Part Three CHAPTER SIX. Does Hebrews 6:4-8 Teach That A Christian Can Fall From Grace and Lose His/Her Salvation? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

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1 Part Three Proof Texts The Devil and Well Meaning People (The Unworthiness Peddlers) Use To Clobber You Over The Head To Make You Feel Too Unworthy To Receive Healing and Prosperity: Identified, Examined, Explained and Refuted CHAPTER SIX Does Hebrews 6:4-8 Teach That A Christian Can Fall From Grace and Lose His/Her Salvation? ABSOLUTELY NOT! We're going to take a look at some difficult passages of Scripture in this chapter, but in doing so it is my purpose to build you up in the faith and to edify you as a Christian. In order to do that we have to take a hard look at some of the things the Unworthiness Peddlers say the Scriptures teach and come to grips with them. I found that if I was ever going to exercise the power of God in my life, then I had to get on top of some of these things. There comes a time and a place when we Christians HAVE to think for ourselves. That is sometimes a difficult thing to do, because when we begin to really think sometimes it messes up our theology. 89

2 Look at Hebrews 6:4-8, 4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, 6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. 7 For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: 8 But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. This appears to say that a Christian can "have it" and then "lose it". Is that, in fact, what it says? Let me rearrange the word order of this passage so that it will make more sense. I'll rearrange it in the proper English order, because the Greek sometimes rearranged his sentences for emphasis. For example, in English we emphasis something in a written sentence by italicizing it or underlining it. The Greeks didn't do that. They moved something around in the sentence and placed it at the very front of the sentence if they wanted to emphasis that aspect of what they were saying. So I'm going to take the front of the sentence and put it back into the sentence in its proper place. Then this passage will begin to make more sense. As I explain it you will have a totally different view on what these verses actually say. 90

3 Look again at these Scriptures beginning with verse 4, "For those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If those who were once enlightened shall fall away it is not possible to renew them again unto repentance." Do you see what I did? I moved the first statement, "It is impossible," back down into the sentence, so that it says what it really means - that there is a group of people who "have tasted the Word of God, that have been partakers of the Holy Ghost, and all of these things, etc.," and then I said that "if this group shall fall away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." Are Christians Included In This Passage? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Let's address another issue. Exactly to whom is this passage of Scripture directed? Is it directed to you as a Christian? No, it is not. Then to whom is it directed? Look at the very title of the book itself - it says "To the Hebrews". Are you a Hebrew or Jew? If you're not, then why do you want to put yourself under something that was never written to you to start with? So it's written to the Hebrews - then, how can we relate to this book? I'm going to show you. At this point, we need to back up and get a little bit of the Abrahamic Covenant under our belts. I'm very much aware that the Abrahamic material is difficult to grasp, and so many Christians want to tune it out when I start teaching it. But the very reason that people have tuned it 91

4 out is why they believe they can put themselves in this Hebrew 6 passage and see themselves losing their salvation if they should stumble. But if you'll stop and force yourself to pay attention, think, and exercise your brain on something besides the trash on television, you will build a foundation under yourself that will give you strength, backbone, and knowledge to beat off the Devil when he begins to come at you because you are a Christian who sinned. This teaching is going to build your faith, if you think and meditate on it, But if you don't you're going to come out at the end of it still confused. Listen, if you put yourself in this Scripture, you can also put yourself in the situation of combining the Scriptures "willy-nilly" and out of context. For instance, we can combine the Phillipian Jailer's question with Judas' solution to the remorse he felt over his betrayal of the Lord, and make the Bible say, "What must I do to be saved?" Well, Judas went out and hung himself. So everybody who doesn't want to go to hell, go find a rope and a tree and get with it, and that way you'll be saved. The mentality here is the same. So let's talk about this passage of Scripture - who it is talking to and what their problem really was. This was written to Hebrews, to Jews. Remember, when a Jew was born, he was born with salvation. He didn't have to get saved, he was saved. God promised them salvation in the Abrahamic Covenant. By virtue of the fact that he was born into the bloodline of Abraham, a Jew was as saved as any Christian is today. However, even though they were saved, they sinned. Well, God can't go along with sin. So He did something about it. He added Moses' law, with its sacrificial system, to the Abrahamic Covenant four 92

