Hebrews chapter 6, and we saw here that
the burden of the writer to this letter,
the writer of this letter, is to lead
Christians beyond the milk level to solid food
level, beyond foundation to superstructure, beyond the nursery
class to higher education.
In our earthly life, none of us want
to be babies, none of us want to
stop our education with the nursery class, and
none of us will want to have a
building with only the foundation.
Why is it then that in the Christian
life, so many believers seem to be satisfied
with just drinking milk, laying a foundation, and
living in the nursery class all their life?
And we saw in our last study what
the nursery class is.
Repentance, faith, water baptism, baptism in the Holy
Spirit, spiritual gifts and healing, the hope of
the future of resurrection, and eternal judgment in
heaven or hell.
Don't you realize that most believers are occupied
with only these things?
And if you have these things, and you
go to some place and you preach the
gospel, the gospel you preach will only be
these things, how you can lay a foundation.
And you bring people to birth, that means
you're bringing them to being born again, and
then never let them grow.
They are babies forever and ever and ever,
and you have a church full of babies,
whether they are fifty years old or two
years old.
Retarded children, this is the problem with multitudes
in Christendom today.
Maybe one pastor who is mature, sometimes he's
also a baby.
And this is not the Christianity in the
New Testament.
Let us press on to perfection.
And if you yourself have never gone beyond
the nursery class, how can you lead other
people beyond the nursery class?
If you're still drinking milk, how can you
lead other people to drink more than milk?
So this is the challenge that comes to
us.
There is a doctrine that determines how we
lay a foundation, and there's a doctrine that
leads to perfection.
And if you are only gripped with one,
and we think that is everything, we will
go everywhere producing babies.
And we may think, well, the important thing
is just to get them out of hell
and take them to heaven.
If that was the only important thing, there
would never be an exhortation in the Bible
like we read in Hebrews 6, 1, saying,
let us press on to perfection.
It would have said, let us go and
produce more babies.
No, it says you should be mature.
Every believer should grow to maturity, not just
bring more and more people to the level
of babyhood.
And it's because so many believers are babies
that so many churches are full of quarrels
and court cases and fighting and leaders fighting
with each other.
And the leaders fall into adultery and running
after money and so many things like this,
because they're all babies.
The leaders are babies.
Babies will always fight.
When we grow up to maturity, we don't
fight.
That's one proof that we have grown up
to maturity.
We don't covet positions of honor in the
church.
If you covet positions of honor in the
church, you're a baby.
And you see the amount of babyhood there
is among leadership in Christendom today, seeking empty
honor from each other for silly little things.
And we see the state of Christendom.
It's a pathetic testimony to the world.
And if you're concerned about that, you will
seek to press on to maturity yourself and
seek to lead every convert to maturity.
You'll never be satisfied with laying a foundation.
You'll want to complete the structure.
Some of you, if you go somewhere and
you preach the gospel and a few people
are gathered together and you want to build
a meeting hall, how many of you will
be happy with just laying the foundation of
the meeting hall and say, OK, we've got
a place to meet here.
We bought a plot of land.
We've laid a foundation and there's a floor
here.
It doesn't matter if there's no roof, no
wall.
We get wet in the rain and we
sit in the sun, but we've got a
floor.
I've never seen anybody happy with that anywhere,
anywhere.
But, you know, many times I think of
people who have only laid a foundation and
then they teach a lot of things in
those meetings.
It's like a man who hasn't built a
house.
He's only laid a foundation and he decides
to move in.
He brought his furniture and his beds and
his sofas and dining table and kitchen equipment
and everything.
And he set it up in this house
where there are no walls, no roof, nothing.
It's just foundation.
This is the condition of a lot of
churches.
There's a lot of teaching and knowledge and
this, that and the other.
But all the knowledge is like the furniture
in a house which has only got a
foundation.
And there are a lot of problems.
Of course, there'll be a lot of problems.
If you want to solve those problems, teach
people.
First of all, press on to perfection yourself
and lead others to perfection, my brothers and
sisters.
That is the answer.
And that was the burden of the man
who wrote this letter.
Let us press on to perfection.
And he goes on to speak about the
danger of not pressing on to perfection.
See, if you lay this foundation like that
for a long time, spiritually anyway, the foundation
itself will be destroyed after a while.
That's the great danger.
Now, earthly solid foundations, you may say they
last for a long time.
But spiritual foundations, if you don't build a
superstructure on it, if you don't press on
to perfection, even the foundation will be eroded.
And after some time, they would have lost
their salvation.
They would have lost their baptism in the
Holy Spirit.
They'd have lost their faith.
They'd have lost their repentance.
They'd have lost everything.
There's nothing left.
That's the danger.
And we see that again and again and
again, everywhere of people who just make people
converts and don't lead them on.
They have a lot of problems in those
churches.
And the churches where people are urged to
press on to perfection, there are less and
less problems because we are dealing with mature
people.
That's the answer.
And he speaks about the problems that come
when you don't press on to perfection in
verse four onwards.
Chapter six, verse four.
In the case of those who once been
enlightened.
Now, read these words carefully.
