that. But for the most part, the format is that I just teach for a while, and then we have some time of discussion. But I was thinking about it last night. If there's anybody that you're just burning to say something, or maybe you need to correct me, or you have a question and you don't want to wait to ask it, that's okay. we're still just a fun little group of guys here.

We put the fun in fundamentals. Anyway, Hebrews 6 is a really neat passage. I would call it, at least from my perspective, semi-Christian famous as the result of the fact that the verses in this passage have been debated by people for centuries as to whether they're indicating that a believer can lose their salvation or not. And as with nearly every one of these passages we've dealt with before, when I read what historical Christian men have taught about these verses, there is some variety or diversity, I'll say, which is interesting comfort to know that these things are difficult even for the the people that were considered the most learned men of christianity and so like i guess i say that to say these aren't necessarily easy things for us to grasp at the same time i think god believes his word is clear and it's our job to try to understand it.

So having said that, I'm going to try to help explain what the predominant views are that actually make any sense. And go through that with you. And I'll tell you what I think too. And so let's read. I'm going to go to verse 14 of chapter 5. and then we'll read a little bit into chapter 6. I'm in the LSB now, but solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern both good and evil.

Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of teaching about washings and laying on of hands and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For in the case of those once having been enlightened and having tasted of the heavenly gift and having become partakers of the Holy Spirit and having tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and having fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame.

For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled. receives a blessing from God. But if it yields thorns and thistles, it is unfit and close to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. But we are convinced about you, beloved, of things that are better and that belong to salvation, though we are speaking in this way. so there's more context to all this of course but i read up to verse nine specifically because i think it gives us a clue as to what the author is trying to communicate so remember the three most important rules of bible interpretation context, context, context.

So the context of this letter, the specific context of the book of Hebrews is to communicate to the Hebrew people that Jesus Christ is better than all of the things that they're doing religiously. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament rituals and ceremonies and ceremonial laws and washings and things that they were still practicing, that Jesus Christ is the end of those things. And we will get a lot more of that later in the book of Hebrews in detail.

But his point to them is about who Jesus Christ is. And the goal of this letter is to get these Christians to turn away from the formality of religion that was still a part of their regular life as the result of you know the vestiges of the historical Jewish religion that they were still carrying on And so this isn't necessarily... Let me put it this way.

These people sort of had an excuse where the book of Hebrews hadn't been written yet. and so they were somewhat ignorantly worshiping the right God in the wrong way. They were doing what they thought the Bible said that they should do without a full understanding of what these things meant. For example, I had a friend, he's in heaven now, who told me when he got saved, he started reading the Bible, he saw that you couldn't eat pork, and there's this funny story when he came home from church one day with his wife and she had a pork roast in the oven and he just threw it in the trash he was a new Christian, she had actually married him as a non-believer so this guy was reading the Bible and in good faith he was trying to do what he thought the Bible was telling him to do but then when he kept reading and he got to the New Testament, and he understood the dietary laws and what Jesus had said about what's clean and unclean, then he knew he could have pork again.

And so when this writer's writing to the Hebrews, this is not like the Roman Catholic Church, where we have centuries of their errors, we have the scripture that's already been written that's explaining the use of the priesthood and the ceremonies and things like that. These are people who we look at as brothers in Christ, who in the first century, because the New Testament hadn't been completely written and propagated yet, they didn't have all the information we have. And so does God expect us to understand things about him, even from Old Testament scriptures?

Yes. Does the New Testament very often help explain the Old Testament to us in a way that helps us to actually understand it better and understand it the way it was meant? Yes, indeed. So I say that because I think sometimes we're hypercritical of the first century church. It's easy to look at the Corinthian church and say, wow, that's terrible. What's not always easy to do is see where we're Corinthian in our nature at times, which basically just means we're worldly and fleshly.

We all commit the same errors. We just don't always apply the Scripture to ourselves. So at the end of chapter 5, after the apostle, I was going to say Paul, then I was going to say the apostle, after the author exhorts everyone to discernment, he basically tells everyone, you're just drinking milk. You're not eating solid food yet. And we talked about what that meant, that it's not that milk is bad.

