The Willful Sin, Part 1 (Hebrews 10:26-27)

Now, if you will, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, to chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, and we're gonna begin reading at verse 19, catch some of the context again.

Hebrews 10, verse 19, therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembly together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the

Son of God and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted 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 terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Let's pray before we begin.

Our Father, we do ask for your help and assistance in understanding this passage.

Help us to understand who is being described here, what is being warned about, and help us to see if we are in this group of people that is being described here.

We pray that you would bless the preaching and the teaching and our understanding of your word and the power of your Holy Spirit, so that we may honor you with obedient hearts and obedient lives.

Be honored and glorified here, we pray, in the name of Christ our Lord, amen. Well, apostates, we all know one.

I mean, it's not that we all know the same one, but we all know somebody who has departed the faith at one time or another. We all know someone who has had exposure to Christian truth and felt their hearts strangely warmed by the gospel message, and then they began to enjoy the fellowship and the meeting with the people of God and even made friends with many who were in the church.

Then they made a profession, a valid one, it seems, a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, and then were baptized.

And then they went on to serve in various ministries within the church, even evidencing certain

Christian virtues and qualities like forgiveness and graciousness and kindness and gentleness and compassion and love and submission.

And then slowly, sometimes slowly, their affections begin to cool and the passions begin to wane and their priorities shift.

And what was once a fervent conviction and commitment to Christian truth becomes an almost undiscernible apathy toward Christian things and Christian truth.

Something happens sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, but eventually and inevitably, they end up leaving the

Christian faith and renouncing what they once firmly would have held that they believed and firmly would have insisted that they were part of.

They walk away, leaving the faith. In the end, they forsake the assembling of themselves with other

Christians and then begin to renounce the truth that they once openly professed. And sometimes those people go on to be apathetic observers of Christian things, sort of sitting by the sideline, watching what's going on, thinking to themselves,

I gave the whole Jesus thing a whirl for a period of time and it didn't work out for me. Others go on to become hostile and openly hostile to Christian truth and to Christian things, even attacking the faith that they once said that they would have believed.

This is nothing new under the sun. In the first century, the apostle John wrote of those who went out from us, but they were not really of us.

Their going out from us demonstrated that they were of us. And John says, if they were of us, that is, if they were believers, they would have remained with us.

But the apostate leaves in order to reveal that they were never really of us to begin with. According to John, the departure of apostates from the

Christian faith gives evidence of what they were all along, professing believers and not believers at all, not really of the people of God, not one of the people of God, but just simply one who professes or pretends to be one.

And apostates eventually and inevitably leave the faith because they cannot put up airs and pretenses and the exhausting charade of what it means to try and pretend to be one of the people of God, so eventually they depart.

And sometimes we are able to see the apostasy happen relatively quickly, sometimes it goes in slow motion.

Sometimes there are people who attach themselves to the congregation of God's people and you suspect from the very beginning that something is not right, something is a little off.

Maybe it's their profession of faith or the way they talk about Christian truth or Christian theology, something is not quite right there, but then over the course of time, it becomes more and more evident that something is seriously and profoundly wrong in their

Christian profession of faith and then eventually they leave. Sometimes the departure is quick and it takes us all by surprise.

And the more high profile the quote unquote Christian is who makes his departure from the faith, the more devastating it is to those

Christians who are left behind and who observe the whole thing. And so if it is a well -known pastor or an author or a conference speaker or one who has made a name within Christian circles in some high profile way, his departure from the faith is then used as an opportunity by those who are not believers, by the watching world to bludgeon those of us who are true

Christians and to besmirch the name of Christ. And the more high profile they are and the more ardent they are and passionate they are in their previous convictions, the more devastating their departure from the faith becomes because Christians then watch those who have left the faith and they just scratch their head and say, how could that person not have been a

Christian? It's almost appalling, it's devastating. Last week I set a little bit of the theological table for this discussion on the warning passages in Hebrews 6 and 10.

These warning passages in Hebrews help us to understand the nature of this apostasy, who it is that apostatizes and the judgment that the apostate faces.

And so that is why while going through this, that is why we're taking the time today to really focus in on this question of who are the apostates that are mentioned in these warning passages in Hebrews 2 and in Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 6 and in Hebrews 10.

So I mentioned last week that this is a battleground text amongst those who, over the issue of the security of our salvation, there are those who would disagree with my position to say that a

Christian can genuinely lose their salvation and perish in hell and then there are people who believe that a Christian, a genuine

Christian, cannot lose their salvation and perish in hell. And so that raises quite naturally a question, the question is this, how essential is this issue if we disagree on it?

