Hebrews 3:7-12
All right, so turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 3, we’ve spent some time in the beginning of this chapter. We’re going to move ahead a little bit, but we’ve seen so far in Hebrews chapter 3 that the pastor who is writing this word of exhortation, he compares Jesus and Moses. It was a fascinating section. I’d love to spend more time there, but we’re going to keep moving. But after he does that comparison, contrast between Jesus and Moses and really trying to accentuate the faithfulness of both servants, but then to show the superlative faithfulness of Jesus over and against Moses, and just to see his greater glory and honor as the son over the house that Moses served within.
After he makes this comparison, the pastor then issues a warning, and that’s really what occupies the rest of the chapter, and into chapter 4 is this section on warning. So let’s read Hebrews 3 starting in verse 5, and we’ll read through this section into verse 11, most of which comes, as you’ll hear, comes from Psalm 95, the back half of Psalm 95. So starting in Hebrews 3, verse 5, “Now MOSES WAS FAITHFUL IN ALL HIS HOUSE AS A SERVANT, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later, but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house- whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence in the boast of our hope.
“Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE WILDERNESS, WHERE YOUR FATHERS TRIED Me BY TESTNG Me, AND SAW MY WORKS FOR FORTY YEARS. THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, “THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS”; AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST’”
The Pastor’s chief concern is raised there in verse 6, and he’s asking, do you or do you not belong to God’s house? Are you members of his family? Are you part of his people? Do you belong to his house? And if you do, then stay in it. That’s what he’s saying to his own people. Stay put.
If you don’t belong to it, you depart to go to do what you think is easier, better, more advantageous, beneficial for yourself or whatever. And that is really the choice that this pastor’s congregation was facing. Do I want to escape not just some of the mild persecution they were receiving, but do I want to avoid it?
Am I trying to escape the persecution that may come and the things that I’m fearful over or am I going to continue to identify with God’s people, with Christ, with his church, and stay put and risk the persecution that I may face. For those who want to part from the fellowship, but can’t? Kind of like Israel of old, stuck in the desert, held fast there by God, led around by God for forty years and forced into submission, forced to follow a leader that everyone questioned and no one wanted to follow.
What do those people do? What do those people do when they must stay put and they can’t get away and they can’t go back to the city from which they came? Well, what do they do? They grumble and they complain. According to verse 8, it started with a hardened heart. It resulted in provoking God and testing God and going astray in their hearts. And when it comes down to it, they never knew God. They never knew his ways, though they had seen God’s works for forty years.
It is an absolute tragedy for them, but very instructive for the Hebrew Christian community, very instructive for this pastor’s congregation, and I would say this too, very instructive for the Colorado Christian community, or we might say the American Evangelical community, or we might say the Western religious scene.
Now, while we today may have a sense of what the pastor is referring to, this congregation of Hebrew Christians knew exactly what their pastor was driving at. They knew the fuller context for every reference and citation of Scripture, every illusion in their own history. This is what they were raised with. This is what they were weaned on is the Old Testament.
So what we just have a sense of, they thoroughly understood. And so little illusions here and there that may pass us by they got the point; they understood the context behind it. We may get a little bit fuzzy at times about the details. So we’re going to try to look up some of this history as we go through this text.
I’m going to give you several points for tonight if you’re taking notes number one, the Spirit’s continual calling. The Spirit’s continual calling. And that is to say, the Spirit is always calling. He’s always calling to every generation, in every time, in every place. And you need to look no further than that word today; today, every day we can call today. And so every day, today, the Spirit is calling. This is his continual calling. “Therefore, just as the Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’”
I just want to move real quickly through this section and get to the next point, but let me not bypass too much here. Therefore, the word therefore is pointing back in view of Jesus superlative faithfulness, which is over and above that of Moses. Then he says, “as the Holy Spirit says,” this is really reviewing the author, this pastor’s view of the Bible.
He sees that this authority, the authority of Scripture exceeds that of the human author. So it’s not Moses who says or David who says, but he identifies the speaker as the third person of the Trinity. Interesting, his pneumatology has really filled out his understanding of of bibliology and how Scripture came together. It’s the Holy Spirit who’s speaking.
The verb here is the present tense, which means that the Spirit saying is ongoing. It’s a continuousness. So the Spirit is saying, today, on any day that anyone awakens to hear him speaking. So that’s our time too. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the appointed time.
