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#8: The Solution to Falling Away

Hebrews

Feb 22, 2015


by: Jack Lash Series: Hebrews | Category: NT books | Scripture: Hebrews 3:12–3:14

I. Introduction
A. Review of Heb.3:7-12 from last week: Jewish Christians in a parallel situation to the Israelites in the OT. And so the author warns them not to follow the same path to unbelief. Basically he is saying this: You’re in the same situation our forefathers were in when they traveled in the wilderness. Don’t repeat their stupid errors. Don’t get bitter. Don’t get cynical. Don’t stop hoping and trusting. Don’t harden your heart.
B. The passage ended with this warning in v.12 “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”
II. Explanation of Hebrews 3:13–14
A. In v.13 he elaborates on the hardening of the heart which he spoke of in v.7 and 12. He talks about being “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
1. Let’s think about the deceitfulness of sin. Every sin involves believing a lie.
2. Satan is a master liar, the best ever. He once convinced the two most blessed people in the world that they were deprived! (Adam and Eve)
a. Even as we flee one sin, he catches us in the opposite one. He turns tax collectors into pharisees and sluggards into workaholics.
b. Not only this, but Satan is a disguise artist. 1Pet.5:8 says that “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” And that’s very true. But that tells us about his heart and his vicious intent. The Bible doesn’t tell us that Satan comes to us LOOKING like a prowling lion. He is a prowling lion, but he almost never looks like one.
c. Satan is a master fisherman. He knows us better than we know ourselves and uses the best lure to catch each kind of fish.
d. He doesn’t come to us looking all vicious and scary.
e. More often he comes “disguised as an angel of light.” (2Cor.11:14) How beautiful!
f. He doesn’t want to set off our alarms. He doesn’t want us to be on high-alert. He wants us to relax so that we’re not “sober-minded and watchful.” (1Peter 5:8a)
3. Not only this, but as humans we are experts in self-deception.
a. Most times when we are blatantly sinning we still think we’re doing the right thing. We defend our anger or our cruelty or our stealing or our lying.
b. We convince ourselves that what we want to be true is true.
4. We also live in a world which lies to us. The wilderness especially lies to us.
a. It seems to tell us that we are deprived. It seems to tell us that God doesn’t care. It seems to tell us that it goes on forever. It seems to tell us that it’s all futile. Even though none of those things are true.
b. What we see is often a lie. It contradicts what we know is true.
c. That’s why the Bible tells us to walk by faith and not by sight. (2Cor.5:7)
d. Even atheists must learn to walk by faith and not by sight. E.g. electric fence with warning sign: it looks safe, it sounds safe, everything about it seems safe — except the sign which says DANGER.
e. But the world — as it appears — deceives us.
B. But v.13 also gives some instructions about how to combat this power of deceitful, hardening sin: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
1. Exhort: your translation may say “encourage” here. But it does not mean encourage in the sense of “affirm.”
a. The Greek word here is PARAKALEO. It’s a very rich and broad word. It’s translated by 14 different English words in the ESV NT, including urge, encourage, comfort, beg, appeal, exhort, implore, plead, entreat, invite and four others.
b. You may have heard of the noun form of this word, which is PARACLETOS: helper, counselor, advocate, the word Jesus used to refer to the coming Holy Spirit in John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7.
c. It includes a wide range of ministry: from comforting someone with tears of sympathy, to giving someone a swift kick in the pants.
d. Jesus is the supreme example of this word. Think of all the variety with which He dealt with people. Sometimes He was very strong. Other times He was amazingly tender. He even wept. But in each case He was acting to love the person the way they needed to be loved, He was saying what the person needed to hear.
2. So what's the key to avoiding this apostasy? Hebrews 3:13 says that it is the every day faith-encouragement which we receive from the people of Christ.
a. On our own each of us is prone to be impressed by arguments which question or compromise our faith in Christ, but in the healthy atmosphere of Christian fellowship the emptiness of these arguments is more easily seen as manifestations of “the deceitfulness of sin.”
