I’m calling an audible this morning real quick. Something that… I don’t know. Sometimes you just feel like the Lord’s put something in your mind, and you can either choose to do it or choose to not do it. And I haven’t even looked at it. Matter of fact, as we’re doing it right now or as I’m talking right now, that’s why I can’t talk, is I’m actually looking up the lyrics to the song because I just feel like the Lord put this song on my mind. So I want to share it with you, even if I’m not the greatest singer. I’ve sang it before, and I haven’t practiced it, so I’ll probably mess it up, if that’s okay. But- I want to sing this morning, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.”
Though I don’t deserve it, though, as we’re going to look at this morning, we continually mess up, we continually fall short, yet Jesus Christ bestows His grace and His mercy on us so abundantly to the point where none of us here have the words to describe the grace and the mercy that Jesus Christ gives to us. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, as we continue on through the Book of Hebrews as our kind of a journey through the Book of Hebrews. This chapter that we have been looking at began with telling us that Jesus Christ is the all-sufficient sacrifice. He died once for all, and that that sacrifice that He gave to us on Calvary’s cross is good enough for all time, for all sin, forever and ever. And then last week, we looked how we need to hold on to that sacrifice, to not let that go. That because of Jesus, because He is who He is, and He’s the all-sufficient sacrifice, the perfect Lamb of God, who was given to us for the sins that we’ve committed, that we need to do a few things. He gave us a few commandments last week, and the commandments that He gave us was to hold fast onto what the Lord has given us. It was to encourage one another, to lift one another up, and to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. And how we talked about how, yes, church is important. We should be in church at every opportunity that we can. But the reason is not simply to put our name on an attendance sheet, but the reason is whenever we neglect fellowship with God and God’s people, we open ourselves up to so much that will continually lead us down a path that we don’t want to go.
And this week, the title of the message is There Is No Other Sacrifice. I don’t actually know that I like that title, but it’s too late to change it. So I usually try to go with a passage out of the passage of scripture to title my sermons. But the title is not important. What’s in it is what matters, right?And so I hope that I can convey to you this morning what the word of God says. But this chapter has been telling us that Jesus is better. Really, the whole Book of Hebrews has been telling us that Jesus is better. Now remember, I’ll keep repeating this, but remember who it was written to. It was written, I told you the first week, I believe it was written by Paul, and we don’t know exactly, but I believe it was written to first-century Jewish Christians. Born and raised Jewish, under the old law, under covenant, under sacrifices, and they have now trusted in Jesus. And this whole book has been telling them that even those things in the past were pointing to Jesus, and Jesus is greater and better than the old covenant. And now we have seen that his sacrifice is final and sufficient for sin. And so now join with me in reading starting at verse 26. It says, “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remain no more sacrifice for sins. But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose you, shall hebe thought worthy” or how much more does he deserve, “who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongs unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Let’s go to the Lord in a word in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning. We’re so grateful for this opportunity again that we have today to be in your house. I pray that we never take that for granted. Lord, as we open up your word and we read it and we study it, and we hear from you, Lord, I pray that I would decrease and you would increase. That all of this would be about you and would be what you want said. And Lord, I just pray that if there’s someone here, as I know there is, that needs to make a decision for you, that today would be that day, and that we would give you the free reign to do what you would have us all to do. I ask it all in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This passage of scripture is serving to us as a warning. If you didn’t notice, if you couldn’t tell, there is some pretty strong language that’s used in this passage that we have read. And I want to start off by just saying that if you reject Christ, there is nowhere else for you to go. If you reject Christ, there is no other avenue in order to be saved. We talk, and we see again the Old Testament. What did they do to atone for sin? They sacrificed. They took animals and they sacrificed them, and that was sufficient for the time. It never took away sin, but it could atone. It could cover up for sin, but it could never take away sin as Christ did. But now that Christ, the final sacrifice, has been given, now there is no other thing to turn to. There is no other place for us to go. There is no other thing that we can turn to. And so that is the overview kind of, of what’s being said here, but then it goes a little bit deeper. And in verse 26, he says, “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remain no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” It started off by saying, remember verse 25, “Forsake not the assembling of yourself together as some do” and do it so much the more as you see the day approaching for if we sin willfully. Listen, I’m going to use this for just a brief second, 30 seconds. You see how all of this ties back together? He says, again, not to forsake the assembling because when you do, you open yourself up for temptation and sin. And now he’s saying, “For if you willfully sin.” I know that I’m standing in front of people today who never willfully sin. Right?
