Train Wreck (Hebrews 10:26-31 Jeff Kliewer)

I'm not having much luck here. OK, good morning. I'd like to welcome you again. I think that we're going to be launching the live stream right at the very beginning. It's exciting to have you. It's exciting always to be in fellowship with fellow believers.

I just met a new family this morning, and it was kind of funny. We know them, and they know them. And the Christian community can be exciting and small. My wife and I had the chance a couple of years ago to be in Scotland, and we visited the Breitenbach Free Church in Canoosie, Scotland.

And we didn't know anybody there except within a week we wanted to join the church. It's like there's something about being in fellowship with each other. God had been so gracious to us over the past months while we were outside.

And God, in His providence, gave us this technology that we could do virtual church. But now, praise God, we're together, and we do welcome those who are online. But it's awesome to see everybody. A couple of quick announcements.

We are going to be resuming this evening, and I encourage you to come back at 6 o 'clock. We're to the point now where we're beyond the fears of the virus, and we're resuming our Sunday evening prayer meeting.

Yeah, praise God. So come back at 6 o 'clock. We're going to start out thinking meeting in a classroom, but based on the faces I see, I think we're going to be moving out here in the sanctuary. What do you think, Jeff?

I think so, too. Yeah. All right, guys, I want you to set your clocks when you get home. Women, I want you to tell your husbands to set your clocks when you get home and get up at 530 tomorrow morning.

This is the men's monthly prayer breakfast. We meet at 6 o 'clock right here at the church. We have time to discuss and to pray, and we'll also be having some breakfast after that type of fellowship. So guys, come on back at 6 o 'clock.

Prayer for Sovereignty, Witness, and Revival

One with another in front of your very throne with your son sitting there as our advocate in worship and in praise of you. Father, this morning, our prayer is that we would submit in all things to your sovereignty.

The world is pushing us. Satan has so many agendas to distract us, but you have the way, the truth, the life. And so, Father, our prayer is that we would be in submission to who you are. And Lord, I pray also that as we leave from here, as we go into the world, that we go obediently speaking your truth.

There is a world that cannot comprehend, because without the Holy Spirit, the things of God cannot be understood. Lord, you've given us your truth. You have made us your children. Pray, Father, we go from here.

Speak your truth to our neighbors. We proclaim the gospel message to our families and our friends. And so, Lord, we pray we would be salt and light in this world. Jesus, in your Sermon on the Mount, you prayed, let your light so shine before the world so that they will see your good works.

And then here's the thing, and glorify the Father who is in heaven. Lord, we pray that our lives are led in such a way that the glory goes to you, that we spread your word, that the world can hear. We pray for a revival in our country, Lord.

We pray for our President Biden, our Vice President Harris, that your grace reaches into their hearts, that they become your children, and that they govern from truth. We pray for revival in this world.

Personally, Lord, we pray that you would help us through your Holy Spirit to not hide portions of our life from the power of the Holy Spirit in those dark closets. We pray, Lord, that we would open them up to you.

There is a danger, Lord, of a train wreck that's coming where false teaching is given, but you have the power to heal. Lord, make us into Bereans who hear the word and go to the word and seek the word.

We pray that we would never become, allow ourselves to become numb to the true message by practicing and allowing sin habits to form, that we would not become vulnerable to false teaching, but Lord, that we would love you, we would seek you.

Be with our pastor, Jeff, as he opens the word out of Hebrews 10 and shows us the significance of remaining true to you. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Longing for God's Presence and the Lord's Supper

Psalm 17, verse 15, says, I will behold your face in righteousness when I awake. I will be satisfied with your presence. Lord God, we just, ah, we just anticipate the day, Lord, that we stand before you in righteousness, beholding your glory, being made like you in your presence, Lord God.

I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene And wonder how could he love me, a sinner condemned unclean How marvelous and wonderful and my song shall ever be How marvelous and wonderful is my Savior's love for me It was in the garden he prayed not my will but thine No tears for his own griefs but sweat drops of blood for mine How marvelous, how marvelous and wonderful and my song shall ever be

Standing in back. I think we got around, but Jeff's got those. We have been invited to share in what we call the Lord's Supper. In the upper room, Jesus took his 12, he washed feet, he taught, and then he took the elements and he shared them.

