HEBREWS: “A Greater Test & Rest, pt.1 (Hebrews 3:7-19)" | 9/10/23
Hebrews 3:7-19 | 9/10/23 | Will DuVal
One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been is Gilpin Lake, just outside Steamboat Springs in CO. But to GET there, you’ve got to hike 5 ½ miles OUT, through bear- and snake-infested mountains, with a 2,300 ft. elevation gain, using fallen trees to cross over rivers… and then hike another 5 miles BACK!
It’s not easy - we were sore for DAYS afterward - but it was WORTH it. [I think we’ve got a picture of me and Polly…]
It was DEFINITELY the best PB&J I’ve ever tasted, after hiking that far.
The most refreshing SWIM I’ve ever taken… just floating there, RESTING my muscles, after all that work.
But you don’t get to enjoy Gilpin Lake, if you’re not willing to endure hiking the 10.6 mile Zirkel Circle (truth be told: the hike is beautiful too). But you know what they say: “No pain…? [no GAIN]”.
That is essentially the author of Hebrews’ main message for his church - and for US - this morning, in chs3 & 4: that in CHRIST, God has this perfect, peaceful REST waiting for us, but in order to enjoy the REST, we must first pass the TEST. And while Jesus offers us a greater rest, He also presents us with a greater TEST, of faith.
No pain, no gain; no test, no rest. And God, through His inspiration of the author of Hebrews, is going to give us 6 instructions this morning for passing our test of faith, and then NEXT week - yes, I decided once again, last minute, that I needed to split this sermon into 2 parts; there’s just too much here to try and cover it ALL in one morning - so NEXT week, we’ll receive 6 additional instructions for actually entering this amazing REST that God has in store for us.
SCRIPTURE: I invite you to STAND… Hebrews 3:7-19:
“7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
11 As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
-
16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”
[This is the word of God… SEATED…]
So what is this TEST we’ve got to pass, before we can enjoy God’s REST… and let’s go ahead and identify the REST as well:
These 26 verses are essentially a mini-exposition of Psalm 95, vv7-11. I told you in week 1 of Hebrews - we don’t know the author, but we DO know he is a PASTOR, essentially writing a SERMON to his congregation. And just like ANY good pastor, he always grounds his message in the word of GOD. Hebrews quotes the OT more per verse than any book of the NT, but in THESE 26 verses, he’s focusing almost exclusively on Psalm 95:7-11.
Psalm 95 was written by King DAVID, around the turn of the 1st millennium, BC, but David was taking HIS audience back another 4 ½ centuries to the time of MOSES, and the recently-freed Israelites, whom God tested, v8, “in the wilderness”. You’ll notice v7 opens with the word “THEREFORE”; that means his argument for TODAY is gonna be built off his conclusion from LAST week, in the FIRST 6 verses of ch3, namely, that Jesus is the greater MOSES. So now he continues that analogy, and argues - “if JESUS is analogous to MOSES, then who does that make US? Today’s followers of JESUS?” We are like… [the ISRAELITES! Oh boy…]
Now, if you were here for our series through EXODUS, you’ll remember that just AFTER the Exodus - Israel had been enslaved in Egypt, God parted the Red Sea to set them FREE - but then he TESTED them in the wilderness - at Marah, at Massah and at Meribah, Exodus 15-17. God let His people suffer THIRST, and then HUNGER, and then thirst AGAIN, to see if they would trust Him to provide. And did they?