And so the message is for everyone who hears the Spirit’s voice at any time in any place, do not waste this opportunity that’s put before you. If you are hearing the Spirit’s voice through the Scripture, don’t waste the opportunity. Don’t let this pass you by. To hear the Spirit’s voice, to hear his voice, it’s a call to those who hear.
It Harkins back to Jesus, who often called out to the crowds that followed him, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” There are thousands following Jesus sometimes. Such a crush of people. And yet he knew there was this person who had ears to hear and this person is very individual.
Let him, singular individual, that person who has ears to hear, let him hear. Hearing is a privilege out of the masses that bypass and don’t hear the word of God and don’t heed it. Many actually, you know, they get this physical sensation of sound, they can interpret the words, but because they don’t heed and follow and do, they essentially have not heard it. They’re just like deaf people. And hearing is a privilege.
And so if you hear, if you have ears to hear, you need to take full advantage to heed what you hear, to do what you hear. Your life should change. It should not stay the same. You shouldn’t go home and say, well, that was a good time at the church and just pass on with your week. Something should change. That is to say you need to heed what you hear is another way of saying, it’s a positive way of saying, don’t harden your hearts.
Don’t harden your hearts as we come through this section here in verses 8 and 9, “today, if you hear his voice,” end of verse 7, verse 8, “if you hear his voice, then do not harden your hearts.” We notice this is a conditional sentence an if-then statement, if-then sentence. So he says, “If you hear his voice, then do not harden your hearts.”
The if statement is the protasis. The then statement is the apodosis. It’s the if and then, and I don’t want to get into the technical details about this, but this particular kind of conditional sentence is known as a third class conditional in Greek syntax. And it can depict degrees of certainty, degrees of certainty, and it’s from the speaker or the pastor, the writer, his perspective.
He’s throwing it out. They’re not exactly certain who in his congregation is going to pick it up and hear, not really sure. The subjunctive mood in the protasis, in the if statement is literally, if you should hear his voice, if you might hear his voice, he’s throwing out there, writing to the whole congregation, but knowing that there’s a mixture of people in his visible church, some who will hear and some who won’t.
So if you should hear his voice; the way he writes that or it shows, come to the pastor, is somewhat uncertain. Perhaps even, as all pastors can be a bit anxious too, about the state of his people, about the state of his church, as to whether those who are maybe drifting in his church, maybe departing from his church and going back to the synagogues. As if he wonders, will they respond well or not?
Will this exhortation, this brief word of exhortation that I’m sending them, is it going to stop them, cause them to stand up and take notice and return and stay and endure, or are they going to continue to leave? So several degrees of certainty or uncertainty here. Is it likely that they are hearing the Spirit’s voice, that they will therefore not harden their hearts? Obviously, that’s what he wants for every single member of his church.
That’s the best outcome, obviously, since true believers who hear, their hearts are soft and they’re pliable and they’re responsive, they will respond well. And that’s what he’s praying for the entire church. Perhaps, though, he’s discovering church members who have entered into what they are treating as a wide gate religion, walking on the broad road, strolling down main street, and if they did not enter through the narrow gate and they don’t stay in this narrow road kind of a church, maybe that’s going to be revealed in this time of testing, that they’re facing in Rome.
So the pastor’s question here in this conditional sentence, as if-then, leaves it kind of open, ambiguous, not knowing what responses there are going to be in his own church and among his own friends, people he’s loved, ministered to, people he’s been to the graveside with, cared for. But he knows time and truth go hand in hand, so he’s going to wait to see what he finds when he returns home; obviously, he being away when he writes this exhortation to them.
All right, so we come to the second-half, verse 8 and verse 9, and a second point. We said the first point was the Spirits continual calling. The second point is the church’s perennial warning. The church’s perennial warning. The readers of this epistle, for his readers who know the reference from Psalm 95, notice he doesn’t cite, he didn’t say, now, as it says in Psalm 95, he just writes it and they know where it is.
It’s how familiar they are with their own Scripture, but they know the reference in Psalm 95, and they know it, as he quotes from it and cites it here, is from the Greek translation, but they also would know the Hebrew original. They would have grown up with that in their synagogue.
So they read in the Greek translation, the Septuagint, but they also are familiar with the Hebrew original. They know it well enough to know that what he’s raising here, the pastor is bracketing a period of time of Israel’s most characteristic sin, which was to fail to hear and to heed God’s voice.