And he says, you're gonna do this in remembrance of me. We are invited today to an amazing dinner being laid out for us in heaven. We are actually in front of the throne of God with Jesus, his son at his right hand as our advocate and talking to the father on our behalf.

Our sins, they are many, but his mercy is more. And I think this morning, as I'm standing here with you and we're in front of the throne and Satan is saying, John has really blown it this week. And Jesus is saying, but I got that one.

I got that one, my blood has cared for that sin. We are in his holy temple. The nation of Israel kind of got that. This was a special place. This was a place where they would go where they knew the Shekinah glory was there and the holy of holies, and they could come into the very presence of God and they would prepare themselves and they would come with a mindset.

And I think that evangelical New Testament Christianity kind of loses the power of that reality. We are in the very presence of God this morning. And as we are gonna partake in these elements, we are doing an amazing offering of worship and our minds need to see that we are, the Lord is in his holy temple.

And so we're sharing there with him. The Lord is in his holy temple that all the earth keeps silent before him. The world has got a lot of noise. Satan has got an arsenal full of distractions, but we are exhorted to be silent before him.

I'd like to ask you to close your eyes. I'd like you to think about this moment and this time in his very presence. Surrender your agenda, surrender the thoughts of what's gonna be happening this afternoon.

Even surrender the stresses, listen to him. Can you hear him in your heart? Or are you being distracted? Can you hear him? Focus on him, focus on his body, focus on his bloodshed. Don't be distracted.

Don't let Satan, and if that's happening, just proclaim in your heart, Satan, go away in the name of Jesus. I want to worship right now, because he's worthy and he's calling to us. He has called us here, our high priest.

He is interceding. And as we prepare now for these elements, I want us to prepare our hearts. It's written in 1 Corinthians 12, whereforeever, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. In your heart, open your heart in confession, in preparation for these elements. In your heart, do you feel those sins of disobedience where you know the Lord has told you, but you've gone your own way?

Confess those. In your heart, do you know that sin of pride where you feel all that worthy in and of yourself, abandoning the sovereignty of God? Confess that sin. In your heart, do you know that you've been called and led by Christ to be salt and light in the world, but you've been embarrassed or you've been afraid?

We have the power of the Holy Spirit. Confess the sin. Let our hearts be pure. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God as we share these elements. Let our hearts be prepared for him. It says, for I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. Take, eat. After the same manner, also he took the cup. When he had supped, saying, this cup is the New Testament in my blood.

This do ye as often as ye drink it in remembrance of me. Take, drink. Amen. Amen.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. God, what can we say but thank you? Thank you for the forgiveness of sin through the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus our Christ. We look to you alone for the forgiveness and cleansing that you promise.

And now, Lord, as we've taken this bread and cup, Lord, we also now open the bread of your holy word and ask that you would nourish our souls. We pray that you would teach us things that we do not know.

We call to you. We know that you will answer us and show us great and wonderful things that we do not know. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The Malbone Street wreck or the Brighton Breach Line train wreck is regarded as the worst train wreck in American history.

November 1st, 1918, the subway that goes under New York City came off the tracks killing as many as 102 people. How did such a thing occur? Well, it turns out that on that Friday morning, the workers and the engineers didn't show up to work.

They were on strike. And so the choice was left to the company whether they would grind the operation to a halt or they would sub somebody else in there. And I'm sure as those deliberations were happening, there were those who were warning them, you can't just have anybody run this train.

Not just anybody. We need somebody who's a trained engineer. However, the company leaders prevailed and Antonio Edward Luciano, who had never operated a train before, was put in the engine. Room. He was a crew dispatcher with no experience operating the line.

As the train barreled through the subway, the sign posted said six miles per hour. He took it at 30. His front car did not derail, although the back wheels came off. And when it did, the cars behind his engine derailed, killing 102 people.

There were warnings against such behavior. And the result was a train wreck. There are warnings being sounded in evangelical Christianity and across America, but we'll speak especially of evangelicalism regarding this newfound social justice movement.

There is an author named Vodibachum, who John mentioned, who wrote this book that I want you all to get. So put it in your phone, make a note. It is called Fault Lines. Fault Lines by Vodibachum, B-A-U-C-H-A-M.

He has been sounding the warning for a number of years. He and others with John MacArthur wrote the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel back in 2018. And in January of 2019, they went to Atlanta for a conference to teach the danger of what is happening in evangelicalism.