Do those who believe that you can lose your salvation, does believing something like that make you a heretic or aberrant in your theology?

Does it make you wrong enough to go to hell itself? And the answer to that is no. This is not an essential issue but it is a very important issue.

It's not essential in the sense that if you disagree with me, you're going to hell. This is not an essential issue in the sense that if you get this wrong, this is wrong enough to mean that you are not a

Christian and you don't have sound enough theology, you're not trusting in Christ and therefore you're gonna perish. This is not essential in that way where denying the security of the believer is a denial of an essential cardinal doctrine of the

Christian faith but it is very important and here's why. Because all of our theology is connected.

Quality stuff, I don't know what's going on. All right, all of our theology is connected. Truth is consistent. And so theologies have a way of bleeding into each other so if you get something wrong in one area, it's inevitably going to crop up in other areas of your theology because truth is consistent and they're all attached to each other so if you get this issue wrong,

I can guarantee that there are some other issues where you're thinking on it is going to be unbiblical simply because the other doctrines that are attached to this are, in some cases, very essential doctrines like what did

Jesus actually do on the cross? For whom did he die? What is the nature of justification, sanctification?

How certain is our glorification? What does God's predetermined plan, what does his purposes actually accomplish from eternity past on into the present?

There are other theologies that bleed into this and so it is important that we take the time to get it right though it is a secondary issue, it is a very, very significant issue.

So while it's not an important, while it is an important doctrine though not an essential doctrine, Hebrews chapter 10 gives us a chance to really kind of slow down and give some thoughtfulness to the nature of this apostasy and who these apostates are.

So that is what we're doing. Looking today in verses 26 and 27, we're gonna answer three questions from this text that will help us to understand who apostates are and what it is that they do when they leave the

Christian faith. And here are the three questions. Let's read verses 26 and 27 together again and then

I'll give you the three questions. Verse 26, for if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.

Now here are the three questions. What is the willful sin mentioned in verse 26? What is the willful sin?

Number two, why is there no sacrifice for it? And number three, what is the judgment that is faced by those who commit it?

What is the willful sin? Why is there no sacrifice for it? And then what is the judgment that is described in verses 26 and 27?

So first, what is this willful sin? The very first word of verse 26 connects us back to the context because as I said a few weeks ago, it is an inferential conjunction, meaning that it joins what comes in verses 26 and following the stern warning with the exhortations that preceded it in verses 22 through verse 25.

So it is as if the author in verse 25 is saying, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as is the habit of son, but instead encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching because, here's how the argument flows out of the text, you do these things and not neglect your assembly because there are some who will do that very thing and they go on sinning willfully.

This willful sin is connected to the exhortations in verses 24 and 25.

The willful sin is the neglect of those three previous exhortations. Let us draw near, let us hold fast and let us encourage others to do the same or gather together with others for that same purpose.

These people who commit the willful sin, they are people who have not drawn near with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith, having their hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and their bodies washed with pure water as is described in verse 22.

They're not those who have drawn near in that sense. They may have drawn near, but not in full assurance of faith. They may have drawn near, but not having their hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.

They are not those who hold fast the confession of our hope firm until the end. And they're not those who encourage others to do the same and they're not those who obey the commandment to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

We saw back in verse 25 that the forsaking of the assembly was not just missing church an occasional Sunday because you're sick or because you're ill or you're caring for somebody you're traveling.

That's not what's being described. What's being described there is desertion. It's the act of deserting the Christian assembly.

These are people who have turned their back on the assembly and gone their own way and done their own thing. Those are the ones that are being described here.

So the author says then in verse 26, those who go on sinning willfully, what is the willful sin?

It's connected to the previous exhortations. The willful sin is not drawing near with a sincere faith.

It is not holding fast the confession of our hope without wavering and it is not encouraging others to do the same, but instead forsaking and neglecting the assembly of the saints.

That is an idea of what the willful sin is. And notice that it is called a willful sin. He doesn't just say if anyone sins after receiving the knowledge of the truth.

Has anybody here sinned after receiving the knowledge of the truth? If that's what he is talking about, all of us have.

So all of us would fall into this camp. We've all sinned after receiving the knowledge of the truth, but he specifically is describing a kind of sin and a duration of sin that the author has in mind here.

If you go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, that word willfully is a word that means intentionally or voluntarily.

In fact, the only other time in the New Testament that this word is used, it is translated as voluntarily. It's used only two times here and later in 1

Peter chapter five, where Peter describes the elders who quote, exercise oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily.

