5 Warnings in Hebrews, Part 2

The Danger of Doubting

Don’t Harden your heart against the Holy Spirit, (3:7-19).

Heb’s 2:5-18 is making the case of Christ’s superiority to the Angel’s based on His humanity.

Son of Man - Chapter 3 then states the Son’s superiority to Moses in four ways:

a) Christ was the builder of the house. Moses was a part of the house, (3:3)

b) Christ was over it (3:6), Moses was in it, (3:5)

c) Christ was a son (3:6), Moses was a servant, (3:5)

d) Christ was the revealer, Moses testified to a revelation, (3:5b)

The Angels spoke truth, Moses spoke truth, and One who was greater than both revealed the truth.

So now we are given the Warning to the believer not to fail as our forefathers did when they heard the truth and went astray in the story about Meribah, Nos 20:13; Ex 17:7.

A warning not to harden our heart, Heb 3:7-11.

Hardened = callused, which comes through the result of repeated irritations.

And what has this type of believer become callused to? The believer can become callused to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, which has two functions that lead to hardening.

1) Grieving the Holy Spirit. Eph 4:30, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Grieving the H.S. is when you are: out of fellowship, operating under your own power, and saying no to the ministry of the Holy Spirit from working within you. Grieving the Holy Spirit results in blocking the Metabolization of Doctrine, and you end up compounding the grievance.

a) The Holy Spirit is not in control of your soul; your OSN is.

b) You’re not taking in any new doctrinal information for the Holy Spirit to work with.

And Eph 4:31 shows us the type of individual who is grieving the Holy Spirit. One who has.

Eph 4:31, All bitterness, both anger and wrath, verbal brawling and slander, must be removed from you, along with all malice."

What is the picture of believer who is not grieving the Holy Spirit? Eph 4:32, Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

So the principles of grieving the Spirit are:

a) A bitter soul never metabolizes doctrine.

b) Bitter people slander, because they have placed themselves on a pedestal. Malice is one of the most descriptive words of gnosis without epignosis, of the hearer but not the doer of the word.

c) Malice is the desire and the motivation of the gnosis believer to inflict suffering and injury on others.

Eph 4:32, "But become kind toward one another, compassionate and forgiving each other, just as God also by means of Christ has forgiven us."

And then the second part of hardening your heart is:

2) Quenching the Holy Spirit. 1 Thess 5:19, Do not quench the Spirit; Quenching the H.S. is when you are not only grieving the ministry of the Holy Spirit from working within you, but you are hindering His ministry to others. This is a warning against Reverse Process Reversionism (RPR) and Black out of the Soul.

Blackout of the soul is the inevitable result of emotional revolt of the soul and locked in negative volition to Bible doctrine. The blackout of the soul begins with the creation of a vacuum in the stream of consciousness of the right lobe of the soul. This vacuum creates a system of suction that attracts into the seven compartments of the soul; the emotional complex of sins, and the three arrogance skills.

Three Arrogance Skills: Self-Absorption, Self-Deception, and Self-Justification.

The blackout of the soul immobilizes previously metabolized Bible doctrine. Blackout of the soul is the status of the believer with negative volition to doctrine, which results in his involvement with the cosmic system.

Rom 11:7-8 describes Jewish blackout of the soul from persistent negative volition. Cf. 2 Cor 3:14-16; 4:3-4; Eph 3:16ff.

Turn to 2 Cor 3:14, read 14-16

Rom 11:7, What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened; ⁸just as it is written, “GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR, EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT, DOWN TO THIS VERY DAY.”

Turn to Eph 3:16, read 16-19.

Next the writer of Hebrews shows us two exhortations so we don’t fall into the seduction of the cosmos and become callous.

1) Exhortation from within the Body of Christ. Heb 3:12-13, We are to encourage one another, just like in Eph 4:32 look out for one another and build up / edify one another as members of the Royal Family.

2) The exhortation by showing us the reward of being steadfast, Being not a partaker, but a companion with Christ in His millennial reign. Heb 3:14.

If = eanper – subjunctive third class conditional - maybe you will, maybe you won’t.