I was there in Atlanta when Vodibachum preached a sermon called Defining Social Justice. So if you're not quite familiar with what the pastor is talking about right now, you'll probably wanna go watch that YouTube video, Defining Social Justice by Vodibachum.

One of the big ideas that they talked about in the conference was that there are some who are concerned about oppression with regard to race. Other people feel that the LGBTQ community is being oppressed.

Others say that one of the two genders is oppressed by the other. Females are oppressed by males. Others are more interested in economics, the rich and the poor. Others, nationality. But in all of these cases, the common denominator, the train, the hitch that holds all these cars together is this idea that there is a victim class and an oppressor class.

This is classic Marxism. Classic Marxism because the essential teaching of Karl Marx was conflict theory, that the world is divided between the oppressors and the victims. And the idea of Marx was to overthrow that by revolution.

Many people have brought this teaching recently into evangelicalism. They might not be concerned about all the areas of social justice. For example, they might still say that the LGBTQ agenda is unbiblical, yet they have one pet car on the train, and that is often the race issue.

The problem is, all of these cars are hitched together in the oppressor-victim narrative. And the final result of traveling down that road of identifying as a victim, rather than seeing oneself as a responsible sinner in need of grace, looking humbly and thankfully to the Savior, the end result is often apostasy, falling away.

We have seen the falling away of the guy who wrote, I Kiss Dating Goodbye. He kissed Christianity goodbye a couple weeks or months ago. Sadly, someone who was evangelical, who gets on this train and eventually makes shipwreck or train wreck of his faith.

Paul warned against such thing in 1 Timothy, making shipwreck of the faith. Many others have followed along that train. In January of 2019, I met a young man at that conference who wasn't familiar with the social justice controversy.

And so I asked him what he thought of it. And he said, ah, I don't know that it's really a big deal. But we talked about it for a while, and I told him my story, how for 12 years, I was a missionary in inner city Philadelphia, and we baptized hundreds of believers.

But we have seen at least a dozen, maybe as many as two dozen leave the faith over the last 10 years. And every single one of them left, according to the social justice agenda. They began to identify as a victim of, whether it be a white man or straight or men or the rich.

And as they develop that victim mentality, it was a matter of years before they shipwrecked their faith. It broke my heart to see. When I talk about the social justice movement, I don't speak as a politician.

It's not about right and left politics. For me, this is a gospel issue. It is a gospel issue. Now, Ecclesiastes chapter 10, verses two and three, says that the wise man goes to the right, and the fool goes to the left.

That's just the Bible, folks, that's not me. Look it up, Ecclesiastes 10, two and three. But the issue here is a gospel issue. I've been speaking out about this since 2009. I went to Florida and preached a sermon called The Serpent's Cunning in 2009, because I saw that there were those who were redefining the mission of Jesus as a revolutionary, that he was come to overthrow societal structures.

And they downgraded him from what the Bible presents him to be. I spoke of it in 2013 at another church, where the pastor had embraced social justice narrative, and as a result, they canceled my support.

I was a missionary visiting, and they decided they weren't gonna support any longer, which was fine, the Lord provided in other ways. In fact, when I preached The Serpent's Cunning, the worship leader, who was kind of an SJW, social justice warrior, he got up in the middle of the sermon and walked out.

So please, nobody walk out on me here. If you're thinking of doing that, hear me out. We wrote an open letter to Paul Tripp when he said that for many years, he's preached a truncated gospel, and now he was discovering the true one.

We made a video in 2019 called Sweet Social Justice from Acts 520, I'm sorry, from Isaiah 520, where Isaiah the prophet says that there are those who call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet. Right is wrong, and wrong is right.

Up is down, down is up. And so it is with so-called social justice. It is sweet social justice, but in fact, it's bitter. It's not biblical justice at all. And then comes 2020, and all of America is turned upside down.

Riots in the streets, and to our great dismay, we saw half of evangelicalism, the leaders within many of the articles that we read, Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel. Many people that we once respected jumping on the social justice train.

It was heartbreaking to see. Votie Bauckham calls it a fault line that's under the floor of evangelicalism. It's been scary to watch. The result, according to Bauckham, will not be an aversion of an earthquake.

The earthquake is coming. If you build your house on the San Andreas Fault, one day it will come. But the key is, will you stand when it comes? Can you avert the train wreck? The train wreck is apostasy.

