Sowed, Planted, Rooted // Pastor Bobby

We are still in Hebrews,

and we have now finally arrived at one of the most controversial texts in

all of the New Testament.

And so I'm going to assure you now,

since I am not the brightest candle in the candelabra there,

that I'm probably not going to give you the decidedly all knowing answer

to the questions this morning.

All right,

I'm just going to go ahead and warn you of that.

There are about four different ways to look at this thing.

And today,

more than any other day,

I got more handwritten notes on my notes than I normally do.

So I got to go fast,

and y'all got to listen fast.

So here we go.

We are still talking about the object of our faith,

which is Jesus himself.

Jesus is the object of our faith.

He is the object of faith.

And the book of Hebrews is the book that ties the Old Testament to the

New Testament,

and it brings out all of God's provision and preparation together with

the fulfillment in Jesus Christ in the book of Hebrews is kind of what is

the binder that holds both books together.

And so as we read,

we are going to read Hebrews,

chapter six,

verses one through eight.

And here we go.

Therefore, let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to

maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works,

faith in God,

teaching about ritual washings,

laying on of hands,

the resurrection of the dead,

and eternal judgment.

And we will do this if God permits.

For it is impossible to renew to repentance those who were once

enlightened, who tasted the heavenly gift,

who shared in the Holy spirit,

who tasted God's good word and the powers of the coming age,

and who have fallen away.

This is because to their own harm,

they are recrucifying the Son of God and holding him up to contempt for

the ground that drinks the rain that often falls on it and that produces

vegetation useful to those for whom it is cultivated,

receives a blessing from God.

But if it produces thorns and thistles,

it is worthless and about to be cursed and at the end will be burned.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for your word.

Thank you that you've spoken,

God, that's the first truth we pulled out of hebrews,

is that you have spoken and you've spoken through your son Jesus.

And God,

I thank you,

God, that your word is clear.

Our understanding not always is.

And so,

God, my prayer this morning is that we would hear from you,

that we'd hear your voice,

we'd understand that which you would say to us today,

and that God we'd get that better glimpse of who you are,

God, so that we might walk with you before you,

that we might be your children,

that, God,

you would be our heavenly daddy.

And we draw near,

and we pray it in Jesus name.

Amen. Alrighty.

So when I read this passage,

the point that kind of came out to me was,

is the verse down there toward the end where it says,

for the ground that drinks the rain,

that often falls on it,

and that produces vegetation,

useful to those for whom it is cultivated,

receives a blessing from God.

But if it produces thorns and thistles,

it is worthless and about to be cursed,

and at the end will be burned.

Reminded me of a parable that Jesus taught us about the Sower.

That the sower came out and was sowing seed,

the word of God,

the gospel,

the good news.

And. And some of the seed fell on the road,

and some fell by the road in the rocks.

Some fell among the thorns,

and some fell on good ground,

and that some.

The seed on the road just got picked up by the birds.

Immediately, the seed that fell by the road into the rocks got a little

bit of growth,

but then it.

Just because it had no root,

no depth of root,

it dried up.

And then the thorns of the world choked out the seed that fell among the

thorns. But the seed that fell among the good ground produced fruit 30,

60, 9000 times.

All that stuff.

You know,

the story,

the parable,

it's in two of the gospel accounts.

And so when I read verses seven and eight,

I started thinking,

all right,

so let's put this text in context with the book of Hebrews,

the writer of Hebrews.

And again,

some of you know who it is,

or at least have a conviction of who it is.

Other scholars do not,

and I'm not sure that we do know.

But I will say this.

The writer is communicating to an audience,

and he knows who his audience is,

and he's communicating the truths that that audience needs to hear.

And then that is written and given to us by the author,

who is God himself and is passed down to us in 2024 so that we can get an

understanding of what God wants to say to us.

Many of the believers that hear this whole text of the book of Hebrews

are former practicers of Judaism.

They're probably,

the majority of them are hebrew people that have trusted Jesus,

have received salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

And yet the challenges of the faith in that time period was that they

wanted to turn around and go back.

I want to go back to Judaism because it was very rigid and it was very

fixed. And as long as I dot this sign,

as long as I cross that t,

then, then I'm good.

You know,

as long as I follow the rules,

I'm good.

And yet,

what we've learned in this is that God speaks.

God has spoken through Jesus.

Jesus is the son.

Jesus is the heir of all things.

Jesus is creator,

he is sustainer.

He is the,

the exact expression of the essence of God.

He is the radiance of God's glory.

He is the king.

He is the high priest.

And we're in the section where we're understanding how much higher the

priesthood of Christ is over any other priesthood that has preceded

Jesus. So Jesus is proclaimed the high priest who brings the sacrifice

once for all.

Because, remember,

the Old Testament sacrifice was every year we got to do the day of

atonement.