Like I said, we can come to scripture
with a preconceived idea of what scripture should
say.
And that is the best way to remain
ignorant of what the Bible says.
If you want to know what the Bible
says, when you come to the Bible, get
rid of all your ideas and all the
theology you heard and studied and say, Lord,
open my eyes.
Maybe what I've studied is all wrong.
Please, this is written for simple people.
This is not written for scholars.
This is written for fishermen.
This is written for babies.
God has hidden these things from the clever
and intelligent.
Come like a baby and you'll understand it
very easily.
What are the words used here?
These are all words to describe a person
who is born again.
First of all, enlightened.
That means in his darkness, in the darkness
of his heart, the light of God has
come.
He's a born again person.
Second, he has tasted the heavenly gift, the
gift which God gave of his son.
He has received his son.
He's tasted Jesus.
Third, he has been made a partaker of
the Holy Spirit.
He's not just a superficial Christian.
He's received the Holy Spirit.
Four, he has tasted the good word of
God.
He has responded to God's word.
Number five, he has tasted the powers of
the age to come.
That means he's also tasted something of supernatural
power in his life.
He has tasted something of the miraculous.
He has tasted supernatural answers to prayer in
impossible situations.
He has prayed and God has produced an
answer to that prayer.
He has tasted answers to prayer.
This is a really born again person.
All these five things characterize a born again
person.
I believe that healing in our body comes
under the category of tasting the powers of
the age to come.
In that future age, I will have a
resurrection body, perfectly healthy without sickness.
I can't have that body today, but I
can have a taste.
It's like some new biscuit manufacturing company sends
you one biscuit as a taste of the
quality of biscuits we are producing.
A little sample.
And healing is a little sample.
One biscuit.
I'll get the full packet one day when
Christ comes again.
I believe we can taste it when we
are sick.
This is what I pray when I'm sick.
I say, Lord, I want a taste in
this body of that resurrection power, which will
one day transform my whole body into the
likeness of Jesus' body.
I know I can't have it all fully
today, but can't you give me a taste
of it?
A little taste.
One teaspoon is enough.
You know the crumbs that fall from the
table.
I can't get the full bread, but the
crumbs that fall from the table was enough
to heal that girl.
It can heal me too.
One day I'll have the full bread, total
perfect resurrection body.
But here is a person who has experienced
all this and then he falls away.
Is it possible for such a person to
fall away?
It's not just falling and getting up.
There are many believers who fall and get
up.
We all have that experience.
This is not talking about falling and getting
up, which all of us have.
It's falling away completely.
If you come to the Bible with an
open mind, you realize that is possible.
If God says it is possible, it is
possible, whatever your theology may say.
You just admit that your theology is wrong
and God's word is right, that you can
fall away.
And these people, why do they fall away?
First of all, they crucify the Son of
God afresh.
How do you crucify the Son of God
afresh?
I remember seeing a Christian movie.
It was an evangelistic movie where it described
the conversion of a young man who was
a godless young man.
One of the things that converted him was
in this movie they showed somebody hammering the
nails into the hand of Jesus.
And this boy, this young man wondered, who
is this hammering?
And when he turned around, he saw it
was his own face.
He was hammering the nails into the hands
of Jesus.
Have you seen that?
Absolutely true.
Have you seen that you were the one
who said, crucify him, crucify him.
You say, I never said it.
Every time you sin, that's what you're saying.
Do you know that every time you sin,
what you're saying is crucify him?
Because why was he crucified?
He would never have had to be crucified
if man had not sinned.
He was not crucified because man was not
educated.
He was not crucified because man didn't have
any clothes or food or any such thing.
He was not crucified because man's social conditions
were bad.
These are the things a lot of people
are interested in today, social conditions, food, clothing.
Okay, that's all important.
But he was crucified for some other reason.
Jesus would never have had to come to
earth if man's only problem was there was
not enough food or not enough clothes or
his social conditions were not good.
He would never have had to come and
die.
He came and died only because of one
reason, because man had sinned.
He was crucified only for one reason, for
sin.
And when I explain the gospel to Sunday
school children, I tell them, do you know
that even if you were the only little
boy and girl in the whole world who
did something wrong and everybody else was good,
Jesus would still have come for you?
That is the gospel.
If I was the only sinner in the
whole world, everybody else was holy, Jesus would
still have come and died for me.
For whose sins would he have died then?
My sins.
As long as you believe that just Jesus
died for the sins of the world, you
may be a nominal Christian.
When you believe that Jesus died for your
sins, that's when you get born again.
Have you seen that?
That he was crucified, your sins crucified him.
So every time you sin, you're crucifying him
afresh.
I'm not talking about accidental falling into sin.
You know, accidentally you can stamp on somebody's
foot.
You know there's a difference between accidentally stamping
on somebody's foot and deliberately stamping on somebody's
foot?
There is a difference.
How often we accidentally, you may be traveling
in a bus and you step back and
you accidentally stamp on somebody's foot and you
say, oh I'm sorry, you didn't do it
deliberately.
But there are other things we do deliberately.
Sometimes we accidentally lose our temper.
We didn't want to.
