Last week’s text called us to ‘consider Jesus,’ whom the author calls ‘the apostle and high priest of our confession…’ Considering Jesus and His worthiness to receive more glory than Moses because He’s God’s faithful son and not merely a faithful servant in God’s house like Moses—indeed because He’s the very builder of the house—flows from the description of Jesus as our suffering, sanctifying, sibling, similar, Satan-destroying, slavery-ending, servant Savior in 2:10-18. And that description of Jesus flows from the urgent call at the beginning of ch. 2 to ‘pay much closer attention to what we have heard (i.e., the gospel we’ve heard) lest we drift away from it,’ and end up having neglected, through sin and disobedience, the salvation we thought we had but never actually had.
We’re not even a quarter of the way through this book of the Bible, and if you’re not alarmed by what you’ve heard so far in the sermon to the Hebrews, one of two things is true: either you haven’t been here, or you haven’t been hearing. The church is ever and always to be on high alert to the realities of sin and spiritual drift away from the gospel of the Savior that saves us from that sin. We’re always to be alarmed at the prospect of being spiritually negligent and eventually judged by God to have been void of genuine faith in Jesus. And so as we come to today’s text, where that lack of faith in God and His promised salvation is front and center, I urge you to listen; and I’m asking the Holy Spirit to help you listen. And why wouldn’t He? He’s speaking!
We read in v. 7, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says…” Clearly the human author of Hebrews sees all Scripture as inspired. He’s already quoted heavily from the Old Testament and will continue to do so. He doesn’t deny the human hand in the writing of these texts, but neither does he ascribe their ultimate authorship to men. Knowing full well that David or some other poet penned Psalm 95, he nevertheless says, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says…” And notice it’s not, “as the Holy Spirit said…[way back there in the old days, as if he’s calling attention to something that applied only to an earlier generation],” but “as the Holy Spirit says (present tense).” So are you listening, church? And what does the Holy Spirit say? “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” Feel the pulse of the present tense in this passage—and in all of Hebrews! The author is interested in the past—the development of the story of redemption and the faith of his hearers thus far. He also concerned with the future—the destiny of his hearers. But he brings both the past and the future to bear on the present in a powerful way in vv. 7-11:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
And said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts;
They have not known my ways.’
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
The sermonist of Hebrews applies an ancient Hebrew hymn sung about an even more ancient Hebrew event to his very contemporary audience. These are culturally Hebrew yet spiritually Christian people. Why would the author dig up this old Psalm and apply it to present day people if the Psalm’s warning weren’t still valid? Why would he bother to bring it up if there was no chance of the spiritual rebellion that happened a thousand years before Hebrews was written being repeated? And why would the Holy Spirit and two thousand years worth of Christians take such care to preserve and faithfully hand down all of Scripture (including Hebrews) generation to generation if this kind of hardening of heart and rebellion weren’t still possible today?
To know what a spiritual rebellion against God could look like today, we need to consider what it looked like originally. The rebellion mentioned in Psalm 95 and referred to here in Hebrews 3 is the rebellion of Israel after God brought them out of 400 years of Egyptian slavery. They were on their way to the Promised Land, but they weren’t going to get there overnight. They had to cross a desert wilderness where they couldn’t grow crops or raise livestock, and where drinking water was scarce. So while they were relieved to no longer be slaves, Israel quickly realized that even living as slaves in a foreign country had some advantages over living as free men and women in a desert wasteland. Their work as slaves might’ve broken their backs, but at least they had roofs over their heads. The slave bosses might’ve been brutal, but at least they knew when their next meal was coming. Pharaoh was a wicked ruler, but at least they could see his palace and know he was in charge. But Israel had none of these assurances in the desert. Shelter? You’d fold your tent up and take it with you whenever the camp moved. Food and water? God would have to provide those things. Leadership? Well, Moses seemed to be in charge, but he was gone for weeks on end up in the mountains.
