I don’t have any statistics to back me up, but I am certain that one of the top contenders has to be a sermon delivered to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut, on hot July day in 1741. The preacher was Jonathan Edwards, a distinguished graduate of Yale University, who would later be appointed president of what was to become Princeton University. Along with the Anglican preacher George Whitefield he was one of the leaders of the remarkable spiritual revival known as the Great Awakening. It was a movement of the Holy Spirit that profoundly touched the hearts and changed the lives of thousands as it swept across New England in the mid-1700s—reaching as far as Nova Scotia!
The title Edwards gave to this particular sermon was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. And if you find its title forbidding, its contents are nothing less than soul-shaking. By my estimate the sermon would have taken close to an hour and a half to preach. And it was around the mid-way point that Edwards thundered forth to the congregation with these words:
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.
I’ll leave it to you to imagine the rest!
The reality of judgement
Now I have never been what you might call a hellfire and brimstone preacher. I am one of those who believe that the carrot is generally more effective than the stick, that the glories of heaven are far more inducive to faith than the threat of hell.
Yet I have to acknowledge that Jesus himself warned about the prospect of hell for those who turn their backs on God. He declared to the people of Capernaum, who refused to accept his message, that it would be more tolerable on the Day of Judgement for the inhabitants of Sodom than it would be for them (Matthew 11:23). He cautioned his followers, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43).
Think too of his parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man ended up in flames and anguish, desperate that Lazarus might even dip the tip of his finger in water so that he might have a droplet to cool his tongue (Luke 16:19-31). And at the last supper Jesus warned his disciples, “If anyone does not remain in me, they are thrown away like a branch and wither; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned…” (John 15:6).
In fact it has been claimed (and not without merit) that Jesus had more to say about hell than anyone else in the Bible. So perhaps we should not be surprised when we come across it again in this morning’s verses from Hebrews. We read of “a fearful expectation of judgement”, and those chilling words at the conclusion of the passage: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
The word in both cases in the original Greek is foberon. It’s related to our English word phobia, hence words like acrophobia, the fear of heights, and arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. Or how about odontophobia, the fear of dentists!
It all reminds me of my days in elementary school back in the Dark Ages, when to be sent to the principal’s office was a punishment you sought to avoid at all costs. Who knew what penalty was going to be meted out behind that thick oak door? Well, at least you came back from the principal’s office. But here there is no coming back.
Now lest I leave you thinking that God is some kind of celestial killjoy, constantly on the lookout for people to punish, let me remind you that there is a whole other side to the coin. Ours is a God who cries aloud to his people, “As I live…, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” And he pleads, “Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). And our Lord Jesus is the good shepherd, who seeks out his sheep that have strayed and brings them back into the fold. Yet there remains the tragic possibility of an eternity without him.
So it is that our verses from Hebrews this morning contain that stark warning to those who might be tempted to abandon the faith, that “if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgement…”
Why people leave the faith
Now this connects with one of the themes that has been in the background of Hebrews all along. Indeed it is likely that it is the reason for its being written in the first place: that one by one and for various reasons people had been dropping away from the community of believers. And for the author of Hebrews that was no light matter. It’s not like dropping out of a bowling league or even dropping out of school. No, dropping away from following Jesus is a matter of life and death.
Now for some people this whole topic brings up the question of whether or not it is possible for a believer to lose their salvation. And that is an issue I’m not going to delve into right now. But no matter which side of that particular debate you stand on, you don’t have to have been a Christian for very long before you notice that there are people who at one point appear to have had a genuine faith and yet somewhere along the road have left it behind.
Christian author Frank Viola offers a list of reasons why this happens.[1] Here are a number of them that he highlights:
· The nasty way that Christians can sometimes treat each other. Disputes in the church can often arise over what are really non-essential issues and church members can become overinvested in them to the point where they lose perspective altogether and end up treating those with a different perspective as though they were enemies.