5 hundred twenty years later. This enabled Him to let those people stay saved and keep everything He promised in Abraham's Covenant. But it also enabled Him to deal with the sin problem. When Jesus came, He was the final sacrifice for sin under Moses' law, and when He died there was no more need for sacrifices to be made with the blood of animals. Then when a Jew accepted Christ as his Messiah, his Savior, as the final sacrifice for his sin, the blessings of Abraham's Covenant kept running - he didn't lose a thing. But what about the Jew that came to the place in his life where he had to make the choice of accepting the final sacrifice - Jesus - and he balked? It didn't matter that he had been born a Jew, that he had tasted the good Word of God, that he had all the promises of God, that he had been made a partaker of the Holy Ghost - that Jew fell away from what God promised him in the Abrahamic Covenant at the point that he turned his back on Jesus as his Messiah. And since he balked, it was impossible to renew him - that Jew - unto repentance, because if he did not receive Christ as his final sacrifice that meant Christ had to come back and die again, and that Jew would force Him to be crucified again. So the people involved in Hebrews 6 are not Christians at all, though it may look like it. When you understand how it's all put together, you can see that it was spoken to Hebrew people, or Jewish people, who had come right up to the point in their lives where they were going to accept the final sacrifice for sin under Moses' law - which was Jesus - or they were going to reject the final sacrifice. Keep in mind, they were falling away from something they had by birth. They didn't have to get saved like you and me. They were born into it. They kept what they had 93

6 by following the Jewish sacrificial system. But the final element in that sacrificial system was Jesus. If they came up to the edge and refused to accept Him, they fell away from everything they had been born into. And when they fell away like that, it was impossible to renew them again unto repentance, for this would have required the Son of God to die over and over and over again. The Jewish people who received Christ as their Messiah did not fall away from what they were born into, which is salvation, healing, prosperity, and well being for their families. They did not fall away from that and lose it. They kept right on going, and their system is still in force now. It's the Abrahamic system, and that is the same system that you and I were grafted into when we, as Gentiles, received Christ as our Savior. Hallelujah! In verses 7-8, the writer of Hebrews draws two comparisons. Look at them again, 7 For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: 8 But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. As a Nation, The Jews Became Thorns and Briars To Be Burned Off When I was growing up I heard my Dad use the expression "clear new ground". What happens when you "clear new ground" is you clear the stumps, trees, and weeds off land that has never been cleared before. It has 94

7 produced nothing but briars and thorns and bushes. It's of no productive use. So what you have to do is clear it, and when it's all cleared you burn it. You burn it off. Then you brush hog the rest, pile up what's left, and burn that. When you're through you have a piece of land that can produce for you. The writer of the book of Hebrews is talking to a group of Jews who have come right up to the edge of receiving Christ as their Savior. He was telling them in verses 7 and 8 that they were the ground, the part of the earth that had been blessed. But if they decided to back off at this point and refuse to accept Jesus as their final sacrifice, they were going to fall away and become like the ground that has nothing but briars on it. They would be burned off as a Jewish nation - and that is exactly what happened. You, as a Gentile Christian, have been grafted into the Abrahamic system. There are not two churches - one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament. There is only one church. There has been only one people of God down through the centuries, The Abrahamic Seed Group, and we Gentile Christians have been grafted into that Abrahamic "one people of God". No Sin Can Ever Uproot A Christian When you, as a Gentile, accept Christ as your personal Savior, there is no sin that can ever uproot you. Why? Remember what we learned earlier? It was not their sin that got the Abrahamic Seed Group in trouble, it was their sacrifice problem. And, once we accept Christ as our final sacrifice for our sins, that settles it! But, if there was just one sin that could uproot you as a Gentile Christian, have 95

