Alright, Hebrews chapter 3. Let's
turn there together in our Bibles. Last week we finished up Hebrews
chapter 2 and we need to remember the occasion, the purpose, the
problem that was happening that caused Paul to write this letter
is that there were people who were Christians who were also
Jewish who were being tempted to go back into Judaism, to fall
back into the practices of Judaism, to fall back into the laws of
Judaism, to find their assurance in the practices and the laws,
to forsake the gospel of grace. And we've seen that when people
apostate, that means when they fall back into the old ways,
they are by example, by action, they are rejecting grace. And
it doesn't mean that believers can't dabble and have hard times. And we see the book of Galatians
that we read before Hebrews. We know that believers can be
confused and have seasons and short times and sometimes longer
times. But by the grace of God given to us through the Holy
Spirit to understand the word and our intimacy together with
the word, we hold each other to the standard of righteousness
that is in Christ Jesus alone by faith. so that we are certain
as Paul will explain to this group of Christians there are
certain things that we should be aware of that we should put
away because of God's love for us in Christ and therefore our
love for him and our love for each other. Our concern should
be first and foremost for the intimacy of the brothers and
the sisters for the glory of Christ rather than for our own
flesh and desires. And here Paul in the first two
chapters has basically landed the mountain, if you will, of
the divine nature of Jesus as the eternal God, the Son. And
that we are to understand that what God has done through his
son is the sufficient and always sufficient and ever hopeful promise
of eternal life. And that Jesus, though he was
lowered, though he was brought into the place of being humbled
and killed and being raised to life, taking on humanity, he
is still, even in that moment, greater than all of the shadows
that pointed to him. And so we see that He's greater
than creation because He is the creator. We see that He's greater
than angels because He is their creator. They worship Him. We
see that He is God because God the Father has said that Jesus
is God and He's commanded all creation to worship Him. God
has also said that no one can be worshiped but God, but Him.
So we know that Jesus is God. We see that Jesus is the one
who created us for the sake of saving us and when he became
our justification, our sanctification, our wisdom, our propitiation,
that it established our salvation forever. And then through his
suffering, God finished the work of redemption. And so that our
hope and our trust should be put in him. We also see the comparison
here that Paul says that like Christ took on flesh, we also
share in the flesh. We have sin, we have trials,
we have temptation. As we'll see later in this letter,
Jesus was tempted so he can sympathize with us. Jesus understands temptation,
but Jesus never sinned in his temptation. And so, therefore,
we can trust in the finished work of Jesus, evidenced by His
resurrection and His glorification, that we too shall one day inherit
that promise to be just like Him. Verse 1 of chapter 3. Therefore, holy brothers, you
who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and
high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed
him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house. For Jesus
has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses. As much more
glory as the builder of the house has more honor than the house
itself. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of
all things is God. Now Moses was faithful in the
household of God, or faithful in all God's house as a servant,
to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. But
Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his
house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting
and our hope. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit
says, 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
40 years. Therefore, I was provoked with
that generation. and said, They always go astray
in their heart, they have not known my ways. As I swore in
my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brothers,
lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading
you to fall away from the living God. 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. For we have come to share
in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm
to the end. As it is said, today if you hear
his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.
For 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 dead 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 unable
to enter the cause of unbelief. Now I'm going to stop there.
I don't know that I'll finish the whole chapter, but if you'll
notice as you read this through the week, you'll see that it
just continues, therefore, and then here, and now, and since
then, and all of this, for, since then, therefore, since then,
for, therefore, and he continues to argue and illustrate historically
over and over again all of the necessary truths concerning the
gospel. And we have a tendency in our
present contemporary mindset to establish this text in such
a way that we can piece it out, we can pull it out and say, see,
we shouldn't harden our hearts, we shouldn't disobey. God ruined
the Israelites in the wilderness because they disobeyed. But I'm
gonna go ahead and give you the punchline here. If you look over
at the end of chapter three, when Paul is reiterating what
he's already quoted from the Old Testament, God. And he says,
those who heard and yet rebelled, was it not all those who left
Egypt by Moses, these that God had saved through the Exodus?