That's the word voluntarily. As I illustrate the meaning here of this word willful, you understand that Peter is using it of elders who serve in an elder capacity and they do it voluntarily.

No elder ever slips and falls into eldership. No elder accidentally elders. I've never walked up to a guy and say, hey, what are we doing here today?

I'm sorry, I just accidentally elder today while I was here at the congregations. Nobody ever does this accidentally or haphazardly or thoughtlessly or without intentionality.

But those who serve as elders do so voluntarily, willfully, deliberately, considerably, thoughtfully. They give some thoughtfulness to it and they do it with diligence because they plan and purpose it.

And that's the idea behind this word. They do it voluntarily, not accidentally. So this is not describing then somebody who falls into sin or sins accidentally.

It's not describing something that happens and you lose your temper and you sin in that way. And then you wonder if you've lost your salvation.

That's not what this word is describing. It's describing a thoughtful, thought through execution, a planned out, determined sin that continues on and on.

I don't know about you, but I can't tolerate anymore. There we go.

Maybe it's my beard. I'm sorry. So it is a thought out, willful, deliberate, intentional, thought through, planned out, executed.

This is done with forethought, this sin. Whatever this willful sin is, it is done with forethought. Not something that somebody falls into.

It's something that they willingly, voluntarily, intentionally, you might even say high -handedly, or with a premeditated, in a premeditated fashion, they commit this sin.

Further, the present participle of this word tells us that it is an ongoing pattern, something that is continual.

Wayne Grudem, in a chapter on this subject of the warning passages, he writes this, quote, "'The present participle indicates "'an ongoing pattern of sin.'

"'The New International Version translates, "'If we deliberately keep on sinning "'after we have received the knowledge of the truth, "'no sacrifice for sins is left.

"'Willful and persistent rejection of the truth, "'and living in rebellion against it "'are in view in this verse.'"

Close quote. And that comes from a chapter in a book called Still Sovereign, edited by Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware, and I would commend the book to you.

Wayne Grudem contributes one chapter in that book to the subject of all of the warning passages in the book of Hebrews, and of all that I have read on the warning passages in the book of Hebrews, and I haven't read everything there is to read, because that would take me a lifetime, but of all that I have read, and it's quite a lot,

Wayne Grudem's treatment is the best that I have seen out of any other author that I've seen on this subject. His one chapter in that book,

Still Sovereign, is worth the price of the entire book. It's not light reading, but it's very, very good theological reading, and I would commend it to you.

So it is describing an established way of thinking and believing. It is describing a permanent renunciation of the gospel, a permanent denouncing of Christ, a permanent turning away, and this is not something that is done accidentally.

It's not something that is done haphazardly. It's not something that you fall into, and though we haven't covered this phrase yet,

I want you to notice in verse 26 that it is something that is done after receiving the knowledge of the truth.

That's significant. In other words, this is a sin that is committed in the full light of revelation.

This is somebody who does this sin not out of ignorance, not out of unknowingness or any kind of accidentalness.

It's just something that is done against the truth with full knowledge of the truth. Whoever these are who commit this sin of apostasy, they do so with full understanding of the truth.

Now, let's contrast then, at the risk of being somewhat redundant, but I need to be clear, let's contrast this sin then with a couple other things that it is not.

Again, it is not, we're not describing a Christian who lapses into sin. It is possible for Christians to lapse into sin.

It's possible for something to happen and you to respond in a sinful way. It is possible for a

Christian to sin, sometimes even grievously, and it is possible for a Christian to sin and even for that sin to go on for a period of time, and I'm not gonna give any kind of period of time, so I don't wanna give anybody an excuse to think that they're justified in going on that.

If I said went on for six months, you'd say, okay, I got two more months left. I don't wanna do anything like that. So it is possible for a

Christian to lapse into a sinful habit and for that sinful habit to go on for a period of time. We're not describing lapsing into sin or falling into sin, and the good news is that when a

Christian lapses or falls into sin like that, the Lord sanctifies that believer out of it or disciplines him like in Hebrews chapter 12 so that he may produce in that believer the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

So I see somebody falling away from the faith or lapsing into sin, I always say, if that person is a believer, God will discipline them, and that's what

I pray for. Lord, pour out your discipline on that person. Bring them back to repentance and faith, and if I see somebody who's a professed believer who is living in a sin and not repenting of it, my assumption is that they're not believers no matter what their previous testimony has been, and my prayer is that,

Lord, if they are believers, then discipline them severely enough to bring them back to the truth and do so quickly, and if they are not believers, then bring them to faith, true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ before they fall away and cannot be renewed again to repentance.