The bracket of time that he’s putting down there. He puts it in years. He says forty years, but we can kind of see at the beginning of that forty years and then at the end of that forty years, two incidents that are really familiar to them and parallel, and they’re alluded to in verses 8b or second-half verse 8 and into verse 9. It’s the time “when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tried Me by testing Me and they saw My works for forty years.”
When did Israel provoke the Lord? When did they face trial in the wilderness that led to them trying God, testing God even though they saw his works for forty years? I’m might actually turn that question around and say when did they not test him and try him and provoke Him? Many, many instances of this, from the moment that they departed Egypt, right, all the way from the very beginning, all the way to the border of Canaan, they were testing God.
There was just this constant trouble and stubborn, stiff neck, hard hearted rebellion. And the writer here isolates it to the sin of unbelief. They did not believe. Because they did not believe, they did not want to follow. They didn’t depart, because who’s going to take them back to Egypt? So they follow Moses. They follow the pillar of cloud. They clearly know Gods in this.
And so they’re kind of like caught up in this movement, in this group of people. It’s family. It’s all family. Where are they going to go? They’re stuck in it. But because of their unbelief, what they turn into is a rabble. They’re difficult people, hard to lead, always ready to rebel, always ready to overthrow Moses.
What is the point of all that? The writer to Corinth, our familiar apostle Paul, he said this, “I don’t want you to be unaware, brothers. They’re our fathers.” He’s talking about the Jewish fathers. “our fathers, they were all under the cloud.” He’s talking about the pillar of cloud, the Shekinah glory of God. “They all passed through the sea,” that’s the Red Sea, that was parted to the right and to the left; wall of water on each side. “They pass through on dry ground.
They were all baptized into Moses, in the cloud and into the sea. Not saying that they were dunked in the ocean. No, they were baptized into Moses, that is immersed in Moses. They all shared in this together. They are all sharers and partakers of what God did in bringing them out of Egypt. He goes on to say they all ate the same spiritual food. What is that? That’s the manna in the wilderness, right? They all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.
He’s saying Christ was there the entire time with his people. Where is he? In the Shekinah glory of God. He is the Angel of the Lord, Angel of Yahweh, who appears from time to time. They’re all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them. The rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were struck down in the wilderness. Interesting to see, with most of them God was not well pleased.
We can probably sight on one hand the names of the people with whom he was pleased, Joshua, Caleb, right? The rest of the millions plus children of Israel, dead. Now, I’ve always wondered this. Melinda and I talk about this sometimes when, when Jesus says that many will pass through the wide gate. Many will walk on the wide road that leads to destruction, but few go through the narrow gate.
Few are on the constricted narrow way; few there be that find it. I always wonder how few is few. Sometimes I look around and we don’t have a whole lot of friends. How few is few? I mean, is it two clans out of all the children of Israel? That’s all that made it? That’s what he’s saying, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were struck down in the wilderness.
Now these things happened as examples for us, examples for us today. Are we listening? Are we paying attention? Just a summary statement that Paul gives there about Israel’s vast history of sinning against God, complaining, grumbling, rebelling, turning against Moses, committing idolatry.
After leaving Egypt, if you’d like to go back and follow this with me, we can trace some of their history and you can go back to Exodus chapter 14. This is right after the incident at the Red Sea, of the parting of the sea, starting in Exodus 14. And we’ll touch on a couple of these passages.
But after leaving Egypt, you remember that God led them out and they could have gone one way, but he didn’t lead them that way. He could have led him in a way that’s just like a quick exit, escape, land bridge. But instead he leads them to the Red Sea and they are hemmed in there at the sea. They see the Egyptians bearing down and according to Exodus 14 and starting at verse 11, they freak out in their unbelief.
He, the pastor, sees that this authority, the authority of Scripture exceeds that of the human author. It’s the Holy Spirit who’s speaking.” Travis Allen
They have just seen God judge and decimate all the gods of Egypt, kill all the first born, get them out of there. And all their Egyptian neighbors loaded them up with treasure and said, just get out. Some Egyptians actually came with them, said we’re going to worship your God, not our gods. They’re dead. They didn’t do anything.
God has decimated Egypt. He’s brought them up to the brink of the Red Sea. They freak out at unbelief, seeing this Egyptian army coming in their Chariots. They complain against Moses and really against God. Look what it says in Exodus 14, verse 11, “They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you’ve taken us away to die in the wilderness? What is this you’ve done against us in bringing us out of Egypt?
