Taking a Closer Look at Spiritual Defection

Sermon Transcript

Mr. Wardle, my 10th grade driver’s education teacher, used to periodically show us driver’s ed films. Now sometimes those films were just corny movies filled with teenagers fastening their seat belts. But other times, as you might remember if you grew up in my era, they were gruesome films. Filled with gruesome images, they had gruesome titles, and they were just gruesome.

But even back then as a teenager, I recognized that Mr. Wardle wasn’t deriving any pleasure from showing these gruesome films. He was following the district curriculum that knew, and he, of course, agreed, that we as teenagers needed some sober warnings. We needed some warnings that would wake us up to the potential danger that existed when we stepped into these new vehicles and went driving around town. So he showed us the films. And they were upsetting to some students. But they were an important part of our education.

You see, love doesn’t dictate that some teacher just throw us the keys and say, “Have fun.” Love also requires that there’s some sobriety that’s included in the education that might remind us that there’s a lot to this thing called driving, or in our case, from Hebrews chapter 6, that there’s a lot of potential danger in this thing called the church. That in reality, for you to hop into the church, oh, it has potential for great blessing here and in the next life, but it also comes with some potential danger.

And there’s no book quite like the book of Hebrews for interspersing encouragement with some gruesome films, if you will—some reminders, some pictures that say, “You know what, you ought to take this seriously, and you ought to be concerned about the potential danger of you hopping into this without really understanding exactly what it’s all about.”

So if you haven’t already opened your Bibles, let us embark on the middle verse of probably the most sobering warning in all of the book of Hebrews—Hebrews chapter 6, verse number 6—and try and remember a bit of the context that even last week began to have that biting sense of now, are you sure that you know what you’re doing?

Because as we saw last week, there is the ability for us to experience a lot of blessings in the church, and when it’s all said and done, miss the ultimate blessing of redemption and forgiveness of sin.

Look again at verse number 4 as we get the beginning of the sentence. We’ll focus in this morning on verse number 6, but let’s get the whole of what the writer of Hebrews is trying to say to us here.

It is impossible, he begins, for those—and we looked at this list of five things last week—who’ve once been enlightened, who’ve tasted the heavenly gift, who’ve shared in the Holy Spirit, who’ve tasted the goodness of the Word of God, they’ve tasted the powers of the coming age—it’s impossible, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again, and they’re subjecting Him to public disgrace.

Then he gives an example, verses 7 and 8. It’s like the land that drinks in the rain, often falling on it, and it produces a crop that’s useful to those for whom it’s farmed. It receives the blessing of God, but the land that produces thorns and thistles—and the assumption is it’s also getting the rain that’s falling on it—it’s worthless land. It’s in danger of being cursed, and in the end, it will be burned.

Here was the encouraging part that ultimately helped the first century audience kind of loosen the grip on the pews as they heard this letter read in their church. He says, “Even though I speak like this,” he says, “we’re confident of better things in your case.” Now, you underlined this last week, right? “Things that accompany salvation.” And that was a key verse for us to understand the context of all that’s being said in verses 4 through 6.

And that is whatever’s being said about drinking in the benefits of church and of Christianity, he says when it comes to falling away and trampling underfoot, or in this case he says crucifying the Son of God all over again, he says, “We expect better things concerning you.” But you need to know this is a possibility. You could be like the land that drinks in the blessing, doesn’t produce fruit, produces instead thorns and thistles, and even in this one lifetime, it’s in danger of being cursed, but God’s common grace will prevail, but in the end, you know, it’ll be burned.

He says, “But we expect better things in your case, dear friends.” Things that accompany salvation, because salvation doesn’t accompany this. It doesn’t include this. Whatever this is, this is something different, which led us to look at verses 4 and 5 and say, “Wow, can you experience all those blessings and still not be saved and regenerate?” And the answer last week was clearly we can. As a matter of fact, we looked at you could do all of those things to some degree and still not be regenerate.

As a matter of fact, we saw examples in Scripture that proved it and put flesh to these principles and concepts, and we say we’ve seen it, we’ve watched it happen. People have experienced all kinds of blessings by being associated with Christ and His church, and yet in the end they haven’t been regenerate. And so we said, “Wow, that’s sobering. Let’s make sure it didn’t happen to us.”

That was bad enough for us to compare phony to real last week, but now we’re going to deal with the word in verse 4 which we put there in your worksheet in bold because we can’t really make sense of verse 6 unless we have these words attached to it: “It’s impossible for those that have all these benefits, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance because to their loss they’re crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace.”

We can’t make sense of this text unless we start by understanding that there are three different kinds of people. Please jot that down. There are three different kinds of people in the New Testament. And to understand where this particular verse is going and to whom it’s addressed, ultimately, we need to know, well, what kinds of people are there in the New Testament?

Now, this may seem really basic, but for the sake of comparison, it’s important for us to itemize them this morning.