Never. Nobody here has ever known what was right, known what was wrong, knew what you were fixing to do was wrong, and did it anyway, right?I remember Judah whenever… Crash pastor’s kids get used in illustrations. But I remember Judah whenever he was probably about a year and a half, two years old, where they’re not really talking great, but they are talking, and you know they understand. And it was always so funny because we could be sitting in the living room, and Judah would get a look, and you can see it. You ever see somebody and you can see the wheels turning? Right? He would be looking at something that he knows he’s not supposed to or get into, and you would see the wheels start turning. You would see him having the discussion with himself in his head of like, “I know I’m not supposed to, but if I do, it probably is going to be worth it.” And he would do it. And it was so funny because you could see him making the decision and then going and doing it. We are no different. We choose willfully knowing that something is wrong, and we do it anyway. The first thing that I want to start off by talking about is this passage that we are looking at is talking about saved people.
It is talking about people who have trusted in Jesus Christ as their Savior. Again, we got to know the context, who it’s being written to. It’s being written to people who have trusted in Jesus. It’s being written to people who are assembling together. It’s being written to people, as it says, “If we sin willfully after we have received knowledge of the truth.” We have been saved. Who gives us the knowledge of what’s right and wrong? When you are saved, you receive the Holy Spirit. You ever hear, we call it sometimes, I try to refrain from calling it this, but the Bible does refer to it as this, that still small voice. I try to refrain from that because people who may not know say, “Still small voice? I ain’t ever heard of that still small voice.” But you know what I’m talking about, where you know God’s not speaking to you audibly, but you hear it, right And it’s like he’s saying, “Don’t. No. Please don’t. I’m begging you. Don’t do that.” And it’s for our own good, and we do it anyway. Kind of like whenever we know we shouldn’t do something, we feel bad about doing it, and we do it anyway, knowing that we’re going to feel bad about it. So he says, “For if we continually willfully sin after we have received the knowledge, there remains no more sacrifice for sin.” This is often misconstrued as someone saying, “If you willfully sin after you’ve been saved, you lose your salvation.” And if you were to read this in a vacuum, right? If you were to only read this verse, if you were to only look at this and not look at everything else in the context: of everything that’s been said, you would walk away saying, “That means if you choose to sin knowing it’s wrong and do it anyway, you lose your salvation.” That’s true.
But remember, the first part of chapter 10, Jesus Christ was the one-time sacrifice once for all. And I’m going to show you as we go through scripture and hopefully tie it together at the end, that this is never talking about anyone losing their salvation.: It says, “But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” He’s saying that if you choose to willfully sin, you choose to continually go against God, you are neglecting the only sacrifice. If you reject him, there is no other sacrifice waiting. There is nothing else. That again, in and of itself, takes care of us losing our salvation. If you teach that you could lose your salvation from this verse,: you would then in turn have to teach from this verse that you could never get it back. Because it says there is no more sacrifice.
But I’m here to tell you, and I’m probably going to say it six more times before I’m done, you cannot lose your salvation. Jesus Christ died once for all. What he did on the cross was enough for all sin, for all time. He has already paid for my big sins. He has already paid the price for the sins that I’ve committed. He’s already paid the price for my willful sins.
