The book of Hebrews, continuing.
I had lunch on another day this week.
I don't want to give the impression that
I'm always out lunching with people, but this
time, a man who was the head of
the Christian Medical Society was in the city,
and he was a good friend of mine,
and he told me that he had been
in London and had gone to hear Dr.
Martin Lloyd-Jones.
And he said, Dr. Jones got up and
said, We are studying the book of Hebrews.
We have been 12 years in the book
of Hebrews.
12 years.
And he said, This is the third message
on this verse.
So this is the 15th talk only on
the book of Hebrews, and we're nearly halfway
through, so you'll see I go faster than
Dr. Lloyd-Jones goes.
The book of Hebrews, the sixth chapter.
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of
Christ, let us go on to perfection, not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead
works and of faith toward God, the doctrine
of baptism and of laying on of hands
and of resurrection of the dead and of
eternal judgment.
And this will we do, if God permits.
Since the next word is for, there's a
break, and we'll start with verse 3.
Notice what the writer said.
This was occasioned, these words here, were occasioned
by a condition among the Hebrew Christians to
whom this was written.
Something strange had happened to them.
They had reached a state of arrested development.
And as always the case, when development arrests,
it doesn't remain there, it starts back.
And that is what has happened.
Have you ever noticed these most disturbing words
preceding this?
It says in the 5th and 4th verse
back of it, in 5.11, "...of whom
we have many things to say and hard
to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of
hearing."
Now, the reason it was hard to say
it was not that the writer found it
hard to express what he had to say,
but that the hearer wasn't getting it, and
so it's difficult to say something.
Did you ever try talking to a person
that didn't know a word you were saying,
that didn't know your language?
Stand and talk earnestly to him, and just
shake his head, and maybe have one word
that he learned meaning I don't understand.
Well, that's the reason it was hard.
"...we have many things to say, but I'm
talking one language and you speak another," he
said.
"...seeing you are dull of hearing.
For, for the time that you have had,
you ought to be teachers yourselves.
For now you have need that one teach
you again, which be the first principles of
the oracles of God, and are become such."
I want you to see, are become such.
They weren't such, but they have become such.
"...have need of milk, and not of strong
meat."
They had actually regressed and gone back to
their childhood state.
After having obviously grown some, they started growing
backwards.
"...for everyone that uses milk," he explains, "...is
unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he's
a babe.
But strong meat belongs to them that are
of full age, even those who by reason
of use have their senses exercised to discern
both good and evil."
Now, he said that we were to leave
the first principles, that is, the elementary instructions
of the Christian faith.
We are to leave them, but not leave
them behind.
I want you to notice that.
That we are to not leave them as
one would leave one house and go to
another, or one city and go to another.
We are to leave them behind as a
builder who is building a house, lays the
foundation.
Then he leaves the foundation behind as he
goes upward.
And if it's a building like some of
the big buildings downtown, they leave that far
behind.
Then they go up a story, and another
story, and another story, up and up and
up, until they have 30 or 40 or
50 stories towering in the air.
And they have left the foundation, not that
they've departed from it, but that they've built
up on it.
Now, that's what the man of God means.
Now, what are these first principles which we
are to leave?
He names them for us so there'll be
no misunderstanding.
He says, "...repentance, and faith, and baptism, and
the laying on of hands, and the resurrection
of the dead, and eternal judgment.
These are the elementary first principles of the
doctrine, and we are to leave them as
a builder leaves the foundation and builds on
up.
Not laying again the foundation, he says, but
the structure must rest on the foundation.
However high it may tower into the sky,
it must rest on the foundation.
It rests upon the foundation of Christ and
of who he is, and of repentance and
faith in him, and baptism into the body
of Christ, and the coming resurrection of the
dead, and the judgment to come.
These basic doctrines of the faith, they will
rest upon them, and no matter how far
we go in the Christian faith, we never
leave these.
They're there as a foundation upon which we
build.
But the trouble here was that they never
went beyond the foundation.
They never went beyond the foundation.
The exclusive preoccupation with elementary truth is a
characteristic of evangelicals today.
The ignoring of Christian truth is characteristic of
the liberals, but exclusive preoccupation with the first
principles is characteristic of the average Church, even
the average Alliance Church.
He says that keeps us ababe all our
lives, for he shifts his figures of speech
back and forth.
We're told in school never to do that.
They call that mixing your metaphors.
Our Lord Jesus mixed his metaphors plenty, and
so did Paul, and so did everybody else
that had anything to say.
You don't go by your metaphors, you go
by what you're trying to say.
Henry Ward Beecher, one of the greatest preachers
of his generation, said, When the English language
gets in my way, God help the English
language.