Every year we've got to do the regular ritual things of Judaism.

But Jesus is the once for all sacrifice for the sin of mankind,

for the sin of the world.

That's why this whole passage opens up with this thought.

Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings.

Now, that doesn't mean bad teachings,

doesn't mean wrong teachings.

It just means the first teachings,

the basic teachings,

the foundational ideas that once we've trusted and received salvation

provided in the shed blood of Jesus Christ,

we don't have to keep going back and making sure that we've received

that. You see,

once you know Jesus right,

once you've been adopted by God as,

as our heavenly Father,

then you're a part of the family.

And I'm going to go ahead and tell you the overwhelming evidence of

scripture is that what God does,

we can't undo.

Okay? When God works,

you're not strong enough,

you're not powerful enough to undo what God does.

So what we see throughout scripture is this assurance of what God has

provided in salvation.

And then you get a verse like this or a passage like this,

and it's one of the passage in hebrews ten.

Sort of is a corollary to this right here.

But the point is,

is that God's the one who saves us.

And if you can unsave you,

that means you're stronger than God.

Raise your hand if you are.

I didn't think so.

You're not.

Okay, so I'm going to kind of make my way through this text and try to

point it out.

I can't follow my notes because I got too many.

All right,

let me remind you of a couple of things.

Matthew 20 413 says,

those who endure will be saved.

So there is this encouragement that we persevere in our faith.

Okay? Those who endure will be saved.

I want to reflect on another passage from one John.

Oh, man.

One John,

chapter two,

when John says,

there are those who went out from us,

but they were not of us.

Okay? So there were people in the body of Christ.

When John was one of the elders and one of the leaders of the body of

Christ, there were people who left the body,

but they were not actually a part of the body.

Okay? So there's some things here that we draw in.

So I want to remind you that of the things we've learned in Hebrews,

I listed them.

All right,

son.

Air, creator,

sustainer, radiance of God's glory,

exact expression of the essence of God.

Jesus is God.

He is king,

he is the highest priest,

all of those things.

But there are also the fore warnings that we've talked about.

The first one was a warning not to drift away,

right?

And I talked about surfing that day.

Second warning is the warning against unbelief,

as in the days of the rebellion.

Now, the context is the hebrew people and what God has done on behalf of

the hebrew people,

right? So the days of the rebellion,

being in the wilderness,

when they had seen God work,

when they had experienced the spirit of God moving them through the

wilderness, the pillar of fire and the.

And the cloud,

by day,

God had worked.

They had seen the spirit of God,

they had heard the word of God.

They had heard all those things.

That's the context for this passage right here.

They had presence of the fellowship.

And when God said,

go, take the land,

they said,

no, we want to go back to Egypt.

So you see the context there.

All right,

all right.

So the third warning,

which is right here in chapter six,

is the warning against apostasy.

What that means is to reject the faith.

To reject the faith,

to have been made aware of,

enlightened in a sense.

See, because we're going to get into that.

For it is impossible to renew,

to repentance those who were once enlightened.

Now, in this context,

the greek philosophy and all that sort of thing,

enlightenment is a reference to a knowledge to come to an awareness of

something. And just going,

I don't believe that.

I don't think that's true.

See, those who have been enlightened,

those who have tasted the heavenly gift,

what does that mean when you say the word taste?

What do you think?

See, it's Sunday morning.

Y'all already looking forward to lunch,

aren't you?

Well, the idea of tasted the gift of God from heaven.

This idea that God's people in the wilderness,

they literally tasted the gift of God.

The manna on the ground,

the quail flying through the water,

out of the rock.

You see,

there was a literal tasting there.

See, who've shared in the Holy spirit the fact that they're in the

presence of God at work among his people.

They shared the benefits of the spirit of God at work among the people.

You see.

They shared that goes on to say,

who tasted God's good word.

See, Moses is delivering God's word to them.

And they had shared in that,

you see,

and the powers of the coming age.

What is he saying?

That's the reference to the future,

what God has directed for the future.

So we get this picture in the context of the writer of Hebrews,

the author of scripture,

which is God himself,

inspiring these words to encourage people to be careful,

beware. There is a warning here,

folks. There's a warning here that what I put in the context of what I

refer to as churchianity,

there are people who sit in churches every Sunday morning who hear the

word of God,

who see the work of God's spirit,

who see the goodness of God and taste the goodness of God,

and who walk away and go,

I don't want that.

What does that mean?

Does that mean they've really,

truly, genuinely trusted Jesus for salvation?

All right,

so the last warning we'll get to later in Hebrews is just the outright

rejection of God.

So elementary teachings does not refer to bad teaching.

It just refers to the elementary stages,

not the mature stages,

because this is an encouragement to maturity.

So when we look at this,

this idea of when it says repentance from dead works,

what is he talking about?