And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not those
who sinned, whose bodies fell dead in the wilderness? And to
whom did he swear they would not enter his rest, but to those
who were disobedient? And so you see these qualifiers.
But the context here is not teaching that obedience yields life. The
context is actually the exact opposite of that, is that their
obedience, if we see verse 19, so we see that they were unable
to enter the rest or the promises of God because of unbelief. Unbelief. Now sometimes we find
that it's easier to follow a set of instructions. We want to go
to the Bible and say, what does the Bible teach me about having
a pure heart? It does teach us about having
a pure heart. What does the Bible teach me
about having a pure mind? I want to have a pure mind. I
want to have pure hands and a pure mouth. I want to honor the Lord.
I want everything that I am to be set apart for the sake of
God's name. But why do you want that? If you want that because
you fear condemnation, you haven't believed the gospel. You're not
holding fast to the truth of the promises of God through Jesus
Christ, who is greater than Moses, who is greater than the angels,
who created all things, who laid his life down and satisfied the
wrath of God for his people. The very nature of the gospel
as good news is that this proclamation, this news, this truth that is
proclaimed about the finished work of Christ is indeed a work
that has accomplished salvation for His people. So that we hope
in Him and then out of that hope comes an adoration that does
ebb and flow. The love that we have for Jesus
is not always a given. Our desire for walking in a manner
worthy is not always fresh. Those things are renewed every
day and when we are disciplined to be in and with the body and
under and in the Word of God, then God the Spirit with each
other as we are to do today, as long as it is called today.
We are to exhort one another to believe in the finished work
of Jesus and then also behave in a manner worthy of his name. But we should not desire these
things because of fear. For it was not the fear of God
that motivated the disobedience of the Egyptians. It was the
fear of death. It was the fear of them not trusting
that God had promised to do what He said He would do because they
put their face and their vision and their hope on what they could
see. And what they could see is not what God was promising
them. God was doing the impossible for God is sovereign over the
will of man, the mind of man, the plans of man, the words of
man. the thoughts of man, the love of man, and all the things
of man. God is sovereign over it. He will use His creation
to His purposes for His glory to the good of His people. But
it's easy to go back. It's easy to begin to try to
find a foundation of security and assurance by seeing that
we've modeled ourselves in a certain way according to a certain picture
found in the Bible. But beloved, if you are not absolutely
in every way divinely perfect like Jesus Christ, you are worthy
of condemnation. So even in our best of days,
the most righteous man that would ever walk the face of the earth
could never stand before the judge of heaven and be counted
righteous. He was 99.99% perfect. In that one thousandth of a percent,
he would be condemned forever justly. And because we are indeed
fallen in our existence, we will never stand in a place where
we can say, look at who I am, Lord. We always have to say,
look at who I am in your son. So it is a temptation. What is
the temptation, the main temptation of Hebrews, of this letter? The
main temptation is that I want more confidence. I want more
assurance. I want more security in my eternal
destiny. So I'm going to go and do things
that seem a little more godly. I'm going to practice things
that can give me a little more encouragement. I'm going to follow
after things that may or may not be as beneficial or may not
even be required of me, but I'm going to do them so that I'm
making sure. I call it the safety net of salvation. Well, I'll
do this just in case, but that's not what the gospel is. That's
not what saving faith produces, but that's what the flesh does.
We are reminded here, Paul reminds his Jewish brothers in Christ,
look at this very first verse of chapter 3. Therefore, because
Christ he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help
those who are being tempted. Now I want you to ask yourself,
what is the temptation of Christ? We talked about this a little
bit night before last at dinner at home. Temptation of Christ,
when he was in the wilderness and he was tempted after the
40 days, the enemy tempted him to satisfy a need. And what was the need? Hunger.
