Word of Salvation – Vol. 45 No. 03 – January 2000
The Danger of Dull Hearing
Sermon by Rev. A. Van Drimmelen on Hebrews 5:11 – 6:8
Scripture Readings: Hebrews 13:1-19; Hebrews 5:11 – 6:8
Suggested Hymns: BoW 371:1,3,4,6; 322; 461; 430
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon today is on the Biblical/Reformed doctrine of ‘The Perseverance of the Saints’. Let me begin by explaining some of these words for the children. Then I will be sure that most of us have understood what I mean.
What is a doctrine? A doctrine is something the Bible teaches. It’s a teaching. So what the Bible teaches about Christ is the doctrine of Christ, and what the Bible teaches about heaven is the doctrine of heaven. So when you hear the word doctrine, think “teaching”. Bible doctrine is Bible teaching.
Notice that I don’t say, “Bible doctrines of heaven” or “Bible doctrines of Baptism.” The Bible does say a lot of different things about heaven and baptism in a lot of different places, each one from a particular chapter and verse. And so, in that sense there are a lot of different teachings about these topics. But when we say we are going to study the Bible doctrine of heaven or of baptism, we mean that we are going to try to look at all the teachings (or most of them) and then sum them all up in a unified way.
That is why you will only hear doctrinal preaching in churches where the Bible is considered to be an inspired unity. In other words, if I believed that all the different teachings in the Bible disagreed with each other I wouldn’t bother trying to preach on “the doctrine” of anything. But I believe the Bible is God’s Word, and that God is not a God of confusion or contradiction. So what the Bible says on various themes will fit together. And we will be all the wiser and deeper for trying to listen to the whole message of the Bible on its important themes.
No one text of the Bible will adequately teach all there is to know and understand about perseverance in the Christian faith. We will consider Hebrews 6 in particular, but at the same time draw on other passages from the Bible.
Now, what does the word, ‘perseverance’ mean? The word ‘perseverance’ means ‘endurance’ or ‘persistence’. But even those words may be too big for the children. Let’s use an illustration. Sometimes children at school participate in an athletics carnival. There are many events, but perhaps there is none more challenging than the gruelling cross country run, the 400, 800 or even 1500 metres.
Now what does it take to finish a long race like that? Especially when you are tired? What if you didn’t eat all your breakfast cereal before school and stayed up late the night before. How are you going to finish? Not very well, you might be thinking. But what do you need to finish? To go home from school with a ribbon even – a blue one, first place!! You might say, strength, or a big desire to win, or trying hard. Well, that’s what perseverance is. Perseverance is having a big desire to finish something, and trying hard, and getting the strength to do it. So, when you are standing on the side of the track and you are there in the crowd, just near the finishing line, then at the end of a race you want to encourage your favourite runner. He is running for your house team after all. “Go Tim,” you could be shouting. “Persevere, Timothy!” But of course everybody would look at you funny if you said that. So what you might be saying is, “Hang in there, Tim!” “Give it your best, Tim!” It’s the same thing. Perseverance means, “hanging in there, giving it your best shot.”
So, we are going to talk about the doctrine, or the Biblical teaching, of “the hanging in there of the saints”.
Now what does the word ‘saints’ mean? ‘Saints’, simply means ‘real Christians’. When Paul writes to the church at Philippi, he simply begins, “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.” A saint is not a special group of Christians, like martyrs or preachers or missionaries. Saints is just another name for people who are truly born again and who have saving faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
So what we are going to think about now is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. That is, the Bible’s teaching of the ‘hanging in there’ – the endurance and persistence of people who are true Christians.
The book of Hebrews has more to say about Christian perseverance than any other New Testament book. It is written specifically for a group of Christians who were about to quit hanging in there. Let me walk you through this book to show you what the situation was like and how this writer responds to it.
Let’s start in chapter 2.
What we see here is a signal that the church was starting to drift away from the truth. Verse 1 says: “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” They had started to drift with the current of the world instead of rowing upstream toward holiness.
Verse 3 suggests that they were beginning to neglect the greatness of their salvation: “how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” They were just not paying much attention any more to what it means to be a Christian in the real world. They were drifting and ignoring God.
Now chapter 3 verse 6 suggests that they were losing a grip on their confidence about the future. “…And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.” “If we hold on!” So, evidently, there was danger they were not holding on to their confidence and hope.
Drifting. Ignoring. Failing to hold on. This is the opposite to hanging in there over the long race.
Verses 12-14 show us again what the danger is. “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” Their drifting and ignoring and slipping could result in a falling away from the living God. They are failing to “See to it…!” to fix it up the way they should. So he goes on in verse 13: “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
Evidently their conversation was only about the world. All they talked about was international politics and the stock market and problems at the office and at home. They had lost the importance of encouragement in their daily conversation. Sin was starting to deceive them. And this neglect was causing them to drift, and slip, and lose their hold on joyful, strong confidence. And that is terribly dangerous. He says in verse 14, “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” Hanging in there with confidence is absolutely crucial if we hope to finish the race.
