Now, this morning, I want to talk to
you on a little text that has bothered
a lot of people.
I don't pick it out deliberately, but I
simply won't skip it.
It is the 26th verse of the book
of Hebrews 10, chapter 10, verse 26.
Paul, or whoever wrote this book, and I
assume Paul, says, "...for if we sin willfully,
after that we have received the knowledge of
the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for
sins, but a certain fearful looking-for of
judgment, and the fiery indignation which shall devour
the adversaries."
Now, that verse 26, "...if we sin willfully,
after we have received the knowledge of the
truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins."
I want to talk about this particularly today
because this passage has been widely misunderstood, and
is widely misunderstood, and very generally misinterpreted.
It appears to be out of accord with
the rest of the scriptures.
It's not, but it seems to be out
of accord.
Always keep that in mind.
When you find a verse of scripture that
seems to contradict another verse of scripture, always
remember that it does not.
The contradiction is in your mind.
It's because you do not have sufficient light.
If you had sufficient light, you would know
there was no contradiction there.
This passage has been used as a club
by responsible preachers to frighten half to death
some of the Lord's people, and some of
the Lord's sensitive and badly frightened people have
used it against themselves.
And not only has the passage been misused
by people against others and against themselves, but
Satan, the devil, uses this passage.
He uses it to malign God, and to
create the impression that God is a short
-tempered tyrant, ruling according to his own unreasonable
and unpredictable whims.
And the devil uses it to trap the
consciences of people.
I suppose that, well, there's hardly a passage
any way in the Bible that more people
have inquired about than this one.
I have had letters about it.
I have had conversations over the phone.
I have had people who have come to
see me in person, and they're usually very
serious-minded, honest people, people who are very
deeply in trouble because their consciences have been
trapped.
Now, a free conscience may lead to repentance,
but a trapped conscience can only lead to
despair.
And there are many of the Lord's people
whose consciences have been trapped.
And this passage of scripture is a trap
that Satan uses to trap the people of
God.
But you say, if it's scripture, how could
it ever be used as a trap?
Well, do you remember what Peter said?
Our beloved brother Paul, also according to the
given wisdom unto him, has written many things
which the unwise and the unstable and unlearned
use to their own destruction.
And when he says the unlearned there, he
doesn't mean people who haven't been to college.
He means people who are not deeply learned
in the scriptures.
So our conscience gets in trouble, and we
turn against ourselves and use this passage of
scripture to beat down ourselves.
I know who's doing this, it's the devil.
And then this prevents many a prodigal from
coming home.
If somebody had gone to the prodigal son
and told him that there was a passage
of scripture that said, if you left your
father's house and went into the far country,
there remained no more sacrifice for sin, he'd
never have come back.
Because he would have misunderstood it and being,
if not an honest man, at least a
sensitive man, as the passage shows, he would
never have come back to the father's house.
And then another thing this passage does, it
tends to draw away attention from major truths
to minor truths, and to create argument and
bitter feeling.
It's astonishing, isn't it, how the whole Sermon
on the Mount can be passed over and
people will get together and argue over this
one verse of scripture.
But that's the way it's done.
And now we want to talk a little
about this because of the fact that it
has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, misused, both by
the devil and by people, against the people
of God.
And I'm always on the side of the
people of God.
I sound sometimes as if I wasn't, because
I'm pretty severe with them.
But I am severe with them as a
father is severe with a little family of
children that he loves unto death, and of
which he's very proud.
I am very proud of God's people and
very happy to be with them, and recognize
them as being the father's children.
But I am not going to let them
get away with a lot of bad manners
and bad habits when they shouldn't.
For that reason, I am pretty severe, but
I am severe with a smile.
I never preach except with a smile in
my heart and with the joy that I'm
a part of the Church.
But now, what does it mean here?
What does this passage mean?
And first, let's look at what it does
not mean.
I think that it says, For if we
sin willfully, after that we have received the
knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fear for
looking forward to judgment.
Now, what doesn't it mean?
If we can determine what it doesn't mean,
we're in a better position to find out
what it does mean.
I read in that deeply scholarly magazine, Reader's
Digest, this week, about a woman who called
up a police station and said, I just
want to ask you, what bird is that
out in front of my house?
He said, It's an English sparrow.
She said, Thank you, and hung up.
Well, you can see how silly that all
is.
He didn't know, he hadn't seen the bird.
If you have to explain it, of course,
it had better not have been told.
But fact is, she didn't know what it
wasn't, and she didn't know what it was,
and he told her what it was without
knowing what it wasn't.