That's my prayer. So we're not talking about a believer who lapses into sin, second, we're not talking about a believer who strays away in their intimacy from the

Lord for a period of time. Every Christian goes through seasons in your life where because of the circumstances of life or because of your emotions or because of your hormones or because of,

I'm just throwing that in there, because of kids in your life or things that are happening outside of us or what's going on in a political arena that our passions, our affections, wax and wane a little bit.

We grow passion, our love for the Lord, and then we kind of cool off for a season, a time, and we kind of want some distance for a period of time.

Those things happen, just the part of being human. I'm not talking about that. I used to have a coworker in a job that I worked at.

Every Monday morning, he was the most on -fire, fervent, passionate, just lit -up

Christian you'd ever seen. Now, by Friday, it was a bit of a different story, but Monday, he'd come back again. Why was that? Because he went to church on Sunday so that he could get the emotions going again.

And in our conversation, the theological conversations, he always feared that if he didn't keep the emotions up and the passion there and the burning fire all the time, just always turned up, dialed up to 11, if he didn't have it always dialed up to 11, then he might sort of cool off for a bit, and what if he died at that point?

Then he wouldn't even know if he would go to see Jesus. We're not talking about a Christian whose affection's cool for a period of time.

Of course, that is not an excuse in any way of consciously allowing our affections for the

Lord to cool. We need to deal with those, but that's not what's being described here. This is a well -thought -out, deliberate, intentional, high -handed act of treachery against the truth.

That's what's being described, a high -handed act of treachery against the truth. Now, let me give you some examples, even from recent years, and I point to these, not to besmirch these people at all, but simply to give you examples that you are probably already familiar with.

Within the last three years, most notably, we saw the deconversion of Joshua Harris. Now, Joshua Harris's departure from the

Christian faith made news in 2019, ironically and providentially, while we were in the middle of studying the warning passage in Hebrews chapter six, so that may be why that sounds familiar to you, because I brought up Harris's name.

Harris gained fame because of his work with Sovereign Grace Ministries and the Gospel Coalition. He wrote the book,

I Kissed Dating Goodbye. He was instrumental in the purity movement, and his family is well -known, his brothers are well -known.

He was quite the Christian celebrity, and the progression of Harris was slow, but it was discernible.

In 2014, he left his pastorate of a Sovereign Grace church, and then he left the Gospel Coalition.

Later on, he renounced his book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. In 2018, he announced that he and his wife were separating.

Several weeks later, he announced that he and his wife were divorcing, and several weeks later, he announced that he was kissing

Christianity goodbye. So his church, and then the Gospel Coalition, and then his wife, and then his

Christianity, and his book. Joshua Harris ended up kissing a lot of things goodbye by the 2018, and his departure from the faith made waves throughout

Christianity. In his statement, he said this, quote, I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.

The popular phrase for this is deconstruction. The biblical phrase is falling away. By all measurements that I have for defining a

Christian, I am not a Christian, close quote. Do you remember that a few years ago?

That sent shockwaves throughout Christianity. It was on Fox News. You can still find the article there today.

And he went on to include in his statement an apology to the LGBTQ plus community.

And several weeks after he departed the Christian faith, he posted an Instagram picture of him celebrating in a gay pride parade. I think it was in Vancouver, BC, if memory serves, or Seattle.

It's all Sodom over there, so it doesn't matter which city it was. Before Joshua Harris was

Bart Ehrman. Now Bart Ehrman, having studied at Moody Bible Institute, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Wheaton College, Ehrman found a way to leverage his apostasy into a celebrity gig that has paid him quite well.

There is money to be made in attacking the Christian faith, and Bart Ehrman is an example of that. He claims to have been a believer in Christ, but after leaving the faith, he wrote books, and he's participated in public debates.

He's lectured publicly. He's written articles, and been on television programs, and radio programs, all in attempts to seeking to undermine the

Christian faith, and the reliability of the New Testament. He has spent his apostate days attacking Christianity publicly, and applying his intellectual abilities, and they are substantial intellectual abilities, and speaking abilities into attacking the

Christian faith. Bart Ehrman studied under some of the greatest minds that this generation has produced in Christianity.

He was one of Bruce Metzger's final students at Princeton Theological Seminary. Bruce Metzger was a conservative

Greek, and Hebrew scholar, and a textual critic of the New Testament. Bart Ehrman learned under one of the greatest minds concerning textual criticism in the

New Testament today. He departed the faith, turned from the truth. Marty Samson followed soon after Joshua Harris.