He had not eaten for 40 days. It was time to eat. It was not
sinful to eat. It's not a sin to be hungry.
And so what the enemy did was he told Jesus, you have the power
to command these rocks to become bread and you need to eat. Let's
just get on with it. But Jesus answers him this way,
man does not live on bread alone, but on every mouth that cometh
out of the mouth, every word that comes out of the mouth of
God. Every word that flows from the mouth of God. I don't need
this bread to survive before my Father's Word is sufficient.
And the Father's Word is sufficient for Jesus. In other words, Jesus
wasn't fearful of starvation because God's Word had promised
Him salvation. God's Word had promised Him glorification. So the temptation of Jesus was
not to believe the promises of God. The same thing would be true
when He told Jesus to throw Himself off the temple mount. Just throw
yourself. The Word of God says, Satan says,
that He will send His angels concerning you. He will not let
your foot strike a stone. If you were to throw yourself
off, you could not be hurt. You could not be killed. Let's
see it. Let's display this glorious power
of God in such a way that We can be in all of it. Jesus answers
and says, do not put the Lord God to the test. We're not to
tempt God and say, okay, God, I know that you said this, but
I just want to see if you'll do it. We either believe in the
promise of God or we don't. We don't test God's promises.
concerning salvation and concerning those things that he doesn't
tell us to test. The final temptation of Jesus
was that he was taken out overlooking the land of Israel. And the enemy said to him, you
see all of this? Look, if you just bow down to me, I'll
give it to you. Just bow down to me, I'll give
it to you." And Jesus says that the Word
of God says that there is no one to be worshipped but God.
Depart from me, leave me now. Jesus was tempted to not believe
in the promises of God concerning His reign that He was the Lord
of all lords, the God of all gods, the first and the last,
the beginning and the end. He is the very one, as Paul puts
it in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 8, putting everything in subjection
under His feet. Now in putting everything in
subjection to Him, He left nothing outside of His control. And though
He was made lower than the angels, though He died and He suffered,
So that by grace, by the grace of God, He might taste death
for all who believe, for all of His people, we see this. Christ was the King of all things.
His supremacy is paramount, is divine, is ultimate, is pinnacle,
is terminal. So think about that. Jesus and
His humanity was tempted to not believe. to exercise his will
over the will of the Father. And he did not sin. Therefore,
holy brothers. You see? That's what Paul's going
to. Because of that, therefore, holy
brothers, verse one, you who share in a heavenly calling,
consider Jesus. Now there's a command there,
isn't there? What's the command? Consider Jesus. What does it mean to consider? I don't know how much of this
I'm going to get through tonight, but it's important that we stay
with it and walk through it phrase by phrase. What does it mean
to consider Jesus? It means to think about Him,
to reflect on Him, to meditate on Him. That's why I took a few
minutes out of this text to go to the temptation of Christ and
to just paraphrase it for us so that we would be reminded.
There are other points in Christ's earthly ministry, in his earthly
life, where I'm sure he was tempted in certain ways. And the sin
of Christ's temptation, had he given into it, would have been
not to believe. Not to believe the will of God,
the purpose of God, the word of God, and the work of God in
the context of redeeming the people of God through the Son
of God. There's an outline for somebody
to go preach. So consider Jesus. Why should we consider Jesus?
Because he's been there. He knows what it feels like in
the flesh to consider not believing. Yet Jesus could not sin and absolutely
perfectly did not sin and believed completely. So brothers, consider
Jesus. When you're troubled and when
you have trials to not believe in the Lord, when you have trials
to not believe in the promises of God, when you have trials
in times like this where you don't know if you're going to
have a job next week or money next month or somebody in your
household is going to die, we don't know what's going to happen.
