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If we are alive, will we be walking with Jesus in six months, or a year from now? Will we be in church?
Jesus started the church, and since then it has met, and there was a need for the meeting, and there still is.

We have put man on the moon and gave God his walking papers,

We have become so self-sufficient we don’t need people and we sure don’t need church, personal church, we have tv and the internet, cd, pod cast, no need to be involved with people, that is to messy, but we are saved and living for Jesus.

Some turn back

It doesn’t take much experience of the Christian way to observe various instances of falling away from the gospel. There are many different forms of it. The 18-year-old brought up in the secure embrace of a Christian family and a steady church sometimes goes off to university and a year, two years, three years later hits the skid and comes home and is very proud of his or her renegade agnosticism.

Or one finds the nominal Christian who has apparently walked with the Lord and taught Sunday School classes for many years gradually drifting away, snookered by the high-pressured job, the need to be promoted to the level of partner, the lust for yet a bigger house and one more boat and whatever.

Or the person who has been rejected by a mate or lost a child at the age of 3 to cancer, now sunk in endless waves of deep bitterness and tremendous hurt, turning around and lashing out at God. Many of these, of course, eventually come back.

Sometimes even rather shocking ones. The 18-year-old brilliant agnostic eventually marries, has children of his own, begins to wonder what’s going to control their future, remembers the teachings of his youth, and genuinely is converted at the age of 28. We’ve all seen it again and again, haven’t we?

Charles Templeton, He abandoned the faith shortly thereafter when he was a student at Princeton, and although he was courteous towards Christians for many years, toward the end he became an extremely bitter, nasty old man. The young man who was rejected by Vince Trimmer and his crew was just breaking out on the scene. His name was Billy Graham.

What shall we make of these? What category applies?

What is apostasy?

Some people argue that this is simply loss of one’s salvation. One is genuinely saved, truly, honestly saved, as saved as any other saved person, and then one loses one’s salvation.

I would want to argue that flies in the face of so many New Testament texts.

Hebrews 3, one of the essential definitions of a genuine believer is perseverance to begin with.

Some people think this refers simply to what might be called ordinary backsliding. Is any backsliding ordinary?

That is, backsliding without losing one’s salvation. The trouble is the sanctions sound far too severe. Others say this means falling from service, falling from usefulness and fruitfulness, so that it’s such severe backsliding that the person will never be able to have public function, public service, public utility in the church ever again.

When we try to think our way through biblical examples, we do not find instantaneous help. It’s not that there is no help; we do not find instantaneous help because there is such an array of different kinds of examples. Frequently in the Old Testament, for example, apostasy turning aside, is sometimes configured as spiritual adultery.

Samuel prohibited by God Almighty from praying any longer for Saul. “Don’t pray for him, seeing that I’ve rejected him.”
The sons of Korah commit terrible sin. They are destroyed. Moses defies God Almighty, and he doesn’t get into the Promised Land, but he is still a man of great virtue and praise and so on everywhere in Scripture.

Peter What would you make of an ostensible Christian who arrogantly tells the Lord Jesus what to do, contradicts his theology, later disowns him, and swears violently that he never knew him? What would you do with him? Hmm? Well, his name is Peter,

What would you do with another man who.… He was always a bit loose in his accounting, but on the other hand, he was a powerful witness, performed miracles, never actually disagreed with the content of Jesus, so far as we know. His name is Judas,

The Scriptures are full of encouragements to press on, to persevere, to stay the course, and they offer many warnings against falling away, against moving from a position on which one once stood. Technically, that is all apostasy is … the moving away from a position on which one once stood. It is apo stasis. You were on a certain position, and now you move away from it.

Some Turn Back

John 6: 66 Upon this many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. 67 Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away? 68 Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. 69 And we have believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God.

The Scriptures are full of encouragements to press on, to persevere, to stay the course, and they offer many warnings against falling away, against moving from a position on which one once stood. Technically, that is all apostasy is … the moving away from a position on which one once stood. It is apo stasis. You were on a certain position, and now you move away from it.

Technically, at least etymologically, that’s all that apostasy is. But that won’t do as a definition for the very simple reason that it is far too neutral. In that sense, you could call Paul an apostate; he moved away from the position of Judaism to become a Christian, so he was an apostate to Judaism.

Apostasy itself has overtones that are far more serious.
The relatively few places where that word or related terms are used invariably bespeak something fearsome, something horrible. Apostasy takes on in the New Testament deeper, bleaker dimensions. Granted, then, how prevalent in the New Testament are encouragements to persevere and warnings not to fall away, we should not be surprised to find such themes in Hebrews.