And if he had known what it wasn't,
he might have known what it was.
You see what I mean?
Now, if you get a passage of scripture
and you don't know what it is, anything
that you don't know what is, you don't
know what isn't.
And if you can find out what it
isn't, you will find out what it is.
What doesn't it mean?
Well, it doesn't mean that only sins done
before hearing the gospel can be forgiven.
If after you hear the gospel and are
enlightened, then you sin willfully, there is no
more chance for you ever to be saved.
Let's look at it like this.
We have one chance to hear the gospel.
We hear the gospel and are not converted,
but go on in sin.
Then after that, we are finished.
There is no more sacrifice for sins remaining.
Now, that's what it doesn't mean, because that
would be to violate all the scriptures and
to destroy all the longsuffering and patience of
God.
I want to ask you, listening to me
now, you happy Christians in conscious fellowship with
God, how many of you were converted to
Christ the first time you heard the gospel?
How many of you were converted the second
time you heard the gospel, or the third
time, or the tenth time you heard the
gospel?
Some of you were teaching in Sunday school
and teaching others before you were converted.
Some of you were giving to the Church
or to foreign missions and sending out the
gospel that you well understood before you yourself
surrendered to God and gave your heart to
the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Lord
and Savior.
Now, if this passage meant that when you
once heard and understood, for that's what the
word enlightened means, and you sin after that,
you're done.
Now, this couldn't mean this for the simple
reason that that would rule out everybody listening
to me now, I'm quite sure.
I do not think there's anybody here that
was converted the first time you heard the
gospel.
Some people wait a long time.
I wish they didn't.
I was converted when I was 17.
I wish it had been 14 or 12
instead of 17.
But I had heard the gospel and was
able to preach it very shortly after I
was converted.
So it doesn't mean that only sins done
before hearing the gospel can be forgiven.
And if it meant that, then God would
be requiring us to do what he would
not himself do.
Because he told us that we were to
forgive other people 70 times, seven times.
And if we're to do it and he
demands it of us, then I would assume
that he would do it himself.
So I think we can say that this
rules out any such a definition or interpretation
as the one I've suggested.
And it does not mean that if a
Christian sins, there's no hope after that.
Because that would be to contradict the scriptures
again.
Listen to this passage of scripture.
This is one I give often to people
who come in great distress or write me
in great distress.
I often give this to women, because this
is about the only passage, or at least
large or full passage, that talks directly to
the woman.
Mostly it talks to men.
If any man hear my voice and so
on.
But here it says, women, sing, O barren
that did not bear and break forth into
singing, and cry aloud, thou that did not
prevail with child, and so on.
Then it says, Fear not, for thou shalt
not be ashamed, neither be thou confounded, for
thou shalt not be put to shame.
For thou shalt forget the shame of thy
youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of
thy widowhood any more.
For thy maker is thine husband, the Lord
of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer,
the whole one of Israel, the God of
the whole earth, shall he be called.
For the Lord hath called thee as a
woman forsaken and grieved in spirit.
For a small moment have I forsaken thee,
but with great mercies will I gather thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face
from thee for a moment, but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith
the Lord thy Redeemer.
Now, here was a woman who had left
her husband and forsaken him, and he had
forsaken her, and they were separated, and he
had turned his back on her finally in
grief and sorrow.
But he said, It is only for a
small moment, in a little wrath I hid
my face from thee for a moment, but
with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on
thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.
For this is as the waters of Noah
unto me.
For as I have sworn that the waters
of Noah should no more go over the
earth, so have I sworn that I would
not be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee.
For the mountains shall depart and the hills
be removed, but my kindness shall not depart
from thee, neither shall the covenant of my
peace be removed, saith the Lord that has
mercy on thee.
Now, if that passage is there, and then
this passage teaches in Hebrews that when a
Christian sins, he is dead.
That if he sins, there is no hope
for him, for there is no more sacrifice
for sin remaining for him.
Then what are you going to do with
Isaiah 54?
What are you going to do with the
51st Psalm?
The 51st Psalm was written by a man
who was after God's own heart and who
had walked with God and written psalms.
And then he was tempted and sinned, and
he certainly sinned deliberately, falling over the edge
of a cliff.
He sent for this woman, he sinned, and
then to get out of it he had
her husband murdered.
There was a malicious affliction.
And according to the multitude of thy tender
mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly
from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my
sin.
For I and my sin as he
knew, all the writers of the Hebrews knew.
And if it was to be true that
when a Christian sins, that ends it all,
and there's no more sacrifice, no fountain for
him to wash in, no lamp that he
can look to to take away the sins
of the world.