But then there's other types of sins where
we plan and scheme and want to really
harm somebody and write a letter and hurt
people.
Those are much more serious than the accidental
ones.
If you accidentally nail into the hands of
Jesus, that's not so serious.
But when you deliberately nail it, that's much
more serious.
Accidentally falling into sin, we all fall perhaps
every day.
Accidentally, maybe you could even lust.
You know you didn't expect that filthy picture
there and you just were tempted, suddenly you
lusted.
But it's quite another thing when you go
and you buy a pornographic book and begin
to look at it.
That's different.
It's not of accidental sin we all fall
into, but it's very different from deliberate sin.
And when you keep on deliberately sinning, you're
nailing, nailing, you're crucifying the Son of God
afresh.
You think believers can't do it?
So many, when you refuse to forgive somebody,
Jesus hung on the cross and said, father
forgive them.
You say no, don't forgive him, don't forgive
him.
Hammer the nail in.
What's going to happen to you?
I'll tell you, you will fall away.
I guarantee you'll fall away.
Because you're crucifying the Son of God afresh.
And you're putting him to an open shame.
It's a terrible shame to be crucified.
Jesus hung there with the underwear hanging there,
shameful.
And you do it?
That's what sin is.
And when a person sins like that deliberately,
I'm not talking as I said about accidental
sin, deliberately keeps on hammering the nails, a
time will come, whatever believer, whatever spirit baptized
or speaking in tongues, whatever he calls himself,
he'll fall away.
And then if he continues like that, keeping
on hammering the nails, it is impossible it
says in verse six, to renew him again.
You know, a person can cross a line
because he's rejected the grace of God so
much that is impossible to renew him again.
It's very dangerous for a believer to keep
on sinning deliberately.
And verse seven indicates that such a believer
keeps on, he's interested in blessings, but he's
not interested in fruitfulness in his life.
He keeps on drinking the rain, but instead
of bringing forth vegetation that is useful, he
brings forth, verse eight, thorns and thistles.
In other words, here's a believer who's interested
in blessings.
He goes for every meeting where there's a
promise of blessing.
He hears there's some meeting about healing, he'll
go there.
He hears there's some meeting about prosperity, he'll
go there.
He's interested in such messages, rain, blessing, prosperity,
physical healing, and God is going to do
this for you and do that for you.
He wants to drink all the rain, but
what does he bring forth from his life
as a result of receiving all this rain?
Not fruit, not love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self-control, not those
things.
He brings forth bitterness and unforgiving spirit, keeping
on taking advantage of the grace of God,
sinning sexually, keeping on doing that and never
repenting.
I want to say it's a very dangerous
path, anybody who takes advantage of the grace
of God like that in secret.
See, the blessings of the New Covenant are
greater than the blessings of the Old Covenant,
but when you fall from the New Covenant,
it's much greater too.
See, we can say the Old Covenant was
like a little six-inch platform from the
ground.
If you're standing on a platform which is
six inches from the ground and you fall
down to the ground, it's not very serious,
you don't get hurt very much, because you
fell only six inches.
But if you fell from a ten-story
building, a hundred feet high, that's serious.
The New Covenant is something that takes you
way up, but if you fall from there,
it's much more serious than people who fell
in the Old Covenant.
Solomon's fall is nothing compared to your fall,
even if he had a thousand wives and
concubines.
He was only six inches above the ground.
Where have you got Jesus Christ and the
Holy Spirit who lifted you so high from
there when you fall?
It's very serious.
When an angel fell, he became a demon.
When the highest angel fell, he became Satan.
If a donkey falls, he's not going to
become a demon or Satan.
It depends on how high you are.
The higher you are, when a leader falls,
like Moses, once he falls, he cannot enter
Canaan.
When lower believers fall, after ten times God
says you can't enter Canaan.
That's what he told the Israelites.
Even today, when an ordinary believer falls, God
allows him to fall.
When a leader falls into some serious sin,
I don't believe he can ever come back
into a ministry again.
He can be a believer, he can break
bread, sit in the church at the back,
but I don't believe that he can come
back into that ministry.
But it happens.
People commit adultery and then one year later
they are back in the ministry.
I don't agree with it.
I'm not saying they can't be restored to
fellowship with God, but I don't believe they
can come back into the ministry.
They have a lot of knowledge, but what
can they testify to?
They can testify that after 25 years of
following the Lord, you can fall into adultery.
Is that the message we want to preach?
Something is wrong with that type of following
the Lord.
You're not following the Lord at all.
Something is wrong with that type of Christianity.
So I don't believe such a man can
be a leader.
So we see here that the higher we
go, the greater our fall.
Depends what we bring forth with all the
blessings we receive.
Verse 9, having said these strong words, you
see he has told us the Old Testament
people were only following Moses.
We are following Jesus.
Those who followed Moses, if they fell, okay,
it's not so serious.
Those who follow Jesus and fall, it's much
more serious.
That's the basic point.
Because what is the difference in height between
Moses and Jesus?
So much higher.
So the fall is so much greater.
We all say we are following Jesus.
It's safer to follow Moses.