Made up of the words EAN = If, and PER = Indeed

There are 4 Classes of the word IF in the Greek:

1st Class conditional if = If and it’s true

2nd Class conditional if = If and it’s not true

3rd Class conditional if = If and maybe it’s true or maybe it’s not true

4th Class conditional if = If and I wish it were true

In summary:

1st Class = Positive

2nd Class = Negative

3rd Class = Neutral

4th Class = Wish list

Each class can be effected by various modifiers especially the 3rd and 4th Classes as we see in this verse.

In our verse it is intensified by the word PER = indeed

PER intensifies the Neutral class to be more like the Positive first class. So it comes to mean If you hold fast = If and I believe you will hold fast. It still could go either way but the writer is exhorting them with the positive twist. Encouraging them to hold fast to their faith and inherit the resultant blessings of reigning in the millennium and beyond with Christ, by walking with Him in Experiential Sanctification during your life on earth.

Then in Heb 3:16-19 we see the results of Hardening your heart and it all begins and ends with negative volition of the soul with resultant grieving, and quenching of the spirit leading to reverse process reversionism and Black out of the Soul.

Read 3:16-19 compare with 1 Cor 10:1-12

It begins with an attitude of unbelief toward God’s word, leads to Hardening of the Heart manifested by bitterness in the soul, and culminates in the judgment of God.

We are no different than Israel. The picture of Israel is memorialized for all eternity. These were believers. They accepted their redemption at Sinai and drifted away. All the way to the point of Sin Unto Death.

1 Cor 11:30, For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.

So the Warning should be fresh to us today. These verses are not speaking to the unredeemed believer. They are speaking to the Believer. It’s not speaking about loss of Salvation. Its warning the believer not to fade away and come under the judgement of God to the point of Sin Unto Death.

As a believer in Grace, you have a tremendous responsibility to bring Glory to God. If you fail to do so, as Israel did, you will fall under the discipline of God. But you won’t lose your Salvation.

Rev 2:11, ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.’

Rev 20:6, Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.

Rev 20:14, Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

Rev 21:8b, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

And now in Chapter Heb 4:1-10, God provides the example of the warning and the encouragement not to follow those that have memorialized the results of the warning.

It’s interesting to note that:

It was 38 years after Israel’s redemption that Moses pleaded with the new generation to heed the warning and enter into God’s rest, found in the Book of Deuteronomy.

And now the writer of Hebrew’s, 38 years after the day of Pentecost is pleading with the believers in Israel not to fail and heed the warning.

The crossing of the Red Sea signified Salvation through blood and power with resultant Positional rest.

The crossing of the Jordan to the Promised Land signified obedience to God’s word with resultant Experiential rest.

The other day that God speaks to is the picture of Ultimate rest based on Christ’s work on the cross, Heb 4:8.

For all of us who are saved there is the crossing of the Jordan river. It’s your choice to accept or reject it. Will we do His will completely by faith, or will we not? Heb 4:11

In the Old Testament there was the word of the report to the nation by twelve men. Those that rejected the report / will of God, perished. All but 2 of that generation of male warriors died in the wilderness.

Today, What are you going to do with the word of report found in vs 2. Heb 4:2, For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

Many believers today die in the wilderness, never having entered in by faith into the blessings God has for them. The graves in the wilderness stand as a memorial warning to us that we do not fall in the same manner of unfaithfulness, after salvation, caused by bitterness against God for His dealings with us. Either we don’t like His answers or are too impatient to wait for His answer.

Let the word of God do its work in our lives, and Don’t be hardened or callused to His operation by sucking in the false gospel and false doctrines of the cosmos.

And finally in Heb. 4:12 – 16, God gives us the tools to cut off the calluses and scare tissue, and bring glory to Him with resultant rewards to us so that He can help us in our every need.

As we turn to the third warning found in the 2nd half of Chapter 5 & 6, it is interesting to note that the writer stops speaking about Christ being in the order of Melchizedek and not after the order of Aaron because of the hearers immaturity. The trouble is with the hearers, not with his subject.

Read Heb 5:11-14. They are unable to take in this truth, and there was a reason for this condition.

See: Warnings in Hebrew, Part 3.