We looked at a part of this last
time, but this is a strong exhortation. In these verses 7 through 11,
this is a strong exhortation. To you and me, those of us who
claim to be in Christ's household, to those whose confidence is
in that Christ set forth in the gospel, who by His obedience
unto death, absolutely saved and justified and redeemed and
reconciled every sinner the Father gave. This is a strong exhortation
to you and me. And the exhortation here in verse
7 is, as the Holy Ghost saith, verse 8 rather, is harden not
your hearts. Harden not your hearts. Now we
looked at this in a lot of detail last time, but I'm just going
to remind you of a few of the things we said there. Hardening
of the heart is resistance to our rejection of God's testimony. His specific word on any matter,
but it begins with a resistance to our rejection of God's testimony
concerning the salvation that God has provided that Christ
has worked out by His obedience unto death for every sinner He
lived and died for. Harden not your hearts. to the
revealed testimony of God. And what we see in this first
part here is the reality of this hardening. But if hardening wasn't
a reality for those who sit under the gospel, those who claim to
believe the gospel, if there was no possibility that we would
ever harden our hearts, there would be no exhortation for us
not to harden our hearts, would there? So the reality is what
we looked at mostly in the last time I stood before
you. We're not going to look at a lot of that this time. But
what we have here is an exhortation not to harden your hearts. And
then we have in this context here an example from the past,
an example from Israel of those who did harden their hearts and
God's judgment actually against them. They wandered in the wilderness
40 years until all of them died off. And we want to review a
little bit of that example here. For instance, It says harden
not your hearts as in the provocation according to the day of the temptation
in the wilderness. when your fathers tempted me,
proved me, and saw my works forty years." Now, he's talking about
here the day that Israel came to the promised land. Moses led
them up to the promised land. And all this time they had been
moving toward this promised land and should have been looking
toward entering into this land and having a land of their own
where they could grow their own grapes and have their own crops
and have their own homes and all these things. Instead of
going in by God's command and possessing this land by the promise
of God to their father Abraham, they rebelled against God's testimony.
They sent spies into the land. They sent twelve spies in. And
you remember the story, ten of them came back with an evil report.
They said, it's a good land, but we can't possess this land.
There are giants in this land. There are walled cities in this
land. There's no way we can overtake this land. And they totally disregarded
the promise of God to give them this land. He didn't ever say
it was going to be dependent upon your ability to overcome
anything. Just go in and possess it. And that's what Joshua and
Caleb told them, the two faithful witnesses, the two who remembered
God's promise to Abraham their father. They said, If God delight
in us, these giants, though they be giants, they be bread for
us. We're well able to overcome. Let's just go in and possess
it. Now, these had all witnessed great miracles. I mean, just
think about what some of the things that these Israelites
that we're talking about here had witnessed. They were in Egypt
in bondage for 400 years. And God sent Moses to deliver
a type of Christ down there to bring them out of that bondage.
And then by ten plagues, ten miraculous plagues and a strong
arm, ending in the parting of a sea, allowing them to walk
through on dry land. And they had seen all these miracles
of God, and yet What did they do here when they actually got
to a place where they were supposed to rest in the promise of God? What did they do? They hardened
their hearts against God's testimony. Now liken this to a sinner, like
you and me, and able to sit under the gospel. and made to understand
mentally exactly what's being said. I mean, anybody who would
come in here and sit down for any length of time would readily
see that what I learned in the religion of this world that I
was in before I was delivered to the gospel, this is not the
message. This is not the Savior. This
is not the grace. Spoken of? No, we're talking
about a totally different way of salvation. We're talking about
a way that shows how God can remain just and faithful to all
the attributes of His character, and yet show mercy to sinners
like you and me, who can't deserve mercy, don't deserve mercy. We
deserve His eternal wrath, and yet He can give us mercy based
on one thing and one thing only, and that's the merits of our
Savior, reckoned our account there at the cross. So liken
it to this. Not all who sit under the gospel
are saved. The scripture is clear in a lot
of different places, that there are wheat and tares, there are
sheep and goats, there are all kinds of illustrations in the
scriptures to let us know that everybody who sits here, even
though we sit here for periods of time, we're not all necessarily
among the elect. Those who are the elect are those,
back up in verse 6, who hold fast the boldness and the boasting
of Christ and His finished work as all of salvation. Those who
find confidence in the Christ set forth in the gospel, they
are the elect of God. You say, well, everybody claims
to be resting in that. Well, I don't know which of you
are resting, and you don't really know whether I'm resting in that
or not. God knows, and I have confidence based on what I see
in this Word and how I respond to the message of a Savior who
left no stone unturned in delivering every sinner He lived and died
for. I have confidence that because I'm looking to that Savior alone
that I count myself among the blessed. The exhortation here
is never to harden your hearts to any part of this word that
sets Christ forth and gives him all the glory and the salvation
of sinners. In other words, all of salvation
conditioned on and accomplished by Christ alone. No contribution
left nor needed to be done by those that the Father chose and
Christ redeemed there at the cross. Don't harden your hearts
against any interpretation. Never hold on to an interpretation
of scripture that fails to give Christ all the glory and salvation,
no matter how long you believe that interpretation and no matter
how many still believe it. I mean, we come from households.