Pointy finger number one: non-Christians. Clearly in the New Testament there is teaching that would lead us to believe there are those people who are not Christians—duh. Passages like Romans chapter 2, verse number 8, which summarizes their plight by saying they’re self-seeking, they reject the truth, they follow their evil desires, and in the end they receive God’s wrath. Okay, that’s a good summary. Bottom line is: I live for myself, not interested in your Christianity. I have no interest in being, you know, a churchgoer and listening to your preacher talk about God, and I don’t want any part of that. I’m not interested.

Non-Christians, okay? For the sake of comparison, let’s at least clarify this way: these are people that are not right with God, and they know it. They know it. I mean, “If there is a God, your little invisible God you always talk about—if there is such a thing—I don’t even care. I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not interested.” I reject it. These are people that are not right with God, and they have some sense of knowing it, okay?

Secondly, there are, for the sake of discussion and brevity, let’s just call it professing Christians. And let’s put Christians in quotation marks. These are people that are described in passages like Matthew chapter 7, verses 21, 22, and 23. And we studied that briefly last week as an aside to what we were talking about in the comparisons made in Hebrews chapter 6, verses 4 and 5.

We said there are these people that end up at the judgment seat with this great resume about all the things they had done, and in the end they hear these words: “Depart from me,” Christ says, “I never knew you.” Now these are people—and you would quickly agree, I hope—who thought they were going to be received with open arms by Christ, and Christ surprises them on judgment day and says, “I never knew you.”

These are professing Christians. For the sake of comparison, let’s just say they’re people who think they’re right with God, but they’re not. If you ask them, “Are you right with God?” they’d say, “Yeah, I’m right with God. Sure. I’ve had my sins forgiven. God loves me. I’m his child. Yeah, I go to church. I’m okay with God.” Just like the people in Matthew 7 who brought their long list of accomplishments, and they are all connected with the right people, the right places, the right organizations, and they say, “I’m surely going to get in,” and Christ says, “I never knew you.”

Professing Christians, but not real Christians.

That leads us to the third pointy finger: there are real Christians in Scripture, of course. People that are described in passages like 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 7, which we also looked at last week. These are people whose faith is tested, and when it’s tested, it is, as the text says, proved genuine. They have genuine faith, not phony faith.

See, because the phony faith, when the pressure comes and the test comes, it proves to be false—phony. But real faith is the kind that, when tested, it proves genuine, and they continue in their faith and their confidence in Christ, as the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 3—twice—firm to the end.

For the sake of comparison, let’s say this: these are people who are right with God, and they bear fruit for the long haul. Which he says we ought to receive as a father disciplining a son. We ought to find some comfort in that.

Okay, apostasy. Apostasy is a kind of sin, a special kind of sin, a grave kind of sin, which Hebrews 6 is all about.

Can non-Christians engage in apostasy? It’s not even logically possible, right? Why? Because they have no adherence to Christ, professed or otherwise. They don’t care. They don’t go to church. They don’t go to Bible studies. They have no interest in Christ. So they can’t apostatize. They can’t be apostate. There’s no apostasy for the non-Christian.

Two boxes left.

Professing Christian—someone that’s a professing Christian. The Scripture would say, the totality of Scripture, and we’ll prove it here in this text, says, yeah, it’s possible. The professing Christian can possibly engage in the gravest of sins, a sin called apostasy. Spiritual defection can happen. They can abandon Christianity, okay?

Now you say it’s possible. Does that mean it doesn’t have to happen? No, it doesn’t have to happen. As a matter of fact, let’s blow this box up in our minds or maybe out in the margins somewhere. There’s three options.

Option number one is that the professing Christian moves to real repentance and faith and becomes a real Christian, right? Would you agree with that? We could have a professing Christian like I was, like you probably were, in that dating period, and we move from dating to genuine conversion. And so we move out of this period of professing to be a Christian to really possessing the Holy Spirit in our lives and being a genuine redeemed person. And that’s our prayer for people that are professing Christians.

There’s also an option, and I don’t want you to miss it. That’s why we’re spending a little extra time on this box. Option B would be perpetual dating. We just date for the rest of our lives. It is the Matthew 7 experience, who are utterly surprised. They wake up on Judgment Day, and he says, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” And they say, “Why? Because I apostatize?” No, there’s no apostasy there. It’s just you lived a life of professing to be saved. You were in with the community of the redeemed, but your heart was not regenerate. Therefore, you know what? You just dated your whole life. You never really got connected with Christ.

Option A, move to real Christianity. Option B, perpetual dating. Option C, apostasy.

Apostasy is a reality for those who profess Christ but aren’t really regenerate. And you may say, “Well, man, wouldn’t that be easy to see?” The answer is no. Remember last week’s sermon, verses 4 and 5 of Hebrews 6? It’s not always easy to see because look at the things they’re saying. “I’m enlightened. I’ve tasted the heavenly generosity of God. I’m sharing in the conviction and ministry of the Holy Spirit. I have tasted the goodness of the Word of God. It’s changing my life and the powers of the age to come. I’ve seen God do some big things.” It’s hard to look at that person and say, “Wow, you know what, you’re not real.” Well, they look real.

