Latest / The Madison Church Podcast / The Journey to Spiritual Maturity | Losing My Religion (Part 4) | Stephen Feith

Transcript

The Journey to Spiritual Maturity | Losing My Religion (Part 4) | Stephen Feith · The Madison Church Podcast

• 0:00
  Stephen Feith: together so welcome my name is Steven I'm lead pastor at Madison church and I'm sure you've all seen commercials you can raise your hand if you have commercials for medicines in which like most of the commercials explaining the side effects right it's like a 32nd window it's like five seconds Do you have a headache?
• 0:18
  Stephen Feith: You should take XYZ and then for the next 25 seconds they're explaining that you know you could have this could have this you could have that you could do this and in some rare cases death and it's like man all that for like a headache for example our stomach ache or like I don't know. So we've seen these commercials and sometimes I'm watching myself and and I do think this I think you probably do too sometimes I think that the side effects are way worse than the problem all learn to live with the problem to avoid those side effects now plenty of medicines get a bad rap for having icky unpleasant side effects and rightfully so sometimes common ones are upset stomach muscle aches, dizziness, headaches, I'm sure you guys have taken some medicine in the past the prescription for for some reason or another you've had some of those side effects as well. Those are some of the most common ones but do you know that there are some drugs that will turn your urine blue bright blue, this happens it's the odd side effect of taking a certain anti depressant thankfully for you thankfully for you, you would not be on this antidepressant and one day find out that your urine was blue like by surprise you'd be shocked and horrified right? You That won't happen because in the United States there are laws that say that these companies and doctors they have to explain to you the side effects of the medicine so if you went in for treatment of a certain thing they got to tell you what the side effects are. They got to tell you what the warnings are before they just send it with you home and and you know they're waiting for that email to come in when you're like freaking out because you just peed blue. Okay, so that's kind of a good thing. The warning signs though aren't just on medicines, they're not some bottles of pills, it doesn't just have to do with your medical and health lives warning a place of warning signs are all over the place. I went to see a chiropractor for the first time I think it was about a year and a half ago got the sweet deal I thought I was gonna go see a chiropractor was having some neck pain since I had an injury A long time ago and they had me sign a release form and it just so happened that there was one chiropractor working in there a few people in line in front of me so I actually was reading through the waiver I was signing the health release form because usually I'm not gonna lie to you guys I should but I don't read those I just kind of sign wherever they tell me to sign but I had some extra time and so I'm reading through it. And one of the things that I thought was just absolutely horrifying was I essentially just signed on said that like hey if while I'm getting treatment here, the chiropractor accidentally breaks my neck and kills me like I'm not holding them responsible. My family can't hold them responsible. They are not responsible. I know that all risk of seeing a chiropractor could be that by mistake on accident of course they could snap my neck and kill me and it's just one second to be like that and I can't do anything about is very I went anyway in case you were wondering they you know did that back you know if they didn't I trusted on that maybe I shouldn't have sometimes you might drive up to an intersection and as a stop sign and under that stop sign in might have an additional warning that says cross traffic does not stop. The warning there is that if you don't stop, they're not stopping, you will probably cause an accident you will get hurt. And it will be your fault.
• 3:28
  Stephen Feith: We put this extra warning that they do not stop. And even your cup of coffee guys remember when we serve coffee at Madison church back in, you know the 30 years before COVID we used to serve coffee and on the lid that said caution. This drinker holding is hot, and you might get burned. There are even warnings on things that you might think are common sense, but just in case, they're not common sense. We're gonna give you a warning now those are all physical warnings, that's what's physically going to happen to you. If you run the stop sign you're gonna get hurt. If you drink coffee, you might get burned. If you go to the chiropractor, you might get your head ripped off. You know, if you get this certain antidepressant, you might be blue, okay, these are all physical warnings. But we talked about this all the time. You and I were holistic people were mind, emotional, relational. We are physical, no doubt, but and we're also spiritual. And yes, while what happens to one affects the other. What about the spiritual warning signs in our lives? Have we ever considered that? In our spiritual lives, there are warning signs all over the place, like stop signs, like on bottles of medicine, there are spiritual warning signs all over the place. And that's what I want to talk about today.