But if you are planning to fall in
your life, better to follow Moses.
If you follow Jesus, you've got to take
it very seriously.
Very, very seriously.
But he says, having said all this, beloved,
we believe better things concerning you.
Things that accompany salvation.
We don't believe this is going to happen
to you.
I have faith for you, brothers, that you
will not take lightly this matter of sin.
And he says, God is not unrighteous.
Verse 10, to forget your work.
He says a few encouraging words.
He feels that he's spoken a bit strongly,
but it's necessary.
But along with those strong words are words
of encouragement.
But I want to tell you also, he
says, God is not unrighteous.
He has not forgotten your work.
He has not forgotten the love that you
have shown to his name in serving other
believers.
Jesus said, even if you give a cup
of cold water to someone, you won't lose
your reward.
Haven't you done all that in the past?
You've served other believers, you've worked for the
Lord.
He says, now all I'm saying is, we
desire that all of you will proceed in
the same diligence, the same hardworking attitude, till
the full assurance of hope until the end.
Don't just start like that, end like that,
he says in verse 11.
Don't be sluggish.
There's no time in the Christian life where
we can afford to be lazy.
It doesn't matter how much we have followed
the Lord, I don't want to be lazy.
I don't want to be lazy even if
I'm 90 years old, I don't want to
be lazy.
Not a single day of my life must
be wasted.
I remember as a young man reading a
poem written by A.B. Simpson which said,
there's no time for trifling in this life
of mine, because this is not the path
my blessed master trod, but strenuous toil, each
hour and each hour employed always and all
for God.
No time for trifling.
I don't have time to fool around.
I don't have time for many things other
worldly people are interested in.
That's not the way Jesus walked on this
earth.
Every moment of his time, every bit of
energy in his body was devoted 100%
for God and that's how I want to
live till the end of my days.
I hope that's how you want to live
till the end of your days.
Where there's sluggishness, you will never come into
this new covenant life.
Nobody can ever come to this new covenant
life who's lazy, sluggish.
You've got to be radical, you've got to
be wholehearted, you've got to give up many
things other people are interested in.
You've got to concentrate on the things which
are most essential for eternity, because we are
dealing with eternal life and eternal death.
I'm not saying you can't go for a
picnic or you can't have a little entertainment,
but just make sure everything is kept in
their proper proportion.
So many people do not study the scriptures
because they are not serious about their time.
They say we don't have time.
There's plenty of time.
If we look for it, don't be sluggish,
but imitators of those who through faith and
patience inherit the promises.
Faith and patience are always linked together in
the new covenant.
And he gives the example of Abraham.
When Abraham, when God made a promise to
Abraham, you know it took 25 years for
Abraham to get that promise of a son?
25 years.
It says he waited.
Verse 15, he patiently waited and he obtained
the promise.
What did God tell him?
Verse 14, I will surely bless you and
I will surely multiply you.
I want you to notice something here in
this verse.
In the Old Testament, if God blessed a
man, he had children.
Always.
It was part of the old covenant promise.
I will bless you, I will multiply you.
God told Adam, he blessed Adam and said,
multiply, be fruitful.
In the new covenant, the same thing is
true spiritually.
If God blesses me, he will give me
spiritual children.
That's one proof that God has blessed me.
I bless you and I will multiply you.
Now, when Abraham, if God said to Abraham,
I'll bless you, but you won't have any
children, he would have been terribly disappointed.
And if God says to me today, I'll
bless you, but you won't have any other
people brought to the Lord through your life,
I'd be terribly disappointed too.
More disappointed than Abraham.
I want all of you to be disappointed
when God does not use you to lead
other people to God.
Something is wrong.
I will bless you, I'll multiply you.
That means Abraham got a son like him.
And I believe that if God blesses me,
he will give me through my labors at
least a few brothers who have the same
vision and the same passion and the same
desire and the same longing that I have.
Okay, even if I get two or three,
I'm happy.
Jesus had eleven.
He was very happy.
But you say God is blessing you and
you don't even produce one person like yourself,
brother, something is wrong with that blessing.
You've got to say, Lord, what's wrong?
I'm not saying that it can happen overnight,
but God's will is that through our life,
we multiply.
We produce spiritual children having the same desire
that we have.
You know, like our children, people look at
the children and say, he looks like daddy
or mommy.
Same color, same features, same thing spiritually, same
passion, same longing, same desire.
That must be our longing in our local
church.
Don't say what to do, brother, nobody's interested
in spiritual things.
Well, that's probably because you're not interested in
spiritual things because you produce somebody just like
yourself.
When God blesses us, he multiplies us.
Just think if all of us are gripped
by this and we go to different parts
of India and say, well, Lord, bless me
and multiply me.
He's going to multiply me.
Do we produce children?
No, God gives it.
Children are his gift, the Bible says.
That is the mark of God's blessing.
And we've got to patiently wait and we'll
get it.
Abraham patiently waited and trusted and it happened.
And then it says here that God had
given not only his word, but an oath.
It says in verse 17, God, by two
things, two unchangeable things, verse 16 to 18,
verse 18 says, what are the two unchangeable
things?
One is God's word.