8 you ever considered the logic involved in such a thing? If you can produce a sin that can cause you as a Christian to lose your salvation, what you have found is a sin that has more power in it than the blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1:7. How many sins? All, except, of course, the one you can find that can overpower, overwhelm, and overthrow the power of the blood of Christ. What is that sin? I don't know what it would be. There has never been a sin that the blood of Jesus Christ could not blot out and keep on blotting out. There has never been a sin crop up in the life of any Christian that the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cannot cleanse and keep on cleansing. When Jesus came to earth, walked up Golgotha's heights, let them nail Him to a wooden cross and hang Him up for all to see, the Son of God died for the sins of the whole human race. At that point and because of that act, there was no more animal sacrifice required or accepted by God. Do you see that? God not only doesn't require them anymore, He does not even accept them now. This, I believe with all my heart, is, at the very least, one of the things Jesus meant as He hung on the cross - when His great mind ticked off every Biblical prophecy concerning Himself. When He saw that they were all fulfilled, He said, "It is finished." When He said that, the temple veil was ripped from the top to the bottom, indicating that the way into the very place and presence of God Himself now was accessible to all men without having to go through the blood of a bull or goat. When Jesus said, "It is finished," He meant the sacrificial system is finished, for He finished it. 96

9 When these Jews in Hebrews 6 came to the point of walking right up to the cross of Christ and making the decision, "Do I receive this final sacrifice of God, or do I go back to the sacrifices of bulls and goats?" that decision was fateful. It determined the eternal destiny of those people - heaven or hell. There is no middle ground - it's heaven or hell. Those Jews who came to the cross and turned and walked away, fell away from that into which they were born. And that's not all. It is impossible to renew them again unto repentance. They can't repent before God with the slaughter of an animal. That won't renew them to God's fellowship, for there is only one way, and that's through Jesus Christ. They absolutely fell away and lost what they were born with - for one reason. They came to the place of accepting Christ, but never did. They went back to the old Mosaic system. If The Peddlers of Unworthiness Are Right and You Could Lose It, By Their Own Interpretation of Scripture, You Could Never, Never Get It Back! If Hebrews 6:4-8 could include a Christian (which it absolutely does not - let me repeat it again - no Christian is included in these verses, it is written to Jews), but if it were possible for a Christian to be in them, can't you see what it would mean? Look at verse 6, "If they shall fall away, it's impossible to renew them again unto repentance." Let me remind you of a story which I told you in a previous chapter. Years ago I went to a revival in a certain church. When the service was over, the evangelist asked, "How many of you got saved for the first time tonight?" I thought that was the craziest thing I had ever heard. When this preacher asked, "How many 97

10 were saved for the first time tonight," he was implying that you can be saved a second and third and fourth time, and I'm thinking how crazy that statement is. If Hebrews 6:4-8 did pertain to Christians, it's impossible - get that, IMPOSSIBLE to renew them again unto repentance. Do you see the ramification of that logic? If you could lose it, you could never, never, never get it back! But, this is written to Jews, who came right up to the point of receiving the final sacrifice under Moses' law, yet turned around and walked the other way. They fell away, right out of the grace of God that was built into the Abrahamic system. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no other salvation system anywhere in the Bible, except that Abrahamic system. You would do well to exercise yourself to learn that system. A lot of people wonder why they don't have the power of God in their lives. The main reason is they don't know who they are, what belongs to them, where they've been or where they're going, or what their rights are. The average Christian goes through life living by what they feel. Someone was telling me not too long ago how to build a church. Well, I could copy-cat what they said and build a large church - if, by their advice, I was willing to mimic the Holy Ghost and make everyone confuse commotion and noise with the power of God. But that's not what I want to do. I want you to learn to think for yourself. We need to know who we are. We need to know what we have in Christ. We need to know what our rights are. We need to know full well what's involved in our salvation. We need to know that we have been grafted into a Jewish system. We need to know that Abraham's Covenant is still alive 98

