We're in the sixth chapter of the book
of Hebrews.
Hebrews, the sixth chapter.
We read verse one and on.
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of
Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead
works and of faith toward God, of the
doctrine of baptism, laying on of hands and
resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
And this will we do if God permits.
Now, we dealt with that last week.
Now, for it is impossible for those who
have been, or who were, once enlightened, and
have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were
made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have
tasted the good word of God and the
powers of the world to come, if they
shall fall away, to renew them again on
repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son
of God afresh, and put him to an
open shame.
For the earth which drinketh in the rain
that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth
herbs meet for them by whom it is
dressed, receiveth blessing from God.
But that which beareth thorns and briars is
rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end
is to be burned.
But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of
you, and things that accompany salvation, though we
thus speak."
The writer hadn't put verse 9 in there,
that was too much for a lot of
us, because we could have driven home our
position with a lot more finality.
But he put that one in, and we
got to deal with it.
But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of
you, and things that accompany salvation, though we
thus speak.
Now, we run head on here into a
controverted and controversial passage.
This passage seems to teach the possibility that
it's possible, that possibility that some can believe
and fall away and finally be lost, inasmuch
as they can never be restored unto repentance.
And, of course, it's powerful ammunition for all
those who like to teach this.
If somebody would ask me, Mr. Tozer, what
are you, a Calvinist or an Arminian?
I would have to say about myself what
I heard said about a famous English preacher,
now still active.
I said, he's a Calvinist, isn't he?
And a brother smiled good humoredly and said,
well, he's an equivocating Calvinist.
And I think probably that that would describe
me and describe most of the land people,
we're equivocating Calvinists.
We won't go as far as the Calvinists
do by any means, but we don't like
this kind of Christianity.
It gets converted today, backslides tomorrow and gets
re-converted the next day.
The young woman said, saved, oh, I've been
saved three times.
Well, we don't quite like that, and yet
we don't want to come out and say,
as some people do, I'm converted and I
couldn't go to hell if I wanted to.
I'd be a little afraid of that myself.
In fact, I don't think anybody that said
that ever was converted.
Now, those who believe that you can be
born again and then finally sin and be
lost take certain passages, but this passage here
in Hebrews 6, the other side, they deny
this and explain it and interpret it.
Somebody said that he had one time gone
by a little factory, a woodworking factory, where
they make clothespins and chair legs and all
sorts of things with wood.
And on the sign out in front said,
All kinds of twisting and turning done here.
And when I read books by some of
the brethren who are trying to dodge out
of this 6th chapter of Hebrews, it's impossible
for those who were once enlightened and have
tasted of the heavenly gift and were made
partakers and have tasted of the heavenly gift
and the powers of the world to come,
if they shall fall away, to renew them
again in repentance.
And I have read a lot on this,
and the only sign that I could put
over the book would be, All kinds of
twisting and turning done here.
But now, I don't want to come out
on either side, because I told you I
was an equivocating Arminian, but here are the
actual words that are spoken by the man
who wrote this book, the actual words, and
you see what you think about it.
Now, he said, It is impossible for those
who were once enlightened and later fall away
to be renewed unto repentance.
Now, there are those who say, Once enlightened
means merely had light.
That's all, merely had light.
They weren't born again, they merely had light.
Now, that's what you will find, but I'm
not a Greek shark, but I like occasionally
to turn to the Greek, not to burden
my audiences, but to learn myself a little.
And I find the same word is found
in Ephesians 1, where Paul prays that the
eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye
may know what is the hope of his
calling and the riches of his glory, and
of his inheritance in the saints and the
exceeding greatness of his power.
Now, Paul was praying for an advanced spiritual
state for these Ephesians Christians.
They were already Christians and already saints, and
he prays for them that they might go
on to a place where their understanding being
enlightened, and that's exactly the same word as
the Holy Spirit uses when he says it
was impossible for those who were once enlightened.
If that means merely had information about the
gospel but never were converted, then what did
Paul mean when he used the same word
to pray an advanced prayer for people whom
he called saints and said they were already
chosen of God and so on?
Then, the next thing it says, tasted of
the heavenly gift and of the good word
of God and the power of the world
to come.
Now, that word tasted there has given some
of our twisters and turners a lot of
ammunition.
Why?
It says they are merely tasters.
They never actually had the heavenly gift, they
never had the good word of God, they
never had the powers of the world to
come, they merely licked at it to see
if they liked it and decide they didn't.
They merely tasted.
But the same exact word is used in
Hebrew 2.9 where it says, Christ tasted
death for every man.
Now, you just think about it, I'm not
trying to influence you, I hope, I'm just
trying to explain that tasted the heavenly gift
and tasted the good word of God and
the power of the world to come, if
that means merely nibbled at it but never
actually swallowed it, then the same thing is
said about Jesus when he died on the
cross.
He tasted death for every man.
Does that mean that he merely tasted it
and nibbled at it?
No, the word taste means experienced here.
He experienced death for every man.
And that's what the same word means in
this chapter where it says the man who
has experienced the heavenly gift and experienced the
good word of God and experienced the power
of the world to come.
And then it says, made partakers of the
Holy Ghost, and they tell us that partaker
means merely to go along with.
Kind of a foul traveler, but not really
actually anything real.
The heavenly gift and the Holy Ghost here
merely went along with him, but they never
really had him.
But I notice the same word elsewhere used
means to be a participant in, to take
part in, and to accept and to eat
and receive.
So I think this word here means experienced
too, that they received and had and experienced
the Holy Ghost.
Now it says in our text here that
it is impossible for those who were once
enlightened, that is, who had what Paul prayed
that the Ephesians might have, and have tasted
of the heavenly gift, that is, experienced the
heavenly gift, and were made partakers, that is,
to take part in the Holy Ghost, and
have experienced the good word of God and
the powers of the world to come, if
they shall fall away to renew them again
under repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the
Son of God fresh and put him to
an open shame.
Evidently there is somebody here that you can't
renew and I can't renew.
It's impossible for us to renew him to
repentance when this has happened.
Now, the difficulty in this passage lies in
two phrases.
One phrase is, fall away, and the other
is, renew to repentance.
Just what do we mean by fall away?
Just how far does it indicate that a
man goes?
How far does he go in his iniquity
when it's called fall away?
It doesn't mean backslide, because look at Peter.
He backslid, and Peter after his backsliding was
forgiven and became the great apostle to the
circumcised.
It can't mean just backslide, because Mark backslid
and went back, and later we find Mark
was restored and served the Lord until the
time of his death.
It can't mean just backslide, because the man
in the 5th chapter of Corinth, who had
married his stepmother and was living in incest
with his stepmother and was condemned by Paul,
repented with great sorrow and tears, and the
result was Paul forgave him, the Corinthian church
forgave him, and they restored him again to
fellowship in the church after he had quit
his incestuous relationship.
It can't mean merely backsliding, because 1 John
2 says, My little children, I write these
things unto you, that ye sin not.
But if any man sin, he has an
advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the
righteous, and he is the propitiation for our
sins, and not for ours only, but for
the sins of the whole world.
And in the 1st chapter, if we confess
our sins, he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
So it means something other than backsliding.
Now, I want to give you a little
rule here, and I'm sure that this rule
will hold throughout the whole Church of God
around the world for all time.
If you worry about having committed the unpardonable
sin, you haven't.
If you have, you don't worry.
The person who has gone so far in
apostasy that there is no help for him
never worries about it.
Remember in Matthew 12 and Mark 3, the
Pharisees gave vent to certain words which Christ
branded as evidence of the unpardonable sin.
And yet these Pharisees weren't the slightest bit
worried about it.
They believed themselves to be righteous, there was
no penitence in them, no compunction, no sorrow,
no repentance, no humility, no meekness.
They were bold believers in their own righteousness.
And Jesus said that they had committed the
unpardonable sin in that they had attributed the
work of the Spirit to the devil.
So if they had feared that they had
committed it, they would have been humble and
lowly and meek and frightened, and they would
have come like the jailer, shaking and trembling
and saying, Lord, what shall I do to
be saved?
But they had no thought of it at
all.
