Mr. Chair of the Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews 10, this evening verses 26 through 31. Our passage tonight is one that well troubles, the doctrine is in it trouble many people when they consider the judgment and vengeance of God.
And it's a passage that's worded in such a way that it has troubled many a Christian about themselves and unnecessarily. Maybe it's troubled you. So we want to look at it and as we approach it, remind ourselves we're now in the practical section of the book that the writer by the end of verse 18 has told us that Jesus is our great high priest, that he has offered the one perfect sacrifice to accomplish a perfect atonement to perfectly reconcile us to God by the blood of the cross. And he did it once and for all.
And so last week we heard the writer then say, so let's therefore draw near to God in faith in Christ. And let's hold fast our confession of hope that we have in Christ. And then let's also stir one another up to loving good deeds and let's then continue to meet with one another and not forsaking that but to encourage one another even as we see the day approaching the day that's coming of well the return of Christ in the final judgment. And it's a light of that that the author here invites his first years as well as us to consider this warning about that day, a warning about the just vengeance of God and hell.
And in just a moment we'll read the passage but I thought it might be helpful to hear that Charles Spurgeon, well he's full of good stories but he tells the story of a church that was asked to accept as their minister a man who did not believe in hell. And they said to him, you have come to tell us that there is no hell. If your doctrine is true we certainly do not need you. And if it's not true, well then we don't want you.
So either way we can do without you. To speak of God's vengeance is not pleasant but it is necessary since the Bible speaks so clearly about the weight of these things. And so let's hear and consider together Hebrews 10 beginning at verse 26. This is the word of God.
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. One who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 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. For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay and again the Lord will judge his people.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. This is the word of God. May he impress upon our hearts and so to him in prayer. Father your word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and we pray that you would do your good work in us by it.
And lift Christ before our eyes sober us about his salvation which he has provided in our need for him. Grant us the rest in him. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
A Montgomery County, Texas man was facing a possible jury trial and there was no doubt of his crime. Assault on a public servant, prosecutors offered him a plea deal in which if he pled guilty he would be released immediately to freedom having already served well for 19 months in jail awaiting trial. His lawyer advised his clients to accept the plea bargain noting that his prior offenses which included charges for burglary and domestic assault could lead to a sentence of 25 years or more behind bars. He turned them down.
He faced the judge and he faced the jury and his crime was established and he was convicted and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was offered freedom for 40 years. You might say he chose poorly. Against the advice of counsel he chose to reject the offer of mercy held out to him and he chose judgment instead of mercy and the author of Hebrews would not have us be so unwise to make so poor a choice ourselves in matters of eternity.
And so he reminds us in verses 26 and 27 of God's vengeance. He actually warns us of God's vengeance in verses 28 and 29. He speaks of the justice of God's vengeance and then the certainty of it in 30 and 31 will of course consider the only escape that is offered to us. And so let's think about first the warning of God's vengeance here in verses 26 and 27.
The writer says for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment. Now he is not speaking here of what we might call any old sin. He's speaking of a particular sin here. The particular sin of deliberately habitually continually rejecting Christ as your Savior.
Rejecting the death of Christ as the sacrifice that brings forgiveness. Rejecting the high priesthood of Christ who is the only one who can bring us access to God. In other words he's not just describing any old sin in general and he's not talking about Christians struggling with the flesh as they face the war of the flesh against the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit against the flesh. He knows that the moment of being forgiven and being set apart for God and he knows the moment of our death when our souls will be made perfect in heaven and he knows that there is a lifetime of sanctification between those two events of becoming alive in Christ and finally glorified in Christ.
And he knows we're going to fail to do all that we should do and we're going to do what we shouldn't do. In other words Christians are going to still struggle with loving God with all their heart soul, strength and mind and loving their neighbor as their self and we're going to see many failures in our own hearts. We're talking about those kinds of continuing imperfections and sins. He understands true believers struggle with these things and even sometimes true believers backslide profoundly and terribly into various patterns of sin.