NO! 3 times, in a matter of WEEKS, maybe DAYS (we don’t know the exact timeline), Israel DOUBTED God - they actually went so far as to charge Him with attempted MURDER; “God brought us all the way out here into the desert just to KILL us!” - and they FAILED God’s test. And they will do the exact same thing AGAIN in Numbers ch11, immediately after we pick their story back up there, and then again in Numbers ch14, when Moses finally leads them to the EDGE of the PROMISED LAND, Canaan - they send 12 SPIES into the land, to scout it out, and TEN of them came back and said, “No way. The Canaanites are TOO big, TOO fierce; we better march our butts back to EGYPT”. And only Joshua and Caleb trusted God - that He wouldn’t bring us this far to let us DIE; “If it’s us against them: not a fair fight for US; but us PLUS GOD against them: not a fair fight for THEM!” But Israel had NO faith - as a matter of fact, they tried to STONE Joshua and Caleb and Moses and Aaron so they could elect a NEW leader to take them back to SLAVERY - and as a consequence of their rebellion, God BANNED them - that entire generation - were prohibited from entering the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. Instead, God would make them wander around the desert for another FORTY YEARS, until they all died off, for their disobedience and faithlessness.
But remember: that whole Exodus story is an ALLEGORY, pointing us ahead to a deeper, spiritual journey that God is leading US on:
We are Israel. Moses is Jesus. Pharaoh is Satan. And Canaan is HEAVEN.
Jesus frees us from our bondage to SIN, in order to lead us, ultimately, to eternal life in HEAVEN. But in between your OLD life of sin and your promised NEW, ETERNAL life in HEAVEN, stands… WHAT?
[A WHOOOLE lot of… DESERT.] Wilderness.
Infertility. Miscarriages. Death, of loved ones. Divorce. Non-vocational singleness. Unemployment. Debt. Depression. Anxiety. Dementia. Cancer. Not-yet-answered prayers.
Friends: this is life in the DESERT. You’re living it, I’M living it, and this little church 2,000 years ago in Rome to whom Hebrews was written was living in the THICK of it, in ways you and I can barely IMAGINE. Because not ONLY did they have to endure the wilderness WITHOUT the aid of modern medicine, or today’s social safety nets, or the civil protections of a just, democratic government, but they were actually being actively PERSECUTED for their faith in Christ. And I’m not talking “the 10 Commandments got taken down off the courtroom wall” persecution, I’m talking ‘PRISON, BEATINGS, and - pretty imminently here - DEATH’ persecution.
And all that context helps us see the author’s main point here: that God has got us on a JOURNEY, and we know our final destination: it’s REST - when we will one day get to REST in our better “Promised Land”, HEAVEN. And YET, in order to enjoy God’s rest, we must first pass His TEST, down here in the “wilderness”. So his message is: DON’T GIVE UP! Don’t QUIT! Don’t “fall away” (3:12), rather “hold firm” (3:14), don’t “fail to REACH it” (4:1), instead “STRIVE to enter it” (4:11).
The life of faith is a MARATHON, not a sprint, so PACE yourself, and then run it all the way through the FINISH line, even when it gets TOUGH; you gotta push THROUGH the pain.
Now: how do we DO it? How do we ENDURE the test - life here in the wilderness - so that we can ENJOY God’s rest - life eternal in Heaven?
12 ways. Think of Hebrews here as our spiritual marathon coach; if you will put these 12 principles (first 6 this morning) for running the race of faith into practice in your life, you will make it to the end:
#1 - We must first: Hear God’s VOICE & SOFTEN our hearts. (3:7-8)
Hear God’s voice, and soften your heart.
Before the author even gets to his exposition of Psalm 95, look how he introduces it in v7: “as the Holy Spirit says”.
He says: “I’m not just quoting DAVID here”, because “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Pet 1:21) “All Scripture is God-BREATHED”. And friends: if GOD is talking, then we better LISTEN UP!
What’s God SAYING? “TODAY… hear my VOICE… and don’t harden your HEART.”
God is saying “DON’T be like those faithless Israelites, who PLUGGED their ears, PETRIFIED their hearts, and REBELLED against me!”
So how do you and I apply this exhortation in OUR lives… TODAY? Because His “TODAY” in v7 there isn’t just for them; David’s listeners 3,000 years ago… or the author of Hebrews’ listeners 2,000 years ago… No friends: God is calling US, TODAY, “as long as it is CALLED ‘today’” (3:13) - which is EVERY day, by the way; EVERY day is called “today” - that means EVERY day, we need to LISTEN and SOFTEN. So I’ll give you a practical call-to-action with EACH of these 12 points.
