A sermon based upon Hebrews 5: 11- 6: 1-12
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv,
DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
Sunday September 13th, 2020 (Growing In Grace)
Do
you know the name Tom Dooley? Not the folk song Tom Dooley, but Dr. Tom Dooley?
You
need to know his story, because Dr. Tom Dooley was a Twentieth Century saint.
While serving in the Navy, he saw the physical suffering of the people of
Southeast Asia - so much illness and suffering, so few doctors to deal with it.
When his tour of duty was over, he resigned his commission and went to
Indochina, now Laos, to serve as a medical missionary. There he poured out his
life on behalf of the people. He saw patients in consultation. He prescribed.
He did surgery. But not only that; he also recruited and trained doctors and
nurses. And, he raised money and built hospitals.
Tom
Dooley was a Christian, a devout Catholic. He had been made compassionate by
the compassion of Jesus. And, he felt that he had received a call from God -a
call to minister to the needs of those suffering people. His Christian
commitment was symbolized by a religious medal he wore always around his neck.
On the back of that medal he had inscribed some words by Robert Frost:
“The
woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,
And
miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Because
of his Christian commitment, he had made some promises to God. His healing
ministry was his way of keeping his promises. He had come to love the people of
Laos. Because of his love for them, he had made promises both to God and to
them. He worked at fever pitch, sometimes driving himself to near exhaustion.
How would he make a dent in the need? So much to do-so little time with which
to do it.
In
the midst of all of that, it was discovered that Tom Dooley had cancer. The
doctors told him that if he returned to the United States, availed himself of
the best medical care, and got plenty of rest, he could extend his life by some
considerable degree. But, his work was not finished. His commitment was not
complete. So, he decided to spend whatever time he had left continuing his work
there in Laos. If anything, he worked even longer hours. He continued to see
patients, train doctors and nurses, raise money, build hospitals. He worked and
worked and worked, until one day he collapsed, and shortly thereafter, he died.
At
the funeral service, the priest told the inspiring story of his life - a life
that looked very much like Jesus’ life of compassion. He told of how Tom Dooley
had invested his life in the healing of the people of Laos. He told of the
medal he had always worn around his neck, and he read the inscription:
“The
woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,
And
miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Then
the priest added, “And now you can sleep, Tom Dooley, because you have kept all
your promises.”
The
Christian life can be described in many different ways, but there no better way
to understand it than becoming a person who makes a promise to God and keeps
it.
And
the most important ‘promise’ we make is to follow Jesus, as the old gospel song
says, ‘wherever he leads’.
A FOUNDATION...
To
keep following Jesus is what Hebrews is talking about. Before the writer goes on to speak of God’s
promise, he addresses what it should mean for us to keep our promise to God by continuing
to follow a Jesus to grow, mature and keep moving forward in faith.
The
lack of spiritual maturity among certain Christian is the major concern of
Hebrews. These Christians are not moving
forward ‘to perfection’ (maturity) as they should (6:1). They have started drifting, and have become disobedient,
precisely because they aren’t maturing like they should (3:12-15). God had made
them a promise that one day, after the labors of life are over, they would
enter his rest (4:1-12). Now, they
are in danger of forfeiting God’s promise because of they have drifted far away
from Jesus (2:1).
Fear
for their future prompted one of the most famous warnings ever recorded in
Scripture: ‘How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation.’ (2:3).
This was not a fear that they would not find salvation, but this was a
fear that they might neglect and drift away (2:1) from the
salvation offered to them through the hope of Jesus Christ. Could we also, who have tasted of the
heavenly gift of God’s love, as they did, neglect, drift and ‘fall
away’ through our own immaturity or disobedience?
We
want to address that, but first, let’s begin where Hebrews begins. The writer of Hebrews is encouraging his
readers to ‘move on to perfection’, which is to move on toward growth and maturity in Jesus
Christ. His point here is that they
should have already moved beyond foundational, ‘basic teachings about Christ—-and
others that he has listed here, like ‘repentance’, baptism, and these other
basic teachings. They should have moved
beyond the basics, but they haven’t.
This
reminds me a controversial book that came out a couple of years ago, by NC
pastor JD Greer, entitled, ‘Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart!’ That title coming from a conservative pastor
of a large, growing, mega church shocked a lot of people, and made a few others
angry and upset.