“‘Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, “Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians”? It would have been even better for us to serve the Egyptians than for us to die in the wilderness.’” We’d rather be slaves to idolaters and do idolaters bidding than to be with God and you and potentially die in a wilderness. Where would you rather be?
Well, God parted the Red Sea. He led Israel safely through, he brought those walls of water down on the Egyptians when they tried to follow. And according to verse 31 of this chapter, the people feared the Lord at the moment anyway. They feared the Lord, they believed. But we know by continuing to read that didn’t last. Hints of what truly characterized their hearts came out right after they sang the Song of Moses about the great deliverance.
And the Lord tests them in Exodus 15, with bitter water in verses 22 to 24, turned the bitter water sweet. And then after turning the bitter water sweet, so they they’re tested again; out of their heart comes this worry and unbelief and anxiety, and ready to give it all up, God turns the bitter water sweet. And then he says to encourage them in verse 26. “There he set for them a statute and a judgment.”
“There He tested them. And He said, ‘If you will earnestly listen to the voice of Yahweh your God,” listen out for that voice, keep your ear attentive to that voice. “Today if you hear his voice,” “If you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, and you do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments, keep all His statutes, I’ll put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I Yahweh, I’m your healer.”
I delight in healing you, turning bitter water fresh and sweet, sustaining; I delight in that beautiful promise. They found the terms of this impossible to keep, because they weren’t hearing with faith, and they continued on in their fleshly thinking. Exodus 16 says right there at the beginning, “Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, and on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt.
“And the whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the sons of Israel said to them, ‘whether we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, and when we ate bread to the full; for you’ve brought us out in this wilderness to put this whole assembly to death with hunger.’”
Yeah, that’s what Moses devious plan was. Oh, how could I, you know, take all these people out of Egypt, go through all that trouble, and I’m going to take them out in the wilderness; I’m going to kill them with hunger; I’m going to starve these people. That doesn’t even make sense. But sin doesn’t make sense. Sinful thinking doesn’t make sense of anything.
God knows their need for bread. He obviously knows their need for bread, and so he gives them here manna. In the rest of the chapter, though, notice that they disobey clear instructions on how to gather the manna, when to gather it, when not to gather it. They’re just always disobeying. And this brings us really to the first incident the pastor cites.
Just as we kind of go chronologically through the Old Testament texts, brings us to the first incident the pastor cites in Hebrews 3:8, which comes from Psalm 95:8. And it says in Psalm 95:8, it says there, “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness.”
The language from Hebrews 3:8 does not use place names. It’s not using place names there because it’s coming from the Septuagint, which for Greek speakers, Greek readers tends to translate Hebrew place names for the Greek readers of the Bible. So doesn’t give place names, but it translates their meaning. It gives the interpretation, so they know the significance of that place name.
So notice in Hebrews 3:8, it says there, “As when they provoked me,” more literally as in the provocation. It’s actually a noun there, “as when they provoked me.” Sounds like a participle, it’s not actually what it is. In the text, it’s actually a noun, as in the provocation or as in the rebellion.
But you read it in Psalm 95:8, it gives the name Meribah. What does Meribah mean? In Hebrew, it means provocation, rebellion. Moses named the place for what happened there, provoking God, rebelling against God. Same thing if you look at Hebrews 3:8, when he says, “As in the day of trial in the wilderness.”
The Hebrew word for trial, also translated testing or tempting, it’s the name Massah. Again, Moses chose a name that memorialized what God was doing at that time. He was testing Israel. We just read that, he’s testing them. Israel failed the test and then turned and put God to the test. As the writer says, as the pastor says, your fathers tried me by testing me. He uses two synonyms there from massah, “and they saw my works for forty years,” tried me, tested me, both of those meaning massah.
So for forty years, plenty of time that they could see God’s works, plenty of opportunity to repent and believe. God is so patient with those people. As I said, those place names, Meribah and Massah, they memorialized two significant, two parallel incidents, both of which God tests Israel, both find Israel wanting, and both of which demonstrate in the end, God’s faithfulness and mercy.
