The Book of Hebrews 6:1-3 "Carried along to Maturity" (& Eliska's Farewell)

Good morning. We're going to proceed past our backward-walking, moon-walking pony here and get on to the passage at hand. The thing that we pointed out last week, and he's continuing on in this passage, along the theme, the believers in likely Ephesus, the readers of his letter here, the author's letter, to the Hebrews, has made the statement that these believers have actually gone backwards. They've retrogressed.

And they, in spite of having been taught enough to have been teachers, they're actually at this stage only ready for milk again. And so one of the things we pointed out last week, and you have it in this slide in your handout, is there is milk appropriate for the newborn. There is milk appropriate for the young infant. And this passage in Hebrews 5, 12, and 13 has said that's where they're at, at this infant stage, in spite of the fact that they should be teachers by now. The next stage that scripture brings up In 1 Corinthians and 1 John is there is a youth stage where yes, they can have meat and solid food and But they're not there. That's not where they're at and then he said where they should be where they ought to be is At this mature stage where they're having meat and solid food Hebrews 5 14 brings out that point So now here in Hebrews 6, 1 through 3, is where he is bringing out, okay, we shouldn't be having to lay out these things again, these basics, these things you actually should be moving away from because those should long ago have been things that you'd had down and were on to things that are really leading towards maturity. And so he's laying out their spiritual status and what ought and ought not to be the case for them.

Now, so in Hebrews 5.14 it points out maturity, in Hebrews 5.12 and 13 it says, but this is where you are, this is reality for you. So he says here, by this time you ought to be teachers, you have come to need milk and not solid food. That's his assessment of where they're at.

Now, in the passage we're stepping into today, I have to let you know that there's a controversy about this passage. Oh, and next time, there's a controversy about that passage, too. So this will be a very controversial passage, but we're not afraid of stepping into controversial passages here at Holly Hills.

So, there are those who see this passage, verses 1 through 3, as referring to the elements of Old Testament ritual and teaching. It's going back to what's described in the Law of Moses and those kinds of things. So those who look at it that way. Others say, no, no, no, no, no. There are those who see these verses as referring to elementary Christian teachings and not to the Law of Moses.

And actually, I started looking at it, and I say, the whole battle is really unnecessary. Why? Because they have both problems. They've got both problems. They have not only elementary Christian teachings, but they're also tempted to go back to all the things from the Law of Moses, too. So they have both problems. The contention is unnecessary. The controversy shouldn't be. They, in fact, have both problems at once. So they're in a bad way.

The evidence says that the believers this letter was written to are having both problems at once. They, in fact, are going back to all the sacrificial system, they're going back to all the Old Testament practices, and they can only accommodate Bible milk. That's all they can handle. Now, the readers of this letter have become spiritually immature, even retrogressive. They've fallen backwards.

For many of us, the idea of becoming younger might have some sort of an attractive idea. It might have an appeal to us. Getting rid of some of the elements of age might be a nice thing. The truth is, though, when you talk about spiritual matters, it's a different standard.

Our becoming mature is being conformed to the image of Christ and being transformed into the image of Christ. There are two processes, one in Romans 8 and the other in 2 Corinthians 3, both of which in parallel are making us into the image of Christ. So that's maturity. Maturity is in the direction of making us into the image of Christ.

And so going backwards, retrogressing, is a serious situation because what that means is getting younger spiritually means being less like Christ. And that can't be good. So the spiritual retrogression of the believers that this letter is written to have a serious spiritual problem, they're becoming not more like Christ, but less and less like Christ. That regression is a serious problem for them.

Now, I want you to brace yourself. I'm glad you're sitting down. Make sure you fasten your pew belts as I read this. Okay? This is Ephesians 4, 11 through 14, but it's a special version. It's a retrogressive version. Okay? And so I'll read it to you here. And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, and some as evangelists and pastors and teachers. So far so good? All right.