• 4:37
  Stephen Feith: Because that's what the author of Hebrews brings us into today.
• 4:41
  Stephen Feith: And so if you're watching or listening online, we're glad that you're joining us. And if it's your first time with us who've been in the series to the middle portion of Hebrews, we're calling this series losing my religion because we're learning together really, based on what the author of Hebrews has written that following Jesus, we're leading As us from religious obligations of the past, that following Jesus isn't about now I've got to do this, and I've got to do that, or God's gonna be mad at me or God's gonna love me loss. Or if I do this, God will love me more. But really, it's about my spirit, doing the things that's going to enhance my relationship with God. And so even if you haven't been here throughout the series, today, we'll still hopefully make some sense to you. To recap, the first few weeks of this series, we discussed how Jesus is this new high priest, which can be very confusing to us today who didn't live in a Jewish culture with the Book of Leviticus, and the 400 laws that we had to memorize under the Torah. But what the author of Hebrews is essentially saying is that in the past, there used to be one priest, and he represented all the people to God, Jesus is a new high priest.
• 5:51
  Stephen Feith: And what Jesus does is Jesus represents God to all of us. And whereas in the past, only the priest could experience God's presence, because of Jesus, every single one of you can now experience God's presence. And then last week, we got into kind of the introduction of today's talk. Last week, the author confronted the audience pretty harshly. We go from talking about Jesus, the high priest, and the author says, I'd like to talk to you about this more. And spoiler alert, they will, again, they're going to pick it back up, but they paused to confront them and say, some of you are spiritually mature, some of you have kind of hit a ceiling. And it's because you're lazy. It's because your goal, it's not it didn't happen on accident. This was an intentional choice that you made. And so today, the author is going to go into a warning, and then kind of a mitigation, how we can avoid this warning this confrontation.
• 6:45
  Stephen Feith: In other words, there are spiritual warnings, and there are spiritual side effects.
• 6:47
  Stephen Feith: That's what we're going to talk about today. Now, we're looking at a passage today that is one of the most controversial and disputed passages in the entire New Testament, you probably don't see it on Facebook.
• 7:00
  Stephen Feith: However, that doesn't mean it's not controversial, doesn't mean it's not disputed. It means that within scholarship, the people who study ancient languages, people who study the Bible, not very many of them, not very many of us can agree with what today's passage means. And so I just want to say, if you do have questions, write it on that connection card, we'll try to answer them on the podcast this week. And the goal today is to really seek understanding. It's the seek what is perhaps the author of Hebrews really trying to communicate, and how does that tie in with the rest of what they've written. And once we're able to do that, I think there are some practical applications and some challenges that we can take. But I wanted to lead on the front end that this is going to be maybe a little more confusing than it usually is for us. So we're a Hebrews, we're in chapter six, we're going to read verses four through eight first, which reads, it is impossible to bring back to repentance for those who were once enlightened, those who have experienced the good things of heaven, and shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the power of the age to come. And to then turn away from God. It isn't possible to bring such people back into repentance. by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing Him to the cross once again, and holding them up to public shame. When the ground soaks up the falling rain and bears a good crop for the farmer, it has God's blessing.
• 8:30
  Stephen Feith: But if a field bears thorns and thistles, it's useless, the farmer will soon condemn that field and burn it. Okay. So right off the bat, you maybe perhaps are understanding why this is a little controversial, because the content of it seems to be saying something and Is that really what they're saying?
• 8:52
  Stephen Feith: Well, the first thing we're going to look at, if we could put that first set of verses up, as the author says, it is impossible to bring back that word impossible means exactly to them what it means to us today, okay, so don't be confused about that impossible, not going to happen, it is not possible. And now in the description here, what they're saying is impossible to bring back someone to repentance, once they were enlightened, and then talks about once they experienced the Holy Spirit. Now, what's interesting about this passage is that this is kind of the same vocabulary used in the book of Acts. So we're talking about experience in the Holy Spirit, we're talking about what happened and AKSU and in other places, when we're talking about the Holy Spirit, coming on to people and filling them what we would call and today a lot of scholarship, being baptized in the spirit. So this is the same vernacular that's going on. So it says that it is impossible we cannot do this. Once somebody has kind of been filled with the Holy Spirit once they have done all of these things for them to be brought back into repentance.
