Hebrews 10:26-27
When It Runs Out
When you hear a title like that, you should ask the question, "When
WHAT runs out?" If you are, I will tell you that I do not know for
certain. The text while very solemn is also somewhat vauge. In the
text, you can tell something has changed, somethng is missing, some-
thing ran out; but the text never specifically tells us what. My
guess and supposition is that God’s grace ran out. So I could
entitled the message When God’s Grace Runs Out, but I will not.
Heb 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we
have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment
and fiery indignation, which shall devour the
adversaries.
This is a frightening Scripture. In my opinion, probably the 2nd
most frightening text in the Bible. It should frighten the lost.
It has frightened the saved.
Let’s look at it with three thoughts.
I. Solemn Warnings - This text does not have a solemn warning. It
has at least three.
A. It can run out.
1. What can run out?
a. I think the writer is telling us that grace can run
out.
b. Those that have heard me for awhile know that I have
to give words a definition for my small brain to
understand them.
c. The definition I have given to grace is God working.
(1) God working to save us.
(2) God working to change us.
(3) God working to help us to go right in a wrong-
going world.
2. Two questions come to my mind:
a. What would happen if grace ran out?
(1) We don’t really know for no living human being
has ever seen a day when God’s grace ran out
(2) The best we can do is guess.
(3) My guess is that some of the tools that God uses
to work in this world would be removed.
(a) Mercy - Mercy keeps us from being destroyed
when we do something wrong.
(b) Forgiveness - Is God paying for our sins so
we can have a relationship with Him.
(c) Kindness, compassion - Is God using good
like a carrot to move us in the right
direction.
(d) Conviction - Is the shock of God’s shock
colar when we are going the wrong
direction.
(4) Everything that is good from God would cease.
b. Can God’s grace really run out?
(1) \\#26\\ says it can, at least for SOME.
(2) That leads to the second horrible fact.
B. When it runs out, there is no hope.
1. \\#26\\ The Bible writer said it this way, "there remains
no more (or no other) sacrifice for sins."
2. That means that there is no plan B.
3. There are no "do-over"s, second chances, or alternate
routes; and any religion that says otherwise is just
plain lying.
a. There is no purgatory.
b. There is no reincarnation.
c. There is no soul sleep.
C. When it runs out, all that is left is a fearful, certain
judgment and fiery indignation.
1. No one alive has ever seen the kind of judgment of which
this verse speaks.
2. However, there have been some who have seen what their
friends and family experienced when grace ran out for
them.
a. Noah got to see what it was like for the whole world
to run out of God’s grace from Gen 7-9. In fact,
according to \\#1Pe 3:20\\, all but eight perished in
the flood waters.
b. The few Jews who obeyed God and surrendered to the
Babylonians got to see grace run out for the nation
around 586 BC. Most of the others either died or
carried off as slaves. (Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah,
and Lamenations)
c. Lot and his two daughters got to see what it was like
when God’s grace ran out on the twin cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah. No one else in the immediate arrival
survived. (Gen 19)
d. But God’s grace can run out on individuals as well.
(1) God’s grace ran out on Pharaoh. (Ex. 1-18)
(a) The Calvinists like to use Pharaoh as an
example of God arbitrarily damning a human
soul, but there is no indication God did
that.
(b) The indication is that another hard-hearted
sinner just continued doing what he had
always done until God cut His grace off
and sent him to hell.
(2) The same thing happened to Nadab and Abihu, who
in Leviticus 10 offered strange fire before
the Lord; so God killed them.
(3) We could also talk of:
(a) Korah and his band of rebels. (Numbers 16)
(b) Ananias and Sapphira (#Acts 5)
(c) And many others.
(4) I don’t mean to be cold and heartless, but many
people like to use the song from the 60’s as
their theme song, "I Did It My Way," then when
God gets fed up with their sin and turns off
the grace, they want to call God harsh and
cruel. God was not harsh or cruel. Their grace
just ran out!
3. Of course the judgment spoken of here is not just a harsh
death. It’s a harsh damnation, and it lasts forever.
Notice the description.
a. God called it a judgment.
(1) We have all felt some elements of God’s judgment
in this life, but this is the judgment that one
does not walk away from!
(2) It is the eternal one.
b. Then it is called "of fiery indignation."
(1) I get the indignation part. God gets slandered,
blasphemed, ignored, defamed, and defaced until
He has had enough and turns off the grace and
spues out His wrath.
(2) What is puzzleing to me is that God puts the word
fiery in front of indignation instead of
judgment.
(a) Anyone who knows anything about hell and the
Lake of Fire know that is where the fire
is!
(b) I don’t know if it means anything that God
put the word fiery in front of indignation
or not, but it struke me as odd.
c. The it is a certain judgment.
(1) The fact that so few believe in a literal,
burning hell is not a sign that we have gotten
smarter and cast aside our religious fantasies
and fairytales.
(2) It is a sign we have gotten too arrogant to
believe for that judgment is certain.
d. And the writer called it a fearful judgment.
(1) There is no place worse than hell.
(2) There is no place and nothing to be feared more
than hell.
(3) The fact that people today do not fear hell,
does not mean hell has changed.
(4) It simply means people have gotten more foolish.