It's that milk is for babies. And as you grow, and basically the existence of teeth, you know, teaches us that we're meant to eat things of more substance at some point. the lack of teeth in a baby shows you that they're not really supposed to eat that much you know food at that age and the comparisons being made that the people that he's writing to are basically eating like babies and he's telling them you should be functioning as adults by now and what he means is that rather than just just discussing the basics of the Christian religion and the basics of the Christ, you should be talking about what I'll call loftier doctrines. You should be advancing in your knowledge.

And this isn't to say that we don't still review and talk about the fundamentals of the faith, but if you read what he says in verse 1 of chapter 6, he says leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ let us press on to maturity then he says not laying again a foundation and then he says of all these things and what I'll argue with you today is that the foundation the things that are the foundation are actually good Christian things these are not things that we shouldn't do these are things Christians should do Repentance from dead works. Well, that's absolutely, like, basically the first step of becoming a Christian. You turn from the things you were doing, and you turn to Christ.

And by dead works, he's, I think, referring to even the good things we did, the things that outwardly accorded with God's law prior to our salvation, but they were things that we relied upon to bring us into favor with God because we were outside of the covenant of redemption at the time, because we were not people who were by faith doing these things. God couldn't see them acceptably. And, of course, I set my confession down. this desk is not conducive to a zoom meeting with books so just so you know but in chapter 16 concerning good works of our confession it says works done by unregenerate men now listen although for the matter of them they may be good things or things which god commands so yes these are things god commands right don you know love your wife if you loved your wife as a non you doing something that God commanded Let face it And it says and these are of good use both to themselves and others.

People all over the world have understood this, that if we follow God, I mean, this is what the United States was founded upon, was we do the things God says, and we'll have a pretty good life, right? But then in the confession, it says, Yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner according to the word, nor to a right end for the glory of God, they are therefore sinful and cannot please God. And so there is the existence of something that is good in the sense that it outwardly accords with God, but doesn't save you, but isn't pleasing to God because it's not done by faith.

And so this is what he's talking about, is we repent from those things. we repent from all of the religiosity that we have ever been a part of when we get saved. But that doesn't mean we don't still do some of those things. So if you went to, let's say you went to a church for a long time, an evangelical church, and you realized you got saved. Well, you repent not of going to church. you repent of the fact that you went to church not by faith in the son of god at the time most many people have taken the lord's supper before they got saved and many people when they did it they were doing it either not out of faith because it was just an outward motion or they actually thought i'm doing something that's going to earn god's favor upon myself This is what we're repenting of, not necessarily the action.

So when he says repentance from dead works, he's saying works that can't save you, works that you did while you were spiritually dead. He's not saying repentance from evil works. We repent of those too, but that's not the point. These people were not people who were outwardly evil and heathen and pagan in that sense. These were people who were religious and thought they were doing what would be pleasing to God.

And now he's reminding them, you've repented of dead works. He says, and of faith towards God. That's part of the dead works. And he says, of teachings about washings and laying on of hands. They're repenting of teaching that these things will save you. And what's interesting about this phrase is Calvin says this phrase proves baby baptism. in the New Testament, which is really neat, because I love Calvin, and I love that he's just an amazing man of God, and I love the fact that I'm becoming strong enough in my own faith to feel comfortable disagreeing with him, because he's just so amazing.

But he said that in the New Testament, babies would have been washed as babies, and then when a person grew up, though, and decided that they were truly themselves going to follow Christ, that there would be a laying on of hands of that person. And so, because you wouldn't need to baptize someone who had already been baptized, in the Presbyterian sense of it, is what Calvin would argue. And so I thought it was neat the way he argued this, and I'm not promoting Presbyterian baptism, and I'm not sold on it myself, but it was an interesting thought that Calvin had, And sometimes we accuse our Presbyterian brothers of having no evidence of New Testament baby sprinkling.

So Calvin's point was that these things wouldn't have needed to be grouped together here if it wasn't a common practice in the New Testament to baptize babies and then lay hands on them when they were older if they decided to come forward to join the church in the personal sense. so the point though here is is that these are all very good things we would do the resurrection of the dead is a teaching that would have been very important Paul basically tells the Corinthians if you don't believe in the resurrection of the dead you're not saved all right so this is something that was hotly debated and we don't debate it today but you're surrounded by people that don't believe in it. And we don't debate it because we're in an age of unreason where you just can't talk to people anymore about anything, it seems like. But in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, this is the gospel.

