Warning For Taste Testers Series

I. Introduction

Last week we looked at chapter 5 verses 11-14 and considered the challenge for believers to not settle for a diet of milk, but to include solid food in order to grow in Christ and discern good from evil in areas that may not be explicitly described in Scriptures.

Today we are moving on in this warning passage. Last week I joked when Pastor John was here that there was one passage in the entire book I did not want to preach, and it is this passage. J. Vernon McGee in his commentary opens his remarks on this passage with words that reflect the attitude with which I approach this passage. Please listen as I read through these couple of paragraphs:

This chapter, by all odds, contains the most difficult passage in the Bible for an interpreter to handle, regardless of his theological position. Dr. R. W. Dale, one of the great minds in the earlier field of conservative scholarship, worte:

I know how this passage has made the heart of many a good man tremble. It rises up in the NT with a gloomy grandeur, sern, portentous, awful, sulime as Mount Sinai when the Lord descended upon it in fire, and threatening storm clouds were around Him, and thunderings and lightnings and unearthly voices told that He was there.

Every reverent person has come to this section with awe and wonder. And every sincere expositor has come to this passage with a sense of inadequacy,…..

With J. Vernon McGee, that is the way in which I approach this passage.

Although this message will cover the first 8 verses, verse 9 serves as a bridge between sections and so we will include that in the reading. Turn with me now to Hebrews 6, starting in verse 1.

Heb 6:1-9 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits.

4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7 For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. (ESV)

Now, the first three verses of this section pose no great difficulty and continue with the through that was included in the message last week chapter and verse.

Look back at these first three verses:

Heb 6:1-3 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits.

This brings us to the first point in the message,

Believers are called to:

II. Go on to Perfection (Maturity ESV) (v. 1-3)

God’s work in sanctification.

Matthew 5:48 "Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

We can’t do this, we will never be perfect in this life, but that does not change God’s call for us to grow in maturity, to grow toward perfection

Consider Paul’s attitude in Philippians 3 when discussing spiritual maturity:

Phil 3:12-15

12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,

14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.

Phil 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;