Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Alrighty. We've got a great pianist today. Yeah, multitalented person. She's a lawyer, political analyst, and pianist. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for today, grateful for Your word. Grateful that You are the builder of Your church and that You're the same yesterday, today, and forever. I pray, Lord, that You'll be with us this morning as we study.

In preparation for that, we're going to take a few moments of silence to do personal confession before You if need be, not to restore our position, but broken fellowship. We're thankful, Lord, for the comprehensiveness of Your provision to us. Be with us now in all of the youth classes that are meeting today and even meetings that are going to happen, leadership meetings after the service is over. I just pray that You would superintend and guide everything towards Your ultimate purposes. Just use us, Lord, as pliable vessels in Your hand. We'll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, amen.

Well, let's take our Bibles today and open them to the book of Hebrews, chapter two, verse one, which means we're not in chapter one anymore. We're moving. Here's what we've studied thus far in the book of Hebrews. We went over these introductory matters. Probably the main takeaway is you're dealing with an audience that's living in close proximity to the temple, and they're Jewish, Hebrew Christian audience, born-again second-generation Christians.

So, this is the group that followed the apostolic generation, and the unbelieving Jews are just putting these people under tremendous persecution. How dare you leave Judaism and embrace Yeshua? When these people got baptized, they were making a public statement that national Israel was wrong in its rejection of Messiah, and the newborn church that started in Acts two is right. That gets you cut off from family, synagogue, temple, business contacts. So, the temptation for these people was just to sort of lapse backward into the temple system, which was still up and running at this time, just to get the persecutors off their back.

So, it's in that spirit that the author of the book of Hebrews says don't do that because what you have in Christ is so much higher than anything the temple system, which was just a foreshadowing of things to come, has to offer. From there, we went into chapter one, verses one through three, where the author of Hebrews—and we really don't know who wrote it; some people think they know, but nobody knows because the book is anonymous—the author of Hebrews starts off by giving Christ's attributes.

He basically says Old Testament revelation is indirect, incomplete, and temporary. And yet what they have now in Christ is direct, complete, and permanent. So, why would you relinquish that and go backwards to a mere shadow? He does that in verse one and then the first half of verse two of chapter one. Then, when you get to the second half of verse two into verse three, he lays down some incredible attributes of who Jesus is.

I mean, who is Jesus? He's the heir of all things. He's the maker of all things. He's the brightness of the Father's glory. He's the express image of the Father. He is the one that is upholding all things. He has made complete purification for our sins, something the Old Testament system could never do. Unlike a priest whose work was never done because there was always the next round of animal sacrifices that had to be administered, Jesus, when he ascended to the Father's right hand, sat down. So, his work is complete. What a way to start this letter just by explaining that. Why would you leave this and go back to that?

Now he starts the next major section of the book, chapter one, verse four. This section goes all the way through chapter one and all the way through chapter two, where he starts to explain that Jesus is higher than the angels. That seems kind of strange, I mean, why would you talk about that unless you understand what the angels did in Old Testament times? They were the messengers of God.

It was through angels that the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai was mediated. So, if the author can show that Jesus is higher than the angels, he can show that the message of Jesus is higher than the message that you find in the Old Testament because the message of the Old Testament was mediated by angels. That's his point; it's a kind of logical argument.

So, as we saw last time, as we studied verse four through the end of chapter one, he weaved together some just some amazing Old Testament passages showing who Jesus is. Obviously, when you get through with that list, obviously Jesus, you can't compare him to an angel. He's better than an angel. He's higher than an angel. He's bigger than an angel. So therefore, his message must be superior in comparison to Old Testament revelation, which was mediated by angels.

Then we run into, and this is where we are today, chapter two, verses one through four, our first warning passage. This is what the author does five times in this book. He stops his train of thought, which is very logical, but he'll interrupt the logic and he will give a very strong warning against lapsing backward. In other words, if you lapse away from the full revelation of Christ and go back to that temple system, there will be a very severe negative consequence.

Then, when he's finished with his warning, he gets right back on the hiking trail and starts going back to his subject matter about angels. With all that being said, notice this first warning passage. It's in chapter two, verses one through four. I'm going to highlight the parts of it that I think are most important towards interpreting it. Chapter two, verse one, it says, "For this reason, we must pay close attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift from it."

Did I put enough emphasis on that? In other words, the writer is equating his spiritual status with the audience. Nobody doubts that the writer was saved. I mean, if the writer is not saved, we've got a big problem because we've got an unregenerate person writing a major book of the New Testament, which would be absurd. So, when he says "we" and "us," he is identifying with the saved status of his audience.