11 and well and in full force and will run throughout eternity! We need to know that this Covenant is real. Look now at Hebrews 5:11-13, 11 Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. 12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13 For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. This is still the same group of Jews. Listen, these were Hebrew people. They should have been the teachers in the first century. But this writer told them, "I can't say everything to you that I need to say, because you are dull of hearing. You ought to be a teacher, but you're forcing us to stop and re-teach you. The sad thing is that we're having to teach you the ABC's." Practical Lessons For Christians From This Passage Although written primarily to the Hebrews, there are many practical lessons we Gentile Christians can learn from this passage. We need to stop asking the church what it can do for us - what can the preacher do for me, what can the sermon do for me - we must grow up and say, "What can I do for the church, what can I do to help my pastor, what can I do to reach out and help touch other people?" If preachers today preach and teach much past the ABC, pablum milk stage, they'll lose their congregation. The people say, "That's just too deep, I 99

12 can't understand it. You ought not to preach that." NO, get your brain in gear and pay the price to understand what God has done for you! There is nothing in this world that will take the place of the long hours of hard study and research and meditation that YOU spend in the Word of God by yourself. If you'll take the time to pay the price, it'll change you from a "child" of God into a "man" or "woman" of God who will begin to think in terms of other people and not yourself all the time. You ought to be teachers. And this is what the writer of Hebrews was saying, "You ought to be teachers. You're the people of God. You Jews, you're the ones God touched. You were the good ground that was tilled and got the rain, and was blessed. You are the ones who should be teaching." These Jews were pablum kids, baby bottle boys. Listen, we need to grow up and get into the Word for ourselves. When we do, it will cause us to reach out to others and want to help and minister to them. The more I learn, and the closer I get to God the more people-centered I become. It is a fact that people can drive you nuts. But at the same time, we need to view them as Jesus did and minister to them. When somebody comes after me - to sit in judgment on me - the first thing I do is determine whether he is coming after me because he has a problem with his heart or a problem in his head. If the problem is in his head, he bears me no ill will, he just doesn't understand where I'm coming from. Therefore, I'll help him. But if his problem is in his heart, then I know that he has a bad motive toward me, and he'll hurt me. I'll help him if I can, but I'll make sure I keep my back covered. 100

13 The point is, the closer you get to God the more you will begin to view people the same way Jesus did. They need to be ministered to. Sometimes you absolutely cannot minister with pablum. Sometimes you can't minister by babying people. You have to get to the point. Here was a group of Jews who should have been teaching, but they were having to be fed pablum. They should have gone way beyond the ABC's on their own, and been well on the way to teaching others. Look at verse 14, 14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Full age - not necessarily chronologically, but spiritually developed. There are various degrees of spiritual development. A person who is not spiritually developed will make judgments based on their senses just like they did when they were lost. But a person who is spiritually developed has his/her mind renewed, and will make decisions and see things through the renewed mind. What is a renewed mind? It is the mind of a Christian that has become so saturated with Scripture that they think Scriptural answers to worldly problems. The carnal Christian does it the way they always did it - dealing in milk and pablum. They are not of full age. The Necessity of Renewing Your Mind So many Christians will not renew their minds. Their 101

14 minds are not bound up and permeated and penetrated by the Word of God. They still think like they always thought. The Christian who has a renewed mind is the person who has meditated on the Word long enough that it has totally changed him/her. They think Scripture in the face of any decision they need to make. They make choices and decisions based on the fact that their mind has been renewed to the point where they think Scripture rather than, "Does this make sense or not." They are not ruled by their senses. This only comes about by use. It's as you begin to walk this way that your mind begins to function. But your mind will not function this way until you force your decision making process into this mode, rather than the way that you've always done it in the past. This way only comes as you force yourself to do it. This way doesn't make a bit of sense to the mind of a carnal Christian, but, nonetheless, this is how we must learn to operate. These Jews had not done this yet. They didn't understand salvation. They didn't understand that they were born with it. They thought they earned it by keeping the Jewish law, and for that reason they rejected the final sacrifice for sin, which was the slaughter of God's own Son. They fell away, and they can never be saved, never, because that would force Jesus to have to come back and die again for them. And He will not do that. (Of course, the moment they accept Christ as their Savior, they are saved.) "Those who are of full age are those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." They have their senses exercised by reason of use. As a Christian there are exercises that you must go through. 102