Bottom line is, though, either they’re going to move from that stage of just experiencing these things to actually being regenerate, or they’re going to stay in that state for the rest of their life, or they’ll engage in what’s happening in verse number 6 of Hebrews 6. They will fall away one day, okay?

That leaves us with one more box. And this is the box that is controversial to some, but let me make it clear. When it comes to real Christians, can they apostatize? Can they become apostate? I think the answer in Scripture is clearly no. It’s impossible for real Christians to do this.

Now, I know you’ve heard otherwise, and I know that you’ve probably heard sermons from people on the radio or elsewhere. They’re going to teach Hebrews 6:6 and say, “Right there, here is an example. If you compare it with verses 4 and 5, that list is so compelling, they must be Christians, and if they’re Christians, it says right there in verse 6, they can fall away.”

Do you know what you forget when you say that—that doesn’t seem to mesh with the rest of the sermon, when you hear these people talk about how this teaches that you can lose your salvation, as a real, genuine Christian, you can lose it—is the first three words of verse number 4. Take a look at that again. The first three words of verse number 4, which starts this sentence, which in Greek, like it is in the NIV, is at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis, it’s clearly saying, “Hey guys, it is”—what’s the third word? Impossible.

Impossible to what? Middle of verse 6: be brought back to repentance. It’s done. You can’t be brought back to repentance.

Now when you hear someone say real Christians can lose their Christianity, how often do you hear them say, “And they can never get it back again”? That’s not what the theologies that I read about who take Hebrews chapter 6 and say, “Well yeah, this teaches you can fall away as a real Christian,” but you know what—they’re quick to say at the end of the sermon, “Come on back. Would you come on, hop back on the train. I know you lost it and you live for yourself and all that, but get back on board now.”

If this is teaching that you can lose your salvation as a real Christian, you do see the problem here, right? You get one shot at it. It’s not what this text is teaching, see?

As a matter of fact, let’s explode this in our mind a little bit, this box, and let’s just go to a few passages real quick.

How about John chapter 10? Just to get the overall view of what the Scripture teaches regarding my inclusion in the body of Christ. John chapter 10. Once you jot it down, turn with me to verse number 27. John 10:27. This is the good shepherd discourse. Jesus is talking about the fact that he is the good shepherd. And he is now going to talk about his relationship to the sheep. He’s already started that early on in the chapter. But now he’s going to hone in on the connection between the sheep and the shepherd.

And if he’s the good shepherd, he says this about his sheep. John 10:27. He says, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” Verse 28: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; and no one can snatch them out of my hand.”

“Well, who are you? You’re just some Galilean preacher from Nazareth. I don’t know if I can trust—” Verse 29, if you’re thinking that: he says, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,” and you’d all acknowledge that, even if you’re debating whether or not I’m the Messiah. But he says this: “No one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”

Possible. If you are my sheep, you will hear my voice, you will follow me, I will give you eternal life, and that’s a permanent relationship. Nothing can change that.

Okay, you’re in chapter 10—turn back to chapter 6. John chapter 6. John chapter 6, verse 37.

Jesus has said a lot about this already in the book of John. Now remember, the key phrase in verse 29 of John 10 was, “The Father who has given them to me” isn’t going to let anybody, you know, snatch these sheep out of my pen. No way.

Same concept, verse 37: “All that the Father rather gives me,” that’s all these people, “they will come to me.” They will. Everyone that the Father in the war room of heaven with the big map, and he says, “These people going here,” all of those people will come, he says, to me. “And whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.”

Verse 38: “For I’ve come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me.” And the one who sent me in the war room of heaven said, “These people here.” And he says, now I’m here, they’re going to come to me.

He says, verse 39: “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of them.” None of all that he has given me. I’m not going to lose them, but I’m going to raise them up on the last day. Their resurrection on the last day to blessing is done. It is settled in heaven.

Verse 40: “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and trusts in Him”—with what kind of faith? Temporary faith? Faith that when tested fails? No, real faith—”shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

There was a certainty about the way Jesus talked as it related to Him and His followers. If you are a genuine follower, you’re there, you’re done.

Now, he looked at Judas, and he knew he’s not one but he sure looks like one, and he’s fooling a lot of people. He’s carrying the money bag around in the church, right? He’s the guy everybody trusts. But Jesus knew—son of perdition, born for damnation. That’s what the text says. Those are modern words for it, but that’s what Jesus said. Bottom line is he sure looked like a converted person, but he wasn’t.

But all that come to me—all that the Father has drawn over here and said, “These are yours”—he says, “I’m not losing any of them.”