• 9:59
  Stephen Feith: So What does this mean? That it is impossible to bring them back? Does that mean you could lose your salvation? And does that mean that if you did lose your salvation, that you can never have a back? Because it's impossible? Is that what the author is saying? Or is it how other scholars would say they would say that what the author of Hebrews is talking about is people who didn't ever actually have a relationship with God?
• 10:22
  Stephen Feith: Are they saying that it's impossible to lose your salvation? Like it just cannot happen? What is going on here?
• 10:31
  Stephen Feith: Well, that's what we're gonna talk about. Here's what I think it means. I think that this passage is that telling you that even after you accept Jesus, and we never presume that people have right that's that's kind of our our thing and medicine?
• 10:43
  Stephen Feith: Should we ever assume that everyone's a believer that we all have the same backgrounds.
• 10:46
  Stephen Feith: But what I think that the author is trying to communicate is that even after you've accepted Jesus, you have a choice to accept Jesus every day. Or you have a choice to reject Jesus every day. That doesn't mean that every day is a salvation moment, you wake up every day and saying, you know, Jesus, I need salvation. That's not what I'm saying. And certainly there is that you've experienced salvation, you're good, you can have security that God has covered, you loved you, has died for you, and you can have security in that. But it doesn't mean that after you've made that choice for the very first time in your life, that you can go into autopilot. Now, check the box on saved, don't have to think about this anymore. Once saved, always saved, you might have heard. That's I don't think that's what the author's saying, I think the author is saying that you still have a choice that just because you accepted Jesus last week, last month, 10 years ago, that doesn't mean you can't choose to reject him today. I think the author's saying that's completely in the realm of possibility possibilities. Now, does that mean that when we make wrong decisions, that that might cost us our salvation? Like if I do the wrong thing, I could lose my salvation, I want to kind of liken it to this, okay. So when I hear people talk about losing their salvation, I think it's kind of like, they treat salvation like it's a pair of keys, like, Here, I have it, I have my keys, this is my salvation. I have it. I know that. And then it's like, you stub your toe bad word. Lost my lost my salvation, I don't have it anymore. I need to Jesus, forgive me. There we go. Salvation again, that would be a very wrong understanding of what even the author of Hebrews is talking about, you'd have to ignore so much of what the author of Hebrews has already written in the entire book of Hebrews. And in today's passage, they're talking about people who have experienced God to the absolute fullest. Like they have experienced almost everything that God has to offer. And then they reject it. It isn't about disbelief anymore. It's about all out rejection is what the author of Hebrews is talking about. The author of fever says, These people have been enlightened. They're referring to this knowledge that Jesus is Lord and Savior that he overcame the grave, defeated sin and evil so that we could have eternal life. So these people have already been enlightened.
• 13:16
  Stephen Feith: they've experienced the good things of heaven. Okay, so God's spoken to them. They've they've experienced some sort of miracle, some sort of healing because they've experienced that some of heaven says they've shared in the Holy Spirit, they've been filled with the Spirit. They've tasted the goodness of God's Word. Guess what? they've read the Bible.
• 13:33
  Stephen Feith: they've read parts of the Bible, they've heard God speak to them again. And they know the power that is to come. Meaning like there's just no shadow of doubt who these people are. And it's kind of like let's go back to the keys right? These aren't people who have another set of keys that they don't know what this go through. We know that this is you know, this is Megan's car. This is my car this is the front door This is the back door This is my parents key I don't know why I still haven't just always but I can explain that to you now I know what each and every single one of these things are. And that's what the author is saying. Is that okay?