He said here, talking about a baby and
drinking milk and a foundation and the elementary
foundational principles, so we have them both before
us.
I want to take this about the baby
for a little bit and show you how
it's possible to be frozen in your babyhood
state.
Have your growth suspended and stay right there.
Notice the marks of a baby.
Beautiful in a baby, but terrible in a
person when they get to be 18 years
old or 20 or even 5.
First is, a baby can't concentrate on anything
very long.
Have you noticed that?
That a baby loses interest about as fast
as it's possible to lose interest.
It just disappears.
They'll scream and yell and grab for something
delightedly and get it, and one and a
half minutes later throw it down and be
looking for something else.
That is typical of a baby, and it's
the way God meant a baby to be.
But he didn't mean the baby's father to
be like that, nor the baby's mother, nor
the baby's seven-year-old sister.
He didn't mean them to be like that.
That's characteristic of a baby, and it's characteristic
of Christians who became Christians, fundamental Christians, and
then froze and stopped developing, that they're unable
to stick to spiritual exercises, they can't pray
very long, and they can't meditate.
In fact, they smile at the whole idea
of meditation.
I think that was for Thomas Akempis.
And Bible reading, they don't do it very
much, or very much else that takes discipline
and maturity.
And I notice the second thing about a
baby is that they have no relish.
That is, they're preoccupied with simple things, with
foundational things.
You never talk to a baby about existentialism
or the Cold War.
The baby's satisfied with a half a dozen
little things, enough to eat, to keep warm
and dry, and to keep its mother within
yelling distance.
That's about all a baby cares about.
And there are Christians that grow up, and
they have no relish for anything spiritually advanced.
They're preoccupied with their first lessons.
There, there, there, they go.
The average church is a school with only
one grade, and that's the first one.
They never expect to get beyond that, and
they don't want to hear a man very
long that wants to take them beyond that.
If the pastor insists they do their homework
and get ready for the next grade, why
do they begin to pray the Lord will
call our dear brother somewhere else?
That happens so much.
They say, Lord, bless our dear brother.
And the worse they hate him, the more
they bear down on the words, Our dear
brother.
They say, take him somewhere else.
Well, all he's trying to do is prepare
them for another grade.
But that church is dedicated to the first
grade.
And the first grade is going to remain
and will remain.
And that was it here.
Paul said actually some of them went up
into the second grade and gave it up
and said, It's too hard here.
And they went back to the first.
How long have you been in the first
grade, Junior?
Twelve years.
Well, how long have you been listening to
the same truth and hearing the same doctrine?
You must be born again.
And there's a judgment and so on.
Well, that's true.
And we must not leave that.
We must use that to advance.
But we don't do it.
The whole generations of Christians grow up in
the first grade, and they learn to read
their Bible in the light of this.
To them, nothing in the Bible ever means
anything beyond this elementary stage.
They have Bible conferences dedicated to the first
grade in the Christian life.
Bible schools dedicated to the continuance of the
first grade.
Well, for my part, I feel that I
want a little ambition, a little spiritual ambition.
Paul said, I forget the things that are
behind, and I press toward the mark.
There was a man not satisfied with the
first grade.
And notice another thing about a baby is
its cry for amusement.
It loves to be amused.
When I'm on the bus somewhere and I
see a baby looking over a mother's shoulder,
now if the mother sees me, I just
sit there dignified as can be.
But if I can see the baby, I
begin to do these things.
And I invariably get to rouse the baby,
and we have a nice time.
And finally, the mother notices him, pulls him
down, and wonders who that old fella is
back there.
Well, I won't harm the baby, but they
love to be amused.
And it doesn't take $100 to do it.
You can do it by working your finger
like this, or looking through your finger at
them.
They love to be amused, and the cry
for amusement in religion is an evidence that
we are frozen in the first grade.
We're still children, and we're going to remain
that way.
Children have to have toys, and they have
to have novelties, and they have to have
new playmates every once in a while.
And the Church is like that.
And the religious entertainment has so corrupted the
Church of Christ that millions don't know that
it's a heresy.
Millions of evangelicals throughout the world have devoted
themselves to religious entertainment, and they don't know
that it's a heresy, as much a heresy
as the counting of beads, or the splashing
of holy water, or something else.
Just as much a heresy and as far
from being true.
Now, to expose this, of course, raises a
storm of angry protest among the people.
One thing this man wanted to know about,
that may I have talked to this businessman,
he brother told her, he said, I don't
make God out of you, but I follow
you and I believe you.
And he said, what I'd like to know
is why so many people like you don't
know what you're talking about.