The people walking around the city of Toronto
who committed the unpardonable sin would be the
last ones who think they have committed it,
because they don't think they have.
They live in a way that you wouldn't
think they had, and I, we wouldn't have
dreamed that they had, because they are righteous,
self-righteous, self-assured people who are religious
and sure of themselves and cocky and absolutely
a million miles from ever believing that they
might be guilty of the unpardonable sin.
So if you are worrying about having committed
it, you haven't.
The very fact that you are worrying indicates
that the Spirit of God is moving in
your heart, and the Spirit of God does
not move in the heart of the man
who has committed the sin unto death.
I don't even know that this is the
sin unto death.
I am merely using this, but I don't
even know that he is talking about the
unpardonable sin here.
But I say that if we knew what
fall away meant, fall away must mean something
that goes so far that the man doesn't
care about it and isn't worried about it
and has no further feeling concerning it and
shrugs it off as a foolish thing, this
believing in Christ that he once did, a
foolish thing, and that's all.
I knew a Jewish girl one time, rode
in a car with her, a whole car
full of people, on to a young people's
rally, and she happened to be alone.
I don't know what she'd be doing going
to the rally, but she was.
She was a Jewish young woman, and as
we rode along, they told about how she
had given her heart to the Lord Jesus
and accepted him as her Messiah, and then
later she had been persecuted so by the
Jews, her relatives, that she had repudiated Christ.
And we asked her about it, and she
angrily said to us there, I felt chilled
to hear it, she angrily said, it wasn't
worth it, it wasn't worth it, taking Christ
as my Messiah, it wasn't worth what I
had to put up with.
She said, they literally tore the dress off
of me in their anger, tearing at me,
and she said, of course I repudiated Christ.
I haven't followed that girl up, I don't
know, but in my deep heart of heart
I believe that if she truly and really
ever knew Christ at all, that angry outburst
wasn't the end.
I think God had something further for her.
Peter, you remember, also one time said, I
know not the man, and cursed and swore,
but later on he did repent, and I
hope that she has.
So that's fall away that I've talked about.
Now, renew them to repentance.
What does that mean?
It's impossible to renew them to repentance, but
it doesn't say that it's impossible that they
should ever be renewed unto repentance.
And I have a passage over here that
I like to go to.
You may consider this a little bit of
twisting and turning, and possibly it is.
But it's a passage that I want to
turn to here and read.
For I verily am as absent in body,
but present in spirit, says Paul, have judged
already, as though I were present, concerning him
that hath done this deed.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
when we are gathered together, and my spirit
with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ
to deliver such a one unto Satan, for
the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit
may be saved in the day of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, this man who was living in incestuous
marriage with his deceased father's wife, not his
own mother, but his deceased father's wife, this
man couldn't be brought by the Church to
repentance.
He denied there was anything wrong with it.
Paul said, I will turn him over to
Satan, for the destruction of his flesh, that
the spirit may be saved in the day
of the Lord Jesus.
And in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, talking
about the Lord's Supper, Paul says, that if
a man, if we judge ourselves, we should
not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are chastened
of the Lord, that we should not be
condemned with the world.
Now I do not know but what if
this man cannot be, by any effort of
the Church, renewed to repentance, this man who
has fallen away.
I do not know that God can't do
it, even by bringing him down to the
point of death, and in the last hour
of death sending his judgment upon him and
turning him around to himself.
Now I say, these passages seem to indicate
it.
So you see, I'm back where I started,
an equivocating Calvinist and an apologetic Arminian.
Because here we are in the middle, and
this is where we stand, and I will
not be pushed by either side to come
out and deny truth here in order to
establish truth here.
The Christian and Missionary alliance has always stood
in the middle.
I know that I sat on the New
York board, I have sat on there now
for so long that I can't remember, and
I sat on the New York board with
two great men.
One of them was Dr. L.
H.
Zimmer of Toledo, the other Dr. R.
R.
Brown of Omaha.
These two men sat, they loved each other,
they preached for each other, and they sat
and discussed the things of God and voted
and debated the things of God together there
on the board for years and years, literally
until Dr. Zimmer went to be with the
Lord.
Dr. Zimmer was a Calvinist, Dr. Brown is
an Arminian.