• 14:05
  Stephen Feith: You these people have experienced that they know that God has is real what's happening is that they made a choice once they accepted Jesus for who he is how he is whether those last week last month likely in the description we just got this is yours guys to experience that entire checklist from enlightenment all the way to the power that is the calm, that they are now rejecting it. It's not a matter of disbelief. It's a matter of you know, I know when I was baptized, I said I was gonna die to myself raised the new life in Christ. Yeah, I think I can do it better. So sorry, Jesus. That's it. It's essentially taking these I don't need them anymore. That's what this is. It's a it's I know what those keys are. I mean, even from way over there. I know what they do. I know what they are, I can still tell you about them.
• 15:03
  Stephen Feith: I've used them. I use them as early as tonight. And it's not like I'm now like, man, I don't know my keys are. I lost them?
• 15:14
  Stephen Feith: No, it's like, what? No, they're there, right where you throw a man, like the right over there.
• 15:17
  Stephen Feith: Go get them. I had a roommate, let me just kind of made me make this more practical. I had a roommate in college who would pray out loud every night. That didn't bother me that they prayed out loud every night, that was fine. But what they would do is they would begin to pray for the forgiveness of sins, and literally go through beginning in the morning, every sin that they had that day, like every bad word, every indecent thought, anything that they did that they thought was out of line. And so I thought that was odd. I thought that it made salvation seem a little bit like a glass box, like I really had to, man, if I screw up, I dropped the glass box, like everything Jesus did was for nothing, because I couldn't hold on to a wall. So I asked my roommate about I said, why, you know, why do you do this, and he said that if I if he didn't do it, he would go to hell, if he died. This is a very different understanding of the past is that we're just reading it, I'm trying to tell you, this is not the right way to think about what we just did. But that was really intense. like God, who loves you so much that he leaves haven't he lives the life you should have lived he would rather die on earth and live without you in heaven would turn his back real quick. If there's a blizzard outside, and you were driving to Madison church on Sunday night for service, you hit some black ice and you spawn and and you said shit right before you hit the tree, and died. And Gods like, Boy, that's tough. I just can't imagine that he went to the cross to let that overcome him. And so I disagree that salvation guys is not fragile. You You have security in your salvation, you don't have to worry about losing it.
• 17:04
  Stephen Feith: It's there, it's for you.
• 17:09
  Stephen Feith: But what I believe the author of Hebrews is trying to say, and it goes with what they said last week, you were either maturing in your faith and growing closer to God, or you're drifting. And we cannot believe the lie.
• 17:22
  Stephen Feith: Though we can just be complacent. We can't believe the lie that I made a decision 10 years ago, I got baptized, I'm good to go. Now I just don't, I don't have to do anything is that run out the clock situation it's over, I just gonna keep living my life. One, I'm gonna die, I'll go to heaven. It's great. The author of Hebrews is trying to say you're either drifting from God, or you're moving toward God. And if you don't know you're moving toward God, I would heed his warning here, which is you're probably drifting from God. And what the author is saying is that eventually you will drift far enough where you will make the decision to throw that salvation away. You will eventually get there. And I bet you can think of people in a non judgmental way. I'm not asking you to judge anyone. But when you think of your friends or family, you think of people who have had faith and maybe weren't growing.
• 18:13
  Stephen Feith: Can you think of somebody who instead of growing started drifting, and drifting and drifting, until one day like faith just wasn't a part of their life, I can think of several, several people, some of friends, people, my family, even close family, where that happened, where the choice was to not be made where I'm not going to grow, so I'm going to accidentally drift. So I think the first thing that we're hearing is that we have a choice to make, and that is where we're going to mature, or are we going to drift? Okay, so that's the heavy stuff. And again, if something didn't make sense, please write it on the connection card. We'll answer it on the podcast. But let's keep reading ahead to verse nine here. When the author of Hebrews changes their tone, says, Dear friends, it's kind of nice and cuddly after what he's just said. Right? Dear friends, even though we're talking this way, we don't believe it applies to you. Everyone exhales Okay. See, it's, I don't believe it's applies to you. We are confident that you are meant for better things, things that come with salvation, for God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you worked for him, and how you shown your love to him. By caring for other believers as you still do. You're taking notes in your own Bible write that down. You will not forget how hard you have worked for him. Now you shown your love to him by what caring for other believers are great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts.
• 19:47
  Stephen Feith: This isn't a run out the clock situation, keep loving people in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true then you will not become spiritually dull, and then different.