We don't know who's telling us the truth or who's lying. And quite honestly,
we shouldn't care. Let's just deal with what today
has given us. And the only thing that we can
be sure of tomorrow is the same thing that we were sure of yesterday,
and that is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today,
and forever, and that there is no turning with Him. He does
not move to the left or the right. He does not come out of His position
of Sovereign Ruler of all things. And He has finished the work
of redeeming us, and He is sympathetic to us, and He is the one who
makes a way to help us when we are tempted to not believe in
Him. Now for those who miss it, and
you understand that the command here is to consider Jesus, we
are to consider Jesus and then trust in Him, that's where we
get the next few phrases. That the Apostle and High Priest
of our confession, what is a confession but a statement of the truth?
So when someone says, I confess that Jesus is the Lord, that
means that we are stating with our verbiage that we are believing
that Jesus is God. We're believing that He's God.
And so we can say those things, but our confession is a testimony
of the truth. So it's not as important of the
words we say as the truth that rests in us, given to us divinely
by the Father, through the Spirit, the gift of faith to believe
in Jesus Christ, who is our high priest, who is the one, the messenger
of God, the apostle. Remember the very beginning,
many times in many ways, God spoke to our fathers through
the prophets, but in these last days, He's spoken to us by His
Son. That is why Jesus is called an apostle. He is the messenger
of God, but He is God speaking to us. He is God tabernacling
with us. He is the Word become flesh,
teaching us of His work, and its efficacy, and its sufficiency,
and its power, and its permanence. So we're to consider this Jesus,
whom we say is our hope. He is our High Priest and that
He finished the work of redemption. He laid Himself on the altar
and died once for all. He died once for all. But who's
He talking to here? We need to make it very clear
every time we see these types of instructions. We need to make it very clear
who the writer is speaking to. He is not writing to unbelievers. They're not even in His mind. Except that those who go back
to the ritual hopes of the safety net of salvation are unbelievers. Therefore, holy brothers, you
who share in a heavenly calling, Consider Jesus. Don't you understand
that? An unbeliever can't consider
Jesus. An unregenerate person can't
believe in Jesus. A lost person can't believe in
the gospel. Some people mess it up and they
think, well, the New Testament's written and if you believe what's
in it, then you'll be born again. No, you can't believe until you're
born again. And because you're born again,
not only do you believe in Christ, and you understand as you're
taught what He did in His high priestly role, you have confidence
in Christ, and when that confidence wanes, the living Word of Christ
grows you back into a place of holding fast to that confession. And why is it that Jesus is so
special? What did He do in His high priestly
role? Well, that's what Paul's about to answer here throughout
the next few chapters of this letter. He's going to say over
and over again about how faithful Jesus was to finish the work
that God had sent Him to do. And so he says here, The high priest, Jesus, the apostle
and high priest of our confession, verse 2, who was faithful to
Him who appointed Him. Who appointed Jesus the Son?
The Father did. Jesus was appointed by the Father
to be His high priest, to be His sacrificial lamb, to be His
messenger through whom He speaks only and always. And now the
comparison. Just as God appointed Moses who
was also faithful in all God's house. Now let's think about
it for a second. What in the world does it mean,
God's house? Well, this is imagery. This is imagery. And what you're
supposed to do is you're supposed to picture God owning a big house
and inside this house is a lot of rooms and a big kitchen and
dining rooms and all sorts of things. and that there are servants
and staff members all throughout and everybody has a different
job. You've got your landscapers and your groundskeepers and your
plumbers and your electricians. You've got everybody required
to build it and keep it and put it all together and maintain
it and take care of all the people that live there and so on and
so forth. And so Moses was faithful in
God's house, but what is this picture supposed to be? How do
we understand this metaphor? It's simple. We are God's house. For God is building His house. They are His people. Christ came
to build the kingdom made up of the people of God. It's not
a rule. It's not a nationality. It's
not a government. It's not a land. It's a people. who are the temple of God and
John in his Apocalypse gives us great vivid pictures of that
in many different angles with many different focal lengths.