Those two men got along beautifully together.
Down in the alliance tabernacle in New York
City, there was around the corner from Dr.
Simpson's main church, a little church called the
Chapel.
In that church, the Anglicans, called Episcopalians down
there, had set up their little altar, and
being good Arminians that they were, they had
their good church altar service or whatever they
called the thing there every Sunday morning.
So here was a fellow with a neck
here, and he was having his service there,
his communion service there, believing in the real
presence.
And he was an Arminian.
Just through the wall, within hearing distance, was
Dr. Simpson, the Presbyterian Calvinist, preaching the house
down.
Now, they got along together perfectly.
There were Baptists and Anglicans and Presbyterians and
Methodists and what have you all mixed together
in the early alliance.
For that reason, I refuse ever to run
for cover when in the Calvinist with his
eyes, blazing starts in my direction.
Just blaze on, brother, I'm made of asbestos
when it comes to that.
And I refuse to run and hide when
an Arminian comes after me.
I have learned a new trick lately, Brother
Gray.
I didn't know about this before, but I've
learned it.
I told him down in New York this
week, last week, about it.
I find that when somebody reads something I
write and get blazing mad, he says, I'm
grieved.
I got a letter from somebody the other
day that said, signed a missionary, and it
said, I was greatly grieved to read this.
And I said, now at last I've caught
on, when they get real mad, but they're
sanctified and don't want to admit it, they
say they're grieved.
I was grieved when I read that.
They were just plain mad.
If a fellow was honest, he'd say, my
hackles rose when I read what you wrote.
My hackles rose.
But they're good spiritual people and they couldn't
admit they had hackles.
So they say, I was grieved.
Well, that's just another name for I was
sore.
It made me mad and I'm writing a
nasty letter here, not signing it.
But he was good and spiritual, or she,
whichever it was.
I thought it might have been a she,
but of course you can't tell by the
handwriting.
Now it said here that if these people,
whoever they are, do this thing, they have
tasted and experienced Christianity, they've been renewed in
God, and yet they fall away.
And it's impossible for the Church to get
them to come back, because they crucify the
Son of God afresh.
Now whoever they are, this is what they
do.
Of course Christ can't be put on Calvary
again, but the apostate puts him through the
experience again.
He judges him and pronounces against him, I've
tried him, and this little Jewish girl says
it wasn't worth it.
And I have found the old way better,
says the apostate.
It amounts to crucify him, crucify him.
You've all heard of Julian the Apostate, the
man who was a Christian, later turned against
the Lord and fought against the Lord and
died on the field of battle.
And as he was dying, he lifted his
hand up and said, Thou hast conquered, O
Galilean.
He was known as Julian the Apostate, because
once he said he was a Christian, then
turned and said he was not a Christian.
Now it tells us something here that anybody
who has been a farmer, even anybody who
has kept a backyard garden will understand.
He says that in order to get an
illustration before us, the earth which drinketh in
the rain, that cometh oft upon it, and
bringeth forth herbs fit for them by whom
it is dressed, receives blessing from God.
But that which bear thorns and briars is
rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end
is to be burned.
And he uses this illustration right close up
to and next verse after crucifying the Son
of God afresh and putting him to an
open shame.
Now in nature, two fields can lie side
by side.
One of them is a cultivated field.
It has been plowed and then it has
been harrowed.
We talk about having harrowing experiences, and we
forget what the word harrowing means.
It means having a machine with steel spikes
running back and forth over it.
We've had harrowing experiences, and we've had our
field harrowed, and then we've had it planted.
And the rain comes today and it clears
up in the night, and the next day
it's warm and sunshiny, and the next day
it rains again.
Between alternating rain and sunshine, this field brings
forth grain or corn or whatever it is,
it brings it forth in abundance, lying right
across from that field.
And a field as good as this one,
no difference in the quality of the soil
because there's just a line between.
Here lies a field, the same sun shines
on it on Wednesday, the same rain falls
on it on Thursday, and on Saturday again
the same warm sun, and on Sunday the
rain.
It is alternating.
God is alternating his sunshine and his rain
on that field, too.
But what do you find there?