Don’t need to turn there, but it’d be worth jotting down Romans chapter 8, verse 35. And you know this, don’t you? Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. It’s stated in a rhetorical form. He says, “Who? Who’s going to separate us from the love of Christ?” And then he lists all those rhetorical questions. Shall trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, height, depth, any other—no, nothing. Neither height nor depth nor any other thing can separate us from this covenant relationship of love that Christ has toward us that the Father has placed on us.

How about Philippians chapter 1, verse number 6? And this speaks to more than their generosity for the Apostle Paul’s mission trips, if that’s what you’ve heard, Sunday school grads. This has to do with not only the working of generosity in their lives, but the working of the salvific plan, which includes bearing fruit, which is what they were doing in the book of Philippians. And if you didn’t know that controversy, skip it. Get to the verse, and here’s what it says.

Verse 6: “Being confident of this, he who began a good work in you”—do you know the rest of it? “Will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Do you see how it doesn’t depend on the one who runs? See, doesn’t depend on me. Ultimately, if I’ve been called to Christ by God and he has set me there, I will come to him. I will hear his voice. I will follow him. How long? Hebrews 3: to the end. I will do that to the end. And God will get the glory because according to passages like this, including Hebrews chapter 13, it is a work of God.

And speaking of Hebrews 13, tucked away in this great little context about generosity and contentment, just jot it down. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 5. There’s a statement that would be really hard for us to reconcile as Christians if I could be an apostate. He says to these people, as he said elsewhere to the apostles, “I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.”

If that’s a reality for a real Christian, see, I can’t find a place for that verse. If there is a theology of professing Christians who go through life without God’s discipline, they are people that adhere externally to Christ, but they’re not genuinely repentant, converted people, then I recognize, yeah, these are people that it may appear God has forsaken them, but they never had him to start with. That’s why he doesn’t say, “Depart from me, I used to know you.” “Depart from me, I never knew you.” See?

He doesn’t cast them out, he doesn’t lose them, you can’t run away. But you’d better make sure you’re real. See, there’s the difference. See the difference between sin and apostasy. That little chart helped? I hope so, because that took some time to put together. But I’m getting better. I’m getting faster at it.

Number three. Let’s get to the heart of this text. Let’s go back to Hebrews chapter 6, verse number 6, and try and understand apostasy as best we can.

Now, if you look at your worksheet, you have four words listed there. What’s the word? Serious. Here’s the thing about apostasy: every component part of it is serious. It is serious sin. It is serious. The whole context is serious. It’s big time serious.

Let’s start with the first thing. Remember that verses 4 and 5 precede the statement about the impossibility of these people being reconciled again or being brought back to repentance. And that is these five things: once enlightened, tasted heavenly gifts, shared in the Holy Spirit, tasted the goodness of the Word of God, tasted the powers of the coming age. They have a lot going on. They have had, letter A, let’s put it this way, a serious connection with Christianity. Serious connection.

These weren’t people you handed a gospel tract to and they said, “Well, I’m not interested.” See, that’s not an apostate. It’s not even an apostate. That guy next door you keep giving Christmas cookies to, hoping he’ll come to the Christmas musical at your church, and he rejects you every year—that’s not an apostate. Just because he says no to a gospel presentation or an invite to church, that’s not apostasy. Apostasy requires a serious connection with Christianity.

As a matter of fact, if you’re in Hebrews 6, turn back to chapter 2, and let me show you how serious this was for that first-generation audience that heard this letter for the first time. Hebrews chapter 2. Look at verse number 3 and 4.

Hebrews chapter 2, verse 3. He says to this audience, the very first warning in the book, “How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” This salvation which was first announced by the Lord and confirmed to us by those who heard him—those are the apostles—God also testified to it by signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

That’s major. These people didn’t get a gospel tract drawn by some guy named Jack Chick, right? These guys watched the apostles heal people. And I’m not talking the kind of quote-unquote healings you see on TV. I’m talking about the kind that make the front page of the Jerusalem Post where someone’s eyeballs are sunk back into their head and Peter touches him and all of a sudden now he’s got 20/20 vision with crystal clear, beautiful eyeballs. I’m talking about that kind of healing.

I’m talking about the kind of healing—and you know my daughter, she’s paralyzed from the knees down, and so what does she have here for calves? Nothing, just bones. Bones with skin, and it’s just all atrophied.

Now, can you imagine someone who’s been paralyzed from the waist down, as they were in the first century, who stood by the pool, or laid by the pool, rather, and they were there being propped up by crutches, and they were completely atrophied from the waist down. Just bones. No thigh muscle, no calf muscles, and they were there, was crippled from birth. Matter of fact, they probably had all kinds of twisted bones. If it weren’t for surgeries, that’s what we’d see with a lot of our modern people that are paralyzed.

