Hi, this is Pastor William. On behalf of the members of Providence Baptist Church, I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and thank you for joining us. It is our joy to share God's truth, and we trust that the preaching of God's Word will always bless His people. But we humbly remind you that no recording can ever replace biblical corporate worship or true Christian fellowship. So we encourage everyone everywhere to commit themselves to the service of God's kingdom in a local church. And we pray that the Lord keep and bless you as you continue to earnestly seek Him. Amen. Amen. Please be seated. And turn with me this morning to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, in verses 26 through 31, before us this morning, that's what we'll be looking at. We have another fearful warning from the author of Hebrews. And as we finish this morning, I pray that you all are prompted to reflect on your own response to the gospel and to God's word, and to recognize the serious nature of a deliberate rejection, or a deliberate, well, a deliberate rejection. So our text this morning, Hebrews 10, 26 through 31, For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, 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 more 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. Now, last time we saw that the author of Hebrew, we saw the author of Hebrews exhort his readers to hold fast to their profession of faith, and he gave them several calls to action, things that they should be acting on. In this passage before us this morning, we have another compelling warning about turning away from the word of God and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The consequences of doing so are set before us this morning. underscoring the severity and the gravity of rejecting the gospel message. This passage delves into the serious and severe implications of continuing an unrepentant sin after, as the author says, receiving the knowledge of the truth. So the central theme here this morning is the deliberate refusal to submit to the word of God, specifically the gospel. which ultimately leads to the rejecting of the gospel, ultimately leads to rejecting the only valid sacrifice for sins and turning away from the grace that God offers. The author lays out, also lays out here, several marks of apostasy. So let's take a closer look at the text this morning. For if we go on sinning, beginning in verse 26, 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. Now, as I've mentioned before, word order can play a little different role in Greek than it does in English. In Greek, the writer can sometimes change the order of words without changing the meaning of the sentence. Now there are times when that happens as well in English, but generally you have to change some of the words in English to change the order of the words and maintain the same meaning of the sentence. But I think the author here is trying to emphasize something with word order, because the actual Greek puts the word deliberately at the very, the word that we translate deliberately, at the very beginning of the sentence. So this, I believe, is the author's attempt to put special emphasis on the point that he's trying to make. And that is, do not remain in your sin, if the Lord brings it to your attention, do not remain in deliberate sin. Now the sin they're specifically dealing with here is the sin of going back to the old traditions of their religion. So for us, if your conscience is troubled by something that you have said or something that you have done, do not ignore it. That could very well be the Holy Spirit trying to tell you something, trying to work in your life. So the warning against sinning deliberately does not mean that all sin we commit nullifies Jesus's sacrifice for us. Rather, what the author is saying is that if you continue in sin, deliberately and definitely refusing to repent, then you are essentially rejecting the gospel. And you are willingly walking a path that leads to destruction. In that sense, there is no longer any sacrifice for your sins because by your very behavior, you have rejected the only valid sacrifice that God would accept. And you turn your back on the only one, Jesus Christ, who can justify you in the court of God. There is no forgiveness for a person who has made that decision. So what does the author mean by receiving the knowledge of truth? That seems like, well, it is a unique phrase in the New Testament, in scripture, so it bears some scrutiny, but we can gain some understanding of what the author means by considering how this expression is used elsewhere. Paul uses this expression in 1 Timothy 2, 4. or two, three, and four, when he says, this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. To be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Receiving the knowledge of the truth then, is sort of a way of expressing entry into God's community, into God's covenant family, or at least coming to an understanding of the gospel. This is also found in Timothy chapter three, or second Timothy chapter three, and second Timothy chapter two. So the author of Hebrews is referring to those who hear and understand the gospel, but deliberately refuse to submit to it, even though they understand its truthfulness, even though in their words and questions they may even profess to believe in the truthfulness. But they do not put their hope and trust in Jesus Christ. The author also addresses those who wants profess the faith, but later abandoned and turned away from the faith. There's no salvation in that condition. Their profession of faith, their past profession of faith, their past performance will warrant them no merit with God. This is clearly put forth by Christ in the parable of the soils, when he warns about the gospel seed falling in shallow soil, where there may be a superficial sign of life, but it fades under persecution, or it gets choked out by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It gets washed away when the whore of Babylon comes and pours out the contents of her cup. This contrasts sharply with true regeneration, which brings a lasting transformation and fruitfulness. Just like in the parable of the soils, this passage in Hebrew highlights the sobering reality that some people will grasp an understanding of the gospel and yet reject Jesus Christ. They will reject his lordship. And in doing so, they reject His salvation. As I've mentioned before, there is no salvation without Christ being your Lord. Jesus Christ came to save people for His kingdom. So in that kingdom, there is a King, and that is Christ, and He is Lord over all. So He is certainly Lord over those who He saves, even those who may may kick against the goads, as Paul says. The warning to submit to God is found in numerous places in Scripture. And the Apostle John gives similar warnings in 1 John and in Revelation. There's also this passage here in Hebrews is also very similar to what we read earlier this morning in Hebrews 6, verses four through eight. In that passage, we are warned that it is impossible to restore someone who falls away after coming to an understanding of the truth. In that passage, we are warned that there's no sacrifice for someone who continues in unrepentant sin after receiving the knowledge of truth. That does not mean they cannot repent. It's the very essence of the gospel is to repent and believe. This warning is also similar to what we read in Hebrews chapter three this morning. That passage was addressing the Israelites who had fallen away after witnessing God's divine power during the Exodus. The people of Israel witnessed, the people of Israel in that generation, they witnessed God systematically dismantle the most powerful nation in the world at that time. But he protected them from every blow that fell upon Egypt. They witnessed him destroy Egypt's army. They witnessed as God provided them with Egypt's wealth as they departed. He gave them bread and meat and water as they traveled. He preserved their clothes, their sandals, their items. And during the Exodus, Israel not only gained their freedom, but they also received the knowledge of the truth. Specifically, the truth of God's sovereign power and control over all creation. Yet, when it came time to actually enter the promised land, they didn't trust God. They didn't believe Him. They failed to believe His word. Who else were they going to trust? What other word could they believe? Who else could they turn to? All the gods that they were familiar with from being in Egypt had been mocked and destroyed by God. They witnessed that. They understood the truth unlike so many other generations throughout history. They experienced it and yet they refused to bow the knee and believe and to trust him. Brothers and sisters, when someone understands the gospel message and they reject it, there is no other means of salvation that they can turn to. Can we just pause for a moment and agree on one thing, and that is that we are all sinners? We are all sinners. We can agree on that, that we sin, and God, the one who created us and who controls all things, we offended him in our sin. We continue to offend him in our sin, but he extends a hand of grace and a gift of mercy, and those who reject that offer, they will find nothing remaining but his justice and his wrath. It is God that we have to deal with, and he offers us grace and mercy. So those who reject it, those who turn a blind eye, or they just dismiss it out of apathy, they find nothing remaining but his justice and his wrath. And that's what the author's about to explain next. In verse 28, it says, and anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. The author of Hebrews continues here by comparing the Mosaic law with the new covenant. The term here he uses to set aside the law of Moses, that's paramount to someone completely rejecting the Old Testament law of God. And to do so would mean that they would forfeit their status as a citizen of Israel, as a child of the covenant. This is not talking about a mere ignorance of God's law, but it's talking about a deliberate and audacious rejection of God's law and a rebellion against the law giver. And consequently, those who transgress the law and it was witnessed by two or three, faced merciless execution. Remember, it was just after this period of the Exodus, and God had given them the law, and they were collecting manna, and they were getting rocks from places in the desert that was unexpected, and God had given him his commandment, and then there was a man that went out on the Sabbath and collected sticks to build a fire. when he should have collected all the sticks he needed on Friday for them. He should have collected enough sticks on Friday for Friday and Saturday for his fires, but he didn't do that. It was a deliberate, visible, open rejection of the law that Moses had just given them. And I don't know how many of the community would have seen it, but there certainly would have been two or three and probably a lot more. And they executed him. It was the law. Those who set aside the law of Moses faced execution, and it was merciless execution. It was immediate. The method they preferred was stoning, and that is a gruesome punishment. Such a gruesome punishment for idolatry kind of puts the next verse also in light. How much more, verse 29, how much more, 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? So while those who ignored the law of God faced earthly