Full Assurance of Faith: Part Two

The speaker emphasizes the importance of gathering together as a community in Christianity. They criticize the misapplication of certain Bible verses by works preachers who use them to instill fear and doubt in people. They argue that the passage in Hebrews 10:26-27 about deliberate sin should not be interpreted as losing salvation, but rather as a warning to those who reject the gospel. The audience is identified as Jewish converts to Christianity, and the deliberate sin is seen as opposing the gospel. The speaker encourages a correct understanding of scripture and the assurance of God's love and grace. The following message is brought to you by the people of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. For more information, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org. And now here's Pastor Jason Booth with the message. 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 under foot 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. But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while, and the coming one will come, and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. The word of the living God, and may his name be forever praised. Amen. We lead up to verse 26, with the admonition to not fail to gather together. And in this day and age, it's more convenient than ever before to gather together. We gather by way of gospel meetings. We can communicate one with the other by everything as low-tech as mail, to everything as high-tech as face-to-face video conferencing. Most of us are but a few keystrokes away from the brethren. We can talk to one another. We can communicate over the phone. We can even do television shows back and forth, as it were, with video conferencing. It's never been easier to gather together, has it not? But the scripture tells us this timeless truth, Christianity is community. It's about being together with one another. And when some perverse government tries to shut down regular gatherings, they better have a very good reason for even thinking that we ought to not gather, right? And I think we've had our fill over these last few years of this, that, and the other. We need to gather together. We need to be together. And growing up in religion, verse 25 and verse 26 were always the billy club bludgeoning tools of the works preacher. And let me refresh your memory as if you don't already know the verse. The scripture says in verse 24, Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. In verse 24, verse 25 now begins the billy club passage that so many a works preacher uses. Verse 25, verse 26, it's sort of a combo platter, when misapplied, of works righteousness. And listen, Not neglecting to meet 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 deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. And at that point, the works preacher will lay into you with both cutting knives, telling you how skipping church services and not working alongside the church, just the way that he says you ought to, probably means that you don't have faith, and moreover, you go out and you commit a sin of any sort, and now you need to know that this Bible has nothing for you but fear and judgment. And these verses are used to put people down in such a place of doubt. It's so sad to see people use these verses in this very way, and yet we see it all the time. We see it all the time in works religion. We see these verses used as bludgeoning instruments. I've even heard men try to use these verses as proof texts for losing your salvation. Oh, if you sin willfully, there remaineth no sacrifice for sins. Well, beloved, I'm going to unpack this passage of Scripture, and I'm going to show you why it doesn't say anything like that. And Scripture has to interpret Scripture. We must stop reading passages in a vacuum. We must stop misapplying, misappropriating, misinterpreting Scripture simply because we grabbed a hold of a little nugget that sort of kind of lends itself to our predisposed opinion, and we need to understand Scripture in the light of what Scripture is actually teaching. For this particular passage, the Bible says if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. That's a lot. And if it means what the Arminian free will works righteousness preacher wants us to believe it means, then everyone is already doomed for hell. Because the Bible says if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. So if it means what they want it to mean in part, then it means what they want it to mean in whole, which is to say, if you sin after believing the gospel, you are going to hell and there's nothing anyone can do about it because there now remains no sacrifice for sin. Now, is this what the Scripture is teaching us? Am I to believe that the Apostle Paul in his writings, the writer of Hebrews here, the Lord's promises of eternal life that can never be taken away, the entire promise of the Old Testament that God will have a people that he will write his laws on their hearts and he'll remember their sins no more. I'm to believe that God is going to put away sin in the person and work of Jesus Christ and then just randomly here, the writer of Hebrews is going to undo all of that by saying, oh, but by the way, if you sin after you've heard this truth, there's nothing for you. Scripture must be rightly divided, beloved. It must be rightly divided. And I can tell you that growing up in religion, I heard a lot more trashy misapplications of these precious passages than I ever heard about grace. I heard more preachers trying to instill fear into their congregants in these dead religious societies than I ever heard anyone talk about the invincibility of God's love in Christ. What a waste of time. If you go to a church that tells you you can lose your salvation, it's no church. It might be a great social club. It might be an awesome social services agency. They might have great after school programs. They might have great things to do for your kids, but they're not a gospel preaching church. Not at all. So, all right, preacher. The scripture says