And here, can you imagine the shadow of Peter going by, and all of a sudden now the guy has these plump, big thigh muscles, and he could go down to the gym in Jerusalem and go pump weights or do squats? Can you imagine that? That’s not what you’re seeing on TV, is it, under the name of the miraculous. But that’s what was going on in the first century. And these people saw it with their own eyes. They watched it.

They had a serious connection with Christianity. They had truth in massive measure. They heard the words of the representatives of Christ. And speaking of people with massive exposure, how about a guy named Judas? Remember him from last week? He went out two by two when Jesus sent him, and they were doing the miracles, just like Matthew 7. “Didn’t we perform many miracles in your name?” “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Serious connection and exposure to Christianity.

Letter B. Now I know if you look at verse number 6, this doesn’t sound very serious. What’s the words, verse 6? “If they”—what’s the words? “Fall away.” Oops, I fell. Sorry, my brother pushed me. Just fell off. I was there, I was tracking, then boop. I tripped.

That’s not the concept here. Falling away is much stronger. As a matter of fact, I’ll prove it to you—turn you to a passage in a minute. But first, let’s write this down: it is a serious renouncing of truth.

Though falling away to our English ears, it sounds a little bit like I just tripped, I stumbled. It’s not stumbling, see. Peter stumbled. It was sin, it was egregious. He cried about it when he was done. He said, “I don’t know the guy.” He was even willing to curse to tell this little girl in the court of Caiaphas that I don’t know this guy. That’s not apostasy. It is a serious turning away.

As a matter of fact, go to, if you would, Hebrews chapter 12. Another warning in the book of Hebrews. I think this is the fifth warning section of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 12. Look at the words that are used here. And again, you can see both A and B in this, because it’s the same message with a different theme and different words, but it’s the same message of warning. It’s the fifth time that the red asphalt film had been shown.

And it says in verse 22, Hebrews 12:22, “You have come to Mount Zion.” And that was the Old Testament idealization of Jerusalem as the dwelling place of God. The heavenly Jerusalem, not just the dusty city, man. “You’ve come to the place where God lives, the city of the living God. You’ve come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly.” Why? Because people are getting converted and repenting. And Jesus said repeatedly, if you repent, man, there’s a party in heaven. The angels rejoice over one sinner.

So you’ve got all kinds of angelic beings excited about what’s going on in this place that you’ve been coming to every Sunday. “You’ve come to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. You’ve come to God, the judge of all men. To the spirits of righteous men made perfect. You’ve come to Jesus,” verse 24, “the mediator of a new covenant. To the sprinkled blood that speaks of a better word than the blood of Abel.”

Now you’ve come to a big thing now. You’ve got a serious connection with Christianity, verse 25: “See to it that you do not”—listen to these words—”refuse him who speaks.” We’ve already had stronger words in Hebrews chapter 3: your hearts—don’t let them be hardened. If you’d hear his voice, don’t harden your heart. Don’t refuse him who speaks.

“If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth”—at the Old Testament—”if they got in trouble for that, how much less will we if we now”—underline this phrase, here’s the sense of falling away in Hebrews 6—what are the words? “Turn away”—”if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven.”

See, that’s what apostasy is. It is having a serious exposure to truth, and I seriously turn away from it. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore. I am not interested.

It’s not about, you know, “Jim, who you’re calling—come on man, you haven’t been to church for a few weeks.” “Yeah, I know my kids, I got soccer, it’s busy, it’s hard, my wife doesn’t want to come, it’s a long drive.” That’s not apostasy. It’s laziness and sin maybe, but it’s not apostasy.

Apostasy is the guy who says, “I’ve experienced, I know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I’m not a Christian. Don’t call me one. I’m not coming to your stupid church. I’m done.” That’s serious turning away. And he says, don’t let that happen to you. Don’t turn your back on Christ. Don’t turn your back on the truth.

Apostasy requires a serious connection with Christianity. Apostasy is a serious renouncing of truth.

Thirdly, if you look back in Hebrews chapter 6, it says, “because to their loss”—why can’t they be brought back to repentance? “Because to their loss, they’re doing this. They are crucifying the Son of God all over again.”

And I’m thinking, what are you talking about? How many times did Jesus get crucified? Once. But here, in some sense, their behavior is crucifying him all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Your life in some way is a public disgrace, and it’s like crucifying Christ all over again.

Why did Jesus die on a cross? He died as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. He wants to save you not just from the penalty of sin. His intention was to save you from the practice of sin. He died for that purpose, to redeem you out of a lifestyle of sin and the penalty of sin.

When you now, apparently whatever this means, do what you’re doing after renouncing the truth, you are disgracing him, and it’s like now you’re living for the very thing he died for. And he died to put sin away. And you’re engaging in sin and indulging in sin. And you’re really just a disgrace to Christ right now.

Number three, or letter C, if you would: it’s a serious indulgence in sin. What follows the renouncing of truth? An indulgence in sin. We’re not talking about someone who trips in the Christian life. We’re talking about someone who says, “I don’t want anything to do with it anymore. And I’m going to live the way I want to.” And you watch their life, and sure enough, they live the way they want to, which is antithetical to living for Christ. That’s apostasy.