And we often quote the beginning to phrase the gospel for people. But if you read that whole chapter, he's really attacking a false teaching that has come out that says there is no resurrection of the dead. And so this is an important thing you would have to understand and believe in order to be saved. Now, you don't have to understand every aspect of all these things, but the point is, is when you came to the church to be baptized, when you actually professed faith in Christ, you would have believed in the resurrection of the dead, and you would have said something about it.

And eternal judgment. you would have to believe in eternal judgment um this is something that you would confess you'd say you know i recognize that as a unforgiven sinner i was worthy of eternal judgment if you if you look at these phrases here a lot of these phrases you see would come right from the apostles creed so you know the apostles creed is a summary of the faith that is essential to those who want to say they're Christian. These are things that are non-negotiable. If you don't believe what's in this creed, then you have a problem.

We don't know if you're really a Christian. And that's pretty much what verse 1 tells us about some of these foundational principles. These are the building blocks that without them, you can't build the rest of Christianity. And you can deny these things I would argue with you that annihilationism is heretical I don think I could say that anyone that ever believed in annihilationism or tried to teach it was not a Christian What I can say is that I think they're gravely mistaken, and I think it puts them on shaky ground from a I'm going to give them affirmation of their Christianity standpoint.

So you want to ask me if John Stott was really a Christian. he was an annihilationist I don't read a lot of John Stott I hear people quote him, I guess he said a lot of great things but I wouldn't quote a guy that believed that just like I wouldn't quote a guy that believed the earth was 14 billion years old I'm not going to say you have to believe in and understand the young earth thing the 6,000 year old earth deal in order for you to be a Christian but I am going to say if you don't believe it, I'm pretty worried about you I don't think you're qualified to teach And everyone I've known who has started down the road of these bad teachings, I've seen them go into other bad teaching. Because their poor hermeneutic that allows them to interpret scripture wrongly will lead them to interpret it wrongly somewhere else. So anyway, the point, though, of all that, not laying again a foundation of these things, is that not to abandon these things. the point is you don't need to continuously lay them down as a foundation in order to like that's not what you do as a christian and the comparison is if you're building a house you lay the foundation your foundation is solid it's done right it's level it's got the right number of bricks and structure and all the things involved that you need to have a proper foundation and then once you've done that, you build on top of it, and you build an edifice that is much higher, much bigger, and in some ways, like more elegant and more precious than the foundation itself.

Now, the foundation has to be solid. We get that. And cracks in the foundation are going to destroy the whole thing. That's why I don't think you can deny eternal judgment or these things in this list. I think that's the point of the passage. You're going to have a problem.

But if you just keep laying a foundation, you're just going to end up with this huge stone wall, basically, in our day. And his point is you don't keep laying a foundation. That's immature. Now, doesn't mean we don't believe the foundation is super important. And it doesn't mean we never talk about these things again. but his point is these people are not able to understand any of the things about Christ that he's trying to tell them because they're just basically they're children doing their ABCs every day they can't read they just A B C D E F G H I and that's fine they know their ABCs but his point is that people are able to advance beyond these things like they're able to advance from milk to meat.

And so he says, we're going to leave the elementary teaching of Christ, not abandon it. We're going to leave this basic teaching, though. We're going to remind ourselves of the gospel. We're going to remind ourselves of the things that Christ has done in prayer and in our preaching, because they're edifying and they're exciting. And it's good for us to praise him and talk about him in that way.

But we need to move on to more advanced things that now we have the ability to understand. And so he says, let us press on to maturity, not laying that foundation again. We're going to press on. We're going to start to teach things that aren't the elementary principles of the oracles of God, but we'll call them the advanced principles. And so this isn't like some kind of thing where, hey, we graduated, now we don't have to study certain things ever again, or we don't read about them.

But there are certain things that we just don't have to debate. So if somebody comes along and says, hey, I think God's not a trinity, I think it's really two persons. Okay, we don't need to debate that. This is an elementary principle that we understand the truth of, and we don't have to debate all these things that have already been settled. interesting line in verse 3, and this we will do if God permits.