Do you remember Marty Samson? He was a prolific worship music writer, known for Hillsong Worship, Hillsong United, Delirious, the band

Delirious, and of course, his departure from the faith was posted on Instagram, like Joshua Harris's was, and he said,

I am leaving the faith, losing my faith, he said, and then he said it brought him great peace. You know why it brought him great peace?

Because it always brings you great peace when you're finally able to shed the sheep's clothing and stop pretending to be something that you're not in front of a watching world.

Carrying on a charade like that is exhausting. To pretend to be holy, to pretend to love the

Lord, to pretend to be in the circle, to pretend to be part of the group, to pretend to have these affections and these desires, to put all of that up on a public display like that is just exhausting on a level that you cannot imagine unless you're doing it.

And then most recently, son of influential pastor, John Piper, Abraham Piper, has become infamous almost, online for attacking the

Christian faith, and that is tragic on so many levels. With a possible exemption of Marty Samson, all of these men were immersed in biblical truth, immersed in it.

And I say possible exemption of Marty Samson simply because the amount of rank and gross heresy that is woven into the warp and woof of Hillsong culture and theology,

I would be surprised if Marty Samson ever even heard the gospel in those environments. But the rest of them would have no excuse for their apostasy.

Immersed in biblical truth, growing up, preaching the truth and reading the truth, their apostasy from the

Christian faith, their departure from the truth is deliberate and willful and flagrant and voluntary and completely well thought out and well considered.

You don't post a picture of yourself standing in front of a mountain lake with mountains in the background on Instagram with a long explanation of your departure from the

Christian faith if you have not thought that through and thought through all of the implications of it. Their departure from the faith is willful, intentional, deliberate, and well considered.

These men know what they are doing when they leave, and yet they leave willfully and voluntarily.

These are not Christians that we are talking about. For them, this is an ongoing established way of thinking and believing, a permanent renunciation of the gospel, a permanent forsaking of God's grace, and a permanent turning from the truth.

We're not describing somebody who has a doubt about the Christian faith. Not describing somebody who has a theological conundrum that they're trying to work through and come to a conclusion on.

We're not talking about somebody who falls into sin or is in a state of ignorance or apathy or just cooled off for a moment in their relationship with the

Lord, wrestling through something. We're not describing any of that. Harris, Berman, Sampson, there will be others.

I promise you there will be others. In our culture, as the price of holding to Christian convictions continues to increase, the list of people willing to pay the price to hold to those convictions will decrease.

I said it some weeks ago, our list of allies grows thin, and it is going to grow thinner, it is going to grow so thin that you're gonna need a magnifying glass to see it.

I would not be surprised, I'll give you an unpopular prediction, unpopular opinion, whatever, I'll lay this out here, these are my cards.

I would not be surprised if we see every year from now until the Lord returns or the end of Western civilization as we know it, whichever comes first, the departure of at least one high -profile evangelical from the

Christian faith, from orthodoxy, into heresy or apostasy every year from now until then.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see that. I could name for you five high -profile evangelicals right now that are teetering on the brink of apostasy and five more whose trajectory does not bode well for them in the years to come.

Prepare for more, and don't be shaken by it. The first century had their Harris's and their

Bart Ehrman's and their Samson's and their Piper's, the first century had those. And one of the things that the warning passage in Hebrews helps us to do is to understand the true nature of what is going on, in that when those people leave, they're not leaving, they're leaving an understanding of the truth, but they're not leaving because they were once saved and have lost their salvation.

These are apostates who were never saved to begin with. So notice now the next phrase, receiving the knowledge of the truth, that these people do this in full light of what they know to be true, having received a full understanding and a full knowledge of the truth.

Now this phrase is understood by many who believe that you can lose your salvation as describing those who are genuinely saved, that this knowledge of the truth means that they have not only been exposed to the truth, but that they have seen it, they have understood it, they have embraced it, they have welcomed it, they've then been transformed by it.

Some would even use this phrase as synonymous with repentance and true and genuine faith in Christ. And so I would ask you, are we justified in understanding this group having received a knowledge of the truth?

Is that a synonymous description of a Christian? Is that synonymous with repentance and faith and regeneration?

Now it's true that that phrase is used to describe genuine believers in Scripture, and I'll give you some examples of it.

1 Timothy chapter two, verse four, says that God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And there

Paul is using it as synonymous with salvation. In 2 Timothy 2 .25, Paul instructs Timothy to correct those who are in opposition if perhaps

God may grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth. That seems to be salvation that Paul has in mind.