He's not talking about the Old Testament practice.

What he's talking about is people who think they can earn their way into

heaven. You think you can be good enough to get to heaven?

No. So it doesn't matter how hard you work,

just try to earn heaven.

You're not going to earn it.

Okay? That's what he's referring to as the dead works right there.

Faith in God.

So our elementary trust,

belief, our faith in God,

what is that?

That's getting the knowledge right.

That's believing,

which believing in the context of scripture means putting your full

trust, everything that you are,

your identity in the person and work of Jesus Christ,

committing to it,

meaning, this is my life.

And finding the hope that we have in God.

You see,

that's what he's referring to right there.

Ritual washings.

Now, see what they're coming.

The hebrew people are coming out of this,

this thing where they got to continually be washing ceremonially,

washing their hands and doing the washings and the ritual washings that

he's talking about.

They're laying on of hands,

this idea of passing something on by the laying of hands.

And we see it in a couple of different ways in the Old Testament and the

new. But the idea is that these are the things that once you are in the

faith. And I'll go on and say,

in the resurrection of the dead,

right, eternal judgment.

See, Christ is the first resurrection of the dead,

and yet we get to be the promise of the following resurrection.

And the truth is,

eternal judgment is we're all going to stand before judgment.

Some of us are going to be seen in Christ,

some are not.

So when I look at all of this together,

I see the parable of the soils,

or the parable of the sower that's found in Matthew 13.

The seed is the word of the kingdom.

The road is no understanding at all.

The rocks are those that have a sort of immediate instant joy,

but there's no root.

The thorns are the ones that root grow,

and then the concerns and distractions of the world choke it out.

But then there is good soil where the seed goes in and roots plants,

and is real and produces fruit in multiplication.

So here's the challenge for us.

What is it that.

How do we read this?

For it is impossible to renew,

to repentance.

Those who were once enlightened tasted the heavenly gift,

shared the Holy Spirit,

tasted God's good word,

the powers of the coming age and have fallen away.

What's that a reference to?

All right,

so there's four ways you can understand this.

You ready?

Now, this is where I'm not going to tell you what you have to believe.

Cause that ain't my job.

All right,

I'm gonna get to the end of it,

and I'm gonna tell you what I believe.

And you can either go along with me or not.

You're not gonna hurt my feelings either way.

So, one,

the first understanding is that you can be saved and then not be saved,

right? If that is your understanding of what this says right here,

then guess what?

There is a lot of theology and a lot of groups out there that believe you

can lose your salvation.

Well, if that's true,

then there is no possible way that you can be saved,

be lost,

and then be saved again,

according to that one sentence,

no way.

And yet,

I know people who tell me,

say, oh,

I've been saved several times.

Well, not according to that verse,

you're not.

Okay, so if you believe there is a place where you can truly,

genuinely be saved and then be lost,

then according to what that is saying in that interpretation of it,

then you cannot be saved again because then you would be.

You would have to re.

Jesus would have to come back down here and get crucified all over again.

And we know that's not happening.

Right? All right,

second understanding.

Now, I'm gonna tell y'all something I'm on.

Cause I did this this week.

You can go to YouTube and find some.

Some really strong conviction people who believe any one of all four of

these. These views.

And, man,

they sound good.

They're sitting in front of a well lighted camera,

right? And they're.

And I go,

and the second view is,

is that this is not a reference to losing your salvation.

This is a reference to bad behavior which causes you to lose your rewards

in heaven,

that you lose some sort of blessing because you were not completely

faithful to your faith.

Right.

All right,

that's one and two.

Third one is this is a hypothetical statement or rhetorical statement

saying if it is possible to fall away,

then it is impossible to renew,

to repentance.

Now, I will tell you that most of the guys that I really like listening

to and reading and studying actually believe this one.

They believe that the writer of Hebrews is setting up an impossible

question, saying that if it were impossible,

if it were possible to be unsaved,

then it is impossible for them to repent because Jesus can't be

recrucified. That's that hypothetical rhetorical empire.

They call it something.

It's something Latin,

something absurd that he's making an absurd statement right there.

Then the fourth one is this is that these people are like those folks in

one john,

chapter two.

They were with us.

They were among us.

They looked like us.

They were a part of everything that we are,

and they left here.

But what we realized because they didn't endure was that they weren't

real. They were fakers.

They were false in their belief.

Now, I can find evidence for both three and four in these arguments.

I have always said that a person who would turn away from Jesus never

really knew Jesus.

Okay? That's always been my statement,

because I don't believe I can undo what God's done in salvation.

And secondly,

if I really,

truly know Jesus,

I'd have to be insane to walk away from Jesus.

Okay? So I tend to lean into the fourth one,

but can see the case for the third one,

that if Christ in all of scripture,

neither height nor depth nor any other thing can separate me from the

love of God.