The security of slavery had some advantages over wilderness life, but the specific rebellion referred to in Hebrews had more to do with the Promised Land than with the wilderness. It’s the beginning of the second year after Israel left Egypt. They’d seen God bring Egypt to its knees with plagues; they’d walked through the Red Sea on dry ground; they’ve eaten bread from heaven and drunk water from a rock; God has given the Ten Commandments to Moses; the Tabernacle has been built; a pillar of cloud assures them of God’s presence by day and a pillar of fire by night; the Israelites have revolted by making and worshiping a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments. God punishes Israel, but they’re still moving toward the Promised Land. And now it’s time to get serious about entering the Promised Land—the land God had promised to the forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, four centuries earlier. So Moses sends twelve spies (one from each tribe) into the Promised Land to check it out. What do they find? The land is good for crops and livestock, but the cities are like fortresses with high, thick walls, and some of the people are giants. Only two of the spies are confident about Israel’s prospects of taking the land; the other ten are scared out of their minds. And here’s what happens…
(NUMBERS 13:25-14:12)
Israel rebelled against God and against Moses because they preferred the “security” of slavery over the faith required for true freedom. The seeming absence of security in the wilderness, and the seeming absence of security in claiming and conquering the Promised Land had a heart-hardening effect on most Israelites. As the callouses of slavery softened on their hands, new callouses began to form around their hearts: ‘God has brought us out here to die of starvation, thirst, and exposure, to die at the hands of some enemy army, or some giant defending his home turf—Moses and his God have betrayed us! We can do better than this. We’d be better off dying in Egypt than dying in this wilderness. And we’d be better off dying in this wilderness than dying trying to take that Promised Land.’ That was essentially Israel’s attitude: sacrificing permanent salvation for a passing security.
You see, for every unbelief we have toward God, we place a corresponding belief in something or someone else. Even worse than distrusting God’s sustaining mercy in the wilderness and trusting in the false security of slavery was Israel’s trusting more in the strength of the current inhabitants of the Promised Land than in the strength of the God who promised it to them. “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?”
If you see Israel’s rebellion as just an interesting story from the past, you’re not seeing it the way the writer of Hebrews sees it! He sees it as a past caution useful in a present crisis in order to avoid a future catastrophe—the catastrophe of being disqualified by unbelief from entering God’s promised rest. What does that unbelief look like? For those who call themselves Christians it’s almost never a formal unbelief: “I no longer believe in God or Jesus, etc.” It’s a functional unbelief—an unbelief that plays out in our actions more than in our words. It’s unbelief in God’s power to overcome our sin, evidenced by continually craving sin and returning to it believing we’ll find more pleasure in that sin than we’re able or willing to find in God. It’s disbeliving God’s promise to sustain us in the wilderness of the Christian life through the bread of life that is His word, the living water that is His Son, and the living stones (as Peter calls other Christians) who make up God’s dwelling place on earth—the community of faith. Instead it’s believing that greater sustenance is to be found back in the salt mine of sin-slavery. A certain comfort may be found in our old sinful associations and addictions—drugs, alcohol, gambling, material wealth, compulsive shopping & spending, lust, masturbating, viewing porn, cussing, racism, telling vulgar or racist jokes, video-game binging, TV binging, over-eating, over-exercising, legalistic religious practices that are full of pomp and void of power, etc. These associations and addictions offer a certain tolerance, a certain acceptance. But it’s the brutal tolerance of task-masters, the deadly acceptance of a wicked king seeking to exalt himself and build his kingdom on the backs of his slaves.
Friends, that’s how we should still read the story of Israel’s rebellion today. Israel didn’t just disbelieve God; they believed in something else. That’s how belief and unbelief work. Human beings are ‘believing’ beings; God made us that way! “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” God knows we’re going to believe in something or someone ultimately, so ‘an evil, unbelieving heart’ isn’t a heart that doesn’t believe; it’s a heart that doesn’t believe rightly, that is, in the one Reality that’s actually capable of filling our every need for comfort, for community, for acceptance, for happiness, and hope.