Let’s talk about, just for a minute, willful sin. What’s the difference in willful sin and accidental sin? I think we try to give ourselves too much credit. There are times in my life, and I’m sure there’s times in your life, where you will do something wrong, and in the middle of it, you didn’t know that it was wrong. You didn’t intend for it to be that way, right? You had good intentions. But I think we give ourselves too much credit because that’s probably only about 5%. Most of the time, whenever we do something wrong, we know beforehand we do it. We may not have been thinking about it. We may not have said, “Well, I can choose to willfully sin against God, or I can choose to not willfully sin against God. I guess I’m going to choose to sin against God.” We usually don’t have that conversation in our head, but at the end of the day, we know it’s wrong before we do it. It says if you reject Christ, you will face judgment. Now, I want us to get into verse 28 and 29, and these two really– 29, we’re really going to hang out for just a minute, okay? It says, “He that despised Moses’s law died without mercy under two or three witnesses.” So what he starts out saying, he compares rejecting Moses’s law, which is what? The old covenant that we’ve talked so much about. He says if rejecting Moses’s law brought judgment, then as he gets into verse 29, how much greater judgment, how much greater responsibility and accountability is deserved for rejecting a much greater law, and that law being the law of Jesus. Do we all understand? Are we all following on the same street here? In verse 29, it says, “Of how much sorer punishment” how much worse of a punishment “suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy?” So suppose, he’s saying, I’ll put it in Arkansas terms for you really good here. Suppose, how much worse a punishment does someone deserve who has trodden underfoot the Son of God, has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? He’s saying, “How much worse do you deserve than the ones who just simply do not believe? How much worse do you deserve if you know the truth, if you know what’s right, if you’ve been covered, your sins have been covered by the blood of Christ, you know what you’ve been brought out of, you know what Jesus did for you, and you continually choose to willfully sin?” I don’t like this verse. I don’t know about you. I don’t like it. Made me feel bad: all week. You say, “Preacher, you’re being ugly to me.” I’ve been getting it all week, okay? How much worse is your punishment that you deserve? And here’s the reason why I believe. Whenever we continually willfully sin, what are we doing? Not only are we thumbing our nose at God, or not only are we saying, “We don’t care what you say,” but we are leading others away from God. We are leading people– What is our number one goal? We’ve talked about it through the Book of Hebrews. What are we called to do? What’s number one above everything else? It is to lead people to Jesus, tell people about Jesus, get them to Christ by whatever means necessary. And here it says, if you willfully sin, you deserve worse than just hell. You deserve worse than our adversaries and what they will experience, what they will have.
You deserve worse because not only do you know better, but you’re leading others astray. Think back to when you were a kid. When you’d get in trouble for something, was punishment greater whenever your parents or your guardian, your grandparents, or whoever, your teacher, was the punishment worse when they knew that you knew better? When they’ve told you for the hundredth time, and you know that you know better, and you do it anyway, that’s when it’s worse. And so he gives us three descriptions that we’ve trodden underfoot the Son of God. Do you know that this is the same language that was used in Matthew 5 when it says that we as Christians are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, we’re no good for anybody but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of men?Same word there. It says that we’ve trodden underfoot the Son of God, means we’ve walked all over God. It says that we have counted the blood of the covenant, the blood of Christ, as an unholy common thing. I’m going to tell you something. The blood of Christ is not common. The blood of Christ is not something that’s unholy. The blood of Christ is the most holy thing that this world has ever seen. Whenever the blood of Christ was shed, it was covering my sin and your sin.
When we choose to willfully sin, not only are we trodden underfoot the Son of God, we’re counting his blood as common or unholy, but we have done it despite, to despite, unto the Holy Spirit.
I’m reminded of a verse in the Book of Romans when Paul’s writing, and he says– Basically, he’s talking about once saved, always saved. Once you’ve been saved, you’re never not saved. And he said, “So when Paul’s grace abounds, should sin also abound?” And he answers the question with, “God forbid.” God forbid. Should we view God– I’m going to get real with you for a minute. That usually means I come down here. That means that, right? When I come down here, I’m serious.If we, as God’s children, I’m using that term loosely, Christians, view Jesus and His sacrifice as nothing more than I’m not going to hell. If that’s all your view of Jesus is, that, well, I’m not going to hell, I can still live my life. Only God can judge me, and I can do whatever I need to do, but I’m saved. You may need to check your salvation. Because if all we view of Jesus and the sacrifice that He made is I get to go to heaven, that’s wrong. That is not how we should view God and His sacrifice as well. He did it, so now I can live. You know why Baptists, and I only be… You know why people who believe you can’t lose your salvation get a bad rap? You’ve heard it, right? You probably even had the conversations of, “Well, you Baptists just think, you ministering Baptists just think that you can get saved and then live any old kind of way you want to.” Anybody ever heard that? You know why that is? It’s because that’s what we show them. We show them that that’s really what we believe because we really do go out and live however we want to. That is not what God says we should do as His children. We should not just be people who say, “Yes, I love Jesus,” and then we go out and we live like everybody else, and you can’t tell a difference between us and anyone else. There should be a difference in us and the rest of the world.We should look different. We should talk different. We should walk different. People ought to be able to know who we are. It shouldn’t take them long being around us to know that we love Jesus- and that we believe that our purpose is to live our life for Jesus. This is not merely a believer who is struggling with sin. I want to make that clear in this, whatever that word I was just fixing to say, distinction.