Apostasy: serious connection with Christ and Christianity—not Christians, but serious connection with it. Then they say, “I’m done with it.” And then you watch their life after that, and sure enough, they’re living in sin. They live a life of indulgence in sin. They disgrace Christ.

Letter D. The whole point of Hebrews 6:6 in combination with the beginning of the sentence in verse 4 is that it is impossible to bring them back to repentance. Let’s put it this way: there are serious consequences, and let’s try and unpack a few of those. Serious consequences.

The serious consequences of this can be summed up in Hebrews chapter 10. I mean, we see the exception in verse 6. They can’t be brought back to repentance, okay?

Now, whatever repentance they had, it must not have been genuine because they’re not living in repentance anymore. It’s like me telling you that I quit smoking last week as you watch me light up a cigarette before church. “Yeah, I quit last week.” “What about you? You quit?” “Yeah, I quit. Saturday. You should quit.”

If I said I quit smoking last Saturday and I go through that with you and I’m smoking my cigarette, have I quit smoking? No. But I did quit last week kind of, right? Because I didn’t smoke Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, man. But Friday I had to have one, so I’m smoking again. “Yeah, whatever—at least I quit.” No you didn’t quit. “But I did.” Does that sound silly to you?

That’s exactly the conversation I have with people talking about their Christian brother who doesn’t come to church anymore who’s turned his back on Christ. I have that conversation all the time. “Oh he repented.” Yeah sure, he’s a Christian. “Yeah he believed in God.”

Well, wait a minute. Belief in God and trust in God—trust in Christ—when it’s tested, it continues on. Repentance is the same way, see. Repentance that’s real, when tested, continues to embrace Christ, not sin.

Oh yeah, I understand. Christians fail. They sin. They do wrong with discipline, and God’s trying to bring them into a more righteous lifestyle. But don’t tell me you’ve repented if you’re back to doing what you used to do all the time. That’s not repentance. It’s fake repentance.

Now, they said they quit last Saturday. See, here’s the thing: if you seriously connect with truth, and then you seriously reject it, then you seriously engage in your old behavior again, here’s the thing—yeah, it wasn’t real. And you’ll never be brought back to real repentance again.

The serious consequence is there’s nothing left for you but judgment. That’s what it’s going to be.

As a matter of fact, Hebrews chapter 10— is that where I turned you? Hebrews 10. Take a look at this verse. Verse number 26 and following. And again, this is not just tripping up. This is not like, “Oops, I didn’t mean to sin, but I did.”

Look at verse 26: “If we”—what’s the word? “Deliberately keep on sinning after we’ve received the knowledge of the truth.” Oh, I embraced all that truth stuff. I went to Sunday school, man. I know all that. I even taught Sunday school for a while. But you know what? I’m going to do what I want to do now. Deliberate sinning.

After you’ve had that—you’ve had a serious connection with Christianity—you’ve seriously renounced that now—you’re seriously living in sin—the Scripture says, then here’s the thing: there’s no sacrifice for sins left for you. It’s done. There’s no redemption for you.

Here’s what you’re left with, verse 27: “Only a fearful expectation of judgment and the raging fire that will consume God’s enemies.” That’s what the Scripture says.

Here’s what people tell me: “I know he’s okay because he did accept Christ when he was young.” What? He’s turned his back on everything. Whatever connection he had with Christianity, he renounces it now, and he lives a life of continual sin. He indulges in that. And you’re telling me what now? “Oh, he’s okay. He prayed the prayer.” What?

Scripture says if we deliberately keep on sinning after we receive the knowledge of the truth, there’s no sacrifice for sins left, but only a fearful expectation of the judgment and raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

Now, “anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.” They didn’t even pull out a box of Kleenex for him. They just said he gets what he deserves.

“How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished, who has trampled the Son of God underfoot and has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that”—here we go again—quote-unquote—”sanctified him.” Now, it set him apart from a lot of things in the world, but it didn’t set him apart in a genuine redeemed sense. It didn’t set him apart into the family of God, because really, he’s living a life that insults the Spirit of grace.

“For we know him who said, ‘It’s mine to avenge; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’” We know him. He’s not going to say, “Well, you’re in the church.” It’s you’re in the church or not. You continue in a path of deliberate sin, you’re going to have serious consequences.

And the serious consequences, specifically in Hebrews 6:6, are you’re done. No more repentance for you. You think you’re going to be brought back to repentance? No.

Now, if that seems harsh to you, it is. You’re getting it now. It is harsh. And if you want a kinder, gentler Christianity, as Simon says to the bad singers, go find people that will lie to you. Anybody catch that? Simon? Simon Peter? Simon Magnus? Simon Cowell? You’ve seen the show, right? But I love that. Isn’t it true? She’s singing terrible, and she’s arguing with him. “I’m not bad.” He says, “Fine, go to an audition where they lie to you,” right? We’re here to tell you the truth. That’s why there’s that weird love-hate with that guy, right? Because oftentimes, you know, he’s the only one willing to tell you the truth.