And on top of God's word, he gave
an oath, a promise.
I swear you're going to have, like Jesus
said, verily, verily, I say unto you, I
will give you a promise.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, God's word
and God's promise.
With those two things, we have a strong
encouragement to lay hold of the hope that's
set before us.
And this hope we have as an anchor
of our soul.
What is the hope of the Christian?
Many people say the hope of the Christian
is the second coming of Jesus Christ.
I say that's half the hope.
What's the second half of the hope?
You read in 1 John chapter 3, verse
2.
There are two parts to this hope.
One, he's coming again.
Second, when he comes again, I'll be like
him.
Don't forget that part.
1 John 3, 2 says that.
And 1 John 3, 3 says, everyone who
has this hope purifies himself.
So we know that that's the hope of
the Christian.
The hope of the Christian is double.
Christ is coming again, and when he comes,
I'll be like him.
And if I have this hope, when Christ
comes again, it's actually one, it's like a
coin.
You can't get one side of a coin,
you get both together.
When Christ comes, I'll be like him.
If that's your hope, it says it's like
an anchor of the soul.
You know, when a ship drops an anchor,
it cannot move.
We saw earlier in Hebrews chapter 2 about
drifting.
Here it says how you can stop drifting.
Drop an anchor, and then the ship will
never drift.
What is the anchor we must drop in
the Christian life?
I'm going to be like Jesus one day.
I'm stuck to that.
Not I'm going to be a millionaire one
day.
Not I'm going to be a great man
in the world one day.
That's not my anchor.
You got all these other things as your
goal in life, you'll drift.
Let this be the anchor all your life.
Not I'm going to bring so many souls
to Christ.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm going to be like Jesus one day.
That's the only anchor.
From that anchor, God may use me to
bring five souls to him or a hundred
souls to him.
That depends on you.
You may be a mother looking after children,
or you may be an evangelist who brings
hundreds of people to Christ.
That's different.
God will multiply all of us, but not
necessarily in the same way.
That depends on our calling.
But the anchor for the mother and the
evangelist must be the same.
What is that?
I'm going to be like Jesus.
Not even I'm going to bring souls to
Christ.
Don't evaluate an evangelist with a mother and
say evangelist brought a hundred people and the
mother brought only two.
That mother may get a bigger reward than
the evangelist because her anchor was to become
like Jesus and the evangelist anchor was not
that.
So don't evaluate by numbers.
Your anchor is the hope that I shall
be like Jesus.
And Jesus has gone in there inside the
veil as a forerunner.
Now this is a title of Jesus which
is not very popular.
In fact most Christians have never even heard
of it.
A lot of Christians have heard of Jesus
as the good shepherd, the door, the way,
the truth and the life, the resurrection and
the life, savior, lord, master, king, healer, but
forerunner?
Have you ever heard of Jesus as a
forerunner?
My guess is that ninety percent of Christians
have never heard of Jesus as a forerunner.
They don't even know there's such a verse
in the Bible.
My personal conviction is that the book of
Hebrews is one of the most important books
in the New Testament next to the Gospels.
I believe it's one of the most important
episodes.
Romans and Hebrews are very very important episodes.
And only Hebrews we read of Jesus as
a forerunner.
Only Hebrews we read that Jesus was tempted
like us in all points and did not
sin.
Only in Hebrews do we read that Jesus
was made like his brothers in all things.
Only in Hebrews it says we can press
on to perfection.
Only in Hebrews it explains to us what
is the foundation and what is perfection.
It's a very very important book.
And if the devil does not allow you
to study it, I'm not surprised.
The devil is clever.
He doesn't want you to study it because
he doesn't want you to press on to
perfection.
He doesn't want you to walk like Jesus.
He doesn't want your life to be effective
for God on this earth.
He doesn't want you to have an anchor.
He wants you to drift.
So it says here that Jesus is a
priest according to the order of Melchizedek, a
high priest.
And if Jesus is the high priest according
to the order of Melchizedek, we are the
junior priests of the same order.
And then it goes on to describe Melchizedek
in chapter 7 onwards, verse 1 onwards.
Melchizedek was the king of Salem or Jerusalem.
So you see, we come back again to
Jerusalem and Babylon.
False religion, false counterfeit Christianity, just occupied with
religious activities.
And Jerusalem, which is the priesthood of Melchizedek.
And it says, this man, he's trying to
prove that Melchizedek was even greater than Abraham.
And that the priesthood of Melchizedek is a
far greater priesthood than the priesthood of Levi.
And the way he proves it is, a
very interesting way he proves it.
He says, do you know that when Abraham
met Melchizedek, in verse 4, he gave Melchizedek
10% of all that he had collected
in the war.
And he says, in Abraham's body was Isaac,
and inside Isaac was Jacob, and inside Jacob
was Levi.
So Levi, he says, was inside Abraham, even
though it's 3-4 generations down.
And he says, when Abraham gave 10%
to Melchizedek, Levi was inside also giving 10
% to Melchizedek.
So he says, who is greater?
Melchizedek is greater.
Levi was giving a tithe to Melchizedek.