First, if you want to “hear God’s voice”, you need to read God’s WORD. If the Bible is truly “men speaking FROM GOD”, if it’s truly God-BREATHED, then you and I need to hear it - hear from GOD - every single DAY.
If God left you a VOICEMAIL - a 66-hour long voicemail, on your phone - you might not listen to ALL of it every day (you couldn’t; only 24 hours in a day!), but if it was God’s ACTUAL voice, don’t you think you’d at least listen to it all the way through ONCE, and then don’t you think you’d SAVE it, and for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you go back, and re-listen to sections of it, that you didn’t understand, to try and sort it out… or when you were feeling DOWN, and you remembered this particular section was especially comforting… or just to hear his VOICE. Maybe this is a little MORBID, but I’ve got a voicemail of Polly and of each one of my kids (actually, I need to get BO) SAVED on my phone, and God forbid, if anything ever HAPPENED to one of them, I think I’d listen to that voicemail over and over again, every single DAY, just to HEAR their voice. How much more, friends, do you and I need to hear from our heavenly Father… TODAY.
And when we do, we need to soften our hearts.
Jesus told a parable, about a man who sowed seed on different kinds of SOIL. Some of it fell on the road, and nothing grew. The problem wasn’t with the SEED; the problem was the SOIL.
Did you know you can attend the best church, and hear the best sermons, from the best preacher, sharing the best NEWS - the GOSPEL - about the best SAVIOR, Jesus, who offers you the best GIFT - eternal life in Heaven, shared with the best FATHER you could ever dream of… You can get ALL that wonderful seed every single Sunday, for your entire life, and still go to HELL, if it’s always falling on hard soil. If the good news is falling on deaf ears, and a hard HEART, it does you NO GOOD; actually, Jesus said in THAT case, it’d be better NOT to hear at ALL, because we’re gonna be JUDGED according to the knowledge we had; the more of Jesus we KNOW, the less excuse we have for REJECTING Him. If you’re sitting here with a HARD HEART this morning - if you read your Bible with a RED PEN in hand, seeking to prove it WRONG, so you can feel justified living life YOUR way instead of GOD’S way; if you’re attempting to sit in judgment over GOD, instead of letting Him and His word judge YOU, change YOU, when your beliefs and values don’t align with GOD’S, as expressed in His WORD - if THAT is the posture of your heart, friend, then let me lovingly warn you this morning: it would be safer for you if you left the sanctuary right now. If you put the Bible DOWN. Because the more you HEAR, the more that SEED that gets scattered, WITHOUT taking root in your hard heart, the more JUDGMENT you are bringing upon yourself.
Don’t DO it. “TODAY, if you hear His voice, do NOT harden your heart.”
What’s the opposite of HARDENING? #2 - HUMBLING! We need to Witness God’s WORKS & HUMBLE ourselves (3:9).
Don’t be like the ISRAELITES, v9 says, who “put GOD to the test”.
Listen: God is the test-ER, not the test-EE. Job tried to do it, in his suffering, “God, you’re really FAILING the test of faithfulness to me here!” You remember God’s reply? “Who do YOU think you ARE? I forgot - did YOU create all this? Did you give YOURSELF life, breath? Job: you exist for ME, NOT the other way around; the only one getting TESTED here is YOU, your faithfulness to ME; will you still WORSHIP me, even in your suffering? Trusting that REGARDLESS of your circumstances: I’M STILL GOD, and I’m still WORTHY of your worship, come what may.”
And the amazing part is: in His MERCY, even WHEN we’re faithless, God STILL comes through for us, doesn’t He? He did for JOB. Job FAILED his test, and God STILL blessed him with more health and family and riches than he’d had before. God came through for Israel, in the wilderness for those 40 years. They grumbled, complained, doubted, REBELLED, and yet God STILL blessed them with bread from heaven (manna), water from the rock, His PRESENCE in their camp - God didn’t LEAVE them! - and ultimately, He still blessed their children with rest in the Promised Land.