• 20:01
  Stephen Feith: Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God's promises because of their faith and endurance. And this is it. So we've gone from a confrontation last week, the author's like, Hey, you guys are you kinda dog, you're becoming like babies, you're not maturing, and you ought to today's a warning that if you don't start to mature, if you keep acting like babies, you could eventually reject the salvation that you have to a comfort, but I don't think that you will. And he's talking to his audience, he says, I believe you're going to heed the warning says, Here are the side effects of not being spiritually mature.
• 20:42
  Stephen Feith: But I don't think you have to worry about that. Here's the warning sign. And I think you're going to take it seriously. And that's good news for us today.
• 20:48
  Stephen Feith: And I love it that says, You know what the sign of your faith is, it's not that you said a prayer. It's not even that they were baptized, although we've talked about baptism a lot in the book of Hebrews, but it's the way that they show love for other people, says, God will not forget the way that you have loved ever other people. That is the evidence of your cell vation. And he says, this is how you will avoid becoming dull and indifferent. How you avoid drifting, is by loving God well, and loving other people. Well, if you want to talk about how to become more spiritually mature, sure, we could talk about all the things we've talked about in this series, and the things we're going to talk about. But let us never forget that the foundation of that is a God who says the greatest commandment is to love Him and to love. Other people love this little practical advice that they gave at the end, talking about following in the footsteps of others. Following the example of those who are ahead of us good company is so important. I've heard it said and I've heard it attributed to several other people, but it's like, you're the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with. I don't think that's very objective. I don't think there's any actual study that shows that like, you're the sum of all five people, but it is good wisdom and knowledge. Because if you hang out with a bunch of people who are politically left, I bet you're probably politically left. Vice versa would be true.
• 22:09
  Stephen Feith: If you hang out with a bunch of people who are politically right, your five closest friends, I bet you're going to be politically right. If you hang out with a bunch of people in your closest friends are all Packer fans, you're probably gonna be a Packer fan. If Yang has a bunch of people are bears fans, you're probably still going to be the Packers fans, because you see how much they suffer. Right? Okay. So you're like you take the average of, of the people who are around you.
• 22:31
  Stephen Feith: But what I want to say is that as we begin to think about maturing in our faith, we do need to begin to think of people who we can lean on, and who we can learn on. And what I think is really important is is we put ourselves in a box, because we're like, well, I can only learn from somebody who is perfect, or in our example, has a certain spiritual maturity. So we're looking for a saint, or priest, or kind of the two things we're like, but nobody else can speak into my life. And that would be such a mistake.
• 23:01
  Stephen Feith: One, no one is perfect. Jesus himself says that the church, the body of Christ, is a hospital for sinners. For imperfect people. Our faith is built on the premise that we cannot help ourselves. So we have to have Jesus help us.
• 23:13
  Stephen Feith: That's why we get baptized, because we said, well, I can't do this by myself. So there are no perfect people. So what does it mean to maybe follow in the footsteps of some people around you? Well, if you're single, who is being single? Well, who in your life is single and thriving? I don't think that everyone needs to be married, I don't think that everyone needs to be in a relationship. And if that's kind of where you're at in life, don't look at all of your other friends who are in relationships, and be like, that's what I need to do.
• 23:44
  Stephen Feith: Because that might be misleading, because that's not where you are at. Now. If you are single, and you feel like you want to be in a relationship, that's okay. But find somebody who has recently done that, well, who was single, who was in a relationship now and how did they do it? How is that healthy, they don't have to be an expert. They don't even have to be perfect at it. They just need to be a few steps ahead of you. If you're married and you want kids who do you know who can speak into that maybe it's your parents, they had kids, so they probably know a thing or two, maybe it's an elderly couple that you're not related to maybe it's your neighbor's, who has a two year old kid, like they probably know a thing or two about just having kids and maybe some of that knowledge and making the mind experience some of the things and if you're younger couple in the room, you have parents, you have younger kids, you know, some of the advice that my parents gave us, it's like, you know, the doctors don't want us to do that anymore. We can't just put the kid on the front seat and go home like that's, we'll go to jail ma like, thank you for the advice, but no, you keep it and that situation be better to talk to the neighbors with the two year old kid because they know okay, if you want to grow in your faith, you don't need to find a pastor. But you need to find someone who's growing in their faith, who's grow who's just a few steps ahead of you. If you read the Bible once a month, who read that once a week, if you read it once a week who reads it daily, if you want to pray more, who prays really well in your life, again, not perfect. If you want to talk to somebody, you're like, man, I really feel like I need to give back more. I need to volunteer more. Okay, who's volunteering once a month? start there, don't start like with Alyssa and john, who you know, every week and showing up early and staying late. Maybe that's too far ahead. But say, Hey, baby, I can start off once a month, and how do I do that? And so we begin to take those. And then on the flip side, who can you help? Because again, Christianity following Jesus, it's not just about consuming.