So here, Moses was faithful in God's house and Jesus was faithful
in God's house. They both did what they were
required to do. They both finished the work that God had set for
them to finish. For Jesus though, has been counted
worthy of more glory than Moses. Because it's easy to say, well,
you know what? Moses did a good job. Jesus did a good job. They
both did a good job. Great. But there's a difference
in the two. Not only we already established
that Moses is not divine, Moses, of course, is an apostle of God,
but he's not the God of the Bible. He's not God the Son. And that's
where he's going. Moses has been counted worthy
of more glory. I mean, Jesus has been counted
worthy of more glory than Moses. As much more glory as the builder
of a house has more honor than the house itself. So now let's
see the picture. When you look at antiquity, when
you look at the magnificent structures of architecture, over the histories of humanity. And you see some of these things
that are thousands of years old and they're still standing. And
we got houses that are 60-year-old rotten down to the core. You
know, you go 10 years without paint, you go 20 years without
a roof, and your house is gone when your grandkids come to visit.
Yet we see things that have been built thousands of years ago
that are still standing. and all of their glory, and we're
at all with this, but then when we step back for a moment and
we suppose the idea somebody built this, then we're thinking,
that guy's a genius. The builder is always more glorious
than the building. The painter is always more glorious
than the painting. The artist is always more glorious
than the music. Maybe. Depends on what they look like,
I guess. But I mean, you think of composition, and I've been
a conductor before, and I've conducted symphonies, and I've
conducted large scores, and I've just always been in awe of how
all of this comes together. And you see historically sometimes
when you learn of some of the classical period composers, of
how they had all this in their head. And they just write it down like
a good author who would have a series of 10 or 12 books in
their head and they know how these stories are going to fit
together and they never write an outline. It's just amazing.
So we begin to see that the one who creates it is really worth
more honor than the one who does the work. Because every house is built
by someone. Everything that we see, there's
something to glory about it and there's someone to glory who
did it. But really, everything is built
by God. So if you see what I paint or
what I draw or what I create, glory in it, wow, it has a certain
level of exposing itself to what it is in its own glory. And then
as the creator, then I may have some glory that's greater than
that. But ultimately, God created it all. And that's what verse
4 is saying. God is the builder of all things.
He's the builder of all things. So who is Moses but just a brush
in the hand of God? Who was Moses but just a mouth
for God? Who was Moses but just a small
little piece of paint? Who was Moses but just a pencil
to hold the tablets, just an easel to hold the tablets of
stone? Who was Moses? but just a man carrying a stick
doing his bidding. So Moses is faithful in the house
of God, but Moses is faithful, verse 5, in God's house as a
slave. And I'm going to use that word.
I don't know which Greek word it is, doulos, diakonos, either
way, we're going to use the word slave right here. Moses was faithful
in all God's houses as a slave. in order that he would do the
thing that he was supposed to do as a slave, to testify to
the things that were to be spoken later. So now we see a compound
here, don't we? Moses had a job to do as a paintbrush. He painted the canvas of the
greater truth. He painted a picture of Jesus. Jesus says that in John 5. Moses
wrote of me. But Christ is not a slave. You
might think, well, wasn't he a servant to the Lord? Yes. But
there's a difference. If someone who works for me tends
my garden, I'm appreciative. He's doing his job. He gets his
wage. But if my children, if my son
or my daughter go out and tend the garden, they're investing
in something more than just to get a wage. Maybe. Depends on
the kid. Where's my money? But in this sense, the comparison
is that Moses was a slave, Christ is a son. Who's going to be more
faithful over the household? We see in John 10 where Jesus
speaks the picture of the sheep and the shepherd and the sheep
gate and the sheep pen and the pasture. All of these pictures
and how the sheep know the voice of their shepherd and there's
shepherds that are hired hands and the hired hands, when things
get tough and the wolves come in and when the robbers and the
thieves come over the walls, they run for their lives and
they leave the sheep. But the son takes care of the
father's business. Jesus said that when he was 12
years old in the temple. Don't you know that I'm about
my father's business? So Jesus is greater than Moses.