And to be clear those things are serious of course we're not making a while you have sin up here and God's children well when we do choose sin it does offend him and it grieves the Spirit and hinders our witness. It really runs contrary to who we are in Christ. It makes us liable to God's fatherly displeasure and discipline as the writer will speak of in chapter 12, God disciplines those he loves. So continuing sin is a reality and it's always wrong and a believer don't misunderstand and I would just say if that's your situation is you're struggling perhaps with some sort of habitual continual sin that seems to have a grip that you just can't get yourself free from.
I am the elders would like to help you in that. You're safe to share your struggles with us. It's not uncommon for believers to struggle with sin. At the same time there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And as new creatures in Christ we need to live learn to live in a new way. But the sin in view here in this passage is different. The sin here is the kind of sin which leaves us in the position of as he says not having a sacrifice for sin. And how is it possible not to have a sacrifice for sin?
It's by the continued rejection of the only sacrifice for sin that there is. That truly takes away sin. If having received the knowledge of the truth that Christ is our great-eye priest you offer the perfect sacrifice for sin by a single offering of himself for sin and we have forgiveness of sin and access to God for him. If we receive that and we go on sinning deliberately that is rejecting this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world then there remains for us no other sacrifice for sin.
And you remember his original authors well many of them were tempted to reject Christ as Messiah and as the true Lamb of God. And to go back to what they had known and what their families still embraced and what was still happening in the temple as this book was written to go back to the animal sacrifices which cannot take away sin. And so it would be for them one who had joined the Christian community but then goes back to Judaism it would be like trading your house for the blueprint from which the house was built or it would be like a person giving up their car and replacing it with a photograph of their car. It would be like a person trading a real piece of chocolate cake for a crayon drawing of it.
It would be foolish and more importantly disastrous. You wouldn't have the real thing. But the writer says we have better news for you. He's been speaking about it for ten chapters.
There is one offering that satisfies the divine justice and truly releases us and frees us and it's Christ. But to reject Christ is to be left with no sacrifice at all. I think you know I'm speaking to a room where many of you know people who seem at least in our eyes to have done this or perhaps seem to be on the road to doing this. And it's a grievous thing.
They said they believed in Jesus. They gathered around with others and worshiped for a time. They began then to forsake the assembly. They may have built, they may no longer identify themselves as Christians at all.
If they persist in that it may very well indicate that they are not and never were true believers. And the writer is saying there is no hope for them outside of Jesus. They need to come genuinely and truly to Jesus. And instead what awaits them if they don't verse 27 is as he says a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
If you reject Jesus he says there is no other Savior. And that's a warning to us all certainly. And he is doing so precisely because he loves us and he wants us to go on in faith. And it's a warning to us all.
Don't chuck the faith. Keep going. Ezekiel 33 verse 11 says this about God. As I live declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
But that the wicked turn from his way and live. And so he says turn back, turn back from your evil ways for why will you die or how so this is real. That's what the writer here is saying. Come back, come back.
Don't leave. Don't leave Jesus. And so whenever God's word warns us like this, we've got to understand that God is being gracious to us. To be warned about something dangerous is a grace.
But we also have to recognize that one day the warnings will end on that final day. What will we have done? In a British cemetery the sign reads pause my friend as you walk by. You are now.
So once was I as I am now you will be prepare my friend to follow me and a wise visitor added to follow you is not my intent until I know which way you went and the writer presents us with that. Is it to heaven through trust in Christ or is it through rejecting the Savior? Is it is it help? So there's a warning and it's a gracious warning.
It's gracious to hear that warning. But to respond is even better. Jesus 29 assures us of the justice of God's vengeance in this. He doesn't want us to think that God is doing something unrighteous or unjust or evil.
He's not. Notice this language verse 28, anyone who set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled under foot the Son of God, has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? So he says, I want you to mold this service.
What do you think? I want you to think it through. And I want you to come to the same conclusion as me, the author says, who agree with God and his word about the justice of this judgment. So he appeals first to their knowledge of the Old Testament and God's prior dealings at verse 28.
And then he appeals secondly to their own sense of the appropriateness of this in verse 29. So back in verse 28, it reminds them of what the law said, the law of Moses. He has a mind due to our only 17 here where a man or a woman might be caught in idolatry, someone that says who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord who transgresses God's covenant, who has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, even worshiped in the Son of the Moon. And so again, what's their crime?