You and I come from households or families. And there aren't
very many people in those families that believe what you and I believe.
And you can see it's not necessarily that many gathered here who believe
this message. But nevertheless, it's the Word
of the Lord, and it's what honors God in every attribute of His
character. And it's what gives Christ all
the preeminence and the salvation of a multitude of sinners chosen
by God and redeemed and justified by Christ. So that's just a little
review. kind of what it is in realizing
that there is a hardening of the heart, the reality of this
hardening. It's not something that you and
I should just take for granted, that we will never do this. I'd
never harden my heart against anything. Yeah, I'm afraid we
do sometimes harden our hearts, so the reality of it. But let's
move on now to the reason that sinners harden their hearts.
And I could give you all kinds of reasons, but let's take the
reasons that God gives us right here in verse 10. He said, Wherefore,
I was grieved with that generation, that generation who provoked
me and tempted me in the wilderness. I was grieved with that generation
and said, They do always err in their heart, and they have
not known my ways. He gives us two reasons right
here why sinners Now, remember, this is an example of those who
did harden their hearts. And we study this kind of like
we study history. You know, some have said that
if we fail to study history, we'll make the same mistakes
all over again. So one reason we study history is so we won't
be drawn into the same mistakes that our predecessors were drawn
into. So we study an example like this of those who did harden
their hearts in order that we might see what we're to avoid.
So he says, he gives us two reasons here why these sinners hardened
their hearts. He says right here in the latter
part of this verse, verse 10, he says, they do always err and
they have not known my ways." Now, that word, air, would better
be interpreted, well, let me tell you about the tense of this
verb here. I won't get into a little Greek here. That word is plano,
and it means a wandering. We get our word planet from that
word, like a planet wandering. It's wandering in a fixed, but
it is wandering. The verb tense here is present
tense. It's indicative and it's passive,
which means there's something happening to these people. They're
not actually doing this. Something's being done to them.
The translators say they do always err, and this word could mean
err. But it's a passive verb, so it means something's being
done to them. In other words, they are being
led astray. They are being deceived is what
we're seeing here. They are always being deceived
in heart. That's the first reason why men,
why sinners harden their hearts. They're deceived. The reason
you and I sat under a message of false religion for so long
is because we were deceived. And when God brought us to the
Gospel, we didn't necessarily just take up this Gospel all
at once. We might have resisted. There's
no might about it. We did resist parts of it and
are still resisting parts of this Word that give Christ all
the glory. But it's because we're deceived.
We're deceived in not knowing what this Word says on an issue.
In this incident, these sinners were deceived by circumstances.
What did they say? They said, there are walled cities
here. There are giants here. We can't take this land. It's
ridiculous to think we can go in and take this land. The deception
came from the knowledge of their inability to overcome those obstacles. They said, we are as grasshoppers
in the sight of these people. We cannot possess this land. And they stirred up all of Israel
against them. The first reason, they hardened
their heart. They were continually led astray and deceived by those
circumstances. And then that second reason,
God says here in verse 10, it says, they have not known. They
did not know My ways. How much of these Israelites
experience of God's sovereignty and unlimited power? Think of
all those things, as I've already said, that they experienced here.