Nobody can live there but rabbits, green briars,
and skunk cabbage, and thorns and thistles.
Nobody would want it, nobody.
It's good for nothing but to be burned.
And if the farmer ever decides to clean
up the place, that's what he'll do.
He'll cut it down, pile it and burn
it, for it's no good for anything.
So says the Holy Spirit, the word of
God falls on people and they're like two
fields.
They may be for a lifetime in a
church, I'm sure it happens.
They come to church, they're on time, sing
the hymns, quote the scripture along with the
rest in the responsive reading, and say amen
at the end of the prayer and go
again and do that week after week when
they're in health for a lifetime.
But in the one life there is the
fruit of the Spirit, love and peace and
humility and joy and the knowledge of God.
In the other, unclouded, unheralded field, who has
had the same opportunity, has heard the same
truth, received the same seed, there is nothing
but briars and thorns which are ready to
be burned.
That happens in homes.
There are homes where young people have been
brought up, one of them will turn out
to be a fire evangelist and give himself
to God and go throughout the world preaching
the gospel, or he will give himself as
a missionary and go to the field as
a missionary and teach the heathen there and
go old in the service of God.
His brother back in Canada or back in
the States will be serving the devil and
living anyway, but what he should.
The same mother prayed for both, and the
same father took both to Sunday school, and
the same parents sat between these parents, the
same two.
But that's the way it happens.
Esau have I hated, but Jacob have I
loved.
And they were twin brothers.
Cain and Abel were brothers of the same
parents, and one of them received a word
from God that he had been accepted and
his sacrifice accepted, and the other one was
boldly and forthrightly rejected.
So it is.
Just hearing the word isn't enough.
Just giving a cent that you belong to
a certain church that believes the gospel, that
isn't enough, because as John Bunyan said in
his wonderful and terrible book, I saw that
there was a way to hell from the
very gate of heaven, as well as from
the city of destruction.
John Bunyan was a Calvinist, incidentally.
So we see, my friends, that the wise
soul is going to be admonished here.
The wise soul is not the one who
will try to get at the root of
this and say, Now what am I to
believe about this?
Can a man finally perish, or can he
not finally perish?
That's not the necessary that you should settle
that ancient controversy that has divided men through
the centuries.
It's not necessary that you should settle it.
But the man who is more concerned with
controversy than with his own soul is a
rash, foolish man.
The humble soul will profit by remembering.
He will remember the context, and he will
remember that this was the blessed Holy Ghost.
This terrible picture that can't be toned down
is here for him, and he will hear
the exhortation to go on to perfection.
Lecture 11 Justification and Sanctification 2 You know
the story of the man who, in the
days when they drove horses and buggies, this
has been told so often you've no doubt
heard it.
They drove horses and buggies, and a man
was rich and he had a coach and
he wanted a driver.
He advertised for a driver, and he had
many people come.
He said to one man, Now I will
entrust the driver, whoever it is that I
hire, my family, my wife, my children, and
get into that coach and they go back
and forth and they have the life of
my children and my wife in their hands,
the driver has, because we drive along over
a way where a road is chiseled out
of the rock and a chasm below and
the mountain above.
And now what I want to ask you
is, how close can you come to the
edge without going over?
Well, I think I could drive within a
foot without any danger at all.
He dismissed him and sent for the next
man waiting.
He told him the same story.
He said, How close could you come?
He said, I could get within two inches
and not go over and not worry a
bit.
The next man said, I could go so
close that I could drive so that half
of the tire would be over the cliff,
half hanging on and I could still make
it.
He dismissed him and sent for the fourth
man.
He told him the same story.
He said, How close could you come?
Well, he said, I do not know how
close I could come, and I promise you
I'd never experiment if I get the job.
He said, I might come close, but I'll
never find out because I'll hug the side
of the cliff every time I have your
wife and children with me.
He said, All right, you're hired.
Come on, you're hired.
There's your man.
And always it's so.
When I find Christians that beat their chest
and say, I believe in the security of
the believer, well, all right, believe in the
security of the believer, but you start thumping
your chest about it, I'm worried about you.
Because you're seeing how close you can come
without going over the edge.