if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin and you're telling me it's not saying what it says. Well, am I? Who is the audience? We've had 10 chapters to determine who the audience is for this book we call Hebrews. The audience is a group of Jewish converts to Christianity. This is the audience. How do I know that? Because the scripture gives us replete examples of how the writer here in Hebrews connects the types and shadows of the Old Testament priest craft and the service of the priest and the offerings of the priest, the sacrifice, and he connects those beautifully with the finished work of Christ. And he's writing to people who inevitably in a mixed fellowship of people would have people coming in just to see what's going on. Or is it a shocker that there might be people in the assembly that are not true Christians? That shouldn't shock any of us, should it? There are people in our church and other churches that perhaps do not know Christ. And only Christ can judge the heart. But here the writer is telling these people, the audience that he's writing to, there is a way to go on sinning. And what is this way? Well, we know from the passage that it cannot mean the sins that we commit contrary to light and nature, the sins that we're all guilty of committing each and every day. As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us some things that we need to keep in mind. James 3 and 2 says, for we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. We all stumble in many ways, says the word of the Lord. And so if the Bible says in James that we all stumble, it's not now going to tell us in Hebrews 10, 26, that if you stumble, there's no hope. So there must be something. There must be something specific about this deliberate sin in the 26th verse that we must unpack from the text itself. You need not take this preacher's opinion, but let's read the broader text. He goes on to say in verse 27 that if you do this deliberate sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, that's important. We're going to juxtapose deliberate sinning versus the knowledge of the truth. So these things are opposites on the scale. The deliberate sin, whatever it is, and we're going to uncover here in a moment, is over here. The knowledge of the truth is obviously the gospel of Jesus Christ and his finished work. We know that from the text of scripture, because how else can we draw near with full assurance of faith? The Bible tells us that we do so with a true heart in full assurance of faith. So the knowledge of the truth is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And whatever this deliberate sin is, is the opposite or the antithesis to the gospel. Verse 27 says, if we do this deliberate sin, then we have nothing waiting for us but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. And then we see the Rosetta Stone of interpreting verse 26, beginning in verse 28. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. And now verse 29, how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? Beloved, I grew up my entire life, up until my early 20s, believing that the way you violated this text was to smoke a cigarette or to sneak a beer or to say a certain bad word or to look cockeyed at somebody when they didn't deserve it or skip out on a church service or not give just the right amount of tithing. And the scripture is plain as the noses on my face. How do we trample the knowledge of the truth underfoot? By seeking to establish righteousness by our own works or by running back to the law. And yet there were some in this fellowship who still attended the meetings, who still attended the life of the corporate church, who were there clinging to what? Clinging to that which trampled underfoot the son of God. What tramples underfoot the son of God any more severe than some works based anti-gospel message? What tramples underfoot the grace of God in Jesus more than some preacher blowhard telling you that you have a stake in the righteousness that will commend you to God, that you have to do something in and of yourself to make yourself pleasing to God, that you cooperate with God? You've trampled the son of God underfoot when you seek to establish your own righteousness. This is the deliberate sin. And what is the deliberate sin? Self-righteousness. And how best to dress up self-righteousness if you were a Hebrew than to recloak yourself in the Old Testament law and say, look, I'm just keeping the traditions of my fathers. I'm keeping the word of God. It is the word of God after all. And yet, because they do not see God through the face of Jesus, the very word of God becomes nothing to them but a shackle and a sure testimony of their judgment. How do we go on sinning deliberately? It's to hear the blessed truth of the gospel, to know that Jesus is the only way, to know that he is your hope and stay. And to hear that truth preached. And to then look at that and say, nah, I'm OK. And that's exactly what these men have done. Listen, what have they done? They've trampled underfoot the son of God. They've profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. This, of course, speaks to the fact that these men that they're speaking to here were part of the life of the church. They looked like every other Christian in the meeting. They participated in the life of the church. And so to the naked eye, the people that the writer of Hebrews is addressing here by the Spirit's revelation are just regular old church folks. But I want you to know that in the assembly, there will be sheep and goats. There are wheat and tares. Vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor in the same meeting hall. Not everyone who calls themselves a Christian is a Christian. Even Jesus says, not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But those who do the will of the Father. And what is the will of the Father? That you believe on him whom he has sent. And who can do that? Those given to Jesus by the Father. Hallelujah forevermore. So the deliberate sinners were those who were gathering with the meeting hall, rest of the folks, wherever they