· The simplistic answers they have been given to complex and difficult issues. The world can present us with challenges that strike at the roots of our faith. Yet sometimes these questions end up being treated with suspicion or simply dismissed with a pat answer, instead of being dealt with honestly and openly.
· Disappointment with God as a result of a tragedy or seemingly unanswered prayer.
· The busyness of a life that doesn’t leave room for prayer or engagement in the community of faith.
· A legalistic understanding of the faith that demands perfection and can only lead to self-reproach, disappointment and even serious depression.
All of these can be factors in slipping away from the faith—and no doubt we could list many more as well. Indeed, in my experience one of the prime factors has been adultery. One of the biggest disappointments of my ministry has been to see leading laymen, men who have a deep and articulate understanding of the faith, Christian leaders, become involved in secretive affairs that end up undermining both their marriages and their faith. And I am sure that many of you could name any number of Christian “rock stars” who have fallen for the same reason in recent years—famous preachers and teachers, megachurch pastors and authors among them.
Today the internet adds an additional, highly powerful factor as well: pornography. It’s no longer a matter of hiding copies of Playboy under the mattress as it was when I was young. Our high-speed fibre optic cables can bring full-colour images and videos right into the privacy of our homes. And they can be deeply addictive.
Preventing departures from the faith
So what are we to say to all of this? How are we to deal with it? I could tell you that you’ll have to wait until next week’s exciting episode, and the weeks that follow. After all, we still have three chapters of Hebrews left!
But before I conclude, I want to mention one author who has been particularly helpful to me recently in thinking this whole issue through. He is psychologist Jonathan Haidt[2] and he is not a Christian but a secular Jew.
His thesis is this: We often think of our mind, our rational faculty, as what is most important in giving direction to our lives and guiding our decisions. But Haidt says no—that as often as not it is our emotions that guide us. And he summarizes it in a simple picture.
Picture if you can an elephant driver on top of an elephant. Now, by and large the elephant has been trained to be compliant. It will go wherever the driver commands. But if for one reason or another the elephant decides to take a different path, the hapless driver is forced to go along for the ride.
The elephant, says Haidt, is that part of our faculties that is based on feelings and sensations, while the driver represents our rational faculties. By and large it is our minds that we look to to guide us through life. But there will be times when the elephant of our emotions takes over—and I don’t imagine you have to think for very long to remember occasions when that has happened in your life.
So what does this mean for us as Christians? Perhaps one of the weaknesses of our Protestant tradition is that we often tend to place our emphasis on the mind at the expense of our other faculties. We engage primarily on a cerebral level, and only secondarily (if at all) on what we might call a gut level. Now I know that part of that is to avoid manipulation. Yet if our faith is to be fully rounded, it needs to involve the whole of us.
For example, how crucial music is to Christian experience! Even Paul, who seems like such an intellectual type, encourages us to “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). Besides, I’m told that singing helps to release endorphins that contribute to both our mental and our physical health.
And how crucial is fellowship! By this I mean not just that casual cup of coffee after the service (as important a part of church life as that is!), but engaging with fellow believers on a deeper level—having others you can share with about the important things of life, people you can trust to stand by you without judging even in the most difficult times, and yet who have the courage to say, “Get with it!” when that’s what’s needed.
I would be remiss too if I didn’t stress the fundamental importance of developing a habit of taking time to be with God on a daily basis—coming before him in prayer and praise, reading his word, and simply enjoying being consciously in his company.
Yes, it is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Yet what is more wonderful than to be held in the firm grip of a loving Father, who vows never to leave us or forsake us? What could be a greater privilege than to walk with a Saviour, who promises to be with us to the end of the age? What could be more amazing than to be filled with a Spirit, who will be with us forever!
So as we hold these verses from Hebrews in one hand, let us balance them with these words from Philippians in the other:
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ… And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. (Philippians 1:6;9-10)
[1] “7 Reasons Why Christians Abandon the Faith” https://frankviola.org/2022/05/12/7reasons/
[2] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 2012
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