Regardless
of the shocking title, the pastor was making an important point. He said that when he was a young Christian,
he was very insecure and kept asking Jesus into his heart. He did it again and again, every time a new, dynamic
evangelist came to town. He kept walking down the isle. He got baptized four times. He wanted and needed to be ‘sure’ of his faith. But then, one day, he grew up. He came to realize he should have been living
his faith, not just ‘getting saved’ over and over again. He even came to question whether being a
Christian should mean having security. He
realized that being a Christian should be mean trusting Jesus and learning to
take risks just like Jesus challenged
his own disciples to ‘launch out into the deep’ water (Lk 5:4). He realized following Jesus isn’t something that
happens because you say a simple ‘Sinner’s Prayer’, but it’s proved by how you live
your life with and for Jesus.
This
is exactly the point the writer of Hebrews is making. The Christian life isn’t about getting saved
over and over, nor becoming sure in everything, but it’s about growing up into maturity in Christ, and
becoming the person you decided and promised Jesus that you would become in
him. Another way to put it is that
sometime or other, you have to graduate Sunday School. I don’t mean that you should stop going to
Sunday School, but you need to grow from being a student to becoming a
participant and contributor to the faith.
The
reason this is important is because, as the old saying goes, ‘if you don’t use
it you’ll lose it’. Any person who does
not set goals, take steps, make advancements, and show improvements will lose
interest in most anything they undertake.
And as a follower of Jesus, as the Apostle Paul told the Philippians, you have to ‘strain forward’, press
toward a goal, and hope to win ‘a prize’ of your heavenly calling
(Phil. 3:14; 1 Cor 9;24).
If
you aren’t growing and advancing as a Christian, you are retreating and regressing
as a person. And just like the plant
Hebrews refers in this text, you are like a worthless crop and are ‘on
the verge of being cursed... dying, and ‘burned’ up (6:8). What are we to make of such direct language
as this?
IF THEY HAVE FALLEN
AWAY
Well, we could decide
to make nothing of it. We could have
the attitude which says: What’s the big deal? We all die, eventually, don’t
we? You could say: So, I remain an
immature Christian. Do I really have to go
deeper, higher, further? I like to keep things
simple. I have other things to do. I’m busy.
I don’t have time to advance in my faith.
This is the attitude
of many, but Hebrews has a warning. If
you remain immature in your faith, the result is that you don’t stay ‘where’
you are or the ‘way’ you are. You drift
away (2:1) and eventually you fall away, Hebrews says (3:12; 6:6,
see also Mark 417, 14:27; Lk 7:23, 2 Pet. 3:17). Your faith becomes worthless (6:8). This is what happens when your faith sits still,
but life moves on. Life is always
moving. If you don’t move with it,
nurturing your faith and growing in faith, you’ve got problems. It’s like flying a plane: You’re either
soaring, or crashing. It’s like a swimming
in the water: Your either swimming or sinking. Or, as Hebrews gives in an example:, it’s like
the crop in your garden: It’s
either growing and producing, or your faith is being choked (6:8), is dying and
will rot.
Your faith in Jesus can
be like taking in food too. If you have tasted
of the heavenly gift (6:4) as Hebrews suggests, and you have ‘tasted the
goodness of the Word of God’ (6:5), but you did not swallow, your life isn’t
being nourished and your spiritual life will be malnourished and it will die. How can you be saved by faith when you have no
faith left? As Hebrews puts it, How
can you escape, if your neglect so great a salvation?
The language of
Hebrews is pretty direct and sharp,
whether you are reading it directly or reading between the lines. As Hebrews 4:12 says ‘the word of God is
living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, ...we are all laid bare to
the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. In other words, to put it simply: ‘You can
run, but you can’t hide.’
Many Baptists, at
least in America, have resisted such warnings from Hebrews’. Many throw up the phrase
‘eternal security’ or ‘once saved, always saved’ and try to say
to themselves, this surely can’t happen to me.
I can certainly understand why
people say this. This text is troubling,
threatening, and challenging too. It
suggests that our salvation is a work left unfinished. It suggests that saving faith might not rest
upon faith alone. It suggests that our
“Peter Pan-Faith” needs to leave “Neverland” and grow up and go to work just like
a twenty something ‘tween’ needs to do.
Hebrews is suggesting
something else too. Faith is not a ‘once
and for all’ transaction. Too many Christians have the mistaken notion,
that to ‘walk down an isle’ at church , to make a profession of faith, and to
get baptized is all that it means to be a Christian. Of course, Faith begins
with all these kinds of things, just as Hebrews says, and our Faith in Jesus is
based upon the finished ‘saving work’ of Jesus on the cross. Still, as the Scripture affirms, this faith
in Christ’s saving work must still be ‘worked
out...with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2: 12 ) in our own lives. Of course our salvation is finalized and finished
on the cross, but it still must be appropriated into our lives in the ‘work’ we
do and the live we live. If our faith
doesn’t work and mature, this says something we too need to ‘pay attention’
too (2:1).