Now, this will become a big deal because a lot of people want to convert this paragraph to unsaved people. Because the logic is this is so severe, this could not apply to a saved person. But when you look at "us" and "we," the repetition of those terms, it's very clear that you're dealing with saved people.

Chapter two, verse one: "For this reason, we must pay close attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift from it. For if the word spoken through angels," you notice he's continuing his thought on angels. He's bringing in this warning as part of the big subject matter of the angels. He says, "For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?"

So, they had salvation. Their danger wasn't "you don't have salvation." Your danger is you're neglecting your salvation. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation after it was first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard?" Verse four: "God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will."

So, what is this? This is your first warning in the book of Hebrews where if you drift backward, something bad's going to happen to you. We have five such warnings in the book of Hebrews. We have a warning against drifting, chapter two, verses one through four. Then there will be a warning against disobedience, chapter three, verse seven through the end of chapter four. Then there will be a warning against immaturity, chapter five, verse 10 through chapter six, verse 20. Then there will be a warning against despising the truth, chapter 10, verses 26 through 39. And then at the very end of the book, there's a warning against denying the truth.

So, we have a warning against drifting, a warning against disobedience, a warning against immaturity, a warning against despising the truth, a warning against denying the truth. All of which this group was in danger of doing because they were pressured to drift backward. Now, this whole idea of drifting, those of you that grew up in Southern California get it.

It's like you go to the lifeguard on the beach and you say, "I'm going to go out and do some boogie boarding." I used to do that, by the way. I wasn't a surfer; my center of gravity is a little too high for that. But I loved doing the boogie boarding. I could do a great boogie up there, by the way. But that notwithstanding, you give the lifeguard your towel and car keys and say, "Can you just keep an eye on these and I'll come back and retrieve them?"

So, you go out and you do your thing and these lifeguard stations all look the same unless you've memorized the number ahead of time. So, you do your thing out in the water and you climb out and you go back to the lifeguard and you say, "Okay, I'm here to pick up my towel and I'm here to pick up my car keys." And he says, "What are you talking about? I never talked to you before."

What happened is the current causes you to drift. You don't even know you are drifting; it's so subtle. That's why you show up at the wrong lifeguard station that you think is the right lifeguard station. It's not that you did anything intentional to make the mistake; it's just you drifted without really knowing it. That's the kind of thing that happens to Christians constantly because we're living in the devil's world. We can drift, and we can drift back to things that God told us to move on from a long time ago. So, that's what this audience here was in danger of experiencing.

This is an interruption, a parenthetical break in the author's argument about angels. So, if you go back to chapter one, verse four, you'll see the word "angels." That's how this section starts. If you go to verse 13 of chapter one, you should see in there "angels." There it is. Then this warning is given. You go to chapter two, verse five, and it says "angels" again. So, it's obviously contained in his argument concerning the angels.

If you look right in the middle of the warning passage, chapter two, verse two, it says "angels." So, the angels did something in Old Testament times. This is part of the argument about angels showing Jesus is higher than the angels, but it's an interruption in the argument to say if you drift, something bad is going to happen to you. This is so common in the book of Hebrews; this happens five times.

So, what this is—and by the way, it's very difficult for me to deny that these are Christians being addressed in chapter two, verses one through four—first of all, the repetition of "we" or "us" to my mind proves they're saved just like the author is saved. Meaning it's completely possible for a Christian to drift backwards. Then the word "neglect," which you see here. How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? You cannot neglect something that you don't possess.

It's like someone says to you, "Hey, you're neglecting your wife." Well, that means I have to have a wife to neglect, right? I mean, you can't neglect something that's not there. Paul would write to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:14, and he would use the same word: "Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery." So, when Paul says to Timothy, "Do not neglect your spiritual gift," he's assuming that Timothy has a spiritual gift to neglect. You see that? You can't neglect a spiritual gift that you don't possess.

So, that's the significance of the word "neglect" in salvation. They had salvation; they were just neglecting their growth in the salvation that they possessed by leaving the full revelation of Christ and sinking backwards, drifting backwards into the temple system. So, what the author does in this warning is he offers an argument from the lesser to the greater.

That is an argument in logic which in Latin we call an *a fortiori* argument. You're arguing from the lesser to the greater. If neglect of lesser revelation brought discipline, do you think you're going to escape the disciplinary hand of God if you neglect higher revelation? So, he's moving from the lesser to the greater, and that's called an *a fortiori* argument.