All the plagues in Egypt. All those frogs and lice and
being delivered. And finally, seeing God kill
the firstborn in every household in Egypt, but theirs. Why? because of the blood on the doorpost
and the mantel which God commanded them to apply. And he said, when
I see the blood, I'll pass over you. Every other household had
its firstborn killed, but those on whom the blood was applied.
So how much of these Israelites experienced, and yet they totally
disregarded the promise God made to Abraham to give his descendants
this land. Listen to Genesis 17 and verse
8. God said to Abraham, And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed
after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger. Abraham
wandered through this land all his life. He never had a city
to live in. He wandered in tents and lived
in caves all his life, all over this land. It was his land. He
was a stranger there. He said, I'll give this land
wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an
everlasting possession, and I will be their God. Now, where in that
promise do these Israelites hear anything about their ability
to possess the land? Where does it say there that
you're going to have to go in and take it now? There's going
to be some strong people there. There's going to be some fortified
cities there that you don't know. There's nothing about that in
this promise. God simply promised Abraham, I'll give you and your
descendants. this land. Now, these are objections
raised by the evil hearts of these Israelites to God's promise. And even when Joshua and Caleb
reminded them of God's absolute and unconditional promise to
give them this land, they completely disregarded God's testimony and
refused to enter in. Now, as brethren, we are inclined
to harden our hearts for these same two reasons. We get caught
up in circumstances. We wonder, am I really, is this
just something I've imagined? I mean, how could a sinner like
me, I know who I am, how could a sinner like me stand just and
righteous in God's sight? We get caught up in circumstances
sometimes and we might wonder about that. And we take our eyes
off the reason for the hope that is in us. What's that? It's the
finished work of Christ alone. That's the only reason anyone
sitting here or any sinner on the face of this earth has any
reason to have any confidence that he can stand before God
and be counted just. It's because his Redeemer and
his Savior is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself,
who worked all of it out, and God reckoned his work to your
account. If you've been enabled by God's
grace to rest in the finished work of Christ alone, you've
experienced the greatest miracle there is. But you're still inclined
to this hardening of the heart. What is hardening of the heart?
Bottom line on hardening of the heart, it's unbelief. If I wonder
sometimes, or maybe I get puffed up. Maybe I think I've become
an excellent deliverer of God's Word, an excellent teacher, an
excellent preacher. I don't, but maybe I do. And I say, I know God was pleased
with that. No. If God's pleased with me,
if He's pleased with you, if He's pleased with anyone here,
it's for one reason and one reason only, because He chose to show
us mercy and grace based on the finished work of Christ alone.
Now, it's a regard for Christ as opposed to any notion that
God is pleased with me either way. More if I do, less if I
don't. It's just like Richard was preaching
in the back. If I get to thinking, well, I know God was pleased
with that prayer. No. No, that's the wrong kind
of thought. God's pleased for one reason
and one reason only. It's a regard for Christ that
causes brethren to do what we ought to do. It's a regard for
Christ, His finished work, and the justification that He worked
out for His people there at the cross. It's a regard for Him
that causes us to pray. with the right motive. It's your
regard for Him that causes us to study. It's your regard for
Him that causes us to fellowship. It's your regard for Him that
causes us to have any confidence at all, right confidence, in
standing before God and being counted just. So we have those
same two reasons these people in this example have that we
harden our heart. We're deceived somehow into thinking
that I can't be in God's family because of something or God's
pleasure with me for some reason other than Christ's work alone. All right, let's move on to one
more thing. I've got four hours here, by
the way. I forgot to tell you that. But this next one is the
result of this hardening. Now, we're looking at an example
of those now who refused to... They would not have their deception
ended by the testimony of God. They refused. They went on in
their stubbornness. So, look at verse 11. We'll see
the result of that hardening of the heart. God said, So I
swear in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest. Now,
in the original, this is the strongest possible language there
can be. There's a little word in the
front of this sentence. And in the Greek, you know, you
always move those important things right up to the front. And there's
a little word in the Greek here that is a strong negation. That's what it is. It can be