And that's the way he proves, you see
from verse 4 to 10.
Levi, he says in verse 10, was still
in the loins of his father when Melchizedek
met him.
And he says, if Jesus is the order
of Melchizedek, he's a far greater priest than
the priesthood of Levi.
Because Jesus did not come from the tribe
of Levi, he came from the tribe of
Judah.
And here he's trying to establish this priesthood
is far greater.
You see, Melchizedek, he received gifts, but it
was not according to law.
There was not a law.
Melchizedek did not preach to Abraham, you must
give me your tithes.
Levi would teach people, you have to give
me your tithes.
When a pastor gets up and tells people,
you got to give me your tithes, which
priesthood is he in?
Levi.
Melchizedek received gifts, but he never told anybody.
He never told people, you got to give
me, you got to support me, you got
to do this.
But he received.
And when Abraham gave, he took it.
That is the priesthood of Melchizedek.
That's how Jesus was.
Jesus didn't tell people, you must support me,
you must give me 10%.
When people gave, he took.
If people didn't give, he was just as
happy.
Whereas Levi lived according to rules.
God will curse you if you don't pay
your tithes.
You see how so much of Christendom today
is under the priesthood of Levi.
When Levi had to wear special clothes as
a priest, when people wear special clothes, even
if it's a jibba to show that they
are different from everybody else, what's it?
It's back to the priesthood of Levi.
Why can't we dress like ordinary people and
ordinary human beings?
That's how Jesus dressed.
So many things you find in Christendom today,
we build a building and we call it
the house of God.
Is the building the house of God?
That's back to the old covenant.
I could make a list of the things
in today's Christianity which is all old covenant.
And that's why we keep Christians under the
old covenant and we don't press on to
perfection.
The priesthood of Levi is totally different.
In Levi's, the priesthood of Melchizedek is totally
different.
He came because God led him to bless
Abraham, said a few words, gave him some
food and disappeared.
And Abraham gave him something, he said, well
praise the Lord, thank you and he went
off.
He was not dependent on Abraham's gift.
Do you think Melchizedek was dependent on Abraham's
gift?
That's another thing we can learn from the
priesthood of Melchizedek.
Melchizedek was a king.
What did he want Abraham's 10% for?
He took a gift from Abraham to bless
Abraham.
That was his attitude.
Like Paul said to the Philippians, when I
receive a gift from you, I take it
so that God will bless you.
What an attitude.
That's the priesthood of Melchizedek.
Melchizedek said, I trust God for my needs.
If somebody gives me something, I take it
and I hope God will bless him for
it.
Levi was different.
Levi said, I'm dependent on you fellas.
If you fellas don't give me your tithe,
I'm finished.
There's a lot of difference between the priesthood
of Levi and the priesthood of Melchizedek.
You can learn a lot about financial principles
in Christian work today by comparing Levi with
Melchizedek.
You see how so much of Christian financial
principles is all back in the priesthood of
Levi in the old covenant.
Not the priesthood of Melchizedek.
Melchizedek had a dignity.
He trusted God for his needs.
If he took a gift from Abraham, it
was so that Abraham would be blessed.
Not because he coveted something which Abraham had.
Don't ever desire.
If you want to have the dignity of
the priesthood of Melchizedek, of which Jesus is
the high priest, don't descend to the level
of the Levitical priesthood.
It's not only in offering sacrifices, it's in
their attitude to money.
The attitude of Melchizedek to money was fundamentally
different from the attitude of Levi.
Both received gifts, but in a completely different
way.
And it's the same thing happening today.
There must be a complete change in our
attitude, if we are full-time Christian workers,
to receiving gifts, if we want to be
a part of the priesthood of Melchizedek.
The dignity of a king.
Levi was not a king.
He was a man who was dependent all
the time.
He was more like a beggar.
And when the people didn't support him, it
says in the time of Nehemiah, he said,
well, then I'm not going to be a
priest anymore.
I'm going to do something else.
And that's how it is, even today.
Somebody doesn't support you, and then I say,
okay, then I can't serve God.
I've got to do something else.
What type of calling did such people have?
Melchizedek was not dependent like that.
He says, God's called me to be his
priest.
Now I'm going to do it.
And he'll provide my need.
And he did.
Be one like that.
Keep that vision before you of the priesthood
of Melchizedek.
He came and he blessed even a great
man, a rich man like Abraham.
Think of that, that we can go around
blessing people with food, materially, spiritually, help them
as we saw in Genesis 14.
That is the priesthood of Melchizedek.
And it says here, it's a picture of
Christ in this way, verse 3.
First of all, verse 2, he's king of
righteousness, which is the meaning of his name.
And Salem means peace or Shalom, peace, Jerusalem.
He's king of righteousness and king of peace.
Righteousness and peace met together in Jesus Christ.
So Melchizedek is a picture of Christ.
Secondly, Melchizedek appears in the book of Genesis.
And in the book of Genesis, every man
of God, whether it is Enoch or Joseph,
the last one, that genealogy is there.
You know the connection between Joseph and Adam.
You know the connection between Enoch and Adam.
All the family tree is there, except one
man of God, whose family tree is not
there.