So, what is his point? If drifting away from Old Testament Judaism, which by the way was mediated by angels at Mount Sinai, chapter two, verse two—if drifting away from Old Testament Judaism was punishable, meaning if it brought into effect the disciplinary hand of God, which clearly happened to the nation of Israel (all you have to do is read the Old Testament to see it; God brought his nation under discipline many, many times because they drifted away from his law)—so the point is, arguing from the lesser to the greater, if drifting away from Old Testament revelation was punishable or brought the disciplinary hand of God, how much more will drifting away from the full revelation of the Son of God be punishable and bring the disciplinary hand of God? Especially since the full revelation of God, the full revelation of His Son, was confirmed to the recipients of this letter through apostolic signs and wonders.

Signs and wonders is a very interesting study in the Bible. I want to be clear; I believe God can do miracles today if He wants to. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't pray for people to get well, right? But having said that, signs and wonders have a tendency in the Bible to cluster around time periods when God is starting a new work, a new age of time, we might say.

We've been in the same age of time, the church age, for 2,000 years. So, we don't have confirmatory signs and wonders like we see in the book of Acts. But signs and wonders were very dominant in the Mosaic time period because God was bringing in a new age of time, Israel under the law. So, when you study the book of Exodus, as we're studying in the main service, you see all of these signs and wonders. Signs and wonders in the Bible will cluster around the Elijah-Elisha stories because God is doing something totally new there. He's raising up a new office called a prophet to call Israel's wayward kings back to the law.

That's something that didn't happen routinely prior to that. The kings would start to go evil, and there were a lot of evil kings. The North had 19 kings; every single one of them was evil. The South, Southern Kingdom, had 20 kings; only eight of them were good. Okay? So, kings had a tendency to just put themselves over the law. That's why in the book of Kings, it keeps saying good king, bad king, bad king, good king. Why does it keep saying this guy was bad, this guy was good? Is it because one guy got inflation under control better than the others? No, it's because the kings are evaluated based on whether they're going to submit to the Law of God as given at Mount Sinai, or are they like Solomon going to put themselves over the law?

So, what do you do with a king that puts himself over the law? Well, you raise up a prophet to call the king back. And that's why most prophets had a very short career span, right? Most of them were killed very fast because the king had the political power. And who wants some guy on talk radio causing problems for them? You guys are pretty quiet on that one. Because I think, to a large extent, we have modern-day prophets today in this sense. There are all kinds of people out there that are calling wayward government back to its constitutional roots, and it's kind of interesting how they get canceled, defunded, thrown in prison with the J6ers.

So, I'm just kind of drawing a modern-day parallel. And so how would you know that these prophets speaking are from God? Well, God confirmed it through signs and wonders beginning with the Elijah-Elisha stories. And so that's why miracles are clustering around that time period. And then miracles cluster around the ministry of Jesus because Jesus, according to the synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), is offering Israel the kingdom on a silver platter.

Had they enthroned the king on his terms, hypothetically the millennial kingdom would have started. So, how do we know this is an authentic offer? The signs and wonders confirmed it. And then signs and wonders cluster around the book of Acts because what is God doing in the book of Acts? He's raising up a new man called the church that we are a part of. We're not at the foundational stage of the church anymore. I would argue that God is putting on the roof of the church, not relaying the foundation. But it's something that's new, a new dispensation called the Age of the Church, and so miracles and signs and wonders cluster around that time period.

And then, I hate to be the bearer of bad news because there's a lot of people out there that are looking for a signs and wonders movement today. The next signs and wonders movement on the horizon according to Bible prophecy is the kingdom of the Antichrist through counterfeit signs and wonders. So, if your whole belief system is "I gotta see a sign, I gotta see a wonder, I gotta see a miracle for Christianity to be true," you're almost a sitting duck for the coming Antichrist.

And then when the kingdom is inaugurated at the end of the tribulation period, which will last a thousand years, it talks about the mute speaking and instantaneous healings taking place and the Dead Sea comes to life biologically. So, that's a new age of time, and to authenticate it, God provides various signs and wonders.

So, where are we here? We're in the signs and wonders age of the church, which has just started. And as the message went from Jesus to the apostles to the second generation that's receiving this letter, they actually had it confirmed to them through various signs and wonders. So, what he's doing is he's arguing from the lesser to the greater, and he's saying this: If drifting away from Old Testament Judaism was punishable, how much more will drifting away from the full revelation of the Son of God be punishable, especially since the full revelation of Jesus Christ was confirmed to the recipients of this letter through various signs and wonders? I mean, how do you think you're going to escape divine discipline? And he's bringing this in to get them to rethink what they're doing. They hadn't crossed the point of no return yet, but they were getting close to the line of no return where God is going to have to discipline you guys. And as the book of Hebrews says, whom the Lord loveth, the Lord chasens. The chastening hand of God is actually a sign that you belong to God. And he's saying if my covenant nation was disciplined nationally, do you think you're going to get away with not being disciplined since you're rejecting a much bigger, higher revelation?