Isn’t this our story TOO, friends: even when we are faithless, God STILL remains faithful to US; He keeps WORKING things together for our good. So how ought we to respond? 2 applications:
First, we need to WITNESS and BEAR witness to - we need to recall and RECOUNT - God’s good WORKS over the course of our lives. When we’re going through one “wilderness phase” of life, we need to call back to mind previous wildernesses that God has led us through, and brought us OUT of on the other side even STRONGER, even CLOSER to Him, because we had to RELY on Him to get THROUGH it. I heard a pastor put it this way: “God’s DELAY is for God’s DISPLAY”. God couldn’t have gotten GLORY over Pharaoh, if He had never let Israel suffer in Egypt. He couldn’t have gotten GLORY by working MIRACLES for Israel, if he hadn’t let them endure a little hunger and thirst in the wilderness.
Friend, whatever suffering God is letting YOU go through right now, you need to remember 2 things: first, to HUMBLE yourself, and remember that God doesn’t owe us ANYTHING - not the easier life you enjoyed BEFORE this present suffering, not the easier life you’ll likely return to after He has DELIVERED you from this suffering, for the display of His own glory, and we certainly don’t deserve the ETERNAL life He’s ultimately gonna give us, even in a worst case scenario where you suffer unto DEATH - God doesn’t owe us ANY of that. So we humble ourselves.
But second, we remember his WORKS. “He's never let me down… / So why would He fail me now? / He won't”.
#3 - We must: Follow God’s WAYS & WATCH our steps (3:10-11)
Let’s LEARN from Israel’s MISTAKES; v10: “‘They always [went] astray in their heart; [so God laments:] they have not known my ways.’”
Something really important happened in BETWEEN Israel’s FIRST round of failures in Exodus 15-17, and their SECOND round of failures in Numbers 11-14; you remember what it was? There’s a REASON God didn’t BAN them from the Promised Land until their SECOND round of failures; remember: we’re JUDGED according to the KNOWLEDGE we’ve been given. And what KNOWLEDGE did God give Israel, in the SECOND half of the book of Exodus?
HIS LAW! And then He gave them even MORE laws, in the book of Leviticus. And then even MORE in the FIRST 10 chapters of NUMBERS. Israel had received no shortage of INSTRUCTION from God, on His will for them, God’s WAYS. The problem was: they “went ASTRAY”. Heck, they were sinning, building a golden calf, before Moses could even get down off the MOUNTAIN!
How do we make sure we’re not making the same mistakes they did? Well, first we gotta KNOW God’s ways. We can’t FOLLOW them if we don’t KNOW them; see point #1, about hearing God’s voice, studying His WORD.
But second, we need to watch our STEPS. Jesus said, “Wide and EASY is the path that leads to DESTRUCTION; but narrow and HARD is the path that leads to LIFE, and those who find it are FEW” (Matt 7:13-14).
Hell is FAR more populated than Heaven, exponentially so, I’m guessing. I like that meme: “The fact that there's a highway to hell, but only a stairway to heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers”.
But a lot of folks today believe just the OPPOSITE, don’t they? They assume Heaven is the default, and you gotta be REALLY bad to get sent to Hell - not according to the Bible. According to God’s word, “the wages of sin is DEATH” - we ALL deserve HELL; the TOUGH part, actually, the IMPOSSIBLE part, is finding a way into HEAVEN. Friends: we COULDN’T find a way in; God had to MAKE a way for us. And if you want to know how HARD it was to carve out THAT path, the one that leads wretched sinners like us into a perfect place like HEAVEN, you need look no further than THE CROSS… AND the EMPTY TOMB. It took the death of God’s SON, and then the greatest miracle in HISTORY - His resurrection from the DEAD - in order to make a way for US to get into God’s holy presence. And now, Jesus IS the Way, He is the Truth, and He is the LIFE; NO ONE comes to God the Father except through HIM (Jn 14:6).
Are you on the path? You better watch your steps.
And one key way we DO that, #4 - is by: Heeding God’s PEOPLE & BEWARING our sin (3:12-13).