3. It’s interesting how often the solution to a problem is not a simple answer or a quick fix, but a change in lifestyle, a change in life pattern. Here in Heb.3:13 the solution to their temptation to abandon Christ, the solution to their spiritual struggle is to have a certain pattern of interaction with other believers.
C. 14 “For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
1. We come again to one of these gentle warnings about perseverance. And there are more to come.
2. This verse helps us see the flaws of two errors:
a. Those who teach that once you decide for Christ, once you walk the aisle, once you say the sinner’s prayer, you will go to heaven, even if you later repudiate Christ. Hebrews denies this over and over again.
(1) And this is also good motivation for those who are being tempted to give up on Christ. Don't think you are safe if you abandon Christ.
b. Those who teach that those who truly know Christ and put their faith in Him can lose that faith and their salvation.
(1) As we’ve seen in other verses, this verse doesn’t say we WILL share in Christ, if we hold our original confidence firm to the end. It says “we have come to share in Christ, if we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
(2) In other words, we either have a share in Christ or we don’t. And if we do, that will be proven by holding our confidence firm to the end.
(3) It is not that we are saved by perseverance, but that we are saved by faith, by true faith not artificial faith, and true faith perseveres. That is, those to whom God gives the gift of true faith, He makes sure to preserve in that faith.
(4) “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” doesn’t mean we come to share in Christ BY holding our confidence firm to the end. It means we prove we have come to share in Christ by holding our confidence firm to the end.
(5) Salvation is not by perseverance! It’s by sharing in Christ: in His righteousness, in His atoning sacrifice.
(6) Holding our original confidence firm to the end here refers to keeping our confidence in Christ, as opposed to having self-confidence that we will make it to the end.
(7) It is specifically by NOT putting any confidence in ourselves, but by looking to Christ, counting on Him.
(8) It is not having confidence in our keeping the faith. It is having confidence in Christ to the end.
(9) Some say that we’re saved by faith in the sense that faith is a good thing which pleases God and is rewarded with salvation. In other words, faith is a good work. But that’s not the point at all.
(a) Salvation is not in being good, it is in maintaining our confidence that He is good. It is in not being good, it’s in looking to the One who is good. It’s in putting our confidence and our faith in Him.
(b) It is not faith as a work that saves us. That’s putting faith in our faith, instead of in Christ.
(c) The reason why faith is the instrument of salvation is because faith is looking to Him instead of to ourselves! Faith is calling on Him, trusting in Him.
(d) Being faithful enough to be rewarded with salvation is the opposite of salvation by faith.
(10) The question is, who are you depending on for your salvation? If you’re depending on yourself, if you’re depending on your strength or your godliness or your good deeds or your good heart or your faithfulness or your obedience to God, then you’re already lost. Only if you depend solely on Christ, on His righteousness, on His mercy, on His atoning sacrifice, on His cleansing blood, only if you put your confidence in Him do you have a share in him.
(a) This may seem like a subtle difference. But it’s the difference between being saved by Christ or being saved by ourselves with Christ’s help.
III. Four things God is teaching us in v.13:
A. God wants us getting together.
1. The Christian life is not a solo. It is a choir. We need each other.
2. I love fires in our fireplace. We only burn them when it’s very cold, and I started one nine days ago and it’s been burning ever since. There are some things about fires which illustrate what we’re talking about.
a. Logs burn only when they’re clustered together. An important part of tending a fire is moving the logs to be touching each other. If they’re left apart, they will go out.
b. Fire is a matter of community — a community of logs, if you will. Fire is given to one log by the burning logs around it. No log can burn on its own, but a few logs clustered together will burn until there is nothing left.
3. "In isolation from fellow-believers each individual among them was more liable to succumb to the subtle temptations which pressed in from so many sides, but if they came together regularly for mutual encouragement the devotion of all would be kept warm and their common hope would be in less danger of flickering and dying." – Bruce
4. "I don't need you!" (1Cor.12:21-22) and "You don't need me!" (1Cor. 12:15-16) are heresies! But that's what we say when we think that we can make it on our own without regular input from the body of Christ.
B. God wants us to PARAKALEO one another.
1. It’s not just a matter of being together. It’s a matter of addressing one another. It’s a matter of choosing to engage in other people’s lives. I need them, they need me.