Some Went Back

John 6: 66 From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him. 67 So Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” 68 Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

We have come to that point in John’s gospel where many of Jesus’ disciples drew back and no longer followed him. This is a turning point in our Lord’s ministry, where he confronts the twelve with the question, “Will you also go away?” This is a frequent phenomenon in our day also. Many people start out the Christian life and seem to do very well for awhile, but then they drop out of sight and nobody seems to know what happened to them.

Those who focus solely on the symbols of Christianity invariably drop out sooner or later. Thousands of churches across our country today are almost empty because people who used to go to church no longer do. In many cases all they get when they go is the sacraments, the symbols ,baptism, mass, the Lord’s supper, some ritual, some ceremony. Many churches focus on those things as though that was what God desires. But our Lord is making very clear that these are simply symbols of a deeper reality, and that deeper reality is the content of what he says, the words that he speaks

John tells us Judas is branded forever as the traitor above all others, outwardly a disciple, outwardly a lover of Jesus, yet inwardly a traitor, an enemy, a devil opposed to all that God wants.

Here in our congregation over the years, there are probably representatives of the groups we will look at today. Some of you have started well, but you will drop out. You will not want to be bothered with studying and searching and understanding.

You will not want to follow truth when once you see it. You will rationalize it.

You will go on and do the wrong thing, deliberately, again and again, and eventually you will drop out. It has happened before. There are many missing faces.

But there are some of you who will never leave. You cannot quit. You have found too much, you have learned too much of life. You have been ministered to and fed and strengthened by the Lord Jesus. You know the comfort of his presence. You can never give him up.

Some Went Out

1 John 2: 15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
18 Little children, it is the last hour: and as ye heard that antichrist cometh, even now have there arisen many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us

The first characteristic mentioned of antichrists, false teachers and deceivers (vv. 22–26), is that they depart from the faithful. They arise from within the church and depart from true fellowship and lead people out with them. The verse also places emphasis on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Those genuinely born again endure in faith and fellowship and the truth (1 Cor. 11:19; 2 Tim. 2:12). The ultimate test of true Christianity is endurance (Mark 13:13; Heb. 3:14). The departure of people from the truth and the church is their unmasking.

The implication is clear that the beginning of heresy was within the circle of Christian truth and doctrine. That is where heresies have their root. It is someone who comes in Christ’s name, someone who declares that he is a Christian and is declaring the truth of Christianity. Yet, as we analyze his teaching it is contrary to what God, in Christ, has said. This is antichrist.

What does he mean by us? Surely not Christendom in general. He means, of course, as he makes clear in the context of this whole letter, those who love the Word of God and who possess the Spirit of God, those who seek to obey the Word in the power of the Spirit.

This is the emphasis he has been making all along. Those who share the life of Christ, by the Word of God, in the power of the Spirit of God. Heretics will invariably cut themselves off from these people.

Through the Christian centuries there have been cyclical outbreaks of heresy arising within Christian circles to twist, distort, and pervert the truth. They bear always the same characteristics.

Let us Go On

6:1 Wherefore leaving the doctrine of the first principles of Christ, let us press on unto perfection; not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, 2of the teaching of

What in general leads to apostasy?

there is a fairly rare word that occurs in 5:11 and in 6:12, in the opening verse of the section and in the closing verse of the section. That word is rendered sluggish or thick, perhaps lazy, but lazy in your hearing.

What is it that prompts this sluggishness, this inability, to hear, to listen, the heart of the issue simply is immaturity in listening to, studying, absorbing, and conforming to the Word of God. In other words, what leads to this terrible state of affairs in this context is inattentiveness to the Word of God.

That should not surprise us. Do you remember how Psalm 1 begins? Psalm 1 The righteous person is described negatively in verse 1, positively in verse 2, and metaphorically in verse 3. That’s the righteous person. When the righteous person is described positively, there is only one criterion: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

Deuteronomy 17:18–20, where Moses looks forward to the time when there will be a king in Israel, and he prescribes the first order of business for such a king. Persevere

“When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”

A remarkable passage, He becomes king. What’s the first thing he is supposed to do?

Audit the books of the predecessor? No. Appoint a new secretary of state? No.

Call a cabinet meeting? No.

It’s to get out his quill pen and copy out by hand a copy of this law, which either refers to Deuteronomy or the whole of the Pentateuch.

It doesn’t mean to download it from a CD onto the hard drive without it passing through his brain.

He was to copy it so clearly that would become his Bible which he was thereafter to read day after day after day, all the days of his life, thinking God’s thoughts after him. So he would learn to revere God’s words and not think of himself better or turn to the left or to the right.

What in general leads to apostasy?

The answer is, in one fashion or another, a neglect of the Word of God.
The prophets denounce the judgment that comes when there is a famine of the Word of God.
One of the greatest characteristics of contemporary evangelicalism is a decline in Bible knowledge, a decline in family and personal Bible reading, and in the culture at large, there is certainly a massive rise of biblical ignorance.