interpreted ill. But it's also a strong negation. So in the strongest possible
way, God is saying here to these sinners who would not bow to
His Word, who would not enter that land on His promise alone,
He's saying they shall never, not by any means, not any possibility,
enter into My wrath. And what did He do? He called
all those over the age of 20 to wander in the wilderness until
they died off. Their children possessed that
land. Their children whom they said
would be a prey They entered into that land by God's promise,
but not those 20 years of old and older. So the result of this
hardening then is what we want to talk about. Here's what's
clearly being stated by this verse, verse 11. No sinner whose
heart remains in unbelief, hardened, hardened by the deceitfulness
of this sin of unbelief, no sinner whose heart remains in unbelief
will enter heaven. No sinner. Another way of saying
that same thing, no sinner who is not resting all of his or
her salvation in the finished work of Christ alone will enter
heaven. It is the strongest possible language you can get here. Listen
to John 3 and verse 36 on this same issue. He that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life. Does he have life because he
believes? No, he believes because he has everlasting life. And
he that believeth not, that is, he that refuses to believe the
record that God has given of his Son, and rests in Christ's
work alone for all of his salvation, he that believeth not the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. The hearts
of brethren have been delivered from unbelief. I'm going to make
a couple of statements here, and I'll have to explain a little
bit. Our hearts, if you're brethren, your heart has been delivered
from unbelief. That is, from the power of unbelief. The power of unbelief that kept
you thinking and going about, trying to work out your standing
with God by something you did, by a contribution you made. Now,
our hearts have been delivered from unbelief. By God's grace,
we're looking to Christ alone for all of salvation. We've been
delivered from dead works and the bondage of thinking that
anything but the imputed righteousness of Christ can save us or keep
us saved. We're convinced that all our
standing before God is in the imputed righteousness of Christ
alone. We don't have hearts of unbelief. But listen. There's
still a lot of unbelief in these hearts. A lot of unbelief left
in these hearts. That's why the exhortation comes.
Harden not your hearts. Believers are just as much under
the influence of sin, and that includes the sin of unbelief.
We're just as much under that influence as we were before God
brought us to this light and delivered us out of that heart
of unbelief. Only final glory will end that
influence, just like it will end the influence of every other
sin. What is unbelief? It's looking anywhere, anywhere
but to Christ's finished work for all my standing before God.
Finding any confidence or assurance before God in anything but Christ's
finished work. His righteousness imputed to
my account. So unless you're willing to stand
here and testify that your heart is fixed on Christ 24-7, And
I just don't believe. I know I'm not. And I don't believe
anybody here is. Then you are admitting that you
still have unbelief in your heart. That's what it is. It's unbelief.
Now, if you look on over in Hebrews 12 and verse 2, we can see this. The writer here describes it
as the sin that so easily besets us. And who's he talking to here?
He's talking to believers here. He's exhorting believers here
in Hebrews 12 and verse 2. Look at verse 1. He said, Hebrews
12, 1, Wherefore, seeing we also are accomplished about with so
great a cloud of witnesses as those that were listed back there
in the Hall of Fame of Faith in Hebrews 11, We are compassed
about with such a great cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside
every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and
let us run with patience the race set before us." The sin
that doth so easily beset us. The sin of finding confidence
somewhere but in Christ and Him alone. The sin of thinking that
maybe Maybe I didn't need God's mercy and grace. No, I needed
God's mercy and grace. I needed to be found in Christ,
not having a righteousness of my own, but that righteousness
which he worked out by his obedience unto death. The gospel addresses both kinds
of sinners. Those who've hardened their hearts
against God's way of salvation. In other words, Those who remain
in unbelief, just like those in this example who would not
bow to God's testimony, but who stubbornly went on and refused
to enter into this land by God's promise alone. It addresses those
kinds of sinners whose hearts remain in unbelief. They have
hearts of unbelief. And it also addresses those whose
hearts have been delivered from unbelief, but still have much
unbelief remaining in them. How can a sinner tell where they
fit into these two kinds of sinners? Well, where do you find relief
from your remaining sin, your remaining doubts and your fears
and your remaining uncertainties, even your moments of unbelief?