I’m not trying to—I did not plan a Simon Cowell illustration this morning. I’m so sorry. We’ll edit all that out.

The bottom line is this, okay? You want a kinder, gentler Christianity, you will forfeit the only Christianity that exists in the pages of the New Testament. And that is: there comes a point for people who A, B, C, reach letter D. Connect with Christianity, renounce it, indulge in sin, all with the word serious in front of it. There are serious consequences.

As a matter of fact, if you want a pattern of this, you can jot and study it later: Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1, verses 21 through 26. And if you were with us in our Romans study, you know this text because we looked at it closely and the repetitive nature of this phrase, “God turned them over.” Remember that phrase? God turned them over. God turned them over. God turned them over. What is that? It sounds like God’s given up on them. You got it. See?

Comes a point when you—and here’s the context—you know God. In that text, it says this: “They knew God, and they neither glorified him nor gave thanks.” See? Everything that they knew, all that truth exposure, they said no. So God turned them over, see, and said, “Fine.”

There comes a point for the apostate where God says, “Done.” Now, that’s a hard time to draw that line because I don’t know what serious is. I know what it is in the first century. You’re watching Peter do miracles, and you’re saying phooey on all this. I’m out of here. And you’ve seriously connected with that. I don’t know what it is in the modern day. I don’t know what it is in our church.

All I do know is that the Scripture teaches that you can come to a place after a connection with Christianity, a renouncing of the truth, and serious indulgence in sin, where God says, not only were you not ever a Christian to start with, you are so hardened in your sin now, you’re done, I’ve turned you over. It’s finished. There’s no repentance for you.

And you know what the early church was willing to do? They were willing to side with God on these matters. The modern church says, “No, that God’s too harsh.” The early church said, “If that’s what God says, that’s what we’ll say.”

Because Jesus instructed them, if you go to a town and you perform miracles and you do these mighty acts and you preach the gospel and they reject it, then you need to have longer prayer meetings for that city. Is that what he said? Kick the dust off your feet and leave town. That was an ancient Near Eastern sign: “Fine, here—you can have this back too. We’re done. See ya.”

Jesus taught people to do that.

As a matter of fact, he said to Chorazin and Bethsaida and the cities of the Decapolis, he said, “If the miracles we did here were done in Sodom and Gomorrah, you know what would have happened to them? They would have repented a long time ago.” But he said, “You guys didn’t. It will be more bearable in the day of judgment,” he says, “for Sodom and Gomorrah”—the most heinous example of biblical cities gone bad—”than it will be for you.”

And if you visit the Holy Land, as they call it, with us in the spring—and I know that you’re all signed up when we’re filled up, but get on a waiting list if you want to go. We may have a spot that opens for you, and I didn’t mean to give that announcement either. Sorry.

It is interesting. If you go to the ancient Near East, or if you study geology in college or whatever, you know that places like Palestine are filled with sandstone, which is all bright rock. They built stuff with this bright, light beige rock all over.

If you go to Chorazin, and you’ll visit the ruins of Chorazin with us, and the paint’s gone, and all the statues, all you have is ruins of Chorazin. It was built with basalt, or volcanic basalt. It was built with black rock. And it’s ominous to walk into Chorazin.

And remember passages like Luke chapter 10, when Jesus said it: man, it’s done. Your city’s done. And to walk there and to see the blackness against all that you’ve seen the rest of the trip, all this bright sandstone, and now here’s this place, and it’s just black—and it reminds you of the book of Jude, where he says, if you participate in this stuff and then you reject it, he says, darkest, dark part of hell is reserved for you.

That’s the roughness of the Scripture. And the Scripture is real clear on that. And the bottom line is this: the early church said, “Fine, we can pattern ourselves after God.” If God is clear that he’s rejected the apostate, he says, “Okay.” As a matter of fact, the New Testament apostles used to say it: “We’ve turned him over to Satan.” Remember those passages? Turned him over. Done. 1 Timothy 1, we’re done. He has rejected the truth. He’s had a serious connection with Christianity. He’s seriously renounced it. He’s seriously indulging in sin now. Done.

As a matter of fact, this will torque you. Are you ready? 1 Peter 5—1 Peter 5, verse 16 and 17. I’m sorry, verse 16 only. You can read verse 17, verse 16. As a matter of fact, I think that may be the last verse of the passage. You don’t need to turn there, but you’re already doing it, some of you. But you can.

Here’s what he says. Now, this is amazing. He says, “If anyone sees his brother”—quote-unquote—”commit a sin that does not lead to death”—that would be a real brother—”he should pray that God will give him life. There’ll be repentance.” I pray, I’m sorry. He says, “I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death.” “There is a sin that leads to death and I’m not saying you should pray about that.”