No record of his father or his mother,
how he's connected to Adam.
That is Melchizedek.
And he says in that way also, he's
a picture of Jesus, who did not have
an earthly father or mother.
He lived in eternity from all eternity in
heaven.
He was God.
He came into, he did not come into
existence in Bethlehem.
He existed from eternity.
He entered Mary's womb in Bethlehem, we can
say.
But he existed without beginning of days, verse
3, without end of life.
The death of Enoch is recorded in the
Bible in Genesis.
The death of Joseph is recorded in Genesis.
But Melchizedek, no record of his birth, no
record of his death, no record of his
genealogy.
And he says in that way, verse 3,
he's a picture of the Son of God,
who had no beginning and no end.
Okay, and he says now, if perfection, verse
11, came through the Levitical priesthood, then we
should go back to the old covenant, where
a special group of people are full-time
workers and all the others have to support
them with their tithes.
That's Old Testament.
He says in the New Testament, it doesn't
have to be like that.
Paul, the greatest apostle, was not supported by
others most of the time.
He worked with his own hands most of
the time.
Occasionally he received support.
Barnabas was like that too.
So he says, this is different.
If perfection came through the Levitical priesthood, let's
go back to the old covenant.
But now there's a change of priesthood, there's
a change of law as well.
And he goes on to speak again about
the priesthood of Melchizedek and Jesus.
And he says, finally, in conclusion, verse 26
to 28, Jesus is different in another way.
Those high priests had to regularly offer sacrifice
for sins every day.
Those priests had to do it.
Jesus offered it up once, verse 27.
Those priests, when they offered a sacrifice, they
offered sacrifices not only for the sins of
the people, but for his own sins also.
Jesus offered only for the sins of the
people, not his own sin.
There's a lot of difference, he says, between
Jesus and those high priests, verse 27.
Verse 28, the law appoints men who are
weak.
But our high priest is not a weak
person.
One who is made perfect forever.
Now one or two interesting verses here that
I'd like to look at before I move
on.
First of all, the total purity of Christ
as a man is described in verse 26.
This high priest of ours is not like
other high priests on earth.
He's holy, innocent, undefiled, completely separate from sinners.
There was not a trace of sin in
him, in unconscious, conscious, in any way.
He lived on earth in perfection.
The other thing I want you to notice
here is that there is a fundamental difference
in the way these two priesthoods function.
One is by a commandment, you know, it
says a carnal commandment by which the priest
became according to the order of Levi.
But Jesus, verse 22, has become the guarantee
of a better covenant.
And he has, verse 16, not by the
law of a physical requirement like the Old
Testament law, but by the power of an
indestructible life.
That's another difference between the priesthood of Levi,
verse 16, and the priesthood of Melchizedek.
The priesthood of Levi was depending on certain
earthly characteristics, earthly qualifications.
If you think that you can serve God
with earthly qualifications, you know, you get a
Bible school degree and you can serve God,
you're back to the priesthood of Levi.
How do you serve God in the priesthood
of Melchizedek?
It's not by any earthly qualification.
Verse 16, it is by the power of
an indestructible life, a life that cannot be
destroyed.
The life of Jesus coming in you, that
is what qualifies you to be a servant
of God according to the priesthood of Melchizedek.
One is a physical requirement, earthly requirement, the
other is a heavenly life.
The more heavenly life you have, the more
you can be a priest in this new
covenant priesthood.
The other thing it says here in verse
25 is that Jesus ever lives to make
intercession for us.
Jesus is always interceding.
That's another mark of the priesthood of Melchizedek.
They are people of intercession.
What is intercession?
Intercession is like this.
I preach to people and then I say,
Lord, that doesn't do the job.
I've got to pray.
Lord, you bless it, otherwise the words are
useless.
Jesus intercedes for people.
The Levitical priesthood was a formal thing.
If formally they would pray and do their
jobs and go.
Whereas Jesus, his whole life is devoted to
intercession for his people.
How many people want to be priests after
the order of Melchizedek?
This is the real priesthood in the new
covenant today.
Take time to study Hebrews chapter 7 and
see the difference.
Now we go to Hebrews chapter 8.
In Hebrews chapter 8 it speaks about the
difference between the old covenant and the new
covenant.
Again, he says we have a high priest
of the right hand of the heavens and
all that was happened on earth in the
tabernacle is only a shadow of the heavenly
things.
In other words, he is saying, just like
God told Moses in verse 5, Hebrews 8
verse 5, make sure that everything you do
in building the tabernacle must be exactly according
to the pattern given you on the mountain.
And he says this is a shadow, a
picture of the heavenly things.
So how must we build the church and
do our ministry today?
Exactly as God has taught us in the
new covenant.
What a tragic thing when people call themselves
new covenant priests and go back to the
priesthood of Levi.
Then the glory will not come.
In the old testament it says Moses did
everything exactly according to the pattern God showed
him.
He did it, he didn't change it, he
didn't modify it, he didn't bring his human
ideas into it and the glory came.
Let's build the new covenant church and serve
God exactly as it says in the new
covenant.
