Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

Mar 16, 2025

Mar 16, 2025

Mar 16, 2025

Passage: Hebrews 5:11-6:12

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Worthy: His Worth, and a Life Worthy of Him

Keywords: faith, patience, covenant, promises, priest, anchor

The ancients called it “acedia,” a Latin word for apathy and malaise–a spiritual condition you could compare with when you gorge yourself on food and your body’s attempts to process all that food makes you lethargic. Without taking a breath, our author continues in his pointed words about maturity to an audience who has become, in his words, “dull of hearing” and “sluggish.” His only recourse is to apply words that come across as pungently and abrasively as smelling salts. Sometimes we need words to awaken us both to peril and promise, that new appreciation for the latter might deter us from drifting into the former. Sometimes we need to fear offending love, even if that love does not to fail to keep whispering its steadfast character.

 

CENTRAL TEXT:  Hebrews 5:11-6:12

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Heb. 6:1   Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits. 

Heb. 6:4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7 For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

Heb. 6:9   Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10 For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

 

PRAYER/SCRIPTURE READING/CONFESSION OF FAITH:   Matthew 10:28-33; Luke 22:31-34; John 21:15-17

LEADER:  And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. . . .“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” 33 Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me. . . .” When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 

The Word of the Lord

ALL:  Thanks be to God

 

CELEBRATION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER: 

 

CONFESSION OF SIN:  

Leader: King Jesus, at many times and in many ways we have been asleep to you and your kingdom.

ALL:  Awaken us, Lord.  

Leader: To who you truly are: Our Creator, Redeemer, Shepherd, Friend. 

ALL:  Awaken us, Lord.

Leader: To who we truly are: Once your enemies and now your friends. 

ALL:  Awaken us, Lord.

Leader: To the needs of our neighbors, especially those we are prone to neglect or despise.

ALL:  Awaken us, Lord.

 

ASSURANCE OF PARDON:  1 Thessalonians 5:6-11

LEADER:  So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 

ALL: Amen.

 

BENEDICTION:  Hebrews 12:1,2

LEADER: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

Illustrations:

Mar 16, 2025

 

QUOTES:  

 

  • The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.
    - Simone Weil (HT: David Brooks)
  • Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards
    • Resolved, to be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality. (13)
    • Resolved, that I will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die. (17)
    • Resolved, never to do any thing which I should be afraid to do, if I expected it would not be above an hour before I should hear the last trump. (19)
    • Resolved, to cast away such things as I find do abate my assurance. (26)
  • There is a gap between the probable and the proved. How was I to cross it? If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof – I wanted certainty. I wanted to see him eat a bit of fish. I wanted letters of fire across the sky. I got none of these. And I continued to hang about on the edge of the gap … it was a question of whether I was going to accept him or reject him. My God, there was a gap behind me as well. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble, but what of the leap to rejection! There might be no absolute certainty that Christ was God, but there was no certainty that he was not. This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it, and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.
    Sheldon VanAuken

 

 

     

    • “In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’ In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
      “Life in an Atomic Age”

     

     

    BOOKS / DOCS

     

    SERMONS / TALKS