2. A good coach doesn’t just watch his players play. He gets involved. He can’t be out there on the court/field, but he is not detached. He is exhorting. He is encouraging. He is instructing. He is rebuking. He is inspiring.
a. Think about the halftime talk. Coaches have a few minutes to talk with their team to get them ready for the second half of the game. Sometimes good coaches are affirming, sometimes they’re explaining, sometimes they’re angry. Sometimes they even weep. Why? Because they care so much about the success of their team, and because they’re trying to give their team what they need in order to go out there and do their best.
3. We are supposed to have this kind of role in each other’s lives, I to you and you to me.
4. Hebrews 10:24–25 “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
a. “Let us consider how to stir up one another” We’re supposed to be trying to figure out how to bless one another, how to help one another succeed.
b. The Greek word here for “encouraging” is PARAKALEO, the same word used as in 3:13 for “exhorting.”
5. In order for this to happen, we have to let others get to know us. We have to welcome others to speak into our lives. We have to love people enough to say what needs to be said, and to say it in the way it needs to be said.
6. It’s so easy to stay on the sidelines. It’s so easy not to get involved. It’s so easy to hang back and let someone else do it. If we don’t invest in others, we won’t get hurt, we won’t suffer heartbreak.
7. Not only this, but we don’t like others telling us what to do. We’re so independent. Americans generally don’t like people speaking into their lives.
a. Many of the world’s most talented athletes never succeed in sports, because they won’t listen to others, they won’t accept coaching. And no athlete is talented enough to succeed without being willing to be coached.
C. He wants us to do it frequently.
1. This tells us that we need frequent and regular Christian influence/inspiration/exhortation: "exhort one another every day."
2. This was the pattern in the early church.“Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes...” (Acts 2:46)
3. Are we actually supposed to meet every single day of the week?
a. I think we need to take this seriously. A life of Sunday morning Christianity is not what the NT has in mind.
b. I think this "every day" can be tempered by the change in our circumstances. We have our own Bibles. The original readers of the book of Hebrews didn’t. We have Christian radio and internet. We have the phone and texting and Facebook, etc.
(1) But clearly this kind of impersonal exhortation is not enough to meet the requirement. We need a significant amount of face-to-face fellowship.
4. Evaluate your life. Do you have daily encouragement in the Lord?
a. Some get it in the context of their family, and that’s wonderful. Christian encouragement in the context of the family can be an important piece of the puzzle, if it actually takes place.
(1) But it’s not enough. In the early church they gathered with each other and not just in families.
b. Are you in a small group? Do you meet with other Christians for fellowship, accountability & prayer?
c. Do you listen to sermons? Do you read Christian books? Do you spend time in the Bible?
d. Do you get daily Christian input and frequent meaningful, personal contact with other believers?
e. We are barraged with worldly philosophies. Don’t you think we also need to be listening to the voice of God?
D. He wants us to be urgent about it.
1. In v.13 he draws attention to the ‘Today’ in Ps.95:7, quoted in Heb.3:7: “Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
2. God doesn’t want us to procrastinate about this. Do it today. He wants this to be taken urgently.
3. Mañana
a. Satan does not rest. He is engaged in an earnest campaign to pull each of us away from Christ.
b. God wants us to think about where we are and who we are and what’s happening and what the future holds. Satan just wants us to go along unthinkingly.
4. The fact is: we are in a battle. We’re fools if we don’t think we need supplies and ammunition — and things to build our morale.
5. And it’s not just that you need it, but others need you. God’s given things to you in order that you can pass them on to others who need them. You’re a part of a body called to serve one another.
6. If you’re not getting daily input, why not? Do you not realize you have an enemy?
7. Christ is with us, but one of the ways He’s with us is through His people.
8. Qualification: Sometimes people have no options. God is calling them to walk alone with Him for a time. Think about Job. His kids were taken away. His wife was no help. His friends did no good. He had to walk alone. It was part of his suffering. And sometimes God makes people go through times like this. But it’s not very often. More often it’s used as an excuse for not being engaged in fellowship. But I didn’t want to leave the impression that there are no exceptions to this principle.