Chapter 4 verse 1 says that some in the church are in danger of not finishing the race, not getting to heaven. “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.” Some had become so negligent and careless in their spiritual walk that they had no godly fear about what was at stake in their daily lives. They were just drifting along with the ‘walkman’ of the world stuck tight in their ears, feeling secure, while God’s messenger was crying out from the shore that the Niagara Falls of judgment was approaching.
That’s what our text suggests in 5:11, “We have much to say to you about this but it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing.” Or, “slow to learn…”
In their drifting and neglect and carelessness, their spiritual ears had become dull. The Bible was becoming uninteresting. Their desire for teaching and preaching of God’s Word was fading. Their energy to think and ask questions about the most important questions in the world was seeping away. And in its place was a kind of spiritual sluggishness and insensitivity. Things of the world were becoming more exciting and attractive than the Word of God and the greatness of His salvation.
Chapter 6 verse 1 suggests that this church had lost its zeal to press on in the Christian life to maturity. “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity.” The church was beginning to feel that progress to maturity and growth in holiness was a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ option. It wasn’t really necessary in the Christian life. So they were just drifting along on past achievements. And all the while, they were becoming dull in hearing, deceived by sin, and hard in heart.
Chapter 10 verses 23-24 show the same danger. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” They had the idea that hope was a kind of automatic thing. It just sort of happened to you, and stayed with you. But the writer says, on the contrary, hope has wings and will fly away as soon as you let it go. Keeping hope is a very active thing we do.
And it is the same with love and good works. If we drift, we drift away from love. If we are going to be a loving community, we must stir each other up. All our natural tendencies are downstream toward the ocean of selfishness. If we are going to live upstream in the clean, cool waters of hope and love, we must actively hold fast to hope and actively stir each other up to love. Drifting and coasting and inactivity in spiritual things are very dangerous.
It wasn’t always this way at this church. Look at 10:32, “Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering.”
In other words, remember the days when you were once so fired up about the value of your salvation and God’s purpose in the world, that you were willing to suffer for it. But now you are sitting on your lounge chair, like a couch potato with no enthusiasm for the future and perhaps thinking that those past experiences you had are enough to make you an acceptable Christian. But security does not come like that.
Verse 39 makes clear what is at stake: “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.” In other words, we can lose our souls and be destroyed if we begin to go backward and don’t press on toward greater faith and holiness. Hanging in there is very important.
So now we have a sense of what’s wrong with this church. They are drifting instead of rowing against the current of sin, and that means drifting backward toward destruction.
– They are ignoring the great salvation they claim to have.
– Their grip on joyful, hope is slipping.
– Their hearts are hardening to the truth of God’s Word.
– Their conversation is losing its spiritual encouragement. Their ears are getting dull.
– They are losing their desire to press on to maturity.
– They are becoming weak and sluggish.
And the result of all this is that they are in danger of shrinking back from the beginning they had made, becoming hardened to spiritual things, falling away from the living God, and losing their souls.
The opposite of all this is Perseverance – hanging in there as an enthusiastic, growing Christian.
There are two alternatives for those of us who claim to trust Christ as Saviour and Lord. One is to press on toward maturity in knowledge and faith and hope and holiness. The other is to drift slowly into indifference and dullness and, eventually, destruction.
And one of the great errors of this church was that they thought there was a halfway point, where they could stay as professing Christians, not pressing forward and not drifting backward. But there is no such place. That’s the point of this book. Either we press on toward the inheritance or we drift back toward destruction.
Now this overview of the book of Hebrews raises many questions in our minds. If it does not raise questions in your mind it is very likely that you have already grown dull of hearing and are in a serious spiritual condition. It raises the question whether assurance that I am saved and will get to heaven is possible or even proper. What’s the difference between Biblical assurance and false confidence?
It raises the question whether a person who is saved can fall away from God and be destroyed. If so, how can there be any assurance? And if not, why is there all this warning about the danger of falling away from the living God, about shrinking back and being destroyed?
It raises the question whether assurance is the same thing as saving faith? Can you have saving faith and still have ups and downs in your struggle for assurance?
It raises the question about how to get and maintain assurance? In other words, as soon as you focus seriously on the necessity of perseverance, as this book does, the urgent question that arises is the question of assurance and security.
And we know we are thinking Biblically when we raise these questions, because not only does the book of Hebrews have more to say about perseverance than any other book, it also has more to offer on assurance than any other New Testament book. So we know our questions aren’t artificial or inappropriate. They are the very ones that the author has on his mind.
So let me close by showing you some of the advice the writer gives about our assurance and confidence.
6:11 – “We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure.”
6:18b – “…we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.”
10:22-23 – “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”
10:35 – “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.”
What I want to leave you with today is three things:
1. A strong, urgent sense that there is no standing still in the Christian life. Either we are persevering toward greater faith and holiness, or we are drifting backward toward hardness and destruction.
2. Just as strong and urgent, a sense that this perseverance is to be pursued joyfully and in full assurance of hope that we will inherit the promises because of the faithfulness of God.
3. Some serious questions lingering in your minds about how these things hang together so that you can be asking the right questions about the Biblical/Reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
May the Lord take away all dullness from our hearing and give us a sharp and living hunger for the truth of His Word.
Amen.