Can you imagine somebody leading a prayer meeting saying, “Well, these are the people we’re not praying for anymore. Don’t pray for these. They’re a lost cause.” The early church had a sense of those people on the apostate list.

“So let’s go around and make our apostate list, Pastor.” You know what? I’m not saying that. I’m trying to teach this text, and the text says there are some that after a serious exposure to truth, they fall away. They turn their back on this. They renounce their Christianity, and you know what the bottom line is? The early church said, “Well then we’ll kick our dust off our feet. We’ll turn them over to the enemy, and we’re not even praying for them anymore,” because we realize that God has turned them over.

That’s a hard thing to do in a modern 21st century evangelical American Orange County church. I realize that. But I’m just here to teach this text. And it says that’s a reality. There are serious consequences for the apostate.

All right, the screen goes up from red asphalt and Mr. Wardle comes back up.

Mr. Wardle was the kind of high school teacher—maybe you had one—who wore a bow tie every day. Did you have one of those? Every day. Dr. Wardle, Mr. Wardle. I don’t know, he wasn’t a doctor. Mr. Wardle wore his bow tie. And I remember the light would come up, the screen would go up, and he would come up to the little podium at the front of the room, and red asphalt had just gone off the screen.

We had this gruesome film on car crashes and dead teenagers. And I remember that. The lights would come up, and there would be like 15-year-old girls with their cheap mascara running down their cheeks. You know, they had cried through it. And I remember the guys—you were looking around like, “Wow, that was gnarly,” you know. People talk about it for days.

Mr. Wardle would get up. And I’ll tell you this: none of that was intended to be pejorative, angry, mean. Mr. Wardle had a way of at least showing us, I care about you guys. And I don’t want you to end up like this. He showed those films and he at least had enough of a congeniality to say you need to know. If you teenagers treat this thing with disrespect and you don’t treat that car with—this could happen to you. I love you kids. I don’t think he’d say that, but that sense was there, and I don’t want this to happen to you. He’d dry our tears, so to speak.

I love this because next week we’ll get to it and we’ll examine it. He says, “I’m convinced of better things concerning you.” And though we’re not in that text this morning, let me just at least let that resonate.

I hope that you this morning know this is not a whipping post for you. This is a time for us to say, yeah, we got to see the film because it’s in the curriculum, but the bottom line is I pray that us at Compass Bible Church, it’s not true about us.

I hope we don’t have the apostates in our midst that are ready to bail, and I pray that God’s work is so strong and his sovereign work in our hearts is so clear and so definitive that we are truly knowledgeable that we are in with Christ and he has brought us with his own blood, and we are not insulting the Spirit of grace, and we know what this is all about.

And you know what? I hope that our apostate ratio is really low. But it’s there, and we’ve got to be mindful of it, vigilant of the reality that there’s a lot of people that can attach artificially and not have the real thing.

I pray that all of us would be led, much like we were last week, to do a little self-examination. Say, “God, I want to make sure that’s not me. I want to make sure my faith is real.”

Let’s pray.

God, it is important for us to say to you that we want you and your Spirit to search our hearts, to try us, to know us, to see if there’s any wicked way in us, if there’s something in us that’s phony or false or plastic. If all this Christianity to us is nothing but external pressure or social pressure or family pressure from our wives or our kids or our friends—this ministry to your Son is nothing more than just an in-it-for-myself kind of experience—God, help us to sort that out.

I pray for all of us that we would, as 2 Corinthians 13 says, be able to test our hearts and test our lives and see if we’re of the faith. That Christ is indeed in us. And we thank you for the Apostle Paul who had the confidence to say, and he knew what was going on in his life enough to be able to say, that if you examine us, you’ll see we haven’t failed the test. Christ is indeed in us.

God, this is not about making us unsure of our standing with you. Ultimate goal of this text, as we’ll see here in the next two weeks, is to make sure that we are sure, to get us to the place of real assurance. But to be assured of where we stand with you, we’ve got to look at the potential of apostasy if our faith and repentance are less than genuine.

So God, we want to rethink this. We want to reexamine our hearts. And we thank you for this time to do it, even though it’s sobering, even though it’s hard, even though it’s harsh.

God, we thank you that you love us enough to not just toss us the keys and say, “Have fun.” You really want us to think through this. So we appreciate this reminder, even if it’s tough and difficult.

And we love you, and we pray that by the time our head hits the pillow tonight, before we go to sleep, we would have the assurance and the confidence that indeed we have repented of our sins. We put our trust in you as the exclusive way for us to be right with the Father. God, that there would be no doubt that your work in our life is genuine. Man, I pray that would happen as we have a day of reflecting on this sermon this morning.

Thanks for this time in your Word. Thanks for the study of your Word. Thanks for the writer of Hebrews and for these poignant texts.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.