Moses pointed to him. Jesus is the fulfillment of what
Moses was used by God to display. The law is Jesus Christ. The
exodus is the gospel. The grace of God. The obedience,
the disobedience of the multitudes of the chosen, even amongst the
elect of God there as Israelites, they still did not make it. And
they were judged not based on the fact that they did not do
what God said for them to do. Many disobeyed, but only those
who believed lived. None of those who did not believe
made it to the Promised Land. Christ is faithful over God's
house as a son. And you might think, well, where
did we get all this earlier where you said, you know, we are the
house because he says it right here and we are the house. We
are the house. Well, how do I know I'm the house?
I want to be the house. I want to be the elect. I want
to be a child of God. I want to be a pillar in the
temple. I want to be part of God's house. How do I be part
of God's house? Well, if indeed you hold fast
your confidence and your boast and your hope, who is Jesus Christ?
The minute you skirt off to do other things to find your confidence,
you're not a house. God hasn't built you. God hasn't
saved you. God hasn't brought you to Him.
God hasn't exposed Himself to you. God hasn't revealed the
Gospel to you when you continue to try to go and do other safety
net things and build yourself in the established glory that
you think the picture of righteousness should be. You have not been
built by God. And if you are not built by God
to believe in the Son of God, you have not been saved. That's why this letter is so
important. This letter is important because Paul wants his brothers
and sisters in the faith to not lose hope because that's easy
to do. And for we who are built by God,
for the good work that has been started in us by the Spirit,
Jesus Christ saving us because the Father has given us to Him,
we will hear the voice of the hope of Christ in this teaching
and we will find what? Peace. And what's the synonym
for peace? Rest. What's the synonym for life?
We will find rest. We'll find rest. We are God's
house if we hold fast our confidence. When people reject salvation
by grace alone, when people reject confidence
and assurance of salvation by grace alone, by faith, through
faith, they are rejecting Jesus. They are rejecting the finished
work of Christ. They are rejecting the promises
of God through Christ. They are rejecting the teachings
of Christ's apostles. They are rejecting 100% of all
the Scripture. But we who are in Christ hear
these things and we see our flesh. And we go, oh Lord, forgive me.
Let me walk after you because of my joy. But never let me look
in my life at how I walk as my hope. I will say this very harshly,
but I intend it in the greatest of love. That is one of the greatest
false gospels of our present day, is that you can know that
you have eternal life because of the life you live. It's demonic,
and it needs to be called out patiently. Therefore, as the
spirit says, all these quotations now here, excuse me, all these
quotations that are coming out of the Old Testament. Flowing
from Psalms, flowing from other play. Matter of fact, I think
all of this is the Psalms. And then experiences of the exodus
and in Genesis. As we see this, We see what the
Lord, yes, now I know where they are. It doesn't matter where
they are. You know where they are. God is saying, today, if you hear
his voice, are you hearing the voice? Do not harden your hearts
as those did in the rebellion. On the day of testing in the
wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my
works for 40 years. And I want you to see one of
the reasons that God put the mind in my mind, God put the
temptation of Christ. because that is one of the ways
that Christ was tempted to test the Lord. We don't test grace. Faith, as
we'll see in chapter 12, is a confident assurance of things not seen.
You're not gonna see glorification or progressive sanctification
in your life to any level that's going to qualify you to have
hope in it. And people put him to the test.
You're not going to feed us? You're going to bring us out
here to die? We like the food in Egypt better. Those people
are big. They're going to ruin us. They're
going to kill us. They're going to destroy us. While you're up there
with the Lord, Moses, we're going to worship this cow we made.