So, when God took the nation of Israel to Mount Sinai, he put them under what's called the Suzerain-Vassal treaty structure. This is part of what we call form criticism, where you study books of the Bible according to the literary forms that were common in that time period. And there was something common in that time period called a Suzerain-Vassal treaty. The Suzerain is the superior, the Vassal is the inferior.

The superior would come to the inferior and say, "If you come under my authority and you obey the covenant text, I will bless you. But if we enter into this structure and you disobey the covenant text, then I will curse you." So, that was very, very common in Abraham's time period, Moses' time period, and that's how the book of Deuteronomy is laid out according to form criticism, just like a Suzerain-Vassal treaty.

There was always a preamble and a prologue tracing the historical development of the parties, God and Israel, and then there were the covenant obligations. This is what the Vassal had to do to make the Suzerain happy. And then the covenant text had to be read publicly so both parties understood what they were getting into, and it had to be stored somewhere. And there had to be witnesses.

And in every Suzerain-Vassal treaty, there are blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. So, what God did at Mount Sinai is he took Moses and the nation of Israel after they had been emancipated from Egyptian bondage and he put them under a Suzerain-Vassal treaty, which is kind of an odd thing in our minds, but in that day it was extremely common.

And the whole book of Deuteronomy is laid out like a Suzerain-Vassal treaty. There's a preamble, chapter one, verses one through five. There's a historical prologue between the two parties, God and Israel, chapter one, verse six through the end of chapter four. Then there's the covenant text, and this is what the Vassal has to do: Deuteronomy chapters five through 26. And it begins with the Big Ten, right? The Ten Commandments. And everything in that section revolves around those Ten Commandments.

Here's how the Ten Commandments apply to daily life as you're entering the land. 613 commandments total, but they're all organized around the Big Ten, which you find in Deuteronomy chapter five. And then the Big Ten and the covenant text had to be read publicly. So, there's reading instructions in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 27, verses two and three, chapter 31, verses nine, 24, 26.

And then the covenant text had to be stored somewhere. So, where was the covenant text stored for Israel? In the Ark of the Covenant, right? And then there were witnesses. Now, how can you witness for God? I mean, does God need an expert witness or an eyewitness? No one can witness for God. So, God in Deuteronomy 32:1 calls heaven and earth as his witness.

And then you have the spine of the Old Testament, quite frankly, the blessings and curses section. Here are the blessings if you obey the Ten Commandments and its application. Deuteronomy 28, verses one through 14. Here are the things I'm going to do for you, God says. Your crops are going to produce bountifully. You're going to go out and fight your battles, and although you're outnumbered, you're going to win. And you are going to lend to the nations of the earth and not borrow.

And so that's in the first 14 verses of Deuteronomy 28. But then, beginning in Deuteronomy 28, verse 15, all the way through the end of the chapter... you see the blessings is only 14 verses. The curses are verse 15 through verse 68. So, it's almost like God knew what was going to happen. Here's what's going to go wrong for you nationally if you disobey the covenant text.

Number one, you're going to go out and you're going to fight your battles and you're going to lose, even though you might have superior armaments. Number two, your crops are going to fail; they're going to be consumed by locusts. And then number three, you're not going to be a lending nation anymore; you're going to be a borrowing nation, and you're going to get plunged into debt nationally which can't be paid off. I mean, does that sound familiar?

You know, it's—and I know this is with Israel, but it's kind of interesting to look at this structure and kind of compare it to the United States. And I'm not making the direct parallel; I mean, the United States is not Israel, but it is interesting that the very things that God said would happen to wayward Israel are happening to our country, right down to debt and the foreigner within your borders will increase. I mean, stuff like that, it's kind of eerie when you think about it.

But anyway, I don't want to draw the connection too tightly; I just want to focus here on Israel. So, there are blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. And that Deuteronomy 28 becomes the spine of the Old Testament. If you understand that, you'll understand the whole Old Testament because the whole rest of the Old Testament is a record of how what God said in Deuteronomy 28 happened in real time. And it's a record of the different prophets that God raised up at different times in the midst of national disobedience and curses to call wayward Israel back.

And if you understand this structure, you'll understand every single Old Testament prophet because what they're saying is come back to the Big Ten. And if you don't, the curses that you're experiencing are going to keep moving and rolling up like a snowball. And if you come back to the covenant text, God will bless you.