I want to make that clear because this isn’t just simply us struggling with sin. This is us choosing to willfully sin. This is treating Christ and His blood with contempt. Anybody know what that word means? You ever, you say, “Well, I’ve heard it on TV,” or, “I’ve heard it in the courtroom, you’re being held in contempt.” Well, if you go back and you look, you can probably understand the context of it. Usually, it’s when somebody has done something or said something disrespectful. The judge will say, “I’m holding you in contempt of court.” It is whenever they treat it as worthless or beneath them. That word contempt carries a lot of weight. And this is what it’s talking about. It’s talking about Christians who are treating the blood of Christ and the sacrifice that He made with contempt. Now, before we go further, nobody in here would say, “I’ve ever treated God…” I believe, I would never say that what God has done for me, and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the blood that He shed for me was common or unholy, or never would I walk on that. Never would I treat it with contempt. We wouldn’t in word, but we do in action.We do in action. I am preaching to myself this morning. It seems as if I get disgusted with myself on a daily basis. I know better, and I don’t do better. What sense does that make? For me to know better and not do better, what sense does it make for me to sit down and pray and say, “God, thank you for Jesus, who died on the cross for my sins so that I can be forgiven, so that I can be justified, so that I can be sanctified, so that I can live a life that shows Christ” and then I go out and I do the opposite of showing Christ? And I’m telling you, I am sick of today’s Christianity, modern Christianity, where they think that God just covers everything, and they can act however they want to act. We cannot. And I’m going to tell you something. We can’t afford to do it because there’s people who need Jesus.
In verse 25, it says, “Do this so much the more as you see the day approaching.” The day is approaching. We can’t afford to live how we want to live. There’s a few sayings that just aggravate me to no end. The you only live once, right? And it’s kind of the moniker of you can do what you want to do, live your life how you… You only get one life. My life is Christ. To live is Christ, but to die is gain. My life is but a vapor. This life is not for me to do what I want to do. And people, I’ve heard preachers say, “God wants you to be happy.” There is no scripture that says God wants you to be happy. God wants you to do what’s best for you. Nowhere in scripture will you see that. Nowhere. That’s bad theology. But what you will find is to be long-suffering. What you will find is to endure the afflictions. What you will find is your work is not in vain in the Lord. It’s in you. Don’t give up. Only God can judge me. Man, that ought to scare you more than give you freedom. Right? People say, “Well, only God can judge me. Who are you to judge?” I would rather be judged by every single one of you all on my worst day than judged by God on my best day. That should bring fear. That shouldn’t bring freedom.
He knows what Jesus did, yet he treats the blood that sanctifies him as something common by continual, willful sin. Notice again, there’s a word in verse 29 that gives us distinction that this is still talking about a saved person, “Wherewith he was sanctified.” You can’t be sanctified any other way than through Jesus Christ. But now I want to talk about deserve and receive. Now remember, this passage is saying, this verse in 29 is saying,: how much worse does someone deserve that continues to willfully choose sin over and over and over and over again? Thank God. Thank God that we do not receive what we deserve.: I think as Christians, we talk about justice a lot. I don’t want justice. Justice, for me, if I receive justice, I would spend eternity separated from God in a place called hell. I want mercy. I want mercy. I don’t want what I deserve. Justice is getting what you deserve. Thank God that a child of God who continually, willfully sins and leads others away from God, and continues that people who are lost are further away from God, we deserve a greater punishment, but I’m so thankful that that is not what we receive. However, I don’t want to… This is a good note. We’re fixing to go to a bad note, and then we’re going to end on a good note, okay? It’s a plane. Verse 30 says this, “For we know him that has said, ‘Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense or repay,’ saith the Lord. And again, the Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” God will deal with sin. Your sin has a price. Just like if you decide to get on 425 here and run 130 miles an hour all the way to Monticello, guess what? There’s going to be a price that comes with that. You’re going to get a ticket. You’re probably going to go to jail if you’re running that fast. There’s a price for your sin. If you decide to go and take someone else’s life, guess what? There’s a price that comes with that sin. Not just with God, obviously, but