So on and so forth. Therefore, I was provoked with
that generation, and I said, He made an oath, and we'll see
this later. They always go astray in their heart, for they have
not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they
shall not enter my rest. So now, when we see that, we
get shaken a little bit, don't we? We get shaken. Where's our
confidence? Where's our hope? It's in Christ. It hasn't moved. But
our flesh loves to mix that bowl up a little bit and try to see
what we can bake out of it. And when we hear this threat,
You didn't know my ways. You didn't know my ways. So I
abandon you to death. That's what God is saying. You
will not enter my rest. You will die in your sins. What does it mean they did not
know my ways? They've gone astray after their
own hearts. They stopped believing in His
promises that they never believed in to begin with. You haven't gone astray and you
cannot go astray except in one way. Verse 12, take care. My holy brothers who share in
the heavenly calling should consider Jesus. Take care lest there be
in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you away to fall
away from the living God. Now what kind of evil were these
Jewish Christians dealing with? I understand Abraham, John, Mark,
whatever the guy's name might be. I understand we're saved
in Christ, but you've got to understand, man, I want to be
sure I'm a believer, so I'm going to walk back over here into Judaism
a little bit. I'm going to go to synagogue. I'm going to go
to temple. I'm going to go here, I'm going to wear the clothes,
I'm going to put my phylacteries back on. I'm going to sacrifice
things. I'm going to go back into the
Jewish culture. I'm going to be a follower of Christ as a
Jewish man, following the precepts of Judaism, because I have more
confidence there. I feel better about my relationship
with Christ when I follow these things, when I live in the standard
of righteous worship that I'm so accustomed to. I feel better. Don't you want me to feel better,
Paul? Paul calls that an evil heart. And that evil heart is unbelieving. And that unbelieving evil heart
leads them to fall away from the living God. They have not
known My ways. The way of God is this, I am
your God. You are My people. Believe in
Me. And when we go outside of that
gracious promise, we're not believing. So take care, brothers. How do
we take care? Consider Jesus. Hold fast to Him. And then also,
verse 13, exhort one another every day as long as it is called
today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness
of sin. Beloved, sin is deceitful. And the sin that Paul is dealing
with in this letter is not the sins of commission that are obvious. When you lie to somebody, that's
not deceitful. You know you're lying, but it
is still deceitful. It does for you what it doesn't
promise you. You think that lying sometimes
will help you in a circumstance to help you. But it doesn't. It's lying. It's deceitful. It
actually hurts you. Not only does it hurt relationally
the people you lie to, but it hurts your conscience when you
lie. It hurts your prayers. It hurts your hope. It hurts
your confidence. And if that's true with the sins
of commission, how much more is it true when we ignore the
promise of God in Christ? When we take the gospel and we
put it on like a badge and we still walk in our own way and
our own knowledge and our own wisdom after the men who call
themselves the shepherds of God, who preach blasphemy and tell
the church that their hope is in themselves, but it's all of
grace. This is a polemic against that
kind of lifestyle. As long as it's called today,
exhort one another. Correct each other. When we see
unbelief, we push people back to the gospel. We push people
back to the Word of God, not our philosophies, not our pet
phraseology, not our one-liners and our soundbites and our sermon
jams. Don't push people to that garbage. It's crap. Push them
to the Word of God. Push them to the very foundation
of their eternal hope. Jesus Christ, the Living Word.
We don't need anecdotal evidence, and we don't need all these other
things to teach us Christ. He will teach us if we're in
His Word, and together we will help each other and exhort one
another to hold fast, not just to the hope of Christ, but that
because of the hope of Christ, we can hold fast in the war against
sin, which is defeated already in Jesus. For we have come to
share in Christ. See, we've come to share in Christ
if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. How
do we hold that confidence? It says it right there. Today,
if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the
rebellion. Let me give you an example of how this looks in
today's culture. When I preach free and sovereign
grace, many, many, many, many people hear that and they go,
yeah, but. That yeah, but. is an evil unbelieving
remnant in our flesh. That year but is hardening our
hearts against the grace of God. That year but is conflating the
instructions of life and the liberty and the freedom of Christ
together as the church with the hope of God. And that yeah but
puts the onus on me and you by the quote power of God to do
something different so we can have confidence. Garbage, evil,
wicked, satanic trash. If it comes in our midst, we'll
cut the head off of that beast, y'all. I'm not gonna have the
sheep of Christ be run into the wilderness because of false gospels. May the Lord be true. For we
were who were those who heard and yet rebelled. For, excuse
me, the questions now, all these questions that Paul asks, for
who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Because in that
thing, who is he talking about? He's talking about me? He's not
talking about you, holy brothers and sisters in Christ with the
heavenly calling. He's not talking about you who have been saved
by grace. He's not talking about you who
have been sanctified with the same source. He's talking about
those who were in the wilderness, who rebelled. Was it not those
who left Egypt led by Moses? What Moses was doing was pointing
to the picture of what Christ would do. Christ would take His
people home. Many people would say, Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus, and none of them would get into the Promised Land. Because they didn't believe in
Jesus. They believed in what they were
going to get from Jesus. And they believed in what they
had become because of Jesus. Moses is a picture of Christ.