So, the way that these curses work—and by the way, there's a parallel passage in Leviticus 26, outlining just like Deuteronomy 28, both given at Mount Sinai, part of the Mosaic package, we might call it—outlining the blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. I mean, if you were to go home today and you were to read two chapters of the Bible, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, you would understand everything in the Bible. You would understand why everything is happening the way it's happening in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. So, that chapter is pivotal; it's what we call the spine of the Old Testament.

And the way these curses work is they keep rolling up like a snowball until they get to a point where they can't be reversed. That's why a lot of the prophets late in the game are saying it's too late to turn around. Ezekiel is saying stuff like "we're going to be in this captivity for a while, so get comfortable." But they would roll up like a snowball with these cycles of discipline, and they would climax in a foreign nation whose language they did not know would come and evict them from their own land, would mistreat them, would incarcerate them.

You look at how Babylon took the Southern Kingdom into the Babylonian captivity and you read about it in the end of 2 Chronicles, and it's just unbelievable how poorly the Jewish people were mistreated. I mean, rings were put through their noses and they were kings, kings of Israel and Judah, they were yanked around in chains so to speak. In fact, we went to, on one of our trips, the Titus Arch there in Rome. And there is an actual piece of archaeology there—I wish I'd brought it in—of the Jewish people in subjugation. You can see them there as slaves. It's carved in stone. You can Google this and look it up, Titus Arch.

And it's kind of interesting, you take a tour of the Roman Colosseum and the tour guides don't even mention this. But to me, it's such a big deal. When we had our group there, we made a big deal of it. Look at that, it's etched in stone, it's the Jewish people in a state of bondage underneath chariots and in chains, so to speak, under Roman authority. And you go around this Roman Colosseum and you ask yourself, "Well, who built this thing? How did this thing get built?" I mean, this is a big edifice. You know how the Colosseum in Rome got built? It got built with the money from the temple, which was quite an edifice that Titus of Rome destroyed. You see that? So, people today want to talk about reparations; I mean, my goodness, maybe we should take money away from the Italians and give it back to the Hebrews because that's how that Colosseum was built.

And this is all an outworking of the cycles of discipline that go all the way back to the Mosaic Covenant. So, these curses would roll like a snowball and they would climax in a nation whose language you do not know nor understand will come and enslave you and in some cases evict you from your land. And that's Deuteronomy 28, verses 49 and 50.

How bad is it going to get for you, Israel? It's going to get bad because you're going to get up in the morning and you're going to say, "I wish it was evening," and then at evening you're going to say, "I wish it was morning." And all of this is predicted in this Suzerain-Vassal treaty. It says in Deuteronomy 28:49-50, "The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth." This is 1,500 years before the time of Christ. "As the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young."

And that's how you always monitor a civilization: How do they treat those that are defenseless, like an older person or someone very young? We might even talk about a child in the womb of their mother. How does a nation treat the elderly? How does a nation treat the very, very young? And that's how you determine how pagan a nation is. I mean, if they have no respect for the young and no respect for the old and they're going after defenseless people, it's obviously a nation that doesn't fear God at all.

So, those are some things I am a little bit concerned about as I watch our elderly in some cases being pressured to die early, the euthanasia movement. Just Google MAID Canada and you'll see it there, how the Canadians on our northern border have made it almost a policy of the elderly need to die in the name of euthanasia. In fact, more people have died—did you know this—through MAID in Canada than were killed, Canadians killed, in World War II. And then this nation would show no favor to the old and it would show no favor to the young. I mean, my goodness, look at our abortion on demand policies in this country. Even with *Roe v. Wade* overturned and the issue being sent back to the states, there have been more abortions than ever, more than ever, despite the fact that *Roe v. Wade* has been overturned. So, I think America is drifting in a pagan direction according to this standard.

But regardless of how you feel about that, God is very clear that a pagan nation is going to come and kick you out of the land, either enslave you or kick you out. And that was announced 1,500 years before the time of Christ at Mount Sinai in a Suzerain-Vassal treaty. This is part of the curses.

So, did that happen? Yeah, it happened over and over again. To quote the great theologian Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again, right? Solomon, at the end of his life, it's almost like he got up in the morning and read Deuteronomy 17 about what a king's supposed to do, and he did the opposite. The king is not to multiply wives for himself, Deuteronomy 17. And boy, look at what Solomon did: 700 wives, 300 concubines. The king is not to enter into treaties with foreign nations. How do you think Solomon got all of those wives and concubines? He entered into all these treaties because part of the deal was you get the princess or princesses as part of the package in terms of an international deal. So, obviously, he completely transgressed God's standards there.