15 There are certain things you must do, otherwise you will never develop a taste or appetite or a desire for the deeper things of God - or meat. You will forever stay a pablum baby. When you begin to exercise your senses via the renewed mind, you will begin to think in terms of what the Bible says, no matter what problem confronts you. The average Christian gets an opportunity to change jobs. The carnal Christian makes the decision based upon the benefits, hours, vacation time, and how much of an increase they will get. That is "old man" thinking. That is a decision made by and with the senses. But the deeper Christian, who is of full age, thinks about that, but he thinks less about that than he does, "Is this the will of God for my life?" The renewed mind is absolutely essential for Christians. It's nothing more than a mind that has been saturated with the Word of God to the point that the Word becomes our thought process. You must begin to face decision making and problem solving, not with your own natural intellect, but with a mind renewed with the Word of God. This is the evidence of a person who has gone beyond pablum and ABC's. This is a person who has taken his place in the kingdom of God as an adult, saturated with the Word of God. This is a spiritual person. He will be a peace maker in the kingdom. He will be a pillar in the church. He is the one pastors and ministers count on. Unfortunately, most decisions concerning leadership in churches are based on someone's appearance and personality. Years ago, as a young pastor, I would go out and get new people in my church. I'd size them up, and if they were good looking and had a good personality, I'd 103

16 say, "Man, they could work with the youth group or they could do this or that." That was the stupidest thing I ever did in my ministry! I've seen people who were good looking and had a movie-star personality that were so full of the Devil, that they corrupted everything they touched. But what was I doing? I was making decisions based on my natural ability to size up someone rather than on my renewed mind. Actually at that point in my ministry, my mind was not renewed as it should have been. I made a lot of mistakes. I had a group of young people who were led down the wrong path for the simple reason that I didn't have enough spiritual brains as a young pastor than to appoint people in leadership over them who were not right with God. We need to go back to the basics. Get your mind pumped up with the Word of God so that when the blood flows through your veins, it pushes Scripture in front of it. It will start showing up in you own personal life, and then the leadership in churches will start trusting you to tell others what to do. Again, these Jews were born saved because of the Abrahamic Covenant. They were guaranteed healing, prosperity, well being for their family members, as well as salvation for their soul. God dealt with the sin in their lives by adding Moses' law to it. He said, "If you foul it up, don't worry. You can still maintain Abraham's blessings. Just make the right sacrifice, and it'll all keep running." And for 2000 years it ran that way. Then the day came when God said, "I'm going to send my Son. He's going to be the final sacrifice for sin. When he gets on that cross and gives up His life, the people won't have to make any more animal sacrifices, for the blood of my 104

17 Son will do it." When Jesus' blood poured out of his body and hit the rocky crags on Golgotha's hill, the power of God went into the temple in Jerusalem and ripped that temple veil from top to bottom. When it did, the way for man to have access to God without the blood of animals was open for the first time in almost 2000 years. So here were these Hebrews 6 Jews who came up to the foot of the cross. They had a choice to make. They could accept the final sacrifice for sin under Moses' law, or they could go back to their old system. The only problem was the old system was finished, because when Jesus hung on the cross one of the seven things He said was, "It is finished." He meant that the sacrificial system was finished, for He was the final sacrifice. So when those Jews came up to that cross and backed off, they fell away from everything they had been born with in Abraham's Covenant, and they were lost, and they are lost to this very hour. When you make yourself a Hebrew who has come right up to the edge of receiving Christ as your Savior, then you can put yourself in Hebrews 6. But until you can do that, you don't belong there. Hallelujah! 105

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