were meeting in a house, in a field, wherever they might have been meeting, maybe in the local market, wherever the Christian folks were able to gather during the writing of this text. And there were those in that crowd who did not look to Jesus for righteousness. They were looking in all the wrong places. And what is that? That, beloved, the rejection of Jesus Christ is the evidence that regeneration has not occurred. Proverbs 24 and 16 says, for the righteous fall seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity. So again, the wicked who stumble are those who trust in their own righteousness, those who trust in the bondage of the law rather than the freedom of grace. And we also see in this very passage that for those hardheaded fools that want to teach people that they can lose their salvation, what in the world are they going to do with the passage that says there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins? You see, as we finish up, I want to make this clear. There is a way and there's a tactic in debate where your adversary proves too much by what they're saying. And in this passage, as that fiery Armenian preacher, that Nazarene, that Church of God preacher, that free will Baptist preacher, as they begin to really huff and puff and snort and stomp on this passage, they get to these words. And I notice most of them start to soft pedal right about the end of verse 26, because they're all happy about people losing their salvation for sinning deliberately. But what do they do with these words? There no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. And oops, you, friend, have proven too much. There no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. And yet the Bible tells us in Proverbs that the righteous man will fall seven times and get up. How can a righteous man get up after falling if God's grace wasn't sufficient? The deliberate sinning here is a denial of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. We see that in verse 28, as the writer likens someone who would throw away the law of Moses, who claimed to be in the law of Moses. He said, you could set aside the law of Moses. If you do that, you die without mercy of the evidence of two or three witnesses. So then he says in verse 29, how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? So we're dealing with a wholesale rejection of the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace in the Hebrew fellowship. And these are the warning verses given to the church that perhaps God in his sovereignty used to save some of these people who were, for all intents and purposes, false professors of faith. It's very possible that the writer of Hebrews was led to give these verses to this congregation so that God would be pleased to save them. And I think that's kind of interesting. That's an interesting way of looking at it. But one thing we're not going to do is let anybody tell us that God is schizophrenic, that God is going to promise us everything with his left hand and then do everything he can to take it away from us with his right. That's not the scripture. It doesn't stand the test of internal context. It doesn't stand the test of scriptural continuity. It doesn't even come close to being congruent with the promises of God in Christ all throughout the scripture, including Hebrews itself. To say that you can lose your salvation is to deny the word of the Lord. It's to trample the grace of God underfoot. And isn't it ironic that the people who would use these texts as a bludgeoning device against God's people that would try to keep us in bondage with these texts, they themselves are guilty of doing exactly what the text warns against. Isn't that ironic? But it's also typical because I know what's in the heart of man. You know why? Because I've been one long enough to know. Verse 31 tells us the truth. You want to reject grace. You want to reject the free and sovereign grace of God and do your part to live your life according to your own standard of righteousness, whatever that is. The Bible says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And now the congregation is being warned corporately in verse 32. Recall the former days when you were enlightened, when you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, speaking corporately now, sometimes being publicly exposed for reproach and affliction and sometimes being partners with those so treated, for you had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. So he's reminding those true believers in the congregation that, yes, you've been through hard times, but you also persevered because you stood up for your brothers and sisters, you've been through hard times, but you also persevered because you knew you had an abiding hope. Where is the abiding hope of those who would trample the grace of God underfoot? They have no abiding hope. And yet here the writer is basically motivating them to remember the faithfulness of God. So it's a mixed company of people receiving this letter. Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. Well, what confidence would a body of believers have if the very warning in verse 26 meant what so many a false preacher tried to make it mean? You would have no confidence. Yes, you would be confident that you failed. And that you continue to fail, but you'd have no confidence and no hope, no full assurance of faith if every time you send, in the general sense, there was no longer any hope for you. That, of course, is not what we're talking about here. We're dealing with the idea of apostasy, of people who never knew Christ, who rejected the gospel, who pretended for whatever social benefit or political benefit to be part of the church corporate. And now the writer of Hebrews is calling them out and saying, y'all are in a world of trouble if you think this is going to fool God, because it's not. Verse 36, for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. What is the will of God? The Bible tells us this is the will of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. God has done the work, beloved. And how do we know