We could easily spend an entire sermon on just these 2 verses; they are so jam-PACKED with GOLD we could mine. But quickly: we find 4 pitfalls of sin here, but then 4 preventative measures we can take, to AVOID them.
The first potential pitfall is an “evil, unbelieving heart”. Jesus diagnosed the REAL problem: our external, sinful behaviors are really just the overflow of what’s in our sinful HEARTS (Matt 12:34). It’s not just that we’re sinners because we sin; No: we SIN, because we’re SINNERS.
And as commentator Richard Phillips explains (107), ultimately: “Unbelief is at the root of all sin. Specific sins are like rotten fruit hanging on a bad tree. But it is not the real problem; it is not the disease, but just the symptom. If we are greedy or hateful or selfish or dishonest, that is just evidence of dead and rotten things deeper inside… Unbelief is the root system that feeds the whole rotten tree of sin.”
Think about it: We get prideful because we don’t really believe God is infinitely greater than we are.
We get discontented and despairing because we don’t believe God is working for our good.
We get worldly and materialistic because we don’t really believe God is ENOUGH.
Every sin, at its CORE, is just symptomatic of our deeper UNBELIEF.
And that can LEAD us to a SECOND pitfall, v12: “fall[ing] away from God”. He warned us of the same thing TWO weeks ago, in ch2: we must “pay much closer attention to what we’ve heard, lest we drift away from it”; remember all his NAUTICAL imagery? God’s calling to ANCHOR ourselves to the gospel?
The tough truth about the Christian life is that it’s not how you START, but how you FINISH that really counts. I don’t know about you, but I am GREAT at starting stuff. I can start with the BEST of them. What’s really difficult for me is FINISHING. Seeing things through. ESPECIALLY hard things. And friends: there is NOTHING harder than living a life of true faith all the way through the finish line.
Marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. Ministry is hard. Some of your jobs are really hard. But NONE of it holds a CANDLE to actually making it OUT of this life still CLINGING to your “original confidence” in JESUS? Cuz the pitfalls are EVERYWHERE! And you don’t even have to fall IN ‘em to FAIL; all you’ve gotta do… is NOTHING! Remember: you don’t have to TRY to drift away… fall away… that will just NATURALLY happen unless you intentionally and diligently act OTHERWISE.
It’s not how you start - do you know why you won’t find “The Sinner’s Prayer” anywhere in the Bible? Because there is NOT a magic prayer that you can say that will save you. Only a relationship with JESUS can save you, friends, and a RELATIONSHIP isn’t a one-time decision you make; it is a LIFELONG JOURNEY that you SHARE with someone. And if you make it to mile 25.9 and then flame out just before the finish line - you FAIL.
Third pitfall, v13: “the deceitfulness of sin”. While the biggest threat to our faith comes from WITHIN us - our OWN “evil, unbelieving hearts”; Jeremiah 17:9 warns, “[Your] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” - yet we must ALSO recognize that sin ITSELF is DECEITFUL TOO, isn’t it?
Just think of all the LIES that sin tells us:
“To sin is just HUMAN” - so what: JESUS wasn’t human? Heresy!
“But surely God expects us to sin” - actually, God expects us to “DIE to sin”, and “bring holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1).
“Come on, it’s not THAT bigga deal” - according to GOD, “the wages of sin is DEATH”! Big deal!
“But you deserve to be happy” - according to GOD, what you deserve is HELL!
“No one will even KNOW about it” - except that GOD ALWAYS knows.
Friends: Sin promises FUN but brings REGRET. It promises fulfillment but brings emptiness. It promises life but brings only DEATH.
Sin is DECEITFUL.
And left unchecked, sin’s deceitfulness will ultimately lead, fourthly, v13, to our HARDENING. How do you end UP with a hard heart, unwilling and UNABLE to hear God’s voice anymore?
By allowing yourself to go on being deceived by sin. Keep buying into sin’s LIES for long enough, and eventually sin’s voice will get so loud that it will drown out GOD’S voice entirely.