even with man. So we understand that when rules and laws are broken, that there is a punishment that follows. With Christ, sin never goes unpunished. Never. God will deal with sin. I think about David, right? King David. One of the things, the first thing we think of when we think of King David is usually he killed Goliath, and then the second thing that we usually think about is that God said he was a man after my own heart, talking about a man after God’s own heart. Can you think of a higher praise from God than for him to say, “You’re a man after my own heart?” I can’t. Then what’s the third thing we usually think about? We usually think about him putting his eyes somewhere they didn’t belong, taking a woman that wasn’t his, and having her husband killed. He sinned. He was a man after God’s own heart, but what happened? For the rest of David’s life, he had a pretty miserable life. His son died early, got sick and died. His other son was killed by his right-hand man. Many other things that happened in the life of David because of sin. But he still knew the Lord. He still never lost his salvation. He prayed, “Lord, give me back the joy of my salvation,” not, “Give me back my salvation.” Lastly, I want us to see, he says, “The Lord shall judge his people.” Here’s another telltale sign of us seeing that this is talking about saved people. It says, “God will judge his people.”
Being God’s people doesn’t mean that we are beyond his correction or his judgment. I think sometimes we think, like I mentioned earlier, “Oh, well, I’m saved, so I’m good.” No. There’s still consequence for sin. There is still consequence, and God will deal with sin correctly. A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Can you imagine? We see a lot throughout the Old Testament, God deals with sin in his people. God does not take sin within his people lightly. Modern Christianity has turned it into, “Give your life to God, everything’s going to be okay. God is loving and just, and all these things.” And God is love, and God does love you, and God will take care of you, and we don’t get what we deserve. But sin still has a price.
A warning that we see here is serious because God is serious about sin. God is never just ambivalent when it comes to sin. “Oh, well, not bad. I’ll give him three strikes before I go ahead.” No. Listen, sin has consequences. The writer is not telling the believers that one deliberate sin, one willful sin, and you’re lost, you’re out. Again, verse 26 said, “After you have received the knowledge of the truth, you’re saved.” Verse 29 says, “You’re sanctified.” That means you’re saved. And verse 30 says, “The Lord will judge his people,” his people being the ones who have trusted in Jesus Christ. His warning is against something more serious. The warning is against continual, willful sin whenever you already know better.
Don’t reject Christ. Don’t treat his blood as common. Don’t turn away from the grace and the mercy that he has provided because there remains no sacrifice, no more sacrifice for sins. So if I may, before stepping all over next week’s sermon, verse 39 says this, “But we are not of them who draw back into perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Do you know what that means? We don’t really say that word perdition anymore, but do you know what that word means? Do you know what he’s saying in verse 39? He’s saying, “We are not among those, we are not like those that kind of go back and do the destruction things, the things that we know we shouldn’t do, and we continue to do them. We are not among those, but rather we believe,and we have faith in God who has saved our souls.” We should live like it. If I had to encapsulate this whole passage of scripture that I believe, and I hope you know that not only do I believe strongly about this, but God believes strongly and teaches us strongly about this, that there is no other sacrifice than Jesus. We know better. If you’re saved, you know better. You’ve been saved for a purpose, and it’s not to do what you want to do.
So keep believing, keep trusting, keep looking at his finished work. Jesus Christ is enough. You say, “Well, preacher, I’m struggling with this sin. I don’t want to willfully sin, but I am. I don’t want to continually do the things that I’m doing, but I do. What do I do?” If you’re worried about what can you do for your sin, you have already messed up. Call out to Jesus. Only Jesus can help. Only Jesus. If you try to come to the preacher, guess what? If I say, “Okay, I can help you,” get out of my office room as far and fast away from me as you can if I say, “I can help you.” I can’t help anybody here, not when it comes to sin. You know the only help I can give you? Turn to Jesus. I can tell you what Jesus said. I can show you how He can help, but I can’t do it. You can’t do it. There remains no more sacrifice. Jesus Christ is it. Once you’ve put your faith and trust in Him, you know what we ought to do? We ought to live like we have put our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ. Let’s all stand.
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