The question isn’t ‘how do we keep believing?’ It’s ‘how do we keep believing in God, the One true life-giving, soul saving, all-satisfying Reality? The writer says, “Take care, brothers…” How do we ‘take care’? Look at v. 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.” Hear that powerful present tense! “Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’…” What’s exhorting? It’s urging, pushing, pressing, encouraging, insisting, pressuring, spurring, goading, prodding, giving someone urgent or earnest advice. With what do we exhort? God’s word! God’s voice! “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” God spoke through Moses in those days but the people weren’t listening. The writer asks in v. 16, “Who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?” You can’t disobey what you haven’t heard—what you haven’t at least been given a chance to obey. The Israelites were given that chance, yet they weren’t persuaded. We owe each other an exhortation, a chance every day that it’s called ‘today’ to obey God. We owe each other a chance to hear God, the voice of truth, the one and only voice that can pierce our hardening hearts and melt the callous calcifying effect of sin’s deceitful lies.
As the writer says in v. 19 those banned from the Promised Land of old, “were unable to enter because of unbelief.” But it’s not that they weren’t devoid of faith. Something, someone compelled a stronger belief than the God who ended their slavery, parted the sea, fed, sheltered, clothed, defended them in the desert, and showed them a land of milk and honey just waiting to be claimed. It’s hard to imagine anyone or anything compelling stronger belief than that…except of course that same God entering into humanity, living sinlessly, dying cruelly and unjustly for our sake, rising from death victoriously, ascending to heaven majestically while promising to return certainly to destroy his enemies permanently and take us to reign with Him eternally. You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty compelling! Will we be compelled—continually compelled, every day while it’s called ‘today,’ by this truth? Will we let belief in this gloriously compelling gospel truth turn all our petty, puny, and prideful ‘beliefs’ in the things of this present world into unbelief? And will we take care to exhort one another toward this Christ-centered faith?
Look at vv. 14-15, “For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” That’s the same phrase as in 3:6, “We are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” That really short but really big word “IF” has appeared twice in this chapter, at the close of two consecutive Sunday sermons. “IF indeed.” Not “IF in–word.” The author is looking for a visible, not just verbal demonstration of confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Confidence.” That’s faith. “Con” means together, group, joint, unified, collective. “Fide.” Fidelis, Semper Fi, Bona fide, Fiduciary, Infidelity, Infidel… “Fide” is faith. “Confidence” is the church’s collectively-held, collectively-exhibited faith in Jesus. “For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
How firmly are you holding your confidence in Jesus? Are their giants and giant-walled fortresses standing between you and the joyous rest God has for you? Can you name those giants? Are they giant sins that God is calling you to slay in the power of Christ? Are they shouting deceitfully to you, “You can’t come in here; we’re too strong for you; just stay out there in the wilderness.” Well, they’re partly right: they are too strong for you, but they’re not too strong for your God! Are other voices, perhaps the gnawing wilderness voices of estrangement and alienation from worldly society, calling out to you from the rocks and crags saying, “You’re lost, you’re all alone, you don’t belong here, or anywhere really; you’re a social misfit, Christian. Don’t you want to fit? Don’t you want to belong?” As a nation Israel was out of place in an inhospitable wilderness. But no individual Israelite was alone! Each individual Israelite was in the wilderness with several million other Israelites. And more importantly, those several million Israelites were all in the wilderness with their God! Look around Christian; you’re not alone. Look around church; we’re not alone. God didn’t tell Moses to say to Pharoah, “Let my people go so that they can wander in the wilderness,” but rather, “Let my people go so that they may sacrifice to me –that they may hold a feast in my honor –that they may worship me in the wilderness.”
Don’t buy the heart-hardening lie that you’re out of place as a Christian; those lies are meant to lure you back to Egypt, back to sin-slavement. What brother or sister will you exhort today with the good news that they be not deceived by sin? Perhaps today you’re hearing the Holy Spirit’s voice calling you in love, calling you to rest in Christ; don’t harden your heart in unbelief! Don’t rebel against God’s offer of grace through Jesus; receive it! And receive it every day, as long as it’s called ‘today’!