So how do we AVOID these 4 pitfalls? With 4 preventative measures:
First, v12: “TAKE CARE”. BLE-pe-te; better translation: “WATCH OUT!” You saw the news story last week about the guy who escaped from prison in Pennsylvania … HOW? Because the GUARD on the WATCH tower fell ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL for 5 minutes. And that’s all it takes, friends. He could have been the best guard in the whole PRISON for the rest of his 18-year tenure. But 5 minutes of letting your guard down - of FAILING to “watch out” - can RUIN YOUR LIFE! You can be the best driver out there, but if you literally fall asleep at the wheel - for even five SECONDS - it can be catastrophic. And the same is true of our SIN. We have to KNOW our hearts are desperately sick and sinful, we have to KNOW our enemy prowls around like a hungry lion looking for someone to DEVOUR, and be on constant guard.
Second, he says, “Take care, BROTHERS”. Listen: the ONLY cure for a sin-sick heart that leads us to “fall away” from God… the ONLY antidote to the POISON of sin’s LIES that leads to a “hardening” of our hearts… is to be ADOPTED into God’s family by grace through faith. It’s becoming a brother, a sister, a child of GOD.
And he introduces this familial language not coincidentally at this point, as a segue way to preventative measure #3 - the FAMILY of FAITH!
Church: we’ve gotta know that we really ARE our brother’s (and our sister’s) KEEPERS! Within the family of faith, we have responsibilities to one another; our mutual Father holds us responsible for how we have “kept” one another.
So v13 exhorts US to “exhort one another”. Phillips explains (110): “The Greek word ‘exhort’ [here] is parakaleo. The prefix para- means ‘to come alongside’, and the verb kaleo means “to call out”.”
Isn’t that a wonderful word picture? So you’re running your marathon of faith, and you’re getting tired, you’re starting to cramp, you’re hurting. But all of a sudden, here comes a TEAMMATE (did you know even running is a team sport?!), and they “come ALONGSIDE you”, to run WITH you. And ENCOURAGE you: you’re not in this alone; let’s run TOGETHER. That’s the “para-”, in “parakaleo”.
But then after running with you for a while, your teammates start to notice you slowing down again, veering off course again, struggling again, so what do they do? They gently remind you: “Hey, the finish line is THIS way”. Or they gently CORRECT you: “I think you’re over-striding, you’re dropping your pelvis, you’re running too tall”, and in LOVE, they “call OUT” your mistake, help correct your form, to try and save you from INJURY. That’s the “kaleo” part of “parakaleo”.
And friends: don’t we need BOTH? Encouragement and correction, reassurance AND reminders, from time to time? This is what the church is FOR. We just re-launched our life groups and D-groups here 3 weeks ago; now is a GREAT time to get yourself in a small group, in intentional Christian community with brothers and sisters you can parakaleo with and for. Don’t settle for just a Bible study. Don’t settle for praying for each other’s neighbors’ cousin’s dog’s surgery. YOU need prayer. YOU need help running YOUR race. And God wants to GIVE you that help, in the family of faith, the Church. But we’ve gotta drop the West County facade and get REAL with one another. And we CAN, because the gospel FREES us to do so. I can be honest about my sin struggles, because Jesus already knows them and he already DIED to SAVE me from them!
Lastly, fourth: how OFTEN do we need that exhortation? V13: “every [single] DAY”! We need it DAILY! Your life group may may meet weekly, but you better find SOME way, some-ONE, who can run alongside you and call you out DAILY if you’re gonna make it, cuz you better believe your SIN doesn’t take a day off!
To pass the test, we’ve got to Heed God’s PEOPLE & BEWARE our sin.
And #5 - We’ve ALSO got to Remember God’s SON & FASTEN our hope to HIM! (3:14-15)
The author reminds us in v14: “For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
Friends: our hope better be built on nothing less than JESUS’ blood and righteousness.