that? Well, the Bible tells us in verse 38, my righteous one shall live by faith. And now we see that we see the distinction between the righteous who live by faith and those who shrink back, both sitting in the congregation of the Hebrew fellowship. Listen, the righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, speaking now of the other class of people in the same congregation, my soul has no pleasure in him. Well, now, preacher, how do you know that he wasn't speaking to God's people? He warned God's people that if you shrink back, I'll have no pleasure in you. You've got to live by faith. And I say to you, no, no, no. You need to learn how to read the Bible. The scripture says that his righteous one will live, shall live by faith. And those who shrink back, God will have no pleasure in them. Well, how do you know that you can't shrink back if you really know the Lord, you can really know him and then really lose your soul? And I say, no, you are a liar. And that doctrine comes straight out of the pit. But it's not my it's not my words. Look at verse 39 and let it let it take up some real retail space in your brain this morning. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. How do I know that I am not one who shrinks back because I am saved and I know that my righteousness is in Jesus Christ alone. I believe he died for me. I believe that his death was sinless, his perfect, his perfect obedience unto death. His resurrection on the third day. I am justified freely by his grace. I know that in me no good thing dwells, but through Christ I can do all things. Beloved, if you know Jesus and the full pardon of your sins, be encouraged. You're not sinning willfully, you're not sinning deliberately in the sense that you are seeking a righteousness outside of the righteousness of Christ. Nonsense. But rather, you live by faith and you do not shrink back and you will not be destroyed. We have full assurance of faith, full assurance. We're not of those who shrink back, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. The preservation here isn't that we have done the work. It's that Christ has done the work in us to preserve us. We believe in the preservation of the saints. I like that terminology better than perseverance. For we sometimes persevere on a given day and we do some good things in Christ. Then other days we don't. Then other years we don't. Then other minutes we do and other hours we don't. And it's back and forth and it's all over the place. But who is the final? And if anybody tries to go to Hebrews chapter 10 to tell you that you're not saved, they need to learn some context. They need to read the text for what it says. You know, we didn't have to bend this text to mean something different. All we had to do was interpret it in the context of the word of God. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to read the text and we're going to interpret it in the context of the word of God. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to read the text and we're going to interpret it in the context of the word of God. All we had to do was interpret it in the context of itself. But I'm thankful for the grace of God that he has given us this place to gather where we can learn of God's grace. We can learn of the keeping power of God. We can trust God. Now, we don't seek to live riotously in light of his grace. But as you are honest with yourself, you know that you'll never please a perfect God in your own strength. And I would rather us take the law of God and the holiness of God seriously and seek his face and know that Jesus is our righteousness. And know that he alone is our hope than to delude ourselves into thinking that you can somehow muster up a righteousness. That will somehow in some way commend you to God because you can't. I am thankful, however, that we have a friend in Jesus. I am thankful that he has gone to prepare a home for his people by way of the cross. You know, I think it's amazing that he was able to build so much with a couple of crisscross beams and a few rusty nails. But he has gone to prepare a place for us, beloved, that where he is, there we may be also. And he tells us, you believe in God, believe also in me. Hallelujah. We're going to be with him one day. We are going to be with him one day. We are going to be with him one day. Hallelujah forevermore. We're not shrinking back. Because he who beginneth a good work in you shall be faithful to complete it until the day of the Lord Jesus. Hallelujah forevermore. Now, the warning for those who might be watching, for those even in our own assembly, perhaps you don't know the Lord. You go through the motions of Christianity, of cultural Christianity, but you know that you don't really know him. I will say, as the Spirit of God leads and directs, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. I don't believe that I hold the gate key to hold you out of God's kingdom. If the desire to be with God in Christ is given to you, then that could very well be the evidence of regeneration in your heart. I just know this, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And if you have a pulse in your body, you're not dead yet. Then as a mortal man looking at another mortal man, all I can tell you is there's time. And I don't know the mind of God or the mind of the Lord. And I don't know the mind of God or the will of God, but I would dare say that you'd have no desire whatsoever to even hear these words if the Spirit of God wasn't working on your heart, doing something that I can't do. But I will leave you with this gospel promise. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And he is a faithful Savior and the best of friends. So we're not shrinking back. We are marching forward by faith and thanking the Lord for his grace and mercy the whole way. Amen. Amen. Amen. Let's sing in response to the word of the Lord this morning. You have just heard a message from Pastor Jason Booth of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. To learn more about the good news of Jesus, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org.