And with whom was He provoked? Who was God mad with for forty
years? Was it not those who sinned,
whose bodies fell dead in the wilderness? And to whom did He
swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were
disobedient? And see, we've just got to learn
to read English! English! The context here has
already been shown that that is unbelief, and you don't have
to take my ignorant self as the source of that. So we see that
they were unable to enter this rest because of unbelief. Context
is king. Unbelief is the disobedient of
the religious. And it's evidenced by apostasy. which puts people back into a
pattern of ritualistic morality of certain degree that they've
created for themselves and their own communities and their own
regions and their own countries and their own congregations by
which they measure another man or woman or child to be found
or not found in Christ. And I am coming close to the
point where I'm always going to be patient when people slam
the sheets on this issue, I'm going to cut them off forever. I do not have the mental capacity
to continue to throw pearls before swine. And the Lord Jesus Christ
has given you all, beloved, that same promise and that same way
out. Show them the word, show them
the gospel, And when they say, yeah, but, show them the same
word and the same gospel. And when they say, yeah, but,
and they show them the same word, the same gospel. And as long
as they're listening, keep teaching. When they stop listening and
they begin to call you out on heresy, just walk away. We cannot
save people. They were unable to enter rest
because of unbelief. Beloved, we are not in that number.
But it is so tempting. to take the reins of life, to
take the reins of salvation, to take the reins of our maturity
and the mortification of our flesh, to take the reins of religion,
and to take the reins of rituals, and to go back into the way the
culture has always produced hope, and that is something tangible,
something measurable, something visible. There is no such thing
as salvation in something tangible, something measurable, or something
visible, because Christ has done the work of salvation and you
cannot see it except in His promises by the Spirit. Rest in Him. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for this word. Lord, I thank you for allowing
me to see and to teach. I pray that the teaching is just
simple enough. And Lord, help not stifle, but
channel the anger that I have with so many professing Christians
across this world and in our community who just balk at the
gospel. Lord, why do I get angry with
them? And it is because I want them
to see. I feel like Moses sometimes,
Father, who was just so fed up with the Israelites for not believing
that he called out for you to kill them. And then when you
said you would, he would call for you to be merciful. So Father,
just help us. Help us to be patient and loving
and long-suffering and to be patient with those who doubt,
Lord. We're not talking about saints who are troubled in their
spirit, saints who are learning the reality of grace, saints
who are teetering, tottering back and to into these things,
Father. We're talking about those who reject grace over and over
again, who are firm on their foundation of their own hope. And then they want to give you
credit against your promises. So Lord, help us to rejoice in
this time. Lord, all of us are failing.
All of us are sinning. Very few of us are able to worship
the way we are supposed to or to love and to minister the way
we're supposed to. Very few of us are able to rest
the way we're supposed to because we're so just concerned and burdened
about where we are. But Lord, help us to rest in
whose we are. And we belong to Jesus because
you put us in him and he died in our place and he is raised
to life to promise us forever life in him. And it is in his
name we pray this glorious truth and this awesome prayer. Amen.