The king is not to multiply wealth for himself; Solomon multiplied wealth for himself. So, what does God do? He says, "Well, the Suzerain-Vassal treaty which you're a party to, Israel, is in effect." And so, when Solomon left the throne, the kingdom was divided into two: ten Northern tribes headquartered in Samaria, two Southern tribes headquartered in Jerusalem. The North takes on the name Israel; the South takes on the name Judah. And you would think that the nation after seeing what happened in that division would get its act together and go back to the covenant text because we don't want to experience discipline like the North did. But the North continued, and God raised up the Assyrian Empire.

That's the outworking of a nation whose language you shall not understand, a diabolical people, by the way. Did you know that it was the Assyrians that invented the crucifixion? The Romans did not invent the crucifixion; they borrowed it from the Assyrians. The Assyrians—and we have all kinds of archaeological evidence of this—would kill people by literally skinning them alive. If I describe to you how people died under Assyria, it's so repulsive the description, I don't even know if I could bring it into a family church setting like this and explain it. And when you understand that, you understand why God said to Jonah, "Go preach grace to the Assyrians headquartered in Nineveh," and Jonah said, "No way! Not those people!" And he went the opposite way to Spain. And we kind of dogpile on Jonah when we read that, but put yourself in Jonah's shoes. It would be like God saying, "Go to the Nazis and preach grace to them." I mean, I wouldn't want to do that, would you? It's like, Lord, let them have it, don't give them grace. I mean, I don't want those people in heaven with us kind of thing.

So, Israel continued and God raised up the Assyrian Empire, and that took the Northern Kingdom and scattered it. That happened in 722 BC, and you can read all about it in 2 Kings 17. Just like you can read about the division of the kingdom after Solomon in 1 Kings 12; that happened in 931 BC.

So, there are three kings in Israel, all reigned for 40 years, the first three kings. Number one, Saul, 1051 to 1011 roughly, followed by David, 1011 to 971, followed by Solomon, 971 to 931. And Solomon is the last king of the United Kingdom, and after he leaves the throne, the kingdom is divided. And so that's why it's whiplash reading 1 Kings and 2 Kings, because it's constantly moving you from the North. Here's a king in the North, here's a king in the South. Here's a king in the North, here's a king in the South. Why do we have to hear all that? Because the kingdom was divided. 19 Northern kings, 20 Southern kings. How many good kings in the North? Zero! How many good kings in the South? Eight. That's a little bit of a better record, but not much of one. If your team goes eight and twelve, it's probably not that great of a season.

So, the North became more and more wicked and God brought the Assyrians to scatter the North. Why did he do that? Because that's what he said he would do, going back to Mount Sinai in the Suzerain-Vassal treaty. Now, you would think the South would learn its lesson. I mean, you would think, "Wow, God really disciplined the North; we're going to get our act together and go back to the covenant text because we don't want to experience discipline like the North did." But the South was worse than the North! And the prophet Ezekiel, who prophesied during this time—I believe it's in Ezekiel 16—talks about two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah. And one represents the North, one represents the South. The older sister became a prostitute, and she experienced all of the consequences of being a prostitute. Now, you would think the younger sister would say, "You know what? This life of prostitution is not for me. Look at what happened to my sister." But the younger became more of a harlot than the older sister.

And Ezekiel is giving this message to the remaining Southern Kingdom, saying, "That's what you guys are like." And do you think that message played well with the leadership there of the nation? I mean, this is why all these prophets were persecuted and mistreated. So, the Southern Kingdom became worse than the Northern Kingdom, and so God brought discipline because he promised he would do that in the Suzerain-Vassal treaty. This time it was through the hands of the Babylonians. Judah was taken into captivity in 586 BC, and if you want to read all about it, it's in 2 Kings 25. That's where Judah is treated horribly, and Chronicles picks up a lot of that information and talks about the total mistreatment of Judah by the Babylonians.

So, they went into the captivity for 70 years; Jeremiah two times tells us it's going to be 70 years. Jeremiah 25:10 and Jeremiah 29:11. And it relates to something I'm going to bring up in the sermon today called "not allowing the land to have its rest," which is in our passage for this morning. So, keep a tight grip on that 70-year captivity; I'll make reference to it a little later.