2 Timothy 3, verse seven describes those who are always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Titus 1, verses one and two. Paul, a bondservant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth, which is according to godliness in the hope of eternal life, which

God who cannot lie promised long ages ago. There is a knowledge of the truth that is according to godliness, and I would suggest there may be a knowledge of the truth that is not according to godliness.

An ability to have a knowledge of the truth and receive a knowledge of the truth that does not result in eternal life and salvation.

So yes, the phrase is used to describe Christians, but here is the issue. Can we always take this phrase, having received the knowledge of the truth, can we always take that as synonymous with salvation?

I'm not arguing that a Christian is one who has not received a knowledge of the truth because obviously receiving a knowledge of the truth is essential to becoming a

Christian. There's intellectual content that you have to hear, receive, and understand, and apprehend in order for you to do what

God has commanded you to do. There must be a reception of the truth and an understanding of the truth, but are we justified in saying that one who has received the knowledge of the truth is therefore always a

Christian? Let me put it another way. If the author wanted to describe somebody who had heard the truth, understood the truth, made intellectual assent to the truth, nodded their head to the truth, maybe even repeated the truth back to others, professed to believe the truth, had encountered the truth in a very real but though superficial way, and had even maybe conformed their lives to the truth, like a sow that is washed, for instance, and they have outwardly conformed their lives to those truth standards, and enjoyed certain benefits of being in environments where the truth flourishes, but had never themselves ever been transformed by that truth or regenerated by that truth, how would the author describe such a one?

Would he not say that they had received a knowledge of the truth? If you're sitting here and you're an unbeliever and you've been an unbeliever here for the last 10 years and you've heard all of the preaching through the book of Hebrews, and you have heard the gospels presented over and over and over, and the clarity of doctrinal truth laid out from everybody who has stood behind this pulpit and everybody who was taught in adult

Sunday school class, and you have heard all of that and you walk away, would it not be fair to say that you had received a knowledge of the truth?

It certainly would, we would never describe you as being one who is ignorant of the truth. You'd received it, you had known it. Every Christian has received a knowledge of the truth, but not everyone who has received the knowledge of the truth is a

Christian, because you can receive the truth and you can understand the truth and make intellectual assent to the truth, even conform your life outwardly, externally to the truth, and never truly be saved.

This is what we encountered back in Hebrews chapter six, when the author talked about those who fall away having once been enlightened.

We saw back in chapter six what is being described there. It's one who has received the light of truth. Every Christian has been enlightened, but not everyone who has been enlightened is a

Christian, because something more is necessary to make you a Christian than simply hearing and understanding the truth.

If all that was necessary to make you a Christian was hear and understand the truth, everybody that I've ever spoken to would be a

Christian. Everybody I've ever preached the gospel to would be a Christian. But that's something more is necessary than understanding the truth.

A Christian is one who has been regenerated by the truth, and regeneration, the new birth, that is a divine act, that is a divine miracle, that is something a sovereign

God does. You can receive the knowledge of the truth without ever being transformed by the truth.

You can be enlightened by the truth without ever being regenerated by the truth, because believers are not just those who have been enlightened, and not just those who have received the knowledge of the truth.

Believers are those whose lives have been transformed by a sovereign work of a regenerating Holy Spirit who gives them life and causes them to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

That is a believer. Not one who simply nods intellectually to the truth. And I would suggest that those who take this description after receiving the knowledge of the truth, those who take that phrase, and say that that is equal to a

Christian, you're making far more out of that phrase than is ever warranted from the text. So every

Christian has the knowledge of the truth, but not everyone who has the knowledge of the truth is a

Christian. The word translated knowledge here, by the way, is more than just a passing acquaintance or familiarity with Christian truth.

It's more than just, yeah, they knew it. This is epigonosco, which means a close, intimate proximity to the truth.

It's described somebody who is more than just passing acquaintance with it, but somebody who knows it really, really well.