So even coming through the test, even though they failed in the test, they still learn a lesson: God’s faithful, God’s kind, he wants to show mercy. He’s going to give you grace. He’s going to take care of you and all your needs and these incidents, they’re parallel. You’ll be mindful of them and start to mention them. Both involve a lack of water. Having no water, being really, really thirsty, that could do something to you, can make you anxious. So evolving a lack of water to which Israel responds not by praying, not by trusting, not by resting themselves, being reposed in God. Instead they respond in complaining.
Both incidents, it’s followed by God graciously giving water, and he brings living water miraculously out of what had seemed to be a dead rock. But the rock is a living, isn’t it? So what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10. So if you’re in Exodus, go ahead and just flip one page over to Exodus 17 to see the first incident like this. And really, he’s bracketing the forty-year wandering in the wilderness with this first incident and then one more at the very end.
So Exodus chapter 17, first incident, “Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the commandment of Yahweh, and they camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people contended with Moses and said, ‘Give us water that we may drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you contend with me?’” I’m just a man like you.
You think I can miraculously generate water? Think again. And then anticipating their next complaint, because their complaint wasn’t really against Moses, it really goes through Moses up to God. So he just calls him out on it. He says, and, “why do you test Yahweh? But the people thirsted there for water; they grumbled against Moses, and they said” again, same thing. “‘Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to put us and our children and our livestock to death with thirst?’” Yeah, as if that’s Moses’s purpose.
God responds to their hard heartedness with mercy instead of judgment. Isn’t that interesting? He provides for the needs. He gives them water from the rock, and then Moses marks the location, giving it a place name for posterity. Meribah, Massah. Verses 6 and 7, “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb;” God says, “‘You shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.’
“Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.” and “so he named the place Massah and Meribah because of the contending of the sons of Israel, because they tested Yahweh, saying, ‘Is Yahweh among us or not?’” From this point right here, Exodus 18 all the way through Leviticus to Numbers 10, all this whole time.
So basically, the end of Exodus all the way through Leviticus, through big chunk of Numbers, that’s 58 chapters. Only one month of time passes by, it’s a month. That month is when God brought his people to Mount Sinai, gave them his law through Moses, and he also saw and dealt with this abominable act of idolatry.
But after that, middle of Numbers 10, God gets the people up, gets them on the move again, sends them toward Canaan, before they get there and if you are turning with me, go ahead and turn to Numbers, go to chapter 20. I’ll just narrate a couple things. Before they get to the plains of Moab on the borders of the Jordan River, before they get to the border of Canaan; and the Promised land ahead of them that God has promised. Before they get there, in Numbers 11, they’re more incidents of grumbling and complaining, awful acts of ingratitude and rebellion.
Remember I read last time about Miriam wanting to usurp Moses and complaining against him? In Numbers chapter 12, we looked at that last time. They come to the borders of Canaan itself; they’re ready to enter, but once again, unbelief in their heart leads them astray. They reject good reports about the land.
They respond in fear about these super-size men living in Canaan. They refused to enter and take possession. Ten out of the twelve spies, you know, excepting Joshua and Caleb, ten out of the twelve. They affirm everything that’s in the land. God is telling the truth. This is a great place, but there’s bad guys there and we’re scared. So Numbers 14 is really a turning point. Lots of complaining, lots of rebellion.
There’s even in Numbers 16, an organized coup d’etat led by Korah and Dathan and Abiram, there’s a man named On, and a few sons of Ruben and other conspirators as well. Very significant faction forms. God made short work of that in dramatic fashion. You remember opening up the earth, swallowing them, in Numbers 16.
But the end bracket of this forty years of testing, the beginning coming there in Exodus 17, the end one comes in Numbers chapter 20. Numbers chapter 20, starting in verse 1, “And the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month; and the people stayed at Kadesh. And Miriam died there, was buried there.”
“Now there was no water for the congregation.” Familiar lesson, another opportunity; will they in this test respond faithfully, righteously, being patient and praying or will they do something else? No water for the congregation. So “They assembled themselves against Moses and Aaron.” And then, “The people thus contended with Moses and spoke, saying, ‘If only we had breathed our last when our brothers breathed their last before Yahweh! Why then have you brought,’ us to, ‘the assembly of Yahweh into this wilderness for us and our beasts to die here?’”
I can’t even tolerate my own voice like that. So sorry. “‘Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us into this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink.’ And Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of the assembly at the doorway, the tent of meeting,” and they pulled out their swords and started hacking these guys. No, that’s not what it says, but that’s how I would have written it. They didn’t do that.