That at my salvation I'm written in the palm of God's hand,

that my name is written down.

You know,

this was.

And I used to do this with people because I love the absurd.

All right.

I said,

all right.

You know,

God's got the book of life up there in heaven,

and I receive Christ and trust Jesus as my lord and savior,

and God writes my name down in the lamb's book of life,

right?

And then I decide and understand this.

This idea of falling away is not casual.

It's not some accidental walking away from the faith,

right? Oh,

I said a four letter word.

I must be lost again.

Oh, I treated somebody poorly.

I must be lost again.

That's not what this is a reference to.

This is a reference to having an awareness of who God is and what God has

done, and saying,

I don't want that apostasy rejecting the faith.

But I used to tell people,

once God's written your name down there and you decide to go do something

else, what did you do?

Oh, excuse me.

Sorry. In the character of God,

I just see that as ridiculous.

I see the assurance of God working in our lives to produce our salvation.

He's the one that saves us.

The evidence of that salvation is fruit.

30, 60,

90 times and enduring unto the end.

Perseverance, not falling back.

Because quite honestly,

folks, if the first one is true,

that you can be saved and then lost without the.

Without the possibility of repentance,

that can be frightening,

right? Well,

it is frightening because this warning is in here.

So I'm not saying it's not a warning.

It is a warning.

So if you're sitting in here this morning,

right, the parable that goes hand in hand with the soils seed.

30, 60,

90. Right?

After that,

in Matthew comes the parable of the wheat and the tares that it grows up

together. The weeds grow up with the wheat,

and you can't tell them apart,

but one of them produces fruit and the other one does not.

Folks, you know what this warning is,

and I'll go ahead and finish out the text.

They've tasted everything fallen away.

This is because to their own harm,

they are recrucifying the son of God and holding him to contempt.

Listen to this.

For the ground that drinks the rain,

that often falls on it,

and that produces vegetation,

useful, produces fruit to those for whom it is cultivated,

receive the blessing of God.

But if it produces thorns and thistles,

it is worthless and about to be cursed and at the end will be burned.

There is a warning in this text,

folks, where you choose to fall out,

guess what?

The gathering is made up of all kind of folks from all kind of different

backgrounds. I grew up in a really,

really, really baptist house in a really,

really baptist church,

and I was always subjected to that phrase,

once saved.

Always say that just means you can act any way you want to.

Well, no,

that's not what it means at all.

What it means is if you know Jesus,

you'll act like you know Jesus and fruit will be seen in your life.

Okay? And if God has genuinely and truly saved you,

you can't unsave yourself,

okay? You can't undo what God does.

So, folks,

our effort,

our energy has to be applied to the fruit.

You're not going to work your way into salvation,

but with God pouring into you,

let your effort be the fruit in your life to let God produce fruit in

you. Okay?

Whew. I'm glad that's over because every scholar,

every preacher I listened to over the last three or four weeks,

everything I saw in this,

they say this is one of the most controversial texts in all the New

Testament. Okay.

All right.

Do you know Jesus?

This morning?

See if you know Jesus.

Hey, you know what?

That's the identity,

not something that the world assigns,

not the distraction of the world.

If you know Jesus,

then draw near every chance you get,

every opportunity you find,

draw near to God.

I told y'all,

I got saved when I was eight years old.

My mama led me through scripture.

I prayed.

I said,

yes, God,

please forgive me for my sins.

Jesus, come into my life and save me and help me to live for you.

Now can I just tell y'all,

I was a teenager.

I did teenager stuff.

I went to my first two years of college acting like a look and see if

there's any children in the room acting like an idiot.

College, just to be honest.

But in my second year of college,

God said to me,

my way or the highway.

Guess what I realized in that moment?

God had never turned loose of me.

God had never released me.

God had never kicked me out for my behavior.

Okay? He was always holding on to me.

Those who endure to the end will be those who are saved.

Okay, we're going to sing one more song.

You get to respond to the word of God because by all means,

you're not responding to me.

You respond to what God has said to you this morning.

And if you know Jesus,

yay. If you don't know Jesus,

we want to introduce you.

Okay?

Let's pray.

God, thank you for today and for all that you do.

Thank you for loving us.

Thank you for your word.

God, you've spoken,

and I can see where lots of people can have well intentioned ideas about

these things.

But, God,

your word teaches us over and over again that you are faithful and true.

And, God,

you're the one who begins a good work in us,

and you will bring it through to completion.

So, God,

just continue to work in me.

Continue to work in us.

God, continue to draw us near.

And God,

help us to draw near to you.

And if there's even one person here this morning that doesn't know,

isn't sure,

God, I pray that we would know that we know that we know that we have

eternal life,

and we pray it in Jesus name.

Amen.