Our Christian experience is one was walking with the Savior, moving out in the direction which he leads and experiencing what He desires us to experience in our lives. Not all Christians experience this. They fall into a state we call "backsliden". Jesus doesn’t walk backwards, His is a forward march into heaven, but some genuine believers chose the back step. We need to understand this as we mature in Christ. It doesn’t happen over night but there is a pattern that leads to this state.
Remember a couple of weeks ago I said when you are lost you want to get back on the right road. Well, sometimes we ignore the signs, we don’t want to believe we are heading down the wrong road even though deep down you know you are going the wrong way, you just don’t want to stop and turn around. Been there? That is what I am talking about tonight, Christians who ignore the signs and keep right on going. I want to show you 5 warning signs that are posted on the road to being spiritually backsliden. Each of the signs are a little more serious then the sign posted before it. But we all know that warning signs are only as helpful as the person who obeys them. I will be using the Book of Hebrews to find the signs along the way.
1. The sign of neglect is the first one posted along the wrong road. Hebrews 2:2-3 "For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
Back peddling Christians are noticed by their neglect of spiritual matters. This neglect means there is a lack of interest. It is not that you are doing everything wrong, it is just that you are doing little right. It is not messing up by going out and planning to do wrong, no it is rather, that you are not doing the things necessary to get you moving forward down the road.
For example, when a marriage ends in divorce, it does not always mean someone has committed adultery. It may mean the husband has been stuck in front of the television too long. The dating has stopped. The compliments have ceased. No more doors are opened. Of the wife has given up and stops caring about the marriage and the home. Such passive, benign neglect opens the door to failure.
Some people are in bad health not because they have gone out and done things destructive to their bodies, it’s just that they have neglected to keep in good health.
Some Christians begin to regress spiritually not because they have committed gross sins. But Satan has done just enough to keep them out of the Word, he has done just enough to keep them off their knees, and really all Satan has done is just enough to cause them to neglect the things of God.
I think it starts with the passage we just read where Paul says, so great a salvation. When you don’t know what you have, you take it for granted. God is saying, your salvation isn’t just salvation, its a so great salvation. It is salvation that cost God His Son and has given us eternal life. It’s a salvation that has provided us with the enabling power of the Holy Spirit and the authority of God’s Word. It has provided us a home in heaven and eternal rewards. It is a salvation that answers our deepest needs and calms the hurting heart and restores the broken life. That is how great a salvation we have. So how can we neglect it? We really can’t if we want to remain spiritually healthy. So the first sign you will see along the road of a backsliden state is the sign of spiritual neglect.
2. The second warning sign we encounter is spiritual insensitivity. Hebrews 3:12-13 Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
I am sure most of us have met people with hard hearts. When people say, "I don’t care" that is an expression of the heart that is not sensitive anymore, that has become callused. How do we get a hard heart, Paul says we are duped into it by the deceitfulness of sin. But that is not for the purpose of having an excuse because he also warns us against allowing an unbelieving heart to develop.
An unbelieving heart doubts God and when we doubt God we open the door for evil and instead of turning to God, we will begin to run from Him. When we read of the children of Israel and their journey through the wilderness we find they were hardened because they had been tricked by sin. Understand, sin is tricky because it will stop you from believing God and His promises and begin to believe Satan and his lure of sin.
Let me put this into a perspective to help you understand this sign post. There are people in prison today because they had stopped believing their mom and dad and listened to their friends. And their friends lead them to crime and prison where if they listened to their parents, they would still be enjoying freedom. The lure of sin. And God is saying, if you would only listen to Me and stop listening to sin, your life wouldn’t be hard and you wouldn’t be duped into a life that is going nowhere.
Now how do you know if you are spiritually insensitive? A quick test. If you sin is bothering you less and less. In other words, if you can go to sleep tonight with things in your life that would have made you sick a year ago, that is a sign of a hard heart.
3. The third warning sign posted is the sign of refusal. To refuse the spiritual diet that is necessary for growth. Hebrews 5:11-12 Concerning him [Melchizedek] we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
Melchizedek, a type of Christ’s priesthood, wanted to take them into some deeper truths but then he realized he was talking to the Sesame Street generation. They did not understand what he was saying because they had not grown up yet, not because they did not have opportunity, but because they refused to grow. They basically were saying, I don’t need to know this stuff, I don’t need to understand, I don’t need to study. They had become willfully rebellious to God.
Here is how it works. You start by neglecting the things of God, which will eventually render you insensitive, and then you will get to where you don’t want to know even when you can know so your spiritual life is headed down the wrong road to a backsliden state. And it is all a choice. Some Christians are satisfied with milk because that is all they have ever tasted.