In 1984, one of the
greatest biblical scholars ever known in Southern Baptist life, professor Dale
Moody, studied Hebrews and came to believe that many Baptists were misreading
Hebrews if they held to the mistaken idea that no matter what you do, no matter
how you live, you won’t ‘lose your salvation’.
In his statement to Baptist
Press, Moody said “there is a superficial faith and a saving faith, a
temporary faith and a permanent faith.
The superficial faith falls away, but the saving faith perseveres to the
end.” Also Moody added that once those who had
experienced a temporary faith, that is a faith that does not grow and
mature, and they fall away from it, it is impossible to restore them. In other words, if your faith is superficial and temporary,
and you lose it, then you can’t return to faith in Jesus ever again, as Hebrews
says, even in the King James Bible: “For it is impossible to restore again
to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly
gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the
goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then
commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and
hold him up to contempt (Hebrews. 6:4-6).
Despite the scriptural
foundation for his beliefs, Moody’s views did not agree with the Southern
Baptist idea of the ‘security of believers’, and so this man, who was called
“the most knowledgeable biblical theologian among Baptists” (Duke McCall) was
dismissed and fired from teaching. Dale
Moody’s thirty-five year tenure at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
came to an end because of his biblical views on apostasy. These
are views that most all biblical Christians in the world hold, except Southern
Baptists.
‘There’s a lot of
biblical dynamite here. You may not
agree with Moody and you may not like to hear or read what Hebrews warns. Even Moody used to try to clarify this
conclusion with a cute little phrase, ‘The Faith that fizzles before the
finish had a fatal flaw from the first.’ What he was trying to say is that you certainly
can’t lose your salvation by accident, like you might lose your keys, your
wallet. As I used to hear baptist
preachers quoting Jesus in John, ‘No one can snatch us out of God’s hand,’
but as a Methodist friend once rejoined:, ‘This doesn’t mean you can’t walk
out’.
For me, we just can’t
take Hebrew’s warning away. While I
don’t think you can ‘lose’ salvation that shows evidence of being alive,
active, and well, I think anyone should have
reason to be concerned if their faith is ‘dead on the vine’. I don’t think anyone should trust their faith
to any popular interpretation of Scripture, but we should actually read what
Hebrews says, and take it very seriously.
If you faith isn’t maturing, growing, and developing, and is adrift, you
could be at risk. The key that unlocks
the door to God’s future is to have a living, active, viable ‘Faith’. And this isn’t the faith you once had, nor
the faith you want to have, but it’s ‘a living’ faith that ‘meets the test’. As Paul reminded the Corinthians: “Examine
yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you
not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the
test! ( 2 Corinthians 13:5).
Will Willimon tells a story
he once heard from Rabbi Friedman. A pastor was called to meet someone at a
beautiful location high up on a cliff. When
they sat down together to have a conversation,
the person commented how ‘loving and caring’ the pastor was. The pastor answered “Thanks, but why did you
want me to meet you here?”
“It’s
a beautiful spot but a bit unusual location for a conversation.”
Well, it’s because this place, this cliff
overlooking town, the view from up here, has become an obsession for me. I just
can’t get it out of my head. Thought that maybe you could help.”
“Help you with an ‘obsession’?” “In what way?”
“It’s
kinda hard to talk about. But you are always so affirming and are such a good,
open listener. “You see,” the person
continued, “For the longest time I’ve had this urge to come up here and jump
off this cliff. Just to see what happens.”
“What?” “See what happens, are you serious?” “You could die!”
“Well,”
the person answered, “I don’t see it as jumping off! I’m just planning on walking on the edge and
see what happens! I’ve always been kind
of lucky. Besides, life’s been a getting stale lately, and I thought this might
give me a rush.”
“No,
You can’t be serious. Why would want to do this?”
“Pastor,
don’t you know that in the Bible, didn’t Jesus say that ‘God will send angels to
take care of you.”
“No,
Jesus didn’t say that, the devil did.
The devil was trying to get him to do what you’re talking about.”
“Well,
maybe it is the devil, maybe not. Who am
I to judge? “No pain, no gain!” Isn’t
that what they say. I’ve a got a real
spiritual of adventure in me. I like
living life on the edge.