But if somebody says that's Old Testament, that
doesn't make any difference, but I will grant
that for the sake of the argument for
those who may believe that.
Let me read you from the New Testament,
a man named John.
He says, If we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us.
That's 1 John 1 and 2.
But if we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all evil.
Jesus Christ came that he might destroy the
works of the devil.
And so, my little children, these things write
I unto you, that ye sin not.
But if any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And he is the propitiation for our sins,
and not for ours only, but also for
the sins of the whole world.
You can't dispensationalize that out of you.
That's for Christians.
So that if it were true that if
a Christian sins, willfully sins after he's converted,
after he's heard the knowledge of the truth,
it doesn't even say converted, he's heard the
knowledge of the truth and been enlightened, then
why was 1 John 1 and 2 written?
And again, look at this man, Peter.
Peter certainly didn't accidentally curse and swear and
deny his Lord.
There was no accident there.
Peter was sneaky, and he wanted to get
out of difficulty.
So when they said, Aren't you one of
his disciples?
He saw the Lord was in trouble, and
he didn't exactly want to get out.
The easy way was a bad thing to
do, and he repented afterwards and the Lord
forgave him.
In fact, he was the one the Lord
hunted up.
And what about the universal experience
of religious people?
What about it?
They say that what is the great mission
man there in the east, one of the
eastern cities of the United States?
I've forgotten his name for the moment.
But this man, I think it was seven
times that he backslid.
Now, I don't think a person ought to
backslide, and I don't want ever to drop
one lonely word that would encourage any child
of God to leave home.
I don't want to encourage anybody in any
measure to do wrong.
Rather, I want to encourage them to do
right, always to walk in the Spirit and
not fulfill the lusts of the flecked ears.
Some of the Lord's people do backslide.
One of the greatest preachers that I ever
heard, I suppose in my lifetime, I'll not
name him.
You probably have not heard of him.
He was a great Bible teacher, one of
the greatest Bible teachers that I ever knew.
He wasn't one of these textualists, but he
was a man who knew what the Bible
meant and was recognized all over this continent
and abroad as a great Bible teacher.
That man, after he had been a Christian
for a while and even had been in
the ministry, had a terrible fall and for
some time was in this condition of backsliding,
and then like Peter, came tearfully back to
his Lord and lived on to be a
very old man.
And when I knew him, he had a
long white beard and eyes that were black
as if they had been bored in with
a red-hot poker.
He would stand and look out over his
audience, and the light of God was on
his old face, and he would teach the
word.
But like David, he had fallen.
But now, if this passage means that nobody
who has heard the word could ever be
restored again after they had sinned, then what
about that man, and what about Peter, and
what about the universal experience of religious people?
The simple fact is, one passage of scripture
is never enough to establish a doctrine.
Always remember that.
And you young Bible students and men who
will be later preachers, I think they mostly
come out Sunday nights.
But anyhow, if you are here, let me
remind you that you never establish a doctrine
on one verse of scripture, because it takes
more than one to establish a truth.
Here is the rule.
If this verse says it, and this verse
confirms it, then you are pretty likely to
be right in your doctrine.
But if you go over here and you
find it, and you go over there and
you find it, and you go back there
and you find it, and you go on
further forward and find it, then they all
say the same thing, and you know you
have the truth.
For instance, the verse 16 isn't enough to
establish the doctrine of the love of God.
But if you go back to the book
of Deuteronomy and hear God say, I have
loved you, and I loved your fathers and
chose them, if you go on into the
book of Psalms and you hear the Holy
Ghost talk about his love, and you go
on into the book of Isaiah and hear
the Holy Ghost talk about the love of
God, you go on into the prophets and
hear Isaiah talk about it, and then you
come into the New Testament and hear Christ
talk about it, then you hear the apostles
talk about it on through to Revelation, you
know you have a doctrine you can live
on and die on, world without end.
But never reach into the Bible and get
one verse and make that either hope or
despair, because it isn't enough.
Every Bible school, every seminary knows that dogmatic
theology is builded upon the harmony of more
than one verse of scripture.
Now, you say, give scripture.
When the devil took Jesus up onto the
pinnacle of the temple, he said, Now, jump
off, he said.
Jump off of here, because it's written.
It is written.
He shall give his angels charge concerning thee.
Yes, said Jesus, but again it is written,
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Truth lies not in the angels shall keep
thee, but it lies in the angels shall
keep thee, but don't tempt God.
And when the Lord says that he will
hear your prayer, it doesn't mean that the
Lord makes an unconditional promise to answer your
prayer.