Nobody's blown out of their seats or blasted through the ceiling yet. Okay. for the non-equipping of the saints for the lack of service, to the degradation of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the disunity of the faith and to the ignorance of the Son of God, to a mere infant, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the exclusion of Christ. As a result, we will be spiritually immature, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. Nobody needs any EMTs or anything? Okay, alright. Now, as this passage starts out, we have it translated, the beginning of the word of the Messiah. A lot of your translations talk about, you know, they'll just translate it Christ.

This actually has the definite article, so the Hebrews would have seen that as this is the Messiah. When Caiaphas was asking Jesus, are you the Messiah? He had this word with a definite article in front of it, just like this. So it's the beginning word of the Messiah, and that's why I had Brad read the expanded and explained version to bring, among other things, bring that out. So this is the spiritual milk, certainly the spiritual food that is needed for the beginning of the Christian life.

In addition to that, on top of that, these believers were tempted to slip back into the rituals of the Law of Moses. What was interesting is the ritual seems to be what they're really focusing on and really missing. They had both beginning Christian teaching as well as slipping back into Old Testament law. Not so much the law affecting their daily life as much as slipping back into the Old Testament rituals. So they had both problems going on at once. So if you think about it, why should anyone settle for something that only points to Christ when they can have Christ himself? That seems rather strange, but that's what they were slipping into, and that's why the author of Hebrews is very concerned about these people.

They're looking at this symbol in the shadow instead of the reality itself. Now, can you imagine what it would be like if after this service, Nancy and I go home to our house, and instead of focusing on Nancy, I get out a picture of our wedding. And I just look at it, and caress it, and kiss it, and talk to it. And here's Nancy working away in the kitchen to prepare a fine meal for me, and I just ignore the meal in front of me and get out my bottle. This would be rather strange, would it not?

And this would be comparable to what these Christians are doing, because they're slipping back into the shadow and into the symbol the symbol, the law, the rituals that point to Christ instead of focusing on Christ himself. This is why later on, and not too much later, we're going to see the author saying, you know, letting go of everything that holds us back, let's behold Christ. Let us look unto Jesus. He's going to want to have a directly focus on Christ instead of all the shadows, instead of all the symbols.

So we'll see that as we go along. And he talks about being carried along to maturity. Now, here's an interesting thing that comes out of this passage, especially as we go to the last part of chapter 5. Staying immature can be done all by oneself. You want self-effort? You can stay immature all by yourself. That's exactly what the first readers of Hebrews had done to themselves. That's what it says there in Hebrews 5. They had made themselves immature, how? By making themselves deliberately hard of hearing. Huh? Huh? Huh?

They had deliberately made themselves hard of hearing. And so because of that, they weren't taking in the spiritual food that should have been bringing them to maturity. And now they're back at this infant, infantile stage. Growing towards maturity is God's intended process for all believers, every one of us. While it requires a continuous act of will, nobody matures by their own self-effort. God does it. God does it. So we can thwart the maturing process, but that doesn't mean that the reverse is true, that we pull it off on our own.

The language here is actually carried along to maturity. Some of the translations, and one of the reasons I went to the Expanded and Explained, talk about, now let us press on to maturity as if we're doing it. No, the language says we're carried along to maturity. And so that's why I deliberately translated it that way. God is the one who is going to pull off the maturing. We can thwart the maturing process, but we cannot pull it off by ourselves. God is the one who does it. Not laying again for ourselves a foundation is the next phrase coming out there in verse 1.

Now, the reality is, and I've been there, done that, putting in a physical foundation is not something that one takes lightly. There's the digging the ground, and sometimes the ground is very resistant. I've more than once been in situations where there's very hard rock to have to dig through, in some cases granite. It's a lot of work. You don't take it lightly. It isn't something you do casually. It's a lot of work, but it's also a really big investment of time and money. But it is worthwhile if it's done just once. Just once.