II. \\#26\\ Specific Group
A. These verses are so abundantly clear, that we do not have to
guess either about to whom these solemn truths were directed
or why.
He 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we
have received the knowledge of the truth….
B. Willful sin can cause God’s grace to run out, especially after
one has received understanding of truth.
1. Notice, the writer doesn’t just say, "after you have
received the truth," but he says, "after you have
received the KNOWLEDGE of truth."
a. It is one thing to give someone truth. It is another
thing for them to get it, to understand it.
b. When I was a child in school, the teachers were
forever giving out truth. Most of it, I didn’t
understand.
c. To receive the knowledge OF the truth means, you got
the truth and you understood what it meant.
2. This Bible passage is being directed at a very specific
group of people.
a. A group to whom God gave truth AND they understood it.
b. They got the knowledge that the truth was intended to
give them, but they would not receive it.
C. Let me deviate for a moment:
1. God’s grace will run out for every lost person.
a. The day a lost person breaths his last breathe, grace
runs out.
b. It does not matter what truths you have heard and what
knowledge you did or did not gain.
c. When you die, grace runs out.
d. That is why Christians work to get the truth to every
person on the globe and to try to help them to
understand it.
(1) Even this year, we are tagging doors and giving
tracts to those we see, asking them about their
standing with Jesus Christ.
(2) We have done two mail outs, and I hope we will
do a third.
(3) We have preached three times every week inside
the building when we could and outside of the
building when we did not deem it safe to do so.
(4) We Facebook the message to those who will watch
it there and place a recorded video and audio
of every message online for people to watch in
the future.
(5) We give what I think is a significant about of
money to missions and actively seek to make
the gospel heard around the globe.
e. These things we do because it does not matter if you
ever heard the name of Jesus or not, the day a lost
person breaths his last breathe, grace for him just
ran out.
f. But that is not the person to whom these words were
written.
2. On the opposite side, God’s grace will never run out for
the Christian.
a. I do not want to give any undue comfort to the
backslidden, but neither do I want to distort the
Bible.
b. Backsliders and carnal Christians should fear God,
but they need not fear that God’s grace will run out
for them; for it will not.
(1) I heard part of a sermon by R.A. Torrey in which
he said he received more questions about this
Bible passage from disturbed Christians than
any other.
(a) They feared that the verses meant that even
a Christian, if they sinned willfully after
they had received Jesus, were damned,
having no other sacrifice that could be
offered for them.
(b) Dr. Torrey wisely answered, such a belief
cannot be true for it would create a
contradiction with the remainder of the
Bible.
(2) And such it is. We must place this truth
alongside of the remainder of the Bible and we
will know that God’s grace never runs out for
Christians.
c. To the backslider, the Christian who is deliberately
disobeying God, and to the carnal Christian, the
Christians who will not grow out the dirt of this
world into the light of the glorious Son:
(1) ou should fear God for He will most certainly
deal with your sinfulness.
(2) That is what \\#Heb 12:5-17\\ will say to you.
(3) God will chasten you as any loving parent with
good sense would chasten their child, but God
not cut grace off to you because you are His
child.
(4) God may send problems and hurts your way, God may
even take you home early, but the fact that your
home is heaven not hell is itself proof that God
will not take His grace from you.
d. So the truth of these verses was not directed to
either the lost world or to backslidden Christians.
D. No, these verses were directed to specific group…
1. …a group that the writer felt had mingled in with the
church but was lost…
2. …a group that had heard who Jesus was, what Jesus had
done, and even understood the message…
3. …a group that had that privilege because God Himself
gave it to them…
4. …but a group that continued to live their sinful life as
though they had not understood or ever heard that truth.
5. To that group, the writer was sending a most solemn
warning.
a. Grace can run out.
b. There is no other sacrifice.
c. All that is left is a fearful, certain future of
judgment and fiery indignation.
III. \\#29\\ Sure Insult
A. The writer spoke of God’s fiery indignation. God gets riled
when we insult, blaspheme, demean, deface, and defame Him.
B. Some do not understand the seriousness of willfully rejecting
what God in His grace has revealed.
1. It is a sin against Jesus.
Heb 10:29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose
ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden
under foot the Son of God…
a. In that time, they only walked on things that they had
no respect for.
b. Example - dirt.
c. Dirt is so common, we think nothing of it. We just
walk on it.
d. To reject what Jesus has done for you is to think no
more of Him than you do of dirt.
2. It is a sin against the holy blood that He shed.
…and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith
he was sanctified, an unholy thing…
a. It is to refuse to accept the blood that Jesus shed
for you us to consider His sacrifice a worthless act.
b. Jesus’ blood may mean nothing to you, but it means a
lot to the Father, and He is the only One who counts.
3. It is a sin against the Holy Ghost who revealed it to you.
…and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
a. The only thing worse than standing before God having
never heard who Jesus is will be to stand before God
having heard who Jesus is.
b. To know who Jesus is, to understand who Jesus is, even
to believe who Jesus is, then to reject Him will earn
the worst place in hell when grace runs out.
C. May I suggest a course of action for you today?
1. Fear God. You will one day soon.
Heb 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God.
2. Believe on His Son.
3. Surrender to His Son.
a. If you have never been saved, be saved.
b. If you are a Christian, live like God commands.
And do it today, before grace runs out.
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