‘Man,
you’re talking crazy! The pastor
said. This is scary! ...You don’t have to do this!”
As
the person looks over the cliff, the pastor reminds him: “Now, please don’t do
this, but if you jump, it’s your decision, not mine!” I can’t stop you....
“Why
not!” The person said, as they jumped.” (Stories,
by W. Willimon, 2020, Abington Press, Location 284, Kindle Edition).
That
story was told to remind pastor’s they aren’t Saviors. We can help people, but we can’t save
people. But the story also reminds us of
something else. This is something that
never stops, even after we become a Christian.
We always have ‘free will’. While I don’t think anybody can accidentally
‘lose’ salvation, we can lose faith.
And it takes faith to ‘endure to the end’.
Our
need for faith doesn’t stop when we become a Christian. We always have the freedom to follow and grow
in faith, and we also have the freedom to drift and fall away from faith. Does this mean we lose our salvation, or does
this mean our faith wasn’t true faith?
That’s really the wrong question. The right answer is that any faith that
doesn’t isn’t growing and doesn’t follow through, ‘has a fatal flaw from the first’.
Even ‘flawed’ faith can appear real, just like counterfeit money. The only one who knows the difference is us,
and God. So, it’s up to us to constantly ‘examine ourselves‘
WE FEEL SURE OF BETTER
THINGS...l
There’s certainly good
reason to keep growing and maturing in our faith, rather than neglecting it. And we are reminded, as this text ends, that
God isn’t out to get us, but this direct talk is to warn, remind, and prevent
the ‘worse’ from happening. The author writes to encourage the Hebrews
toward maturity in their faith. He wants
them to affirm their faith in Jesus and to rest assured of ‘hope to the very end’ (6:11).
Isn’t this always the nature
of God’s warnings to us in all of Scripture?
God isn’t out to get us, but to save us.
And the greatest enemy we have, is not an enemy ‘out there’ somewhere, and
it’s certainly not God; who is for us, not against us; but the greatest enemy
is ‘within us’ —it is our own selves.
During
the early years of football, as the second quarter ended in the championship
game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants, Green Bay Coach
Curly Lambeau thought about what to say. This would be one of the most important chalk
talks of his career. With the Packers losing 16-14, the players counted on him
for a revised game plan.
Unfortunately,
Lambeau never gave that all-important halftime talk. He got lost in thought on
his way to the locker room. He opened the door to what he thought was the
clubhouse and wound up on the street. Before he realized his error, the door
slammed shut behind him. The coach was locked out. Lambeau pounded on the door,
but it did no good. Then he raced to the nearest gate. The security guard
refused to let him in. "If you're the coach, what are you doing out here
on the sidewalk?" the guard sneered. Lambeau hustled off to another gate
and another guard. But no amount of pleas or threats could get him in there
either. The second guard shoved him away saying, "Yeah, sure, and I'm the
King of England."
Meanwhile, back in the locker room, the
Packers were wondering where their coach went. As the halftime minutes went by,
the puzzled players waited. They couldn't agree on a new game plan. By this
time, their angry, red-faced coach had charged the main gate, only to be
stopped once again. Screaming at the top of his lungs, Lambeau attracted a big
crowd, including some reporters.
The
reporters recognized Lambeau right away. They convinced the guards that he was
indeed the Green Bay coach. By the time he reached the locker room, though, the
second half was about to begin. Without
Lambeau's instructions, the Packers faltered in the last two quarters and lost
the championship 23-17. (Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, THE FISHING HALL OF
SHAME (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1991).
Coach
Lambeau's blunder reminds us of something
God would never do. God would never
lock anyone out from his love. As CS Lewis once said, the gates of hell are
locked only from the inside. If we find
ourselves outside of God's loving mercy and grace, its because we
have locked Christ out and neglected to heed his call to forgiveness, redemption,
and grow to maturity in his love.
Recently, when Harvey
Weinstein was convicted of terrible crimes against women, a news reporter asked
one of the jurors how he felt when they voted to convict. The young juror answered very wisely: ‘I took what we were doing very seriously. This is a human being not anyone less.”
I found it interesting
that a person who many might call a monster, but that the juror who had voted
to convict, with all that power in his hands, understood that every person should
be respected, even when they have no self-respect for themselves. In the same way, a person is loved by God
unconditionally. God does not lock any
sinner away from redemption, but we can lock God out. We are given free will. We have the freedom to grow and mature in
love, or we have the freedom to turn and fall away from love. God gives us this freedom. God will give us what we choose. Why would anyone ever neglect to choose
him? Amen
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