The author says, let us press on to maturity. He's coupled with them. This isn't me versus you, you know, I'm writing from far away. He's telling them, I'm with you, and we're going to press on to maturity. And you know what? We're going to do it if God permits.

It's that simple. This is a guarantee if God wants it to happen. We're going to teach you advanced things. We're going to give you meat and you're going to digest it. It's that simple. You're going to put down the milk and you're going to taste the meat.

And I'll tell you what, any of you with little kids, give them some baby food on a plate and give them some really good filet mignon. And you know what? They'll never eat again as baby food. So don't do it. Don't give your kids good steak when they're little. They can't get that good taste yet.

That's all they'll want. You give people meat, and if they have an appetite for it, if God has given them a heart for the meat, they will like it, and they will want more of it. They will crave it. And that's what the author is trying to get to now, is explain that when we feed people the Word of God, if they are truly people who God has awakened to understand these things, they're going to want more and more.

This is why some of you are up at 6 a.m. on Friday to listen to some guy just talk about the Bible, because you want more. You want more of the Bible. than you're getting. You want more teaching. And it's because God has awakened that in you. The people that don't want to continue to learn more and more about Scripture indicate to you that they're either babes, or maybe we'll find out here that they're not really people who have an appetite for these things because God has not actually given them that hunger and thirst. but again we always need to remember that this if god permits line is such an important aspect of the way we think about everything that it will be if god if god wills it we will do nothing outside of his sovereign power and his perfect providence and so but within there we have a virtual guarantee of sanctification.

So now in verses 4 through 6, he says, for in the case of those once having been enlightened and having tasted of the heavenly gift, it's kind of interesting. One guy equated everything from verse 1 and 2 to this other list. So he said, repentance from dead works was like being enlightened, having tasted of the heavenly gift then referred back to faith towards God.

Teaching about washings and laying on of hands refers to partakers of the Holy Spirit. Taste of the good word of God was understanding the teaching of resurrection of the dead. And then he says in verse 6 or no, verse 5, and the powers of the age to come refers to eternal judgment. So it is an interesting analogy that it's almost as if the author is just saying the same things again in different words.

But he says people who have been enlightened, people who have had their eyes opened to what Christ has done, people who have tasted of the heavenly gift and become partakers of the Holy Spirit, he says in verse 6 then, having fallen away, it's impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucified to themselves the Son of God and put them to open shame. So here's where we get into the difficulty, we'll call it. And the difficulty is, is this saying that people who have obviously become Christian can fall away.

Because if we all agree that John 6 says, all those who come to me, I will never cast out. And that John 10, Jesus says, anyone who the Father has put in my hand, I will not be able to lose them. No one can snatch them out of my hand. The Father who is greater than I am, he has given them to me, and nobody can snatch them out of the Father's hand. If we agree that there's enough scripture that we've already established what we'll call the perseverance of the saints, that your election is secure from the foundation of the world, that you can't fall away if you truly get saved, then this verse becomes difficult for people.

And what I'll say is that the view that says these people who have once been enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and become partakers of the Holy Spirit and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and having fallen away, the view that that phrase simply means, yes, it must be possible believers can fall away, is just simply false. I understand why it may read that way and I understand why if you're of certain theological bents you'll go there right away and in fact this will become your go to verse for the fact that believers can of course fall away that's false we can establish from scripture so the way to the way to interpret scriptures that seem unclear or difficult is to interpret them in light of the clearer ones clearer scriptures teach the perseverance of the saints okay so that the two major views that would be within orthodoxy i think would be the first view that this is talking about believers okay this is what spurgeon said about this section of scripture that this description here of tasting the heavenly gift and becoming partakers of the holy spirit spurgeon said is there any other phrase you could use to describe believers? Another author said, I don't remember who, if these phrases don't describe believers, I don't know what phrases could, he said.

So he just emphatically was saying this is about believers, and that it is kind of one of those conditional statements where the author's telling you basically, if somebody was a believer, we'll just sum that up, and fell away, it's impossible to renew them to repentance. And he said, you know, since they would again crucify to themselves the Son of God. So the Son of God's already been crucified on their behalf.