So, the 70-year captivity is over; the land has had its 70 years of rest. And so they come back into the land under the Empire of Persia that had overthrown the Babylonians in the "handwriting on the wall" chapter, Daniel chapter five, 539 BC. Daniel, like Ezekiel, is prophesying during the exile, in exile. So, they come back and God says rebuild the temple, and they decided that their houses were more important than the temple. So, God raises up two prophets, Zechariah and Haggai, whose names are mentioned in the book of Ezra, chapter five, verse one, and I think once more in chapter six. But God raises them up to kind of kick the returnees in the backside and get them to rebuild the temple, which they finally did.

But their disobedience continues during the realm of Persia. This is where the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther take place. And it's where we get the writings of the post-exilic prophets Zechariah, Haggai, and then my favorite, the Italian prophet Malachi. No, Malachi is his name. And then the Old Testament record concludes. Greece comes to power, then Rome trampling Israel down, and then Jesus shows up during the Empire of Rome.

And you would think with this whole history the nation of Israel would say we've had enough, let's embrace the King on the King's terms. But what they said of Jesus—this is in Luke 19, I think it is around verse 15—they say something to the effect of "we will not have this man to reign over us." So, yes, there were some believers within Israel personally, but the nation I'm talking about rejected the Messiah.

So, what is God going to do? The Mosaic Covenant given 1,500 years ago is still in effect. So, 40 years after the time of Christ, to quote the great theologian Yogi Berra, God brings divine discipline in the form of Rome this time, AD 70. And that's where the Jews are pushed into the diaspora, and that's where the Titus Arch showing the Jews in enslavement whose money was used to subsidize the Roman Colosseum, it takes place in that era.

So, what is the author of Hebrews talking about? He's talking to people that know this history. And he's saying do you see a pattern here? If you drift away from God, there's severe discipline. Do you think you're going to escape discipline if you drift away from God since you're drifting away from a completed, higher revelation confirmed to you by various signs and wonders? That's the first warning here.

Now, unfortunately, this has become a great battleground, how to interpret this. There are four views in evangelicalism to understanding this warning passage. The first is the hypothetical view. That's the view espoused by one of my heroes, Dr. Charles Ryrie, who writes about the warning in Hebrews 6: "It's impossible for a student once enrolled in this class, if he turns the clock back, which cannot be done," he says in his notes, "to start the class over." So, his view of these warning passages is it's a severe threat, but we all know, wink-wink-wink, God would never follow through with discipline. These are just kind of empty threats to scare them.

Can I ask you a basic question? Was what happened in 722 BC hypothetical? Was what happened in 586 BC hypothetical? Was what happened in AD 70 at the hands of the Romans as demonstrated in archaeology by the Titus Arch, etc., was that hypothetical? No. When God moves in discipline, it happens. It's not a veiled threat; it's not an empty threat. But in Ryrie's mind, this threat is so severe, I mean, God couldn't treat a Christian this way, could he? So, he turns it into a hypothetical.

The next view that tries to handle this is Arminianism. And they interpret this as salvation. And the Arminian is actually correct in this sense: they say the audience is saved. And I say, well, you're right. "We," "us," "neglect," to me that proves the audience is saved. But the Arminian says if they drift backward, they're going to lose salvation. They had it, but they lost it. And so, in Arminianism, that's how they handle these warning passages. It's all interpreted as salvation, loss of salvation.

I mean, obviously, I can't believe that because Jesus says once saved, always saved, right? John 10:27-29: "My sheep hear my voice, I know them, they will follow me, I give them eternal life, they will never perish." Do you see in blue there the translation from the Greek *ou mē aiōnia*? The *ou mē* construction is a double negative in Greek, meaning it's the strongest negative you can possibly have.

So, when your five-year-old says, "Can I have the keys to the car?" you're saying, "No, no, no, that will never happen." That's what the *ou mē* construction is. And then, if that wasn't enough, it throws in *aiōnia*, which means forever. I mean, once you are saved, you're in the Father's hand; absolutely nothing can take you out of it forever. And the English translations just do such a poor job; they just say "never perish," which is very strong, but it doesn't... I mean, if I was going to come out with the Woods translation, it would say something like this: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; I give them eternal life, and they will never, never, never, never, never (exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point) perish forever." That's what it's saying.

"And no one will snatch them out of my hand; my Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." So, you're in this double grip of grace and you couldn't get out of it if you wanted to. So, therefore, this idea that the warning is aimed at people that had salvation—that part I agree with, "we," "us," proves it—but they lost salvation; I obviously can't buy into that. Ephesians 4:30 says we are sealed unto the day of redemption. John 14:16-18 says the Holy Spirit is in us for how long? Forever! You can grieve the Spirit, you can quench the Spirit as a Christian, but you can't lose the Spirit. So, the Arminian view I can't accept.