Now, so, long time ago, in a town far away, that far away, Denver to Ukiah, Vern is trying real hard to raise his family, working hard out in the fields and as an engineer. And so Vern designs this subdivision, El Dorado Estate subdivision, for a guy named Vern. Anyway, here, right here, As they were starting to build the houses, the surveyors from Vern's office went and drove out to kind of catch up on some things. And they looked over and here was this house being built, foundation, floor.

They'd started up with some of the framing. And they know something's not quite right. So they go up to the workers and they say, do you know that you're building the house right across the property line in the wrong place? Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah, that's what you're doing. There it is right there. Oh, no. So guess what they have to do? They have to tear it out and lay again the foundation. Start all over again. And that's what the author of Hebrews here is going, oh, no, look what you've done. You have to start over again. We have to start over again laying a foundation for you.

So just like redoing this physical foundation is not something that one wants to do, just like the contractor was going, oh no, it's one of those head-slapping moments, you know, redoing a spiritual foundation is also something no one wants to do. And the question is, now that you're doing it the second time, is will this stick this time? There's always concern for that.

The next phrase comes up, repentance from dead works. And there's something we have to clarify here. Repentance is a changing of one's mind. Got that? Repentance is a changing of one's mind. You have this diagram from times past here when we presented this in the last two weeks. And we're going to simplify it here for the sake of our presentation and pull some of the verses and arrows and things like that out so we get to the main point.

What he's talking about here, repentance from dead works, means an act of the will, okay? An act of the will impacting the state of mind. An act of the will impacting the state of mind, that's changing your mind, turning it around. That's what repentance means, okay? Repentance is not feeling really, really bad about something. It isn't blues, blues for the Jews. It's not that. It's not that. It's not making a lot of promises. I'll never do that again. I promise again. I'll never do it again. It's not all that.

People have all sorts of different ideas about what repentance is. It's not repentance unless you come up front and cry a lot. You've got to stay here for five minutes at least. No, it's not that. It's changing the mind. It's not emotional. Notice in the diagram we said it's an act of will and it's an act of mind. It is not getting all emotional. That may accompany it, but that's not a necessary ingredient. It's changing the mind. That's what repentance is.

Dead works are works that do not originate from the life of Christ within us. So rather than originating from faith in Christ and His life within, it's my own self-effort. That's dead works. And those works are dead. So, you can bear with me here. This is not in your handout. Roses are red and violets are bluish. The works are all dead because the laws are all Jewish. Now, in addition to that, there was an old pastor named Vern who gave sermons when it was his turn. But what he spoke on his own and expressed all alone, all such dead words belong in an urn.

Okay. All right, let's move on. Now, the next phrase that comes up here is faith toward God. Bob, you'll get over this, believe me. He's not so sure. What God desires is that we place our faith and trust and confidence in Him. That's what God wants. It's personally, we personally put our trust and faith and confidence personally in Him. That's what God has in mind.

A great deal of religious activity can simply place our faith and focus elsewhere. A lot of religious activity puts our faith and focus elsewhere. In things that I do and things that that guy up front is doing. In things that instead are things that put the focus on me. You know, I'm doing this, I'm not doing that. I've got to try really hard at this. So a great deal of religious activity, I didn't even call it spiritual activity, can place our faith and focus elsewhere.

That's important for us to see. The reality is what God is asking for is we place our faith, that is belief and trust, in the spiritual facts from God's Word that God has personally revealed. And God's Word is not impersonal, by the way. God's Word is not impersonal. People can make it that way. But it's not impersonal. It is God's own Word. God's own Word.

In Galatians 3.12, and get this, Paul wrote, the law is not a faith. Know anybody that likes to live by the law? Ever been told you need to?

Here's Paul, he wrote it himself, Galatians 3.12, the law is not a faith. So, a person can live by the law, or at least try to, In fact, you might die by the law. A person can try to live by the law or they can live by faith.