He can't be sacrificed twice. therefore the sentence actually is telling us if it were possible for a believer to lose his salvation he couldn't get it back anyway but of course Spurgeon would teach you it's impossible to lose your salvation I don't I don't buy that that's the point of this passage I think it would be odd for this author to kind of almost randomly just put a sentence in there that's just this kind of reverse conditional that's meant to teach you something that you already know just with a hypothetical. What I think happening is that the author is talking about the things that we can see about a person I also don buy the argument that like where we say well having tasted of the heavenly gift you know one person said well you know we need to digest it, not just taste it. So these are people that have just tasted it.

I don't think that he's trying to make these minuscule distinctions in wording. I think when we get too detailed into, well, this word must mean this instead of what it obviously seems to I mean, I think we have a problem in our interpretation sometimes. I think we're trying too hard to make it something that we have to be really, really studied to get when the scripture was for every lay person to understand.

And so I think we have to understand that. I think he's just saying there's people who have been enlightened. Their eyes have been opened to what God has done. And I don't think that that is reserved to believers. So real quick proof of that. Just look at Numbers 24 if you want.

Some of you may be in your mind, you remember, wait, Numbers, what? Well, Balaam. Balaam in Numbers 24. Balaam who, I can say, almost with the same confidence of Judas is in hell right now. Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe in verse 2. And the Spirit of God came upon him.

And he took up his discourse and said, The oracle of Balaam, the son of Beor, he says, the oracle of the man whose eye is opened. He says, the oracle of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty falling down with his eyes uncovered. Well, Balaam is an example in the New Testament multiple times of an apostate, of someone who hates God.

And so the fact that somebody was once enlightened, who was once awakened to who Christ is, the fact that the Spirit of God even worked in their life in some way, in particular in the New Testament, maybe even through miraculous gifts. I mean, how do you think there's people that are going to stand before Jesus and say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? Do you think these are just people that are deceived into thinking they did those things?

Or is it possible that people really do some of these things in the name of God, even in their unregenerate state, and the Holy Spirit may even enable that? He may enable them to preach a good sermon. Have you ever heard a good sermon and then later found out the guy was apostatized? I mean, I've read books that I've had to get rid of because the author's not trustworthy anymore. but he at the time wrote something that seems spirit-led.

And so, you know, taste of the good word of God. We've all known people who've tasted the good word of God, who've understood these things. I think the author's describing people who actually do appear to become Christian, not just in profession. We're not talking about people that said, you know, they raised their hand at a Billy Graham meeting once, and then you never saw him again. he's talking about people who seem to labor alongside you they they've done all sorts of things that made you think well this guy must be a Christian and they of course affirmed the foundation they've they've they've said the things you would need to say for a decent church to baptize you and put you in membership and he says if they've fallen away it's impossible to renew them again to repentance.

I think this is a dire warning. I don't think he's teaching this so that we can look around at the people we know that have apostatized and say, well, I guess that guy has no hope left. I won't even pray for him. I'll never evangelize him again. I don't think the point of the passage is for us to figure out who's apostate. So if you know someone who walked with the Lord seriously, and now they have walked away.

I don't think this passage is justification for you forgetting about them entirely or abandoning them and just assuming that they're reprobate and that there's no way they'll come back. I don't think that's how God wants us to apply it, But I do think that it's true that there are people who God has shown this person is not going to come back. And the point is not for you to figure out who the other people are.

You know, like, I just keep thinking of this famous guy named Paul Maxwell. And he was he's kind of a guy that wrote about Christianity. And he got famous. And then he recently apostatized. and I don't think the point is we're supposed to think well Paul Maxwell will never get saved he maybe won't but I don't think that's what we're designed to do with this scripture this is a warning to you you who is not advancing in Christ you who is not moving from milk to meat you are the one being warned hey you need to do things that establish yourself on a better footing for the sake of your own assurance, bearing fruit in my name so that you might have the assurance that you aren't still in the category of those who are going to fall away.

We baptize a new believer into the church. We're going to do that without a lot of maturity in that person's life. And this is a warning to people like that. Hey, don't stay where you're at right now. You are required to bear fruit. And if you don if you fall away someday that promise that we made you that Christ will never leave you or forsake you was not for you You falling away as the indicator that you only participated in all of these works of God as an unregenerate person, not a truly faithful person.