It means that there are others who he'll
answer your prayer.
So we get the truth, not by writing
one passage to death.
We get the truth by taking all the
scriptures and putting them together.
Now, what does it mean?
That's what it does, and now what does
it?
Well, there are two words here, sin and
sacrifice.
And the sin held up here particularly is
the sin of unbelief.
You read the book of Hebrews and you'll
find that's the sin they're talking about.
The sin of unbelief in the word of
God, a sulky, stubborn refusal to go on.
Israel back there in the Old Testament took
a vote of no confidence, voted a vote
of no confidence against God.
They said no, they would not.
And the writer to the Hebrews warns, Now
don't do as they did.
You remember in the third chapter, don't do
as they did.
For with whom was he grieved these forty
years, even those that sinned in the desert,
whose carcasses fell in the wilderness?
And to whom swear he that they should
not enter into his rest?
But to them it believed not.
So we see that they could not enter
in because of unbelief.
Basic unbelief was the trouble of the Jew.
And so the writer to the Hebrews says,
Now you are Hebrews, and you have in
you the streak that your forefathers had.
And they voted no confidence in the olden
days, even though they had sacrifice there, a
sacrifice which was made by the priests.
Now, he says, there has been a fulfillment
of all of those sacrifices in Jesus Christ.
The old Jews used to offer their sacrifice
and get forgiven for their sins.
And if they sinned again, they offered another
lamb and another lamb.
But now, says the man of God, there
is no more.
You Jews, don't go and look to your
old sacrifices, for they are out.
They have no meaning, because they have been
fulfilled in Christ.
This tenth chapter from which this passage that
I use this morning is taken, says, For
the law, having a shadow of good things
to come, and not the very image of
the things, can never, with those sacrifices which
they offer year by year, continually make the
comer thereunto perfect.
But it says that Christ offered one sacrifice
for sin forever, and so there isn't any
other sacrifice.
And if you Jews who always were going
back and always filled with unbelief and always
stubbornly rebelling, if you turn away now from
this last, final sacrifice and go back to
your altar, your altars don't count.
There is no more sacrifice for sin.
There is no place to look.
Either it's Jesus Christ, or there is no
sacrifice, no place to go.
So if you go on in your sin,
don't imagine you can go back and start
over and offer another lamb and go back
to an altar.
You can't do it, says the Holy Ghost
here through the man of God.
There is no more sacrifice for sin.
But a fearful looking-forward of judgment.
So for all of us, it's this.
It's either Christ or eternal loss.
If we draw back from him and still
sin and go on willfully and refuse to
go on with him, there is no place
else to remember sin.
The old sacrifices of the Hebrews were out.
And so it's either Jesus Christ, our Lord,
or else it's eternal loss and a fearful
looking-forward too of judgment that shall devour
the adversaries.
So there isn't any place to hide.
The phony hiding places that people create for
themselves, phony hiding places.
You might as well hope to hide from
the judgment of God if you refuse the
blood of Jesus Christ and look around for
hope somewhere else, looking for another sacrifice which
had been done away and ruled out.
If you do, you are like the man
who might go to Christmas Island, where they
are putting off the big bombs now, and
make himself a paper tent and say, I'm
safe in my paper tent.
One big boom and there's no paper tent
and no man and no anything.
So the great judgment of God is like
the bomb, and when it lights or lands
upon a nation or a city or a
man or a church, there is no place
to hide, only in Jesus Christ, the Lord.
I tell you, the book of Hebrews is
a book of complete repudiation of all the
Old Testament sacrifices and the establishing of Jesus
Christ, the Lord.
No matter how many willful sinners there might
be, the blood of Jesus Christ still cleanses
from all sin.
What other kind of sin would there be
except willful sinning?
If a man loses his temper, he doesn't
do it willfully?
I suppose not.
But if he loses his temper and beats
his neighbor up, just at what point does
he cease to be spontaneous and become willful?
Would you tell me that?
Just where in the matter of beating his
neighbor's ears down, just tell me where does
he cease to be spontaneous?
I don't think God makes an awful lot
of difference between a sin that is a
spontaneous burst of anger, say, or lust, and
any other kind of sin.
But if a man wills to do evil
and continues to sin and turns back to
Israel and to the altars and to the
old sacrifices, the man of God says, No,
don't do it.
They don't exist anymore.
There remains no sacrifice.
Go on to perfection.
Seek Jesus Christ, who is your Lord, and
who offered a sacrifice for sin forever.
So there is no place to hide.
The phony hiding places, God knows there are
too many of them.
I like to try to upset them all
I can and torpedo them all I can.