Nobody will do both. Nobody is going to do both. You can't. Law is not a faith. You can live by faith, you can live by the law, but you make a choice because you can't do both. Not at all. Faith towards God. Faith personally, towards God personally, is the only way to be saved and it's the only way to walk in fellowship. From the time that you're saved, fellowship after that is from faith toward God and not from stuff you do and places you go and things that you do and don't do.

Now, he goes on into ritual washings and baptisms. The ritual washings were spelled out in scripture, and what happens is the Pharisees and the Sadducees, because that's why they're Sadducee, The Pharisees and the Sadducees, they added additional washings on top of the ones that are prescribed here in Exodus and Leviticus. So Exodus 30, 19-21 and Leviticus 6, 4 and 24 specify additional washings that the priests were to carry out. And in some cases, wash the hands and feet, that's the Exodus passage. Leviticus 16 is wash your whole self. Wash your whole self. But these washings were prescribed by the law. As a matter of fact, what happens if you don't do the washing? You die. It's that simple. So you've got to do those.

In the New Testament, there was the baptism of John the Baptist. He baptized for a baptism of repentance. And we just looked at what repentance means, right? Changing the mind. It's not getting all emotional, although you might. But it's changing the mind. and the baptism of Jesus, which wasn't a baptism of repentance, because he didn't have anything to repent for, and he didn't have to change his mind. So that was a different baptism.

Beginning in Acts chapter 2, we have the baptism of the church-age believers signifying our, because we're part of the church, our being baptized into Christ and our being raised into newness of life. When we have a baptism, as we probably will have up here up front pretty soon, It will be signifying that, our baptism into Christ and being raised to newness of life.

The next thing he talks about is the laying on of hands. And there was a laying on of hands in the Old Testament law. What they would do is, there were some instances in Leviticus where they would put hands on an animal that was slaughtered. In another instance, the scapegoat, they would put hands on the goat that was actually let go. And the sins were to be transferred, at least that's the picture, onto the goat. And so these are Old Testament pictures of identification and placing of sins on the animal, whether slaughtered or alive, and that was the Old Testament laying on of hands. In the New Testament, laying on of hands was done in a few different instances, and one of those is when Jesus blessed the children. So that would be another instance, and also by the church's apostles.

What we have referenced there is Acts 8.17 and 19.6. The first one is the apostle Peter is going and confirming that the gospel has been given to and the Samaritans are now a part of the church body.

So that's Peter's work in Acts 8.17, he lays on hands. Acts 19 6 this is the Apostle Paul who encounters some disciples of John the Baptist and in order to have them become a part of the church he then lays hands on them so apostolic laying on of hands was one of the things we also see and one more there was an initiation of ministry and an assignment of to ministry.

We have a record of that in Acts 13.3, when the Apostle Paul and Barnabas and John Mark are going on Paul's first missionary journey, and also in 1 Timothy 5.22. So there's numerous teachings about the laying on of hands.

Now, resurrection of the dead and eternal judgments. There is not just one single and final resurrection of the dead. There are multiple resurrections. and multiple judgments. We have this chart here, and this is actually the simplified version. We just studied, eight days ago, in the conclusion of the Revelation Intensive that we had, these judgments and resurrections and all that. And so what I've done is had several copies of that printed up. If you're interested in that, they're on the cabinets to the right as you exit this room. And if you run out and want one, let me know. I'll make sure you get one.

It covers all the details of all the different resurrections and judgments and things of that sort that the Bible describes. Both the Old and New Testament give details on various resurrections and judgments and so these Hebrew believers who had gone milky These Hebrew believers who had gone milky were now in a place of drawing on the Old Testament teaching as well as the New Testament teaching, only they needed it all over again because they had gone infantile. The resurrections and judgments are complex. There's a lot of detail to them because of different people groups, primarily Gentiles, Israel, and the church, but also different dispensations and timings. You have there a listing of some of the Old Testament passages, not all of them, that are relevant to that question, so I'll leave it to you to look those up on your own. Then he says, this we will do and we will be carried along. So there's a part for us to play in our own spiritual growth. It's not like we're uninvolved. It is not anything that we can ever or were intended to pull off on our own.

