In many areas of life, there are points that we reach that
make it impossible to return.
A. Airplanes especially point this problem out.
1. Take-off......point of commitment....either
fly or crash.
2. Long range flights.....point of no return....
don’t have enough fuel to return to starting
point.
B. Many times in business, one becomes committed
for the long haul.....can’t back out without
disaster.
God’s word speaks of this same kind of principle.
Luke 9:62 - 62. Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand
to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom
of God."
It certainly appears to me that God considers our decision
to become a Christian an irreversible one.
A. Not because God wouldn’t be willing to forgive
one who has strayed (as a lost sheep would)....but
that a person can make it impossible for God to
forgive him because he doesn’t want to return to
the things of God.
1. The yearning for the things left behind can
only indicate that one’s heart has changed in
regard to the things of God.
a. We have to ask ourselves this question...
“If God had not turned Lot’s wife into a
pillar of salt, would she have returned to
Sodom?”
1.) In my opinion....my answer would
be, “yes”....because her heart had
turned back to Sodom.
When we become a Christian, according to Romans,
chapter six....we die to sin....to the rule of sin in our lives...
in other words, we turn our back on the world of sin.
Romans 6:6-14 - 6. For we know that our old self was
crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done
away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--
7. because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will
also live with him.
9. For we know that since Christ was raised from the
dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over
him.
10. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the
life he lives, he lives to God.
11. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but
alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so
that you obey its evil desires.
13. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as
instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to
God, as those who have been brought from death to life;
and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of
righteousness.
14. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not
under law, but under grace.
A. If and when we would turn back to the things of
the world that we renounced....is it like starting
over again or is it worse?
II Peter 2:20-22 - 20. If they have escaped the corruption
of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse
off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It
would have been better for them not to have known the
way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to
turn their back on the sacred command was passed on to
them.
22. Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its
vomit," and, "A sow that is washed goes back to her
wallowing in the mud."
Why is it so bad to leave the Lord....can’t we just come
back?
A. Sliding away from God is the most dangerous
thing that any mortal can do.
I. Before we come to God, our sins were done........... in at
least partial ignorance and unbelief.
I Tim. 1:13 - 13. Even though I was once a blasphemer
and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy
because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.
A. God died for us on the cross while we were yet in
our sins.
Romans 5:8 - 8. But God demonstrates his own love for
us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
1. His great love for us made His sacrifice.....by
His standards............inevitable.
B. The reason that our sins.......as odious as they
were........could still sway God to shed His blood
for them.......was because they were done in
ignorance and unbelief.
1. I think that this is very well illustrated at the
cross.
Luke 23:34 - 34. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for
they do not know what they are doing." And they divided
up his clothes by casting lots.
a. I would not presume to argue that He was
not speaking of those who were
physically killing Him.....but I also
contend that He was speaking of all
mankind who had sinned against Him.
C. Am I saying that sins of ignorance and unbelief
are better than willful sins?
1. Absolutely not.
a. The difference, however, is in the
potential of the heart.
1.) It is harder to change the heart
of one who is bound up in willful
sins....because he wants to be
bound up.
II. Willful sin is sin that is done with the eyes wide open.
A. When one willfully sins, he/she knows what is
right....knows the penalty for that sin....and
chooses to do it anyway!
1. This person is in rebellion against God.
a. If the person is not operating from a
hardened heart.....soon it will be
hardened.
1.) Hardened heart - definition - the
will....the mind....the desires
cannot.....or will not be changed.
Romans 2:5 - 5. But because of your stubbornness and
your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against
yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous
judgment will be revealed.
Hebrews 3:8-13 - 8. do not harden your hearts as you did
in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert,
9. where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty
years saw what I did.
10. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I
said, `Their hearts are always going astray, and they have
not known my ways.’
11. So I declared on oath in my anger, `They shall never
enter my rest.’"
12. See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful,
unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
13. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called
Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s
deceitfulness.
Heb. 10:26-31 - 26. If we deliberately keep on sinning
after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no
sacrifice for sins is left,
27. but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of
raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
28. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without
mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29. How much more severely do you think a man deserves
to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under
foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the
covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the
Spirit of grace?
30. For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I
will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."
31. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God.
B. One who willfully sins against God, then, goes
beyond the ignorant or unbelieving transgression.
1. This person is considered to have treated
the blood of Christ “Ho-hum”....no “big deal”.
2. This person also is considered to have
insulted the Spirit of grace......the spiritual
gift that God has given us.
a. This willful....self fulfilling sin....comes
from a heart of self love (idolatry) and
disdain and disrespect for God.
III. Willful sin is extremely dangerous.
A. It is not that Christ can’t or won’t forgive willful
sin.
1. Christ died for all sinners and anyone whowill
repent.....really repent from the heart.....can
be forgiven.
a. The danger isn’t that God won’t forgive
a willful sin.
B. The danger is that those caught up in willful sin
won’t want to come back....won’t want to repent...
won’t want to totally submit, once again, to God’s
will.
1. Living for self can become habit forming.
a. Living for self and doing the will of self...
even in the face of God’s will can have
the most immediate....tangible....
pleasurable.....satisfaction.
1.) To overcome the drive to serve
self over God.....requires that one
again put self to death.
C. The first time one was in the world of sin and
wickedness was by default......the second time is
by conscious and pre-meditated choice.
1. We left the world of sin because we didn’t
like those sins......what they were doing to us
and what they were doing to Christ.
a. If we return to our previous state, we
indicate that we no longer have this
repulsion of sin and we no longer care
what those sins are doing and have done
to Christ.
** No............it isn’t that God cannot or will not forgive us
if we fall away.......
1. It is more that renewal is hard to impossible
because those who have fallen away from God
don’t care to ever return.
CONCLUSION:
There is a point of “no return”........this is the point in
which one has hardened his heart so much against God and
the call of the Spirit, that God allows them to remain in
their sins and reserves a time of terrible punishment for
them.
Romans 1:21-25 - 21. For although they knew God, they
neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but
their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were
darkened.
22. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23. and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals
and reptiles.
24. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of
their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their
bodies with one another.
25. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and
worshipped and served created things rather than the
Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
A. We see this point reached by Pharoe....a man who
had so much proven to him....and God held him
accountable for what Pharoe knew.
1. After Pharoe hardened his heart, over-and-
over-again.....the scriptures say that “God
hardened Pharoe’s heart”.
How close to the edge do we want to proceed?
A. Just when does one reach the point of no return?
1. How long can a person refuse the loving
instruction of God....through His Word,
preaching, or in the counsel of the saints....
before he has reached the point of no return.
A hardened heart is not always obvious to everyone.
A. Sometimes it isn’t even obvious to the person who
is hardening the heart.
1. A hardened heart comes about when one
would do what one wants to do....in the face
of all scriptural evidence.
2. A hardened heart will come about when one
gets to the place where no other Christian can
get through to him with warnings of dire
spiritual consequences.
a. A “deafness” sets in.
3. We harden our hearts when we go about
forgetting that which we should remember....
and again remembering that which should
have been forgotten.
4. A hardened heart comes about when one is
so full of self that there is no longer any room
for God.....His Word, His ministry, His
people.
5. A person will harden his heart towards God
when the temporal and the seen carry more
weight that the unseen and eternal.
What about you, ......have you strayed from
God’s will......how much further can you go before you
reach the point of no return?
A. Return NOW!