Apostasy is when a person believes in Christ, identifies in the church, gathers to worship, takes communion, sings praise, hears the word, experiences and tastes the powers of the coming age, and then leaves the faith.

That is what apostasy is. It is a great danger. Now, most pulpits will be silent to this issue because it speaks to the wrath of God. We like to consider the kindness of God, not the kindness and the severity of God.

But by preaching the whole counsel of God, when we go book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, we preach whatever it says. So today, as we come to Hebrews chapter 10, turn with me to verses 26 to 31, these verses are probably the scariest verses in the Bible.

The harshest, the most fearful. They speak of a coming train wreck, a hypothetically possible train wreck for any of us who hear these warnings. Remember, the book of Hebrews is written to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, to lift him up as better, better than anything in this world.

He's a better person, better than angels, better than Moses, better than Joshua, a better priest, a better sacrifice. He's better. And as Jesus is exalted, we are to be drawn to him and cleave to him.

But there are many warnings in the book of Hebrews, five of them, five strong warnings not to depart from Christ and apostasize to some other religion or to atheism or agnosticism. There are five strong warnings.

Chapter two, verses one to four, we must pay much more careful attention lest we drift away. Chapters three and four, see to it, brothers, that there is not in you an unbelieving and wicked heart that turns away or falls away from the living God.

In chapters three and four, the comparison is the Israelites who for 40 years wandered in the wilderness and died. That entire generation fell in the wilderness for lack of faith. Chapter six, the warning is the impossibility of coming back to faith when someone has tasted the heavenly gift and the powers of the coming age and the goodness of the word of God.

If they then fall away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance for they would be crucifying the son of God all over again. That's a strong warning. Now we come to number four, the fourth strong warning in the book of Hebrews.

Now, dads, moms, you know, if you warned your kid once, you expect them to listen. If you have to warn them a second time, your temperature starts to rise. A third time, and now you're beginning to get a little bit emotional.

If you must say it the fourth time, you speak very severely, don't you? And so it is in these verses, let's read. 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.

Anyone 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. The Bible teaches that you cannot lose your salvation.

And so as we read this passage, we have a problem because it very much seems that you can. Romans chapter eight, verses 28 and following includes the golden chain of redemption. Those whom God has predestined, he has also called.

Those whom he has called, he has also justified. And those whom he has justified, he has also glorified. And the apostle goes on to say, there's nothing that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Not height or depth, angels of principalities, things present, things to come, nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God. Jesus said, no one can snatch my sheep out of my hand. In Ephesians one, 13 and 14, having believed you were marked in him with the promised Holy Spirit, who is a seal, meaning the stamp of God, which can't be broken.

A seal of your inheritance, a guarantee of your redemption until the acquisition of all who are God's possession. So the Spirit's a down payment. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, behold, all things have become new.

The Spirit now indwells the believer. In Philippians one, six, what does that say? He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. The Bible clearly teaches that God keeps his own.

You cannot lose your salvation. And yet, let's look at the words of scripture. Because Hebrews 10, 26 to 31, sure sounds that way. We're gonna take it by breaking it down exegeting what the passage says to see how these things are so.

The person's in view. Who is the author talking about? It says in verse 26, if we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. Sounds kind of like he's talking about us, doesn't it?

I mean, he says we, and all through the book of Hebrews, we refers to us, the church. He's not talking about the murderers and the adulterers and the cowardly whose place is the lake of fire. He's talking about we.

He goes on to say after receiving the knowledge of the truth. Does this speak to a people who have not yet received the knowledge of the truth or the truth of sin? Or those who have come to receive the knowledge of the truth?

Well, we have a problem, but it gets worse. Because if you look at verse 29, speaking of the offense, it again describes who we're talking about. These are they who have profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.

Now, we're in trouble if we care about the very words of the text. Now, very often people gloss things they don't understand. They fudge things just to make it fit with the preconceived theology they bring to the table.

But as Christians, we cannot do that with the word of God. Every word is theanusta, God breathed, 2 Timothy 3 .16. We have to regard every word. And every place sanctified is used in the New Testament.

It refers to believers. So who does the author have in view? The persons in view are we, who have the knowledge of the truth, who are sanctified, but our problem gets worse. You didn't think it'd get worse than that, right?

Speaking to the sanctified, but how are the sanctified sanctified? Look at verse 29 again. Profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. These are they who are sanctified by blood, the blood bought, the covenant keepers, those who are in covenant with God, namely those in the new covenant, Hebrews chapter eight.