consequences, those who reject the gospel of Jesus incur a much greater penalty. Because it's not merely a temporal penalty, it is an eternal penalty. We see in verse 29 that those who reject God's offer of mercy, they profane Christ's blood and they offend the spirit. They offend the very spirit that they must face in judgment. So how much more severe punishment do you think they would receive? Much more severe than anything in the Old Testament. And here the author uses a rhetorical question to underscore that, and he brings up what some people have mentioned to be the three major marks of apostasy. But let's look at them one by one. First, trampling underfoot the Son of God. This signifies rejecting Christ's identity. It's akin to treating Him with contempt. to treating him with contempt. Jesus kind of speaks about this in John chapter 14, when he says that rejecting the son is paramount to rejecting the father. And that really is true. If any of us were to send our son to do our bidding, and someone rejected them, then they would be rejecting you. They would be rejecting the father. And that's a vital point. Disregarding Christ's divinity devalues his work. Rejecting his sonship rejects the father. And it voids the sacrifice that is offered for sin in his name. So here scripture says it's trampling him underfoot. And the second point, regarding as profane the blood of the covenant. Now some translations will say regarding the blood as common or regarding it as unholy, all of which implies that one considers Jesus's sacrifice of no greater importance than the countless sacrifices offered under the old covenant. The son's sacrifice is no different than the animal sacrifices. That would be considering the blood of the covenant profane. It also implies that Jesus himself was of no more worth than any of us. He is no more holy, he is no more worthy than any other person. And to treat the blood of the covenant as common or profane essentially means that one does not believe that the work of Christ has the power to save. Now the author through Hebrews has already expressed the centrality and the saving power of Jesus' sacrifice, of His blood. We've seen that in chapter nine, in verses 12 and 14, and we've seen it in chapter 10, verses 19, and now we see it again in verse 26 here. It's the same thing. The blood of the covenant sanctifies us. To disregard Christ's blood is to spurn purification, the purification that it accomplishes. It is to spurn the process of sanctification. And it regards the blood of the covenant as profane, as common. So, those are the first two points. Trampling underfoot the Son of God, regarding as profane the blood of the covenant, and then the third one is outraging the Spirit of grace, or insulting the Spirit of grace. Your translations may say it a little differently, but either way, it means that in some character, it is disparaging the Holy Spirit. It is an insult to the Holy Spirit. the behavior that you choose in rejecting or disregarding or ignoring the truth that has been given to you. This is similar to blaspheming the Holy Spirit in Matthew chapter 12. In John chapter 16, Jesus tells us that the Father bestows the Spirit upon us through Christ for our comfort. He also says that the role of the Holy Spirit is to teach us about Christ, to teach us about his saving work, to teach us how to live in light of that. So Jesus, as the promised Messiah, and the work of redemption, is essentially the greatest thing that God has done in this creation. And so rejecting that, brothers and sisters, is rejecting the best that God has to offer. Rejecting the gospel, rejecting Christ as the Messiah, rejecting the redemptive work of his sacrifice is rejecting the best that God has to offer. He gives himself to you. He gives himself for you. and to ignore it, to disregard it, is to reject Him. This strong term, this outraging or insulting the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of grace, is a strong term and it conveys the severe consequences of forsaking Christ. especially forsaking Christ, to return to Judaism. But most people today don't reject Christ to return to Judaism. They don't reject Christ to return to the Old Covenant. But it's all the same. They reject Christ to return to something else. And in the severest consequences, the author here says that there is no salvation, and there isn't. In verse 30, he says, 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. Two, in order to firmly establish his argument that deliberate sin merits a more severe punishment, the author quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 35 and 36. These are words spoken by Moses before the Israelites entered the promised land, or before they tried to enter the promised land. In these references here, these Old Testament quotes, the author is emphasizing God's impending judgment upon those who reject the gospel. He's pointing to the divine vengeance and justice that awaits those who trample on the Son, who profane His blood, His sacrifice, and His work, and who insult the Spirit that brings them the offering and the word of grace. I think one thing that we can all attest to from personal experience, or at least personal witness, is that man's justice is often incomplete, or falls short, or often just not there at all. But we learn from the history of Israel that God is true to his word, that the Lord's justice is flawless, and it will be executed. This should strike genuine fear among those who disregard Christ, for the final judgment carries eternal consequences. Apostasy is a grave matter not to be trifled with, not to be ignored. Any of us are capable of falling into apostasy. So any of us are capable of falling into the hands of the living God, who