It's the crime of Israel rejecting the Lord in favor of other gods. And what should happen to them in Israel? Deuteronomy 17 and 6 says, well, on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death. The person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.
And so the author is reminding them, look how clear the law is about this. And then don't imagine that under the gospel, God's justice is any less strict. In fact, under the gospel, he says God's punishments are worse, so to speak, or more severe. That is, we have greater privileges, and so we have greater responsibilities and therefore greater accountability and therefore greater punishments for apostasy.
It's his language here. Covenant loyalty and faithfulness is expected of one who has come into the New Covenant community, but if they then repudiate the covenant, the curses of God come into play. So the argument that the old covenant was the covenant of wrath and curse and the new covenant is the covenant of love and grace just isn't correct. In fact, the punishment is severe in the New Covenant for rejecting the revelation of God in Christ.
And so don't imagine them, the writer saying to us, that God is being unjust in any of this. Don't think in your heart of heart that it isn't right for God to judge his enemies. When they scorn his free offer of salvation and friendship, I think what they've done verse 29, he describes it as trampling and profaning and outraging. Notice that language verse 29, how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the son of God?
Now some of you may remember in, well, a few of you two, back in 2008, when President George W. Bush held a press conference with the Iraqi president and a journalist through both his shoes at our president. A lot of the journalists throw his shoes, was he tried to seriously injure the president, who didn't want to throw something heavier and more expensive, more dangerous, like perhaps his own camera. Well, no, actually he was seeking to insult the president.
In the Arab world, the shoe is considered unclean. It touches all the dirt in the filth of the world. That's why in Arab homes they take their shoes off before they enter. That's why it's considered an insult to even show a person the bottom of your shoe, why you ought to be careful if you cross your legs not to turn up your foot and expose that.
And it was an insult here. As an insult to President George Bush, senior after the first goal for a mosaic of his face was laid on the floor of the Al Rashid Hotel and Baghdad so that anybody who entered the lobby would have to walk over his face to get into the hotel. It was meant as an insult. The mosaic was subsequently destroyed by American soldiers in 2003.
He was in the lobby and replaced with an image of Saddam Hussein as an insult. That's not connecting with you. Imagine how you feel. If I took a colored Polaroid picture of you just now, we all waited for it to resolve.
That's what that's called. And then I spat on it, crumpled it up, threw it on the floor and stomped on it. Besides thinking I was bad. I mean, what's up with him?
You also have a hard time not being offended by that. What are you doing with the image of me? Well, I'm trying to get at it. This is worse.
God loved the world in this way that he gave his only unique son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And how do they treat that son? Well, what the author says is here, if they keep rejecting him, they're saying, he's beneath him. I don't need him.
In fact, they're saying basically it's fine that he got nailed to the tree and probably it's fine if it happened all over again. They stomp and pound and kick at him. That's what they think of him as a person. And what do they think of his work of his death on the cross for sinners?
Middle of verse 29, they profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. They think the shed blood of Christ, his offering himself upon the tree, and his love expressed in laying down his life for the church. Why? That's just a common thing.
It's no big deal. It's not worthy of reverence or gratefulness. Death they say is just the death of a common man, a common criminal even. And in rejecting Christ, they take their name with Pilate and they take their sin with the crowd who cried crucify him.
Now the last part of this phrase is a little more difficult where it says the one sanctified where it speaks of the sanctification. If the one sanctified is the one profaning his blood, then by one reading of the passage, it seems to suggest that this is a person who was saved and who is now lost. This is a person who was sanctified by the blood of Jesus. They're on there.
The road in progressive sanctification. Well, we did deal with that issue back in Hebrews, chapter 6, but we might also note a different reading would be that they had been set apart from the world and set apart for God through their identification with the people of God. That is they had professed faith in Christ. They'd been baptized.
They'd been assembling with the church. They'd been eating the Lord's Supper. In many ways they'd been saying along with the church, I belong to God through the sacrifice of Christ and get now they repudiate it. In other words, there's a view here that we hold that is that true genuine saints don't lose salvation.
But there are people who profess to be saints who give evidence over time that they aren't. But perhaps a better reading of this passage is actually this, to see that the one sanctified is not the one who professed faith, but the one sanctified is Jesus himself. In the covenant with God, he set himself apart for God's holy purpose to bear the covenant curses for covenant breakers. As in John 17 verse 19, he prayed for their sake, I sanctify myself that they may also be sanctified in truth.