So now we have a major problem. This passage is talking about you. Reminds me again of Paul Washer, when everybody clapped as he was preaching. And he said, I don't know why you're applauding. I'm talking about you.

He made them tremble. This is about us. Next, what is the prospect in view? I don't think you'll find this particularly helpful. When you get to the end, you'll see how it all fits. So hang on. Verse 27, what is the prospect in view?

It is the fearful expectation of judgment. And a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Verse 27, this is the fate of the adversary, which of course is a flame of fire. All throughout scripture that refers to hell.

This is something worse than dying without mercy. Look at verse 28. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy. That's how bad it is if you break the old covenant, you violate the new covenant.

How much worse is your fate? So the prospect here is not very good. Now there have been some who have sought to teach this is something less than hell. Zane Hodges of Dallas Seminary, my alma mater, taught that this is only an apostate living out in the anguish of soul.

The writer was not thinking of hell. Many forms of divine retribution can fall on a human life which are worse than immediate death. In fact, Jeremiah made just such a complaint. One might also think of King Saul, whose last days were burdened by such mental and emotional turmoil that death itself was a kind of release.

When Hodges taught that, MacArthur was up in arms. And in the 1990s, there was a battle called Lordship Salvation, where Master's Seminary and Dallas Seminary were fighting it out. The problem is the language of this text does not support a mere anguish of soul.

It is a fire of judgment. It consumes the adversaries. It is fire. It is something more severe than being tormented. And I would argue that there is no evidence in the Bible that Saul was saved. Any man who's trying to pin David to the wall with a spear is not regenerate.

And who ultimately rejects the covenant and is rejected by God and by Samuel and by Samuel after he died in ghost form, this is not a good sign for Saul's salvation. Very often in Christianity, there is a teaching these days that if you've prayed the prayer, you're good.

Nothing to worry about. You can go on and live like the devil. You're already saved. MacArthur was right. Sadly, Hodges was wrong. The teaching that this is anything less than judgment betrays the very words of the text.

What does it say? A fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. This is a fate worse than death. This is in fact hell. So next, what then is the nature of judgment?

The offense. Look at verse 29. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved? For what? What did he do? 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.

Offended all three members of the Trinity here. It is the picture of apostasy. It is no mere falling into sin. As dreadful as sin is, the sheep who wanders into the miry slough of sin where pigs belong can be rescued out.

If anybody says they haven't sinned, they're a deceiver. First John reminds us of this. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But this is something different. It is not only sinning, but sinning, what's our word in verse 26?

Deliberately. There is a willfulness in the Greek, willfully, deliberately, no longer restrained, but carrying on sin without restraint. It is, the word sinning in verse 26 is in the present tense. A continual sinning.

It is the work of the apostate, as we saw all through the warnings of the book of Hebrews. Trampling underfoot the son of God is to say, yeah, I used to be a Christian. I used to claim the name of Jesus, but now I don't.

Trampling under foot the son of God. What is it to profane the blood of the covenant? It is to regard it as a profane thing, common or less than common, to agree with the Jewish people who crucified their Messiah, as did the Romans, Acts 4 .27, as in a sense did all of us in offering him up.

He died for our sins, but to regard his death as right. To profane his death and to trample underfoot the blood of the covenant, to outrage the spirit of grace. That the spirit offers us grace, forgiveness of sin through the blood of Jesus and to spurn that testimony, to reject it.

This offense is apostasy. It's the falling away, the drifting away, the recrucifying of the son of God. It is apostasy. Now, verse 30, there is precedent for this kind of language. In our evangelicalism, we don't want to talk about anything other than the love of God.

But I would say we cheapen the love of God when we reject the whole counsel of God. All of the counsel of God teaches us what that love is. If I was not a guilty sinner standing under the wrath of God, then why did Jesus have to die?

It's because of his wrath against sin, his holy, righteous indignation against a sinner like me that he poured out that wrath on a substitute, Jesus Christ. And that is love. Greater love has no one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.

I only know this love because I stood condemned. I was guilty, corrupt, going to the fury of fire, the fearful expectation of judgment. But God interposed the precious blood of the lamb, a one-time sacrifice for me, a priest who now is seated at the right hand of the Father.