They “came out from the tent of meeting, fell on their faces.” That’s humility, that’s meekness. “The glory of the Yahweh appeared to them; And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink.’”
Remember the first time, before receiving the law of Moses from Mount Sinai in Exodus 17:6, God told Moses to strike the rock right? Paul said, 1 Corinthians 10, “For all drank the same spiritual drink, and from a spiritual rock that followed them.” The rock was Christ, so why does God here forbid Moses to strike the rock a second time, but command him to speak to the rock instead?
If that rock is picturing Christ, the first strike seems to typify the cross, doesn’t it? He struck once for sins, once. A full atonement is made for those of his people who enter in through the rock, come to the rock, who trusts in the rock. Everything from then on is not striking, speaking, praying, asking, because your father knows what you need, and he sent you a high priest, a merciful high priest. He knows your needs.
So verse 9, Numbers 20, “Moses took the rod from before Yahweh, just as He commanded him; and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, ‘Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?’” Okay, so he didn’t strap on his swords and start hacking, but a sword came out of his mouth, didn’t it?
“Moses raised high his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank. But Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you didn’t believe Me,’ you two, you two guys, leaders, ‘because you didn’t believe,’ you didn’t believe, ‘to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I’ve given to them.’”
Another incident parallel to the first, in which Israel, and this time Moses as well, failed the test. Verse 13 says, “those were the waters of Meribah because the sons of Israel contended with Yahweh, He proved himself holy among them.” Meribah rebellion against a Massah, against a trial sent from God to test faithfulness. The men failed, and in their failing they put God to the test. They provoked him. So another incident of Meribah, of provocation that memorializes Israel’s rebellion and provides for us.
The church provides for that congregation of Hebrew Christians in Hebrews 3 and 4, but also provides for us a perennial, continual, perpetual warning. So we’ve seen the spirits continual calling, and then the church’s perennial warning, and finally the Lord’s immutable ruling number three, the Lord’s immutable ruling.
Here’s his ruling, his finding, his verdict, this is Hebrews 3 verse 10, “THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, ‘THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS’; AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.’” He’s going to talk more about, the rest, unpacking that and the verses to come.
But just a few things to see here. We think about the Lord’s immutable ruling. First of all, we need to see this is the word of the immutable Lord, Yahweh, and he says therefore I, I, he’s referring to himself, Yahweh, Yahweh who does not change, Yahweh who is immutable, he does not change. He is an unchanging God and that’s pronounced in Numbers 14:22 to 23.
If you’re not still in the Old Testament, don’t worry, I’m going to go there for you. But Numbers 14 in verse 22, this is what God says to them. I’ll back up to verse 20. Yahweh says, this is after the people refused to go into Canaan. This is kind of at the high point, this crescendo, this climax of testing. Are they going to enter in when they’re fearful or, and trust me, or are they going to turn away? They turned away.
If you hear, if you have ears to hear, you need to take full advantage to heed what you hear, to do what you hear. Your life should change.” Travis Allen
Another testing, another failure, another provocation, another rebellion and so Yahweh said, having listened to Moses, the mediator, he says, “I’ve pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of Yahweh.” Because that’s going to happen. Are they going to be a part of that glory or not?
“‘All the earth will be filled with the glory of Yahweh. Surely all the men who’ve seen My glory and My signs which I’ve done in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, they shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it.’”
Skipping down to verse 26, “Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I’ve heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they’re making against Me. Say to them, “as I live,” declares Yahweh, “just as you’ve spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. Your little ones, however,” your little ones, “who you said would become plunder- I’ll bring them in. so that they will know the land which you have rejected.
““But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. Your sons should be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, they’ll suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses come to an end in the wilderness. According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition. I, Yahweh, have spoken, surely I will do this to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall come to an end, and there they will die.””
Man blistering. He swears on himself. He is immutable. It’s his immutable word from the immutable Lord Yahweh. Second thing to see in Hebrews 3:10 and 11, the immutable Lord has an immutable wrath towards sin. He says I was angry with this generation and we might say, because the Holy Spirit says to every generation, speaks to every generation, as long as it’s called today.
He is angry with any and every generation that’s like this. If a generation does as he describes here, they too will incur God’s immutable wrath. He doesn’t use the word thumos, referring to an angry outburst. We know this from our Colossians study, don’t we? This is the word orge.