That is he set himself apart in death that those who believe in him may be set apart for God. And those who refuse him perfain his blood, they treat it as unholy and with disrespect. And then thirdly, notice what else they do. They outraged.
This is the end of verse 29. They outraged the spirit of grace. So he speaks here of provoking the Holy Spirit. That of course reminds us of the Holy Spirit as a person.
You don't outrage an inanimate object or some unthinking impersonal force. You outrage a person. You insult an outrage of living thinking people or in this case the person of God the Holy Spirit. He is the spirit of grace.
Jesus ascended to heaven. He did so to send to the world another helper the Holy Comforter, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of grace. And he said in John 15, when the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. In John 1614, he said that is the Spirit will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
And so Jesus sent the Spirit to take that which belongs to Jesus and make it ours, to be the agent of his mediation, to come to us without stretched arms, bringing the good news of great joy, to offer a salvation. And to turn our back then on Jesus is to outrage this messenger of Jesus. And it will not be forgiven is what he say, because it cannot be forgiven and it cannot be forgiven because the only way of forgiveness is in the very message he brings of the death of Christ, the message which this one is rejecting. So we have to picture the scene.
Picture a man lying as another put in the gutter in rags covered with sores, hungry and homeless. He is there because of his own sinful choices and a kind generous man offers to take this man to the hospital, pay all of his bills and then bequeathed on him all that he would ever eat in life. He'll have a comfortable home, he'll have all the food that he could eat and every comfort he could dream of. But the ungrateful man in the gutter spits in the man's face, curses at him and then tells others that the man's offer is worthless.
Can you picture that? That would not be as bad as what the author here is speaking of in insulting the Spirit of Grace who offers you life in Christ. Don't you agree with the author of that? The author says, don't you agree?
Then there is no injustice in God's vengeance. He offers to us friendship. The fury of fire will consume his enemies who refuse his friendship. This judgment then he says is deserved and it's just and it's certain verses 30 to 31.
Notice how he closes. For we know him who said vengeance is mine, I will repay. That's from Deuteronomy 32. And again, the Lord will judge his people.
So he's saying this. You can run as opposed for a time, but you really can't outrun him. You can try to hide, but you really can't hide from him who sees everyone everywhere all the time. He knows who you are and where you are.
And though in this life criminals may fully not get caught, more than one occasion somebody has sped down the street in front of my house, chased by police. I suppose to escape into the back roads of Oklahoma. I don't know the disposition of all of those events, but it occasionally happens. I suppose sometimes perhaps somebody gets away.
Others get caught. But then others get caught. And in our world and in our systems of justice through the incompetence of prosecutors or the sleepiness or weakness or whims of juries or the success of doubts implanted by skilled defense attorneys, sometimes even in our courts, the guilty go free. But only in this life you will find no incompetence on the day before God.
You will find a lack of attention to detail. You will find no misrepresentation of the evidence to turn away from Jesus is the writer says to fall into the hands of the living God. And what then? Fear.
He says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Revelation 6 describes that reckoning when it says then the kings of the earth and the great ones. This is the day of Christ's return. The kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful.
And everyone slave and free. Hit themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains calling to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of their wrath has come. And who can stay in? You can have this lamb.
In all his love and mercy be your Savior. Or you will have this lamb in all the justice of God's wrath. Condemmee. I suppose God's judgment may seem too severe to us because of the weakness of our sense of righteousness.
But we can at least say this. Jesus, the Son of God, has tasted the judgment of God and satisfied divine justice in our place upon the cross for all who look to him in faith. You find salvation in him or you will be judged by him. He is the writer for he is the only escape from God's vengeance.
So ironically, don't run away from him but run to him and you will be saved. I mean, the Lord make it so for all of us. Let's pray. Father, grant our hearts to cry out, Jesus saved me.
Grant our hearts to rest in the salvation he has provided more than sufficiently for all who look to him. And so grant us the joy of our salvation, the freedom of it, the happiness of it. And the great hope of glory in his name, I pray. Amen.
Amen. Let's stand together and sing.