Only THEN, can we withstand “every high and stormy gale” that this world throws at us - persecution, pain, illness, temptation, betrayal, loss, grief - our anchor will STILL hold within the veil, if and ONLY if “on Christ the SOLID ROCK we stand”, because ALL other ground is sinking sand.
If your “confidence”, the Greek word here means “assurance”; it’s the way Hebrews will LATER define the word FAITH - the “assurance of things HOPED for” (11:1) - if your FAITH is in…
-your FAMILY - they will let you down.
If it’s in your WORK - that is SO temporary.
If it’s in your WORKS, how faithful YOU’VE been to God - you will fall short.
If it’s in your WEALTH - you can’t take it with you.
If it’s in your HEALTH - we’re ALL dying; just at different SPEEDS.
Friends: Everything else in this world is sinking sand, slowly dripping down through the hourglass of time that is your life on this earth, until there’s no sand LEFT. And THEN what will you have LEFT, on that day?
I HOPE that YOUR hope will be found in CHRIST, the Solid ROCK.
But we’ve gotta hold on to Him “FIRM to the end”.
Listen: it’s EASY to START a relationship with Jesus. ANYONE can do that. A lot of what I see in the church world today, and especially in our own denomination, if I can be so honest, is a big push to get people to start relationships with Jesus. We’ll even lower the bar, when we’re making the sales pitch: tell them all about God’s LOVE and FORGIVENESS and the good life in HEAVEN, and we bury all the stuff about the WILDERNESS in the fine print. How Jesus said, “If you follow me, you WILL suffer.” His invitation to take up our CROSS, and DIE to self; if you’re looking for “your best life NOW”, you’ve got the wrong guy! It’s not with JESUS. HE promises your best life LATER, after a whole lot of painful RUNNING.
And I get the emails every single week, celebrating how many BAPTISMS this or that church performed last Sunday - how many people started the race. And don’t get me wrong, that’s a beautiful thing. But what I NEVER hear is how many of them START the race, only to quit a mile later, because WE told them: “Jesus will make your life EASIER”, instead of the TRUTH: “Jesus is probably gonna make your life a lot HARDER”, this side of eternity. And I never get email UPDATES, a year LATER, about how many of those folks who we baptized are STILL running the good race… What I’d REALLY love, instead of how many STARTED the race, is to know numbers for how many Christian FUNERALS our sister churches performed last weekend; how many runners endured all the way through the finish line?
Like the great revivalist George Whitfield’s famous reply, when he would get asked after his altar calls - “Pastor, how many souls got SAVED tonight?” - Whitfield would reply: “I guess we’ll wait a few years… a LIFETIME… and find out.” Because signing a pledge card doesn’t get you into Heaven, friends; only holding firm to JESUS to the END does.
So how do we DO it? How do we hold firm, and run for the long haul?
#6 - We must Know God’s WORD & APPLY IT to our lives (3:16-19).
That’s what the author’s DOING here at the end of ch3, in vv16-19; we won’t reread it all. But he’s just taking Scripture - Psalm 95, that he’s been unpacking for them for 10 verses now - and he APPLIES it to the LIVES of his own congregation. He says, “Don’t you GET it - WE are Israel!” God’s WARNINGS here against disobedience, that comes from an unbelieving HEART - they weren’t just for Moses’ flock, 1500 years ago… they weren’t just for DAVID’S flock, 1000 years ago… they’re for US!
CONCLUSION: So in closing, let me remind you AGAIN, that the same STILL applies… to US. These warnings aren’t just for the author of HEBREWS’ flock, 2,000 years ago; they’re for US. “TODAY” - ““Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”. There’s only one unforgivable sin in the world, friends: hardening your heart, when God the Holy Spirit is CLEARLY speaking to you. CALLING you, to turn from your sin, and trust in Jesus. Do NOT ignore that call. Open your ears, open your HEART, and anchor your hope in JESUS. Then find some fellow runners, pace yourself, prepare yourself for some PAIN along the way, through your testing here in the wilderness, but never lose sight of the FINISH LINE, and the eternal REST that’s gonna make it ALL worth it. “For the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).
IF you can make it to the finish line.