And I said, Brother Reisner, I give it
up.
I have no idea why it is, but
it's true.
But as soon as they think that you're
exposing the love of religious entertainment, you're finished
in a minute.
One man wrote an article to the next
birthday of me.
He said that I claimed that religious entertainment
was wrong.
He said, don't you know that every time
you sing a hymn, it's entertainment?
Every time you sing a hymn.
Well, I don't know how that fellow ever
finds his way home at night.
I really don't know.
He ought to have a sea and eye
dog and a man with a white cap
just to take him home.
When you raise your eyes to God and
sing, break thou the bread of life, dear
Lord, to me, is that entertainment or is
it worship?
Isn't there a difference between worship and entertainment?
And a church that can't worship must be
entertained.
And men who can't lead the church to
worship must provide the entertainment.
And that's why we have the great evangelical
heresy on.
The heresy of religious entertainment.
And then a child can't read or enjoy
advanced Christian or advanced literature, even when they
get to be six years old or five
or six years old.
They'll come and make you sit down and
read the book through, but all it says
is, I saw a cat and the cat
was white.
There's nothing much to it, there's nothing profound.
If they never went beyond that, you'd feel
very bad for your child.
When he first comes home and says, Mommy,
listen to me, and no matter what you're
doing or what's burning on the stove, he
grabs you and pulls you down and reads.
He can read how proud you are, he
can read wonderfully.
He never thought he'd make it, but he
did.
Now he can read.
Read the whole book.
We never knew how much our kids memorized
and fooled us, but anyhow, they were reading.
And suppose ten years from now he comes
in, now he's seventeen, and he comes in
and says, Mommy, I can read.
The cat is red.
You'd say to your husband, I think we
ought to do something for this boy, I
think we ought to take him somewhere.
That's exactly why the Holy Ghost wrote the
book of Hebrews.
He said, Let's leave this.
Why stay where you are and remain forever
engrossed in the fundamentals of religion and excuse
anything by repeating you've got to be born
again, and then have any kind of a
show and then say, No, you've got to
be born again.
Any kind of a show and then say,
Be born again.
First principles all over again.
Well, he says here plainly, the Holy Ghost
says, No, I'll let the Holy Ghost say
this.
I'm not saying it.
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of
Christ, let us go on toward perfection.
Not laying again these early foundations of the
doctrines of Christ and so on, but let
us go on unto perfection.
Now, how shall we go on?
Well, of course, perfection means maturity, just as
when your son stands twenty-one years old
and twenty-two years old, he's having his
college degree, he's as healthy as they come
and good-natured and well-balanced, and you're
proud of that big boy.
What's happened to him is, he's matured, that's
all, but he's not perfect.
Lots of times, go into his room in
the morning and see what you see lying
around there is perfect.
He steps out of his trousers and leaves
them there, and his shoes over here.
He's not perfect, but he's mature.
He's come up to his maturity now, and
you're happy and feel good, and if you're
a Christian, you thank God my boy stands
tall and straight and mature now and healthy.
That's what the Holy Ghost means.
He doesn't mean become a wax saint without
a speck of imperfection, without a freckle on
your soul.
He means become mature in God, grow up
in God so that you're no longer a
baby and having to be entertained with the
first principles, but that you are now growing
up in God, becoming a strong Christian, learning
to carry heavy burdens in the Holy Spirit,
learning to pray effectively and learning to suffer
with the world and suffer with the church
and carry the cross.
How do I go about it?
Let me give you briefly, for it's Communion
Sunday and I won't be long.
Let me give you two or three things
here, half a dozen.
One is, make up your minds.
By making up your mind, you can't save
yourself.
But you can make up your mind to
get saved, and you can make up your
mind after you are saved to go on
with God.
And until our minds are made up, God
won't work with an unmade-up mind, or
if he does, he will work toward getting
it made up.
Make up your mind.
Get the loose ends tied up and get
ready.
As a soldier, some young man here called
to the Canadian Army, he gets that nice
little letter.
It says, nice verbal, beautifully worded, fraternal, nice
-sounding letter, but it all means the same
thing, you're it.
And so the young fellow goes, and before
he goes, he picks up his room and
he has a last date with his girlfriend,
and he goes down where he hangs out
sometimes, talks to the boys and says, Well,
I'll be seeing you in two years.
And he sort of gets ready.
He says, Goodbye, and he gets ready.
So a Christian, a Christian when he makes
up his mind to go on with God
and to grow up into God and to
learn the deep and high and lofty things
of God, he's got to make up his
mind to do it and say, Now, I've
fooled around the kindergarten long enough.