This is the word. It refers to his abiding, unchanging disposition. We could call it an immutable disposition toward that which violates and offends his holiness. It’s a divine wrath, so it’s the word of the immutable Lord Yahweh. It’s an immutable wrath that he has towards sin.
Third, an immutable wrath comes from an immutable judgment about the immutable proclivity of unbelief, along with an immutable result. “They always go astray in their heart. They didn’t know my ways.” An unbelieving heart has an immutability to it until God stays it, stops it, regenerates it, changes it, sends it into a believing direction.
The unbelieving heart immutably strays, wanders, departs, and the end of that is straying in their heart, not knowing God’s ways, not knowing the savior of their soul, not knowing the fountain of all blessing, not knowing the fountain of living waters. They cut themselves off. They enter into judgment.
And so forth, we come to an immutable ruling, “I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.” This is an immutable verdict, the Lord’s immutable wrath, grounded in immutable judgment about the proclivity of their sin. It ends with this immutable ruling finding verdict with that in Hebrews 3.
Look at your Bibles there. Let’s read ahead in the text and see what’s coming and see how the pastor intends to apply this text to the members of his own Hebrew congregation, some of whom were on their way out, leaving to return to their old synagogues. He says this Hebrews 3:12, “See to it, brothers,” based on that Psalm, based on that warning, “see to it that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.”
He doesn’t say, look you guys are in the church now, you guys are church members here in a Christian Church. You’re good, you’re good, you’re safe. You’re identifying with us now. You’re professing Christians, you’re good to go. Don’t ever question that. Don’t ever question your salvation.
No, he says, watch out, “brothers, see to it there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. And encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called, ‘today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. But we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast to the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME.’
“For who provoked Him when they heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? With whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, let us fear, lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have fallen short of it.
“For indeed we have had good news proclaimed to us, just as they also; but the word that was heard did not profit those who are not united with faith among those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He said, ‘AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST,’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He’s spoken somewhere in this way concerning the seventh day; ‘AND GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS; and again, in this passage, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.’
“Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news proclaimed to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again determines a certain day, ‘today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as it has been said before, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God also did from His.”
Therefore, therefore church, therefore you Hebrew congregation, therefore Grace Church, Greeley, “Therefore,” all churches, “let us be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall into the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes to whom we have an account to give.”
This whole section is rich with warning, encouragement, and destruction. We need to hear beloved and God’s people need these continual reminders, lest they find within their own congregations, evil unbelieving hearts that fall away from the living God. The perennial problem of the visible church is one that we face in our day as well.
Now just make a few closing observations, that just reflecting on this, you heard Reuben read Psalm 95 earlier. That whole first part of that is just, you just want to stay there. In Psalm 95 verses 1 through 7-ish, it’s just extolling the greatness of God. It’s talking about, we want to worship and bow down, kneel before the Lord our God, our maker, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.
We love that part, then we get to this warning. It just goes right into it. So “today, if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart.” Wow, a call to worship, a general call to worship, and then a warning about hearing his voice. Instructive, isn’t it instructive.
Another thing to see in this Hebrews 3 text is that returning to a Christless Judaism, which is what they were going to do, they’re going to leave the Christian Church and go back to a synagogue that did not see Christ as the Messiah. They were going to go back to Moses, go back to traditions, good biblical traditions, Bible stuff. They were Bible people.
But returning to a Christ less Judaism is on the same level as returning to an idolatrous Egypt. You see the parallel in Hebrews 3 and Psalm 95. Any religion, Jewish or otherwise, that rejects Christ, is on par with the most vile forms of paganism. So while I just say this, beloved, and I know we love the Jews, we do.
We honor the Jews for the sake of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We see the Jews as privileged, appreciate them. Romans 2 speaks about that. Romans 9 through 11 speaks about God’s future for Israel. We know that we would not have handled the privilege that they received from God any better than they did. Do we think better of ourselves? We shouldn’t.
While we see Israel as the incubator of the savior, we consider Israel as the vine into which we, even though we are wild olive shoots, we’ve been grafted in. We love and appreciate Israel. At the same time, we must not treat the current nation of Israel as holy and righteous absolve from wrongdoing.
In fact, if they were to build that millennial temple today, open it for worship tomorrow, it’d really be no different than a Pagan temple offering Pagan sacrifices to a false God. So let’s be really careful, really careful about how we think. If returning to an idolatrous Egypt is bad and returning to a Christless Judaism is on the same level, what would be the equivalent sin for us today? Returning to churches we know are sub-Christian, non-Christian, returning to bad evangelicalism; returning to bad stuff.