This is the message of God. So verse 30, we know him who said, vengeance is mine. I think this skirting over the wrath of God is because people don't read the Old Testament anymore. Deuteronomy 32, this is what Moses was singing about, warning them that God is a consuming fire.

And then again, Asaph sang a similar song, the Lord will judge his people. So there is precedent for speaking this way. Go read the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. You will be reminded of the holiness of God.

And so we come finally to the answer. Verse 31, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. What does the apostle mean to do with this warning? Make you afraid, instill fear, because the fear of the Lord is pure.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And those who have ears to hear will be trained by it. The purpose of such a warning is to dissuade us from apostasy. Hence, the warning functions as a means toward that end, to the benefit of those who cannot be lost.

In other words, this warning will accomplish the purpose for which it was sent. Isaiah 55 language. God issues stern warnings about apostasy, one of which we are reading, because these warnings actually function to the good of our souls.

We need to hear it. We are prone to wander. We hitch ourselves to destructive ideologies. We go down those bad tracks. We begin to sin and we step into sin and the water feels nice. And we get used to the water and we stay there longer and longer.

And our heart gets hardened and calloused. And we need the word of God sometimes to say to us, if you go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and a fire of fury that will consume the adversaries of God.

I need to hear that sometimes. My sinful nature is prone to wander. But here's the good news. You cannot be lost if you belong to him. He is keeping you and this is part of the means by which he keeps you.

Today you hear his voice. Do not harden your heart as you did in the day of rebellion. Like your ancestors who fell in the wilderness. If today you hear his voice, respond to it, repent. Don't go the road of all the earth.

I didn't come to this understanding of the passage by myself. You know, Sola Scriptura does not mean we can't listen and learn from teachers. The Arminian will say this passage means you can have salvation and lose it.

But what about Ephesians 1 .13 and the golden chain of redemption and Philippians 1 .6 and all the scripture that affirms that the saved cannot be lost? Many people will argue like Zane Hodges that well, this isn't referring to hell.

But what about the language of the text? Some will say the person wasn't really saved, but what about the we receiving the knowledge of the truth and sanctified? You see, as you regard the word of God in every word, you struggle and I struggle mightily to understand this text.

The help I found, here's another book to show you. I don't know if you can get this, if this is still in print, but this was by Homer Kent, a theologian from Winona Lake, Indiana, Grace Theological Seminary.

He did a great job in this commentary on the book of Hebrews. He used these words to explain what was happening here. Guys, if you love the word of God, listen to this. Some would explain this sanctification, which refers to the apostates, not to Christ, as merely an external dedication to God entered into by profession of faith, but by far the commonest usage of this terminology describes the person who has been set apart from sin to God.

Let me explain that, I got a little ahead of myself. He says when you see the word sanctified, people might try to explain that as something other than sanctified, made holy, set apart to God, saved. In as much as this is said to have been accomplished by the blood of the covenant, an actual experience of covenant relationship would seem to be called for.

In other words, the language sure sounds like the saved, right? So here's his answer. A more reasonable explanation would seem to be that the passage warns true believers what the outcome would be if apostasy would occur.

Get it? The author does not say that it has occurred, and comparison with six, four to nine provides additional reasons for seeing this as a somewhat hypothetical argument. To object to the value of an argument, which cannot happen, is to misunderstand the difference between God's perfect knowledge of his program and the means he employs for achieving it.

I think some of you are lost by the expressions. Here's a couple of examples. In John chapter seven, verse one, Jesus went about in Galilee, not Judea, for the Jews were seeking to kill him. Was it possible for the Jews to kill Jesus before the appointed day?

Impossible, and yet the means that God used was keeping him from Judea out in the outskirts of Galilee in order that the timing would be right. It wasn't possible, and yet the warning was given. Acts 27, 31.

Remember the story? There's gonna be a shipwreck. Just like I'm warning today, there's gonna be a train wreck. Paul said of this shipwreck in Acts 27, 31, hey guys, you're trying to escape the boat. If you do that, everybody's gonna die.

The soldiers were trying to get on a lifeboat and lower themselves and just save their own. And Paul said, if you do that, everybody's dead. Here's the problem. Earlier in the passage, Paul said, not one of you will be lost.

Once he spoke prophetically, scripturally, it was certain that no one would be lost, and yet he warns them, if you get in that boat and escape that way, everybody dies. The warning was the means to keep them on the big boat.