Today our pattern is not some details like
Exodus chapter 25 to 40.
Today our pattern is, thank God, it's not
a book, it's Jesus.
There they had a book, a scroll with
all the details of the pattern of the
tabernacle.
Today our pattern is a person exactly according
to the pattern when it says in verse
5, today that pattern is Jesus Christ.
That is my pattern.
He is the high priest according to the
order of Melchizedek.
He is the mediator of the new covenant
and I have to pattern my life and
my ministry exactly according to his.
Then I can do his work.
In other words if you want to be
a new covenant servant you must look at
Jesus more and more and more and more.
Consider him, that's what he is saying.
Look at this high priest, look at him.
Pattern your life and your ministry after him.
You want to know how to serve the
Lord, look at how Jesus served his father.
You want to know how to preach, look
at how Jesus preached.
You want to know how to live, look
at how Jesus lived.
You want to know how to live at
home, look at how Jesus lived in subjection
to his mother for 30 years.
You want to know how to do your
work, think of how Jesus worked in the
carpenter shop.
That is our pattern in every area and
make sure he says that you make it
exactly according to that pattern.
That's how it applies to us.
Because Jesus has now obtained a more excellent
ministry.
And then he describes in verse 7 to
13 this new covenant.
And it's very important to understand this.
Because this is the burden of the letter
to the Hebrews.
There is no letter like that in the
New Testament.
Even Romans does not explain it so clearly
as Hebrews.
If that first covenant had been faultless, there
would have been no occasion sought for a
second.
What does that teach us?
That the law was faulty and then God
gave a second covenant.
Now this is not like some car manufacturer
making one model and discovering some fault in
it and then producing a better model.
It's not like that.
God knew it was faulty, but he gave
it to teach man one lesson for 1500
years.
He kept man under the old covenant to
teach man one lesson.
No matter how hard you try, you will
never come up to my standard.
No matter how hard you try, you can
never manifest my nature.
And they tried.
Many of them tried very hard.
But Elijah got depressed.
Moses got angry.
David committed adultery.
John the Baptist lost his faith in prison,
the greatest of them all.
They couldn't make it.
And one failure means you're finished.
100% you don't get and then you
can't get God's standard.
So one purpose of the law was to
show man his inability to reach God's standard.
So the law had a purpose.
God didn't make a mistake.
And for us also, just like God, the
Lord sent the disciples to fish, fish, fish,
fish, fish, fish, fish for 11 hours.
Then I'll come because in 11 hours you
finally learn you can't get anything.
In the same way he allows us, all
of us, our initial experience after being born
again is to live like old covenant people.
We hear a message about victory and we
try.
And we try.
Thank God we are not going to try
for 1500 years.
And I hope it'll finish quicker than that.
That we try and we fail.
We try and we fail.
We finally learn the lesson which the Israelites
had to learn in 1500 years, which the
disciples learned in 11 hours of fishing.
What is the lesson?
I cannot make it.
I cannot get victory.
I cannot serve the Lord.
Some of you think you can serve the
Lord.
God have mercy on you.
I learned long ago that I cannot serve
the Lord.
I say, Lord, you got to fill me.
You know, even today, let me give you
my honest testimony.
When I come to speak, I say, Lord,
I'll make a fool of myself if I
depend on my past experience.
If I say, oh, I preached that message
before, I can preach it.
It'll fall dead.
Even if it's the same words.
The anointing of the Holy Spirit is something
we must experience for every meeting, every message,
every day, every life.
Even if you have preached the same message
a hundred times.
The anointing may be missing the 101st time.
The new covenant is not depending on human
ability or human experience.
It's different.
He says, in this new covenant, it's not
like the old one.
I will put my laws into their minds.
I will write them upon their hearts.
What is the big difference between the new
covenant and the old covenant?
It was, thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt,
thou shalt, thou shalt not, thou shalt not,
thou shalt not.
The new covenant is, God says, I will,
I will, I will, I will.
Verse 10.
Isn't that much better?
It's like a father saying, you must do
that and you must do the other things
on and you must keep the house tidy
and you must clean the lawn and you
must clean the scooter and you must cook
the food and telling his wife, perhaps, and
doing all these things.
And the wife says, how in the world
can I do all this?
And in the new covenant, the husband says,
I will do it.
I'll do this.
And I will help you to do it.
How much easier?
Or it's like telling a child, come on,
write that ABCD perfectly.
And the three-year-old child is struggling.
And the father said, don't worry, I'll do
it.
I'll hold your hand and I'll make you
write that ABAB perfectly.
That is the new covenant.
The old covenant is me struggling to keep
God's law on my own and it's all
crooked and wrong.
The new covenant is God holding my hand
and saying, I'll do it.
Secondly, the new covenant is knowing God personally
as my father, verse 11.
And verse 12, being completely forgiven with the
old, my old life completely blotted out so
that there's no memory of it.
Brothers and sisters, let us enter into the
new covenant.
It's much better than the old.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, it's easy to understand these things
in the head.
Help us to have revelation of the Holy
Spirit in our heart so that we can
enter into this glorious new covenant and the
priesthood of Melchizedek.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.