• 25:38
  Stephen Feith: It's not just about my faith, my life and what I need to do. But as you think about your own life, how can you help people perhaps you are the person who reads the Bible every day, and you can help somebody who's reading it weekly or monthly.
• 25:50
  Stephen Feith: Establish a habit to read it better. That's what God wants you to do. You don't need to pray about and ask him that is what he wants to do. If you're somebody who is generous with your finances, have find somebody who's not good with their finances and help them that's what God wants you to do.
• 26:06
  Stephen Feith: And so this passage today Yes, controversial, much disputed by still think that there are very practical applications for us today, which is want to say that every day we can make a choice to follow Jesus.
• 26:17
  Stephen Feith: And I think the other thing is to say to find good mentors, find good people around you, but also be a mentor. To some degree, it doesn't have to be a standing meeting once a week for coffee, but I have a friend now, I want to kind of start to land the plane here by talking about a scene in Matthew, in which Jesus is telling religious leaders who are skeptical some of the healing and miracles that he did, he responds to them. So there's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist and you're slanders against God's Spirit, you are repudiating the very one who forgives. If you reject the Son of man out of some misunderstanding, the Holy Spirit can forgive you. But when you reject the Holy Spirit, you're sawing off the branch on which you're sitting, severing your own perversity all connection with the one who forgives severing by your own perversity. So this is another passage that kind of ties into what we talked about today. I'm sure if you've grown up in around the church, you've heard something about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and the unforgivable sin. And what does that mean? And have I committed it? You haven't, it ties in with what we're talking about. In Hebrews. Today, we're talking about the blacksmith Holy Spirit, when we're talking about the unforgivable sin that is mentioned here that Jesus himself was talking about. He is talking about what we just talked about. We're talking about a lifelong rejection, all the way to death of his lordship, all the way to death, not just a disbelief, not just questions about faith and spirituality, and all our rejection. And so you don't have to worry about that. I thought it was important to bring up because if you did, groping around the church, you might have questions, what is the unforgivable sin, it is rejecting Jesus all the way till death. So the challenge to lose our religion we choose Christ everyday not out of religious obligation, but out of relational obedience, a submission to His Lordship, and trusting and believing and having faith that he wants what's best for us more than we want what's best for us and knowing that as we do that, and seek him out, we will grow in our relationship with him, and eventually experience not just good things in life, that's great, good things will happen in life when you follow Jesus, but good things in the life to come. I love the picture, Max lucado paints of this future and as a matter of fact, I'm gonna ask you to do something weird.
• 28:52
  Stephen Feith: If you're watching online, I want you to do this to to the best of your ability. But if you're in here, I just want you to bow your heads and close your eyes. Because I believe that God is going to paint a picture in your mind of where we're heading. So Maxwell caner writes. You may not have noticed that but you're closer to home than ever before. Each moment is a step taken. each breath is a page turned. Each day is a mile marked. A mountain climbed. You are closer to home than you've ever been. Before you know it, your appointed arrival time will come. You'll descend the ramp and enter the city. You'll see the faces that are waiting for you. You'll hear your name spoken by those who love you.
• 29:49
  Stephen Feith: And maybe just maybe in the back behind the crowds. The one Who would rather die than live without you will remove his pierced hands from his heavenly robe and applaud