This is a cat Christian long enough now.
I want to grow up until I know
what God is talking about in the high,
lofty things of the Spirit.
Then the second thing is, put away un
-Christlike things.
Put away un-Christlike habits.
Put away un-Christlike acts and squelch within
you un-Christlike desires, and put away un
-Christlike plans, and get rid of hindrances and
thoughts and thought habits.
And then the third thing is, become preoccupied
with the scriptures.
Become preoccupied with the word of God.
This book of God is a powerful thing,
powerful indeed.
If you will read it, it will bring
you out and take you on.
This, when we say, Break thou the bread
of life, we're praying that God will give
us understanding of the scriptures.
And then we're by pushing it on a
bit and raising it a bit to its
mystical phase, we're saying, Lord, when we take
communion, break thou the bread to me.
That's all the same.
So get preoccupied with the scriptures.
Don't just have a chapter occasionally, but read
it until it warms your heart.
Read it until it begins to talk to
you.
We haven't read the scripture as long as
we're reading it, until it begins to talk
to us, we haven't been reading it.
We only think we have been.
So get preoccupied with the scriptures.
Get a good, big-text Bible, and I
recommend King James, but there are other good
versions besides the King James, but the King
James is a good, basic version always to
have around and trust.
Don't let anybody fool you.
You can trust it.
Spurgeon preached out of this book, and Moody
preached out of this book, and the great
souls that have shaken the world used this
book in the last 300 years.
And I, for my part, don't like the
idea that the scholars are all running around
telling us we can't trust it.
I got saved on it, and I didn't
know there was another one when I got
converted on the King James Version.
So I say, make it your basic version.
If you want a few others to get
disappointed in, have them around, but make it
your basic version.
And then the fourth thing is, take up
your cross.
Learn how to suffer for the Lord's sake
a little bit.
They tell us the reason that the Communists
are slowly encroaching on us of the western
world is that we of the western world
love our comforts too much, and they are
not looking for comforts, they are looking for
victory.
And the early Christians, they stole a lot
of that from the early Christians.
A friend of mine went to see a
man who was the head of a local
Communist cell in the local Communist headquarters where
they sent out literature, and the Communist said,
Come in, Reverend, and sat down.
He went in and sat down.
He said, Now, we're Communists, you know that,
and you're a minister.
He said, Of course, we're miles apart.
But he said, I want to tell you
something.
We learned our technique from your book of
Acts.
He said, We learned how to win and
conquer by you from your book of Acts.
And he said, You who believe the Bible
have thrown overboard the methods of the early
Church, and we who don't believe it have
adopted them, and they're working.
And what was the very simple method of
the early Church?
It was to go witness, give everything to
the Lord, and give up all to God,
and bear your cross, take the consequences.
And the result was, in the first hundred
years of the Christian Church, the whole known
world was evangelized.
We don't know that now because our missionaries
are telling us they are leaving the impression
that they don't intend to do it, but
they leave the impression that there are parts
of the world that were not evangelized.
Every part of the world was evangelized, and
every part of the known world was evangelized
in the day after our Lord about 100
years.
And then the next thing is, get Christ
in your focus.
Get the Lord Jesus Christ in your focus.
Show me thy face, one transient gleam of
loveliness divine, and I will never think or
dream of any love save thine.
And open your heart to the Holy Spirit,
and I'm sure God will take us on.
This isn't a luxury.
I'm not being argued here.
Won't you have a luxury binding for your
Bible?
Won't you have a luxury car?
Won't you have a luxury?
I'm not asking this isn't a luxury.
This is basic necessity, that we forsake the
first principles and give up our childhood and
go on into God.
It is basic necessity, for it is impossible
for those who are once enlightened and have
tasted the heavenly gift and have slipped away
to renew them unto repentance.
It says it here.
So this doctrine this morning, this teaching, this
exhortation by the Holy Spirit to leave the
first principles of the Christian doctrine and go
on toward perfection, is not to make deluxe
Saints.
It is to make any kind of Saints,
the most basic necessity in the Christian life.
I think this will be a wonderful morning
for all of us, as we have our
communion a little late because of our missionary
convention interfering.
We're coming in between.
It's a few Sundays late, but it's communion
Sunday, and I think it would be a
wonderful time for us Christians.
Instead of sitting there waiting for the service
to end, if when the bread is received,
we would think of that body broken for
us and the wine is drunk, we would
think of that blood shed for us, and
the prayers are made and the songs are
sung, we'd surrender and repent and yield and
look up and trust.
We might go a long way this morning
if we do this.
And this will we do, as the Holy
Ghost says, if God permits.