is a consuming fire. When you consider that, and you consider the things that I've taught in the past about hell, it should be profoundly terrifying. Those rejecting the Son have a valid cause to fear the Father. To fall into the hands of the living God is to have resisted His love, rejected His salvation, and spurned His Spirit's warnings. And to persist in that may bring you to a point beyond which any further offer of grace cannot, will not be extended. As we've said before, God's justice is perfect. God's mercy is infinite, but His patience is not. This is a scary message, and I know people who reject it entirely simply because of their fear of it, their fear of having to deal with it, their fear of having to consider it, and they reject it entirely, and they put it out of their mind as not true. This is simply not true. I know some very intelligent people who do that, and they're able to convince themselves of that, but they're not able to come up with a better reality that we live in. And there are many who misunderstand and misapply the author's intent here in Hebrews. I do not believe that the author is saying that if you heard the gospel yesterday and you rejected it, then you are lost forever. I also do not believe that the author is saying that if you joined a church last year, but you stopped going, that you are lost forever. I actually had somebody contact me this week through Facebook, struggling with this very thing. When they were a young person, 18 or 19, they had been baptized and they joined a church, and then they went off to college and they just walked away from it all. and now in their later teens, or their later 20s, they're struggling with this, that they are guilty of the sin of apostasy, and there's no hope for them, there's no salvation left for them. That's the way that they were taught this passage in scripture, and I'm here to tell you that is absolutely false. As long as you draw breath, then you can use that breath to repent and proclaim the glory of Christ. As long as you are alive, then what you accepted yesterday can be rejected today. And what you rejected yesterday can be accepted today. The mark of a believer is not what he did yesterday. The mark of a believer is what he's doing right now. That's what matters. The Gospel message is always the same. Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Regardless of what you did yesterday, if you recognize that you are a sinner, then you can repent and believe, because that is the Holy Spirit working in you. So I do not believe I'm speaking to anybody here today who has considered going back to Judaism. So what do we draw from this passage this morning? Well, there are three things that I really want you to take away from this this morning, that we can learn from this. And the first one would be that we should be very, very serious in our consideration of the gospel message. We should be telling it to ourselves every day, The severity of rejecting the truth of the gospel should prompt us to seriously consider its message. We are reminded not to treat the sacrifice of Christ lightly, or to regard it as inconsequential. Instead, we should continually meditate on the significance of Christ's atonement, allowing it to shape our attitudes, our actions, and our decisions. how the gospel is spread today. You cross paths with somebody who knows the truth and they tell you. And then you go about your paths. Now consider if you were in a burning building and you cross paths with a fireman and he tells you, go here and turn right, get out of the building. And you disregard his message. You perish. we should consider seriously the gospel. The second point is that we should be very diligent about repentance and our pursuit of holiness. The warning against deliberate and unrepentant sin underscores the importance of a constant self-examination and repentance. As believers, we must remain diligent in our walk with Christ. It is so easy. It is so easy to go astray. The path is narrow. We must remain diligent. We must acknowledge when we've turned off the path and then we must return to it in repentance. Return, a turn away from any sinful patterns that may take root in our lives. That can be very difficult. There are some things that you don't even realize that you do now that you don't even realize are sinful or they're gonna lead you into greater sin. This requires an ongoing commitment to seek God's forgiveness, to pursue His grace, and it allows us to maintain a healthy, more vibrant relationship with Him by pursuing Him daily, by acknowledging our offenses. Remember, those who are, I think we read it this morning in our Sunday school class, those who are faithful to confess their sin, God is faithful to forgive. So we should be very serious about our consideration of the gospel. We should be very diligent in our pursuit of repentance and holiness. And we should have, brothers and sisters, this third point, we should have a healthy fear of God's judgment. The passage before us this morning highlights the fearful reality of falling into the hands of the living God for those who reject his offer of grace and salvation. This should lead us to cultivate a healthy fear of God, a reverential awe and respect for His holiness and His justice. While we are assured of God's love and grace through Christ, We should not take His mercy for granted, but rather we should approach Him with humility and a deep awareness of His sovereignty. A deep awareness of His sovereignty. We should have a healthy fear of God's judgment. We should have a diligent pursuit of repentance and holiness. And we need to seriously consider God, seriously consider the gospel, what it means to us, and how it affects our lives. Let us pray.