The view that has the dominant market share today is the Calvinist view. Almost everyone you hear teaches this from this angle. It's a view that I thought was true for a long time because I hadn't heard the fourth view. Calvinism, as you know from our series, functions according to the acronym TULIP. The P stands for the Perseverance of the Saints. Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints. Meaning, if you're saved, there needs to be automatic growth, automatic maturity. The idea of a backslidden Christian, carnal Christian, immature Christian... Calvinists will pay lip service to that, but their system knows very little has very little room for that idea.

And you get all this talk about, "You know, there's a lot of professors, but not all are possessors. And we'll just see who perseveres. We'll see who shows up Wednesday night because the saved people will be here." I didn't hear much of a response on that one. So, Bob Kirkland in his book *Critiquing Calvinism* says the P stands for Perseverance of the Saints. This is what Calvinists say gives them assurance of eternal salvation, but in actuality, the emphasis is upon the believer's faithfulness in persevering, not upon God's keeping power. Uncertainty as to one's ultimate salvation is in fact built into the very fabric of Calvinism itself.

So, what they do with this is they say the writer is aiming his remarks at the unsaved. He's saying "saved, saved, saved, saved" as he's teaching, then he stops, and there are some unsaved people there, and he aims the warning passage at them. Now, why can I not accept that? They embrace that because in their minds these warnings are given to people that aren't persevering; they're drifting. So therefore, they're unsaved. You see that?

I cannot accept that interpretation because of "we," "us," "neglect." You see that? The audience is clearly saved. So, saved people can drift backward. It's a possibility. And if you drift backward, there's going to be a consequence, but it has nothing to do with heaven or hell.

So, every single warning passage, if you read a commentary written by a Calvinist, they'll take every single one of them as unsaved people. John MacArthur interprets chapter five, verse 11 through the warning in chapter six, verse eight as unsaved people, which is a interpretation that strains credulity in my opinion. Because in chapter five, it says this: "By this time, some of you ought to be teachers." Would you ever say that to an unsaved person? Would you ever in any your wildest imagination want an unsaved person to teach a saved person?

So, I do not think that these warnings are aimed at unsaved people. And then the writer gets back on the bunny path and continues his commentary for saved people. And by the way, if you believe that these warnings are for unsaved people, as the preacher is preaching through the warning passages, why would you even listen to him? "Oh, he's got to the warning passages, I can mentally check out because that's for unbelievers." But if I tell you that these things can apply to a believer who drifts, I've got your attention. See that?

So, what is the right view of this? And probably at different times in my life, I've held all of these. But I don't hold to the hypothetical view anymore. Once I discovered you can't lose your salvation, I can't hold to the Arminian view anymore. And although the Calvinist/Reformed view had sway over my mind for many years, once I started seeing the "we" and the "us," I can't hold to that anymore. I can't just convert willy-nilly this warning to unsaved people because these people aren't persevering. That's more protecting a theological system than it is exegeting the text.

What I think is in play here is the loss of blessings view. That this is not salvation. These are temporal blessings flowing from justification. That's why in chapter three, verses seven through eleven, Moses and that generation not entering the land is held out as an example. Are we going to say that Moses was not saved? That's crazy! Because there's Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration. Moses drifted backwards; he struck the rock beyond what God said. He lost something; he didn't lose eternity, he didn't lose heaven, but he lost Canaan, a temporal blessing that he could have had. See that?

And that's what these warnings are warning against. You will forfeit as a Christian temporal blessings not related to heaven or hell flowing from your justification. Like what? You'll come under divine discipline, Hebrews 12:5-13. You'll forfeit rest in the midst of tribulation, chapter four, verses one and two. You will lose rewards at the Bema Seat, 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse 15. You will miss out on millennial kingdom authority, 2 Timothy 2, verses 11 through 13. You will forfeit maturity; all the time you spend rejecting the full revelation and going back to an inferior revelation is a time that you can't get back in terms of growth, chapter five, verses 11 through 14. You will forfeit fellowship with God, as did David who sinned egregiously and hid his sin and the heavens became like brass. All that time that he spent in rebellion, his fellowship with God was short-circuited although we never doubt David was saved.

See that? That's what these warnings are doing. They're a loss of temporal blessings flowing from justification, not related to heaven or hell. Can a Christian experience this? Yes, look what God did to Israel in terms of discipline although they never forfeited their national status. How will you escape if you neglect a greater revelation? See that? And then he's finished and he goes right back on his chat about angels.

Father, we're grateful for Your word, grateful for Your church. Help us to rightfully divide it in these last days. We'll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, amen. I'll be back in seven.