So how can you know if you are a milk toast Christian? Has your understanding of the Christian faith remained at the level where you had begun the journey. Are you only able to say Jesus Loves Me this I know, or are you moving into the deeper truths, not only knowing how to stand before the throne of God but you are actually standing there?
Paul tells them, you should be teachers by now, but instead you still need someone to teach you the spiritual ABC’s.
If you can open your Bible and explain God’s truth to someone else, you are a meat Christian. If you can lead someone to Jesus Christ with your Bible opened to the book of Romans, you are a meat Christian. But if you can’t answer your spouses questions about the Bible, if you can’t answer your children’s question about the Bible with something other than ask the Pastor or the Sunday School teacher, you are a milk toast Christian. A pabulum saint.
We have all heard the statement, if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Well it applies to our Christian faith. If you hear the Word of God but never practice it, you will eventually forget even what you have learned of it. You will hear a passage and think that you had never studied it because you had lost the teaching by loss of application.
The fourth warning sign posted along Backsliden lane is the sign of withdrawal. Hebrews 10:23-25 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.
This is a strong warning to believers because unbelievers don’t hold fast. You don’t tell an unbeliever to continue assembling together, because they don’t have any reason to assemble. One of the warning signs along the road comes when you don’t feel that church matters anymore. You don’t feel like you need to be in the House of the Lord, that you can do your own thing. I have heard the excuses and you have to. "I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian." This may be technically true, but you do have to go to church to be a good Christian. I know, as the pastor you expect me to say that, but it isn’t my idea, it is God’s idea because the Bible teaches us the kind of Christians God wants us to be and it says we need the dynamic fellowship, the dynamic motivation and the dynamic inspiration that comes from the people of God, and not only do we need it, we need to give it to someone else. So those who don’t attend church are only thinking of themselves. They forgot about God and about other people. If they were looking at the church as God’s house, they would remember that God seeks our worship--reason enough to attend church whether we get anything out of a particular service. If they were thinking of the rest of the family, they would come and give not their leftovers, but their best because there are other people to be cared for.
The passage in Hebrews says our job as members of the Body of Christ is to "stimulate one another to love and good deeds." You job is not just to be blessed, your job is to be a blessing.
To often we have people who come to church to collect. "Where is mine today?" But they offer very little in the way of what God wants to do in the lives of others through them.
Backsliding Christians don’t have the time to be with the family of God. It is not a priority, if they miss church, it is no big deal to them. Many Christians going down the wrong road are traveling alone. When you know a brother or sister who doesn’t come to church anymore and there’s not a good reason, you can predict something is wrong in their spiritual life and we need to pray, go after them and stimulate them to get right with God.
The last road sign is the sign of rejection. The ones who ignore this sign will fall away from the faith, deny Christ and wind up in the rank and file of lost sinners.
When a believers problem is neglect, he can get help.
When he is insensitive, I can help him.
A believer who willfully refuses to grow can have a change of heart and put aside milk.
When a brother or sister withdraws from fellowship, they are not beyond help.
But when an individual gets to the point of rejection, apostasy, its too late. How serious is it, Hebrews 10:26 states, For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. This person may or may not make it into heaven, it is for God to judge, but Hebrews 10:29 says, How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? You know, I don’t want to find out, and I how you don’t either, but there are people who have pushed it and they will. Those who have need heeded the signs along the wrong road.
This tonight is a very serious teaching but who would like to go to the doctor and he finds out they have a tumor and be sent home with a prescription to take two aspirins and lay down, or who would like to have the fire department come to your home and tell you while you house is on fire, don’t worry about it, it will burn itself out soon.
God in His teaching in Hebrews is not playing games with us. We have the hope and knowledge that He is full of grace as long as we are here, living and breathing, we can alter our course, we can get back on track, we can avoid impending doom.
Nine years ago, I joined with the Youth Department in an annual bike ride they call High Gear to raise money for Speed the Light. We cycled from North Bend to Lake Chelan, 150 miles in three days. Leaving Wenatchee on the final day and cycling along the Columbia River, we hit a stretch where the wind was blowing so hard against us, that no matter what gear we shifted to, we were making no progress, the wheels turned, but all we were doing was remaining upright, cycling, but really spinning our wheels. It is hard to make progress with the wind blowing against you. But coming into Chelan, the wind had changed and it was against our backs, and the same winds that had hindered, now became the winds that helped. What was the difference. A change in direction.
Many of us are struggling because we are going the wrong way and the wind of God’s Spirit is blowing against us, but if we will change direction, the same wind of the Spirit will help us and speed us along lives path.
alter --- prayer