This would not describe your average garden variety pagan on the outside who hangs around the fringes of the

Christian church and hears certain Christian phrases. This wouldn't describe somebody who just comes to church once a year on Easter and is vaguely familiar or can vaguely approximate the

Christian message. Most people who are my age or around my age and older would have a passing acquaintance with the claims of the

Christian faith. They would all be able to say, well, not all of them, but most people of my generation or older would be able to say, yeah,

I think Christians understand that Jesus died on a cross and then he rose with a bunny or something like that, and then if I ask him into my heart, he magically makes me a

Christian, I go to church the rest of my life, and I'm baptized or something like that, be able to kind of vaguely approximate what we believe, that's not how

I would describe it, but that's how a lot of people in my generation would describe it. A lot of pre -millennial people,

I don't mean pre -millennial eschatological sense, but in a generational sense, a lot of people who are pre the millennial generation would describe

Christian teaching, or sorry, would not be able to describe Christian teaching that way, but those who are after the millennial generation would be able to kind of give you a vague idea of what

Christianity teaches. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about a vague approximation of it. So, this describes somebody who sits in the middle of good preaching, understands it, hears it, and they even experience on a real and profound yet superficial level all of the benefits of being surrounded by people whose lives have been impacted by the truth.

They can repeat the gospel to you, they can preach the gospel, they can write the gospel, they can teach the gospel, they can read the gospel, they can articulate to you what the gospel is and serve and look a lot like they have been conformed to the gospel, but they've never been transformed by the gospel, because the truth has never impacted them and regenerated them.

These are people who are immersed, immersed in biblical truth. Where do apostates come from?

Environments just like this. This, these are the breeding grounds for apostates inside the church.

This is quite a profound, a profound realization. MacArthur in his commentary on Hebrews writes this, and this just stunned me when

I read it the first time, which is why I'm sharing it here. He writes, quote, an apostate can be bred only in the brilliant light of proximity to Christ.

Apostates are not made in the absence, but in the presence of Christ. They're bred almost without exception within the church in the very midst of God's people.

It is possible for a person to read the Bible on his own to see the gospel clearly, and then reject it apart from a direct association with Christians, but by and large, apostates come from within the church, close quote.

So we're not talking about somebody who's here once a week, or sorry, once a year. We're not talking about atheists and garden variety pagans who just are around the outskirts of Christianity who hear it and have been exposed to it.

That's not what we're talking about. I'm not talking about somebody who walks by a street preacher and writes them off as a nutcase, and even though they hear the truth, they turn from it and they reject it.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who come from environments like this, from amongst your own selves,

Paul says, false teachers will arise teaching perverse things. In environments like this, with sound teaching, apostates come to the surface.

This happens all the time in churches all across the country, and no church is an exception to it. What makes an apostate is an apostate is a clear understanding of the truth, and then turning from that clear understanding of the truth.

And we have to distinguish between apostates and momentarily faithless Christians or disobedient

Christians. And to give you an example between the two of those, we could just look at the difference between Peter and Judas.

Is it possible for somebody to be immersed in the truth and to hear the truth and to understand the truth and to do so on a very profound level and yet be unchanged and untransformed by the truth?

It is. Judas Iscariot was such a man. Only 11 other people on the face of the planet in all of human history have received as much revelation, as much truth, and as much understanding as Judas Iscariot has, and yet Judas Iscariot was an unbeliever when he was exposed to Jesus the first time, and he died an unbeliever.

So compare Judas Iscariot to Peter. Peter denied the Lord under duress, under pressure, and in fear as a coward.

He denied the Lord, and he felt remorse for it. But later on, you can see clearly that Peter sought restoration and forgiveness, and the

Lord restored him and even used him, and Peter was fruitful. And then there's Judas, who betrayed the

Lord and profited from it, not in a moment of weakness, but out of his greed, out of his avarice, he betrayed the

Lord, and that was a thought -through, intentional, premeditated, determined, voluntary, willful act of treachery against the

Lord. And yet Judas felt remorse, but it was a worldly sorrow that only led to his death.

He never came back to the truth, but instead he denied the truth all the way to the end, and though he was overcome with remorse and guilt for what he had done, because he knew what he had done, he was never forgiven, he was never restored, and he died in the same way and in the same condition as he was when he first met

Jesus, that is, as an unbeliever. Christians can and do sin. That's Peter.

Apostates commit the willful sin, and they walk away from full revelation of truth and full understanding of the truth, and leave the truth, never to come back to it again.

When a Christian sins, the Lord disciplines him and brings him back to repentance. When an apostate sins, the

Lord judges them, as described later in this passage. And sometimes a faltering Christian can look a lot like an apostate in the early stages, and sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between the two, and I'm not convinced at all that we should be trying to do so.

A Christian who falters early, or sorry, a Christian who falters in their sin, and an apostate in the early stages of apostasy can sometimes look a lot alike.

I would dare say that outwardly speaking, just observing Peter and Judas, it might have looked on the night that Jesus was betrayed as if Peter and Judas were cut from the same cloth.

But they weren't. Peter repented, was forgiven, and restored.