You know, one of the things you may have noticed is these Christian bookstores will sell anything. Nancy and I have a friend who for many years was involved in making equipment for Christian bookstores, and they would set up various kinds of shelving and things like that. And so he invited me to go to the Christian Booksellers Association. There were lots and lots of people selling lots and lots of stuff that was like, take anything and put Jesus or a fish on it and you can sell it. Christians will buy all sorts of things. Well, I bet, I would think it's very likely that if you tried to sell a spiritual growth do-it-yourself kit, Christians would buy it. I bet you they would.

And the reality is, there is no such thing. There is no such thing. But people often think, ah, yes, that's what I need, a spiritual growth do-it-yourself kit. And what we're telling you is, uh-uh. It's not going to happen. Being carried along, that is God pulling it off, is absolutely essential. That's the only way it's going to happen. No spiritual growth happens because of self-effort. No spiritual growth happens because we do it on our own. None. So we will be carried along to maturity.

It says that we will cooperate with God's maturing process rather than fighting it as these believers who received this letter had done. They had fought it, how? By saying, I can't hear you! That would have been the game that they'd been playing here. Ultimate maturity, that is complete conformity to the image of Christ, will take place when we see the Lord face to face. And nobody in this room is ultimately mature, right? Because the process keeps going until we see the Lord face to face. Let's take a look at Romans 8, 28 and 29.

For we know that God causes all things to work together for good. What's the good? Does it mean all things are good? Nope. Some things are really nasty, really awful, but God causes all things to work together for the good. What's the good? To those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

And this is something that, rather than dreading, oh no, predestination, I don't have any choices, I don't take any separate actions. No, what this is, is not everything you do, every breath you take, every move you make is predestined. What is predestined is the ultimate outcome, that you will be conformed to the image of His Son. And this, rather than being something that we dread, should be something that's comforting.

Because ultimately, while in the present I can blow it, I can even, as the readers of this letter had done, I can even thwart my spiritual maturity. In the end, when I go to see the Lord face to face, I will be conformed to His image. It will happen, and it's not, I hope it will happen, it's predestined, it's going to happen. I can count on it. We have another passage that indicates the same thing.

1 John 3.2 and by the way 1 John 3.1 that's the one beloved you know let us love you know so anyway here's beloved now we are children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will be we know that when he appears we will be like him like him in what ways every way except his deity every way except his deity We will have a body like His, and I'll be glad for that. We'll have a body like His, and we will also have a complete conformity to His image. We will be spiritually like Him in every way but His deity. He has shared His glory with us, and that will be fully manifest in our new bodies, in our complete conformity to His image. This is a wonderful hope, isn't it? And as a matter of fact, I can say this, I hope it's today. I hope His appearing is today. That wouldn't be bad at all. As a matter of fact, it would be really, really good.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, certainly a lot to be in some ways kind of puzzled about. Certainly you can sense the Concern that the author of the book of Hebrews has for these believers and you can sense the Almost shock at them having retrogress having gone backwards Spiritually and we just pray Lord knowing that maturity is what you intend We just pray that we would have our eyes open that we would see fully what you have in mind for us and And that we would, indeed, as we gather together, be beholding Christ through your word and thus be transformed into the image of Christ. We thank you for your faithfulness to each one of us, Lord. And we thank you also for the ultimate promise we will be conformed to the image of Christ. Thank you for those assurances and those comforts. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. It's all for me Elfie, I'm leaving the shadow, Elfie. I'm living in the shadow, Elfie. You can't go back. You know I'm sure. But I'm going back. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say. I can't live without you I can't live without you I can't live without you I can't live without you I can't live without you