So we'll look at some of the details of that verse hopefully more next week, because I want He says they crucify the Son of God again and put Him to open shame. I think that's worth a little more investigation maybe. But the point in why I get this, though, is in verse 7 and 8 when he says, The ground that drinks rain which falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled receives a blessing from God.

So he uses this analogy that I think explains the previous few verses, which is that the ground receives rain and nourishment. And the ground either brings forth fruit that the people can enjoy or the ground doesn't. But the outward receiving of, we'll say, God's blessing in the rain and God's nourishment is the same. the difference between the ground that bears fruit and the ground that doesn't is whether the seed was there and whether the ground itself was healthy it's not that they both receive the same rain you understand so you and me and everyone else around us in church we're all receiving the same rain we're all receiving the nourishment of christ from the preaching of his Word, from the teaching of His Word, from the reading of Scripture, from doing Holy Communion together, from watching baptisms and participating in them, hopefully in our own.

We're all singing hymns together. We're all receiving the nourishment of God outwardly in the same way. And it's the ones that are actually bearing that fruit of faith that are going to show that we are the ones that aren't falling away. The belief that this must be about believers because these phrases can only be about believers, I think is false. As hard as it is for me to disagree with Spurgeon, I thought Spurgeon took some liberty sometimes.

You know, the parable of the sowers and the seeds reminds us that there are going to be people who outwardly will look no different than we do and that Christians are supposed to and that the cares of this life will choke them with thorns the sun will burn things without strong roots it is entirely possible for someone to have the appearance of being the same type of plant as another plant but then on the day of judgment it'll be seen that there's tares and there's wheat. And there's a point in both of their lives when they're somewhat indistinguishable is the point. So you can't lose your salvation if you have it.

If you have salvation, one of your exhortations to you is to work it out with fear and trembling. not to save yourself, but you work out your salvation in the sense that you become assured that you really are in the category of people who will not ultimately fall away. Even if you have periods of falling away, which we all have periods of it, even if it's just for a moment, but some people have extended fall away periods, you will come back. You will be renewed. and the way that we help ensure this is by feasting on the meat that is the teaching of Christ that is the meat of Christ though, not just the basic elements of it that is what was required to save us in the first place so I'll stop there for today, we'll open up the whole floor here for comments and questions and things like that I think my own time in the Word has prepared me well for this passage, actually.

I've been studying 1 Corinthians 10 pretty in-depth lately, and Paul is sort of saying a very similar thing to the church at Corinth. In chapter 10, he says, I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses. and in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, the rock of Christ.

Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. So Paul is using Israel's experience in the wilderness, where they participated in all these similar things that seem to parallel the church's experience, where they were baptized and they drank from Christ and they ate the heavenly food, but then they were destroyed because they didn't have faith. So he warns them later in the passage to, hey, repent of your sin, flee from idolatry.

So I think it's a similar thing in Hebrews where, like you said, they're participating in the church and the church life, but it's not united with true saving faith. Amen. Good. I just wanted to mention Jeremy. I muted you at one point, so if you did want to share, you have to do whatever you need to do. It's on mute.

Yeah, good comment. Yeah, I was just thinking, as you brought up John Stott and, yeah, those, you know, the ideas of like falling away for a season or whatever right it's like uh i don't know why but it seems like as we get older uh emotionalism might become more of a temptation and i think that that was true of stott you know um because of his you know sister um and the emotions around that leading to his embracing of annihilationism. I don't know.

I just think we need to guard ourselves against emotionalism because it can be a temptation, and it can present false ideas to us that feel good. And it seems like, especially as we get older, for some reason. That's a good point. I feel like I don't have a really good theology of laying on of hands, or laying on of hands. and this kind of strikes me because the author says that it's an elementary doctrine of Christ and so I feel like I need to look into that more and figure out what the author is referring to there so I don't know if anyone has any good passages they could point me to for that Calvin just said it's when a baptized baby wants to make his own profession so there you go I like Calvin but I don't know if I agree with him there yeah he was a good Presbyterian he saw it where he wanted to see it I know that laying on of hands is part of ordaining elders and the laying out of hands was part of sending out the missionaries in Acts, right?