And the difference between Peter and Judas is not just that Judas profited from his treachery, and Peter did not. The difference between Peter and Judas is that Peter was a genuine believer, and though he fell in a moment of weakness, the

Lord restored him and brought him back. Now by now you've probably gotten the suspicion, we're not gonna get to those last two questions that I mentioned at the beginning.

Your suspicions are well justified. So let me just close with one final consideration,

I have to do this quickly because we are out of time. Why does the author then say, if we go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, as if he, the author, was hypothetically capable of committing this sin?

Because those who believe you can lose your salvation, they would say the author includes himself and all of his readers, all Christians, as if they too could commit this willful sin.

So why does the author do that? Why does he include himself in that if he didn't think that he and the genuine Christians could actually commit that sin?

Very quickly and easily, it's just a manner of speaking, it's a way that you would rhetorically speak to a mixed audience among whom you would have both believers and unbelievers and make -believers.

People who are believers genuinely, people who are unbelievers, and people who are make -believers pretending. See, the author is speaking to a group of people, some of whose spiritual condition had not yet been revealed because they had not yet walked away.

And he is encouraging them to hold fast, to draw near and to hold fast to the confession of hope, knowing that some among them would commit this sin.

And so just speaking generally to the group, including himself in it, he just uses a manner of expression, a manner of speaking to say if we, that is any among us commits this sin, and he can do so without himself suggesting that it were possible for him to commit this sin or if it were possible for a genuine believer to commit this sin.

Because there would be some amongst his readers and his hearers who would commit this willful sin. So what are we to do in light of this?

We are to examine ourselves to see if we'd be in the faith. 2 Corinthians 13 mentions this. Test yourselves and see if you're in the faith.

Examine yourselves. Do you not recognize this about yourselves? That Jesus Christ is in you unless you fail the test. Paul encourages readers to examine their own hearts.

The Lord's Supper gives us an opportunity to do this. When we partake of the Lord's Supper, we examine ourselves. We ought to test ourselves and look at ourselves and then ask ourselves, am

I in this group? Do I come to a church like this, a good church surrounded by great people, great ministry?

Good teaching? I hope it's good. Surrounded by good teaching and sound theology? And do I remain hard -hearted and unbelieving in a state?

Am I just going through the motions of this? Have you enjoyed, have I sat here and enjoyed all of the people around me, the fellowship and the friendships and enjoy all of the benefits and the blessings externally and superficially of these true things and yet remain hard -hearted and disobedient and distant from the

Lord? Does that describe you? These are the places where apostates are bred, which is why

I am so serious about this when you get to the warning passages. I wouldn't want anybody who is here to walk away from here thinking that they are a

Christian or pretending to be a Christian and being exhausted by trying to look like a

Christian and yet not be a Christian at all. So examine yourself. Am I in the faith? Is there fruit of genuine repentance and salvation in my life?

Is there evidence outwardly, inwardly that a change has taken place or do

I just sit here and nod my head and sing the songs and say an occasional amen to whatever gets muttered behind the pulpit and then move on complacent and apathetic toward the truth?

Am I falling away? Am I drifting away? Am I drawing near to the Lord, holding fast to the confession of our hope without wavering firm until the very end?

Are you an apostate in the making? If so, draw near to him in full assurance of faith, having your heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.

Hold fast to your confession of faith and do not forsake the gathering of the saints together. That's the preventative for apostasy.

Recognize your sin, your need for a Savior, turn from your sin and embrace him. You know all that is necessary for salvation and if you disobey and you drift by the safe haven of God's provision of salvation in Jesus Christ, there remains no sacrifice for your sins.

You have nothing to look forward to but the terrifying expectation of the judgment that is to come. Don't be that.

Repent and believe today while you still can. Let's bow our heads. Father, we praise you for your great goodness in saving a people for your own glory.

We pray that as we give thoughtful consideration to these things that you would examine us and draw us near to you.

We pray that you would strengthen those who hear our believers, that they may be confident in their faith and have full assurance of faith and that in drawing near to you, they may receive the reward and the confident assurance that they have in your grace and in your family.

Pray for any here who are not believers who have never trusted Christ for salvation, that you by your grace would draw them near to you and cause them to not be disobedient, turn their hearts, open their eyes.

Pray, Father, that they may see their need for a Savior and that this warning may serve its purpose, that they may not be among those who receive the terrifying indignation of your judgment and your wrath but that they may turn and find safe haven in the person of Christ and shelter from their sins and from your wrath and they may find the grace that is in Christ, in Christ alone.