Think about Protestants who returned to the Roman Catholic Church or to Eastern Orthodoxy. Gets so confusing these days with so much bad religion and evangelicalism. We don’t have the time to be nuanced about all that right now, but we really do need to consider carefully and reflect and think about the times we live in because these scriptures, they’re written for examples to us so that we’re warned today in our time.
We’re called to read, study and understand and discern the times we live in and watch ourselves. Watch ourselves. Another observation. We see that though Israel started out well, though they witnessed God’s miraculous redemption in Exodus 14, taking them out of Egypt, passing them through the sea, though they praised him for that salvation in Exodus 15, singing the Song of Moses.
They’re singing together, they’re following the worship leaders. They got the banjo out and everything. It’s not about how they started, is it? It’s about how they finished. Many evangelicals today point back to some decision that they made for Jesus, way back when, as the basis of their assurance before God.
Many evangelical parents, grandparents, they do a real disservice to their rebellious, straying children and grandchildren by holding on to some childish profession of faith that was long since abandoned. Listen, my heart weeps with your heart over those kids, grandkids. But the Bible is very clear on this point. We don’t do anybody a service by ignoring the Bible’s clarity on this. It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.
In the parable of the soils, two of the soils started out the same way as the only good soil, but they failed to make it to the end, failed to produce any fruit. You need to tell the truth about that, first to your own heart, first to correct your own sentiment, your own sensitivities, because you got to look.
Your kids, your grandkids, your family, your your neighbors, your friends. You got to look them in the eye and say, listen, I know you’re professing, but I see the way you’re acting, the way you’re living, the way you think, the way your priorities are, the way your life is going. You don’t look any different from MAGA Republicans or really moral Democrats. You got to tell the truth. You got to tell the truth while there’s still time and stop holding on to false assurances.
Fourth observation, the dividing line between those who enter God’s rest and those who don’t is belief versus unbelief, fearing God versus fearing man, obedience versus disobedience, staying faithful to the end and not remaining faithful, not being loyal. The acting academic president of our seminary when I was going to seminary, man named Dick Mayhew. Richard Mayhew, who helped author the Biblical Doctrine book along with John MacArthur. He once said something in a class I’ve never forgotten. I think it’s very profound and accurate, he said the theme of all of Scripture is the fear of God. You know, you expected him to say Christ or redemptive history or whatever; he said it’s the fear of God.
Every passage is pointing you to the fear of God. Every passage is pointing you to the fear of God. Those who fear God believe. Those who fear God believe and obey the hear and the heed. And this is why Hebrews 13:13 says, “We got to encourage one another day after day, as long as it’s called today, so that none of us is hardened by sins deceitfulness, because we may become partakers of Christ,” if and only, “if we hold fast.”
The beginning of our assurance. What’s the beginning of our assurance? Where did our assurance start? Christ, his work on the cross, everything that he’s accomplished; his blood bought atonement for our sins. Everything that he’s done, it’s external to us. Our faith is in what God has accomplished in Christ forgiving us of all our sins and his atoning work on the cross, him being a substitute for us, we deserving the wrath.
He got it, though he took it and us standing fast in his righteousness. We trust in him and him alone. That’s the beginning of our assurance. We need to hold fast to that firm until the end. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we thank you for what this pastor, what an insightful pastor who has written to encourage and exhort and even admonish his own congregation because he’s, he’s concerned. He’s concerned about the times that they live in. He’s concerned about the temptations and the stresses that they face. He’s concerned about the harsh society and culture around them that is trying to pressure them to cave, to give up this Christ profession, to give up this singular hope that they have.
And Father, there are, it’s a different kind of a tyranny today. It’s a soft tyranny. It’s a distraction culture. It’s a entertainment culture. It’s a frivolity and triviality culture. And so, father, we ask that you would help us to turn our hearts to Christ and Christ alone. Hold firm to the beginning of our assurance. Who is Christ? Let us hold fast to him firm until the end, and let us encourage one another day after day, as long as it is called today.
Let us be encouraging one another, strengthening each other and running together, and if possible, by your grace, leaving no man behind, because we want to come before you and hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.” We love you father and thank you for this good word from Hebrews 3, in Jesus’ name Amen.