The city of Chicago, a great church there,
the pastor turned to this chest beating, said
he couldn't go to hell if he wanted
to, and two of these young fellows in
his church stole an automobile and got put
in jail.
So they sent one of the workers down
from the church to see the two young
fellows, go down and talk with them.
They were young fellows in the church and
in their young people's group.
And when the worker came in, these two
fellows said, Good morning, Bill, nice to see
you.
He said, I hear about your trouble and
I'm down to talk with you.
He said, We know why you've come.
I said, Let's get one thing straight.
We have broken our fellowship with the Lord
in stealing this automobile and getting in jail,
but it hasn't affected our relation in the
slightest.
We don't feel so good now.
We don't feel so good, but we have
this.
Everything is the same.
Now, if you'll start from there, go ahead
and talk to us.
We know you want to talk to us.
Go ahead.
I had to turn my back on those
two delinquents and walked out and prayed that
God Almighty might send the arrows of conviction
that they might fall down on their face
on the stone floor and pray that God
would convert their souls.
For the man who takes advantage of the
safety that he believes is his in Christ
to become reckless and sinful is no Christian
at all.
And the man who believes truly and scripturally
that he is safe in Christ will live
as close to the heart of Christ as
possible for the rest of his life.
I don't want to experience what the word
fall away means.
I don't want to know.
Just as I don't want to know any
more about hell, I know enough about hell.
I don't want to know any more about
hell, but I want to know a lot
more about heaven.
And I don't want to know how far
I can go to the edge without finally
perishing, but I want to know by the
grace of God how far I can keep
from the edge.
But now the man of God eases up
here and tosses in a little change of
pace, and he says, But I am persuaded
better things of you.
He said, I'm worried about you because you
have become such as have need of milk
and not of meat, and you're not going
on as you ought to go on, and
I'm worried about you, because it's possible.
But he says, I don't think it means
you, because I think better things of you.
I feel that way, too.
But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of
you, so I don't press this too hard.
I only say, let's not defend a cold
heart, nor a worldly life, nor a careless
mind.
Let's not defend it, but let us rather
follow Christ fully.
And by following him fully, we know we'll
never deny him completely.
If we should fall or stumble or through
some weakness of the flesh fail him, thank
God for the first aid kit.
Over here in 1 John, I read it
to you a while ago, it was God's
first aid kit for his family.
You know how it is in your family?
We always had what this pink stuff you
put on, mercuricum, and the bandages and band
-aids and all sorts of things.
Because of those six boys, there was always
one of them that had something, almost always,
somebody was falling off of something, breaking something,
and a fellow fell and hurt his shoulder,
and they took him to the doctor, got
him fixed up, and he climbed the fence
and fell over and broke his collarbone.
And then they took him back and put
a board on his back, and he climbed
a tree with a board on it.
Well, you know, you're going to have to
have some sort of first aid around for
a fellow like that.
And they were all about life.
And they're all healthy and alive now, by
the grace of God and band-aids, and
mercuricum and the careful mother that watched over
them, the father that was home sometimes.
But here we have God's first aid kit.
He says, Now if you say you haven't
sinned, you're lying.
He said, Don't do that, but my little
children.
If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.
Go to him and confess your sin, and
he'll cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
I believe that.
And so now I pass over this terrible
passage.
I've tried to deal with it as fairly
as I could and as boldly as I
could.
And I don't want anybody coming to me
and trying to convert me to your viewpoint.
I've studied all viewpoints for 30 years.
I only want to tell you, we've gone
past this passage now, and we're going to
determine, aren't we, that we'll never have any
reason to worry about ourselves personally on this.
We're not going to go back, but we're
going to set our face like a flint,
as Jesus did toward Jerusalem, and follow the
Lamb wherever he goes.
And this can be academic.
It doesn't have to be personal.
It can be academic, this matter of falling
away.
It doesn't have to be real.
And once more I repeat, if you're worrying
about having fallen away and not getting back,
you haven't fallen away.
If you were worrying or concerned about the
unpardonable sin, you hadn't committed it.
There is cleansing at the fountain, precious fountain,
filled with blood.
And that cleansing you can have this morning.
Amen.