So when Paul and Barnabas and them were sent out, they laid hands on them. And in the first century in particular, the laying out of hands was part of how, obviously God did the work, but part of how the Holy Spirit was imparted to new believers, at times at least. And so, you know, I think that, I think you could just sort of search for the words probably and read some of those passages.

I'm not sure that, you know, it's meant to be much more than it shows the touch, the closeness we have with people. In particular, even the laying on of hands of somebody who would have made you ceremonially unclean, it's irrelevant now. the priest laid his hands on the head of the of the goat that was sent out right the expiated sacrifice signifying the transference of sins to the substitute so there's there's a lot of things about it i don't know if it's one thing i guess is part of what i'm saying but but it does seem like uh something we ought to do once in a while at least to to show that closeness with each other in the church, I think, and to just follow the protocol with elders and stuff. Just some thoughts.

I haven't heard go ahead I was just going to see if Stephen or Jason had anything go ahead I haven't heard your interpretation that the things in verse 1 and 2 are then paralleled in 4 through 6 which I thought was intriguing so I have to look into that more yeah I thought it was intriguing too I didn't figure that out I read it in one of the commentaries I don't remember I don't remember who made that relationship but it was kind of neat. Yeah, I've always... I'll figure out who said that.

I'll find which guy I read that said that. It's kind of a neat parallel he made. Yeah. Yeah, I thought so. It fit decently well when you were saying it. I had a professor who pointed out in verse 4, it's probably, who have tasted the heavenly gift, probably a citation from Nehemiah 9 15 where Ezra I think it's let's turn there real quick he's rehearsing the biblical narrative and he's talking about sort of what like the Lord did for Israel He gave them bread from heaven for their hunger.

Yeah, so again, sort of the theme of they're participating in what God has done for them. But then later in Nehemiah, they're destroyed. Jesus, of course, is the fulfillment of the bread from heaven, and he's the heavenly gift. I think we want everything to be real neat and clear. Like, well, when God refers to someone as partaking of a heavenly gift, well, that must mean Christian.

I think that's what we want when we read it. It's like black and whiteness. And the way it's written is we know that there's assurance for those who are elect. And we also know that the scripture is just filled with warnings of falling away. We know that we're saved by grace through faith alone. justified in that sense at least and and and we will make it to the end that way but the scripture is still full of warnings that we ought to do works and it we like to call we like to say there this tension you know and apparent paradoxes And in reality this is just what God says We're the one that makes up paradoxes and tensions.

I mean, this is just God's truth. You know, there's nothing tense about it for him or paradoxical. This is just how it is. we're finite and our minds cannot comprehend all of the great things that God's mind can and frankly if we could we'd have a really weak God and so it's actually good that there's still some mystery well wonderful Jason Stephen nothing I like hearing you guys I just, uh, I've enjoyed listening to everybody this morning, you know?

I'm glad to have you on the call. I love that cross-reference with the Grapians, and I really appreciate you bringing that to the table, brother. Same here, brother. It was nice. All right well what do we have Oh I muted Are there any thoughts about, well, I'll just, instead of talking about it now, let me know what you think of just doing it weekly. If you think that would help people to remember, if it would help, or if you, you know, or if it doesn't matter to you, just, just let me know.

I tend to think that the every other week thing is what throws people off. I know it throws my wife off even. She's like, are you teaching this week? And sometimes I'm like, I don't know. I got to look. And that's probably not good.

But all right, well, let's be finished then. We'll pray. Father in heaven, we pray your blessing upon our studies of your word. We trust that you intend for better things for us, things concerning salvation. and so Lord we thank you for Jesus Christ dying on our behalf and we profess that and we confess it and we rejoice in it and we do ask you to enable each of us by the power of your spirit to live lives that honor Jesus Christ that do the things that are pleasing to you in your sight that we may even experience the joy of that and the assurance that comes along with it And we pray Lord for the guys that couldn't be with us today for whatever reason, that you would help them with maybe whatever difficulties that they're facing.

And if it was just, you know, forgetting or sleeping in late, that you would help us to create a situation that's good for everybody. Thank you for your word, and thank you that it's clear to you. We ask you to make it clear to us. In Christ's name I pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin.

I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.