When they say, God is too loving to
them, I like to torpedo that, for that's
a phony hiding place.
When they say, I don't believe there's a
hell, I like to torpedo that one, for
that's a phony hiding place.
No place to hide.
Hide in the blood of the Lamb.
We used to sing, Hide me in the
blood of Jesus.
And so if we hide in the blood,
we're all right.
Outside of that, there's no place to hide,
and no sacrifice to sin, no penance, no
righteousness, no doing good, no offering up of
a lamb, no slave, a pigeon, or a
redhead.
That's what it means.
I told you what it doesn't mean.
I hope this will encourage some dear people,
for there are sensitive people, a little bit
morbid, and a little bit on the neurotic
side.
But if you're a little neurotic, don't let
it bother you.
Most of us are.
My family claims I am.
My boys tell me I am.
They are.
Somebody wrote a book called Be Glad You're
Neurotic.
I haven't read the book.
But what does neurotic mean?
It means nervous.
My wife said this morning, some people think
that there's something wrong with you because you
move your shoulders.
So nothing wrong with me.
I'm just double-jointed.
Somebody wanted to know if I was crippled
in the war.
No, I never even saw a bullet when
I'm crippled.
I'm just wiggly.
And if you're nervous and sensitive, the temptation
is, when you feel you have failed God,
or even whether you have or not, the
temptation is to take it awfully hard and
begin to blame yourself.
And if you let that crystallize into a
state of morbidity, you can hate yourself and
condemn yourself and refuse to forgive yourself and
refuse to believe God forgives you to a
point where you're a mental wreck.
And we have some mental wrecks.
Now, those mental wrecks would be mental wrecks
on something else.
Religion didn't make them like that.
They were like that.
And they wouldn't let religion straighten them out.
But if you will believe that there's only
one sin that can't be forgiven, and that's
the sin of attributing the works of the
Holy Ghost to the devil, that's the unpardonable
sin, that's the only one that can.
All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons
of men, except the one.
That's the unpardonable sin, and that's not before
us here now.
And always remember this.
The worried Christian has not committed the unpardonable
sin.
For it is part of the psychological state
of the man who has committed the unpardonable
sin that he doesn't know he's done it.
And when you hear anybody grieving for fear
they have, you can always be sure they
haven't.
For in the Bible, the ones that did
were arrogantly sure that they were righteous, and
they'd have laughed out loud if you told
them they'd committed the unpardonable sin.
And the poor, grieved, sin-bruised people that
wept at the feet of Jesus, they hadn't.
Even though they might have thought they had,
they hadn't.
So if you should be among those who
are so sensitive and so nervously distraught that
you feel hurt and self-condemned, and maybe
wonder if you've committed the unpardonable sin and
there's no more sacrifice for sin, the two
don't mean the same, but a troubled mind
can always make them the same.
If you're worried, you haven't.
If you have, you're not worried.
That's the rule of thumb.
You can be sure.
Now I hope that what I've said this
morning will do one thing and not another.
I hope it will encourage God's poor, troubled
sheep.
But I hope it will not encourage them
to be careless.
For we don't want to be careless Christians.
We want to walk circumspectly for the time
is drawing nigh.
But we want to be cheerfully hopeful because
of the goodness of God and because of
the infinite efficacy of the blood of the
Lamb.
We need no other sacrifice.
I was walking up Halstead Street one time
in the city of Chicago.
I don't remember what it was that had
gotten me down.
That was years ago.
I think I was blue, oh brother.
I'd stuck my finger in a glass of
water and could have written.
But anyway, I was down and here was
the Salvation Army.
They were on the street corner and they
had their drum and some off-key trumpets
and they were singing, you know, hoarsely as
they do on the street corner in the
open air.
But when I got there I heard them
singing, I need no other sacrifice, I want
no other plea, it is enough that Jesus
died and that he died for me.
They sang, when I reach the pearly gates,
I'll then put in my plea, it is
enough that Jesus died and that he died
for me.
I felt as if I was two and
a half feet taller and almost felt wings
sprouting.
I left them and I didn't tell them,
to this day they don't know what they
did for me, a poor discouraged preacher.
But I walked on the rest of the
way up to Halstead Street to the church.
My heart was singing and I said, thank
God, thank God it's true.
I ask no other sacrifice, I need nothing
else, Jesus Christ is enough.
There remaineth no sacrifices in Israel anymore, but
there remaineth a sacrifice before the right hand
of God with the nails and marks in
his hands.
That's all the plea that I need and
all the sacrifice that I need and all
the hope I need, world without end.
Amen.