The Only Door, and Faith and Patience to the End

Why we keep going back to the Old Testament

We are still in the sixth chapter of Hebrews, and we'll likely be here a couple more weeks. Some folks think that's too long to sit in one chapter. But Bro. Keith keeps reminding us why we do it: you cannot pick up the book of Hebrews, read it cold, and understand what it says. Not without the Levitical law. Not without the culture and the covenant it came out of.

So a lot of Sundays we're teaching two lessons in one, because the foundation has to be laid before the verse makes sense. Much of the Christian world has dismissed the Old Covenant as irrelevant to Christian life today. That is wrong. It's error, and here's why: we can't have the New Testament without the Old.

Why he says it is impossible

Last week we walked verses 1 through 8 and dealt with the hard part — falling away. Falling away is apostasy. It is a man who once believed and then rejects and abandons the faith altogether. For these Messianic Jews, it meant going back to Judaism and saying Christ was never the Messiah at all — not the way, and not even a way.

These were believers. Verse 4 says they were "once enlightened," they tasted the heavenly gift, they were made partakers of the Holy Ghost. You can't be renewed from nothing. To be restored, you have to be restored from something.

Then verse 6 tells us why it's impossible: "seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." Who crucified Jesus? Rome drove the nails, but it was the crowd in front of Pilate that chose it. He asked which one they wanted, Barabbas or Jesus. Barabbas was a murderer. So he was setting life and death in front of them, the same way the Lord set life and death before the children of Israel, and they said, give us Barabbas. They chose death.

So if a man who had believed turns around and denies Him, he stands with that crowd. He is as guilty as if he drove the nails himself. And it isn't hidden. He owned Christ publicly, and now he denies Him publicly — an open shame.

The door you either go through or you don't

That's the reason for the word impossible. Their minds were reprobate, rejected of God, the way Romans 1 describes men who worshiped the creation more than the Creator. What they brought to God was not acceptable to God.

And then it's as simple as this. When you reject the only way to salvation, there's no other alternative whereby to be saved. God is not the hub of a wheel with many spokes running to Him. Either we believe the Bible or we don't.

Think of it like a door. If God is outside and there's one door out of this room, and you say you don't believe that door is the way, you're not getting through the wall. You cannot be restored if you have rejected the only way to be restored.

The ground that drinks the rain

Verses 7 and 8 put us in the dirt. We are the ground the seed of God is sown in. Ground that drinks the rain and brings forth good fruit receives blessing from God. Ground that brings forth thorns and briars is rejected, near to cursing, and its end is burning.

That's the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 — seed on the wayside, seed on stony ground, seed choked out by the cares of this life, and seed on good ground. It's Cain and Abel at the altar, too. Abel brought what God accepted. Cain didn't. What we hand God matters. Many believe verse 8 was a veiled look ahead to 70 AD, when Titus sacked Jerusalem, because they rejected the Messiah.

Beloved, we are persuaded better things of you

Then the tone turns. "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak." He has been stern the whole letter, and now he commends them: "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love."

Why is he persuaded? Because fruit had shown up. They were ministering to the saints. Jesus said the great commandment is to love God with everything, and the second is to love your neighbour as yourself, and He said in John 13:35, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." We are not saved by works. But we show our love for Him by keeping His commandments, and Revelation 20 says the dead were judged according to their works.

So let me ask us plainly. If somebody walked into our church this week, would they see enough of that fruit to be persuaded of better things of us?

Followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises

Verse 11 goes right back to the warning. Be diligent. Don't be slothful, "but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Follow there means imitate. Copy their actions, because their actions are what brought them the promise.

Abraham is the example. God promised him a seed of his own body in Genesis 15, and he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Then he waited twenty-five years. He tried to help God along the way and it cost him, but when Ishmael turned out not to be the seed, he kept waiting. And when God told him to carry Isaac up the mountain, he went, because he knew the promise ran through Isaac, and he knew it was impossible that God could lie or that God could fail. Hebrews 11:19 says he believed God could raise him from the dead.

Abraham had the promise long before he obtained it. He obtained it through faith and patience. That's the word for us. We have the promise of heaven and the promise of glory, and it is guaranteed, but we have not possessed it yet. Jesus said in Mark 13, "he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."

So don't cast Christ down and go back to the old life where there is no life. Hold on to Him, because when you reject the only way to salvation, there's no other alternative whereby to be saved.

And here's the question Bro. Keith left sitting there. Most of us say don't do as I do, do as I say. Could you tell somebody today, follow me — imitate me in the way I walk with Christ?