Where do you find relief? Well, if you find it in the finished
work of Christ, then count yourself among the blessed. Count yourself
as this example among those who need to harden not their hearts
against God's way of salvation. Our confidence can never be in
our looking, that is, in our faith. It can't even be in our
faith. It can't be in our repentance.
It can't be anything we see the Spirit of God doing in us. He
does some marvelous things in us. He enables us to believe
this message. And we look around and there
aren't that many that do, but we can't find any confidence
in our believing. Where do we find confidence?
We find it in our Savior alone. The result of a heart that will
not be delivered from going astray is final misery. And we, of those
who have been delivered from that unbelief, but still have
unbelief in us, we have to be thankful every time we see these
doubts and fears and uncertainties arise in us and that unbelief. We have to be thankful. But for
the grace of God, that would send me to eternal misery. Back
in our context, verse 11. So I swear in my wrath they shall
not enter into my rest. All right, let's look at the
final thing, and that is the remedy. We've looked at the reality
of hardening our hearts. We've looked at the reason. We've
looked at the result of that hardening. Now let's look at
the remedy. It's not necessarily in this context, but I didn't
want to end this message without talking about the remedy God's
given. for hardening the heart. And in future messages, we're
going to look. We can see a little bit of it
right here in following on down, but I didn't want to get into
these verses much. But look at verse 12. I'll just
give you a little preview on the next lesson here. This is
a warning right here. I've been talking about an exhortation,
but this is a stern warning. He said, Take heed, brethren,
lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief. And that
word in is causing you to depart from the living God. And how
do you guard against that? Verse 13. We're talking about
the remedy for hardening the heart. Exhort one another daily
while it's called a day, lest any of you be hardened through
the deceitfulness of sin. I want to give you three more
R's here. I've just filled you up with R's this morning. I've
got three more under this remedy. First of all, we regard the possibility
of this hardening among us, in us. It's not really a possibility,
is it? It's a certainty. I mean, we're going to have unbelief
in us as long as we're in this flesh, as long as this old principle
remains in us, this principle of sin. So, first of all, regard
the possibility that you've hardened your heart. Regard that possibility. Don't ever get to thinking that
you don't need to be wary of this sin of hardening your heart.
Be constantly reminded that if Christ doesn't keep you focused
on Him, you turn away in a heartbeat. It's Him keeping us. It's not
us holding on to Him. It's Him holding on to us. That's
our confidence. So the first one is regard the
possibility. The natural bent of our hearts
is not to look to Christ alone. None of us are born into this
world looking to a Savior who accomplished all of salvation
without giving us anything to do. Now, none of us were there.
We were all somewhere else. till God brought us to this message.
So our natural bend is not to look to Christ alone. It's to
look elsewhere. We have to be taught, and then
we have to be constantly reminded to look to Christ alone. That's
why we need to be here. That's why we need to be under
the sound of this message. That's why I don't want to be
absent. I just want to be sitting right here when somebody's delivering
a gospel message from this pulpit. Nothing in this world will cause
us to look to Christ alone but the gospel. Everything else in
this world is drawing our hearts away from Christ. I mean, people
will pat you on the back and say, oh, I know you're a good
person. Don't they tell you that? I know
they do. And you have to say, there ain't nothing good in me.
My goodness is in Christ. I mean, everything in the world
is drawing us away to find confidence in something other than Christ
alone. So the first thing is regard
the possibility that we do harden our hearts. The next thing is
resist the temptation. The only religion this world
knows is just one big deception. He said they do always err, they
are always being led astray, they are always being deceived.
That's what this world religion is. It's just one big deception. We're clearly warned that this
age will be characterized by this kind of deception that will
never get better, but only worse as long as this world exists.
Let's go just back a page or two to 2 Timothy 3.12. You wonder why you come under
persecution from your family, from your friends, when you stand
fast in this gospel and tell them that their only hope and
your only hope is in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ
alone. Listen here. to 2 Timothy 3, 12. Yea, and
all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Not might, not its possibility,
not its certainty. If you stand for this gospel,
if you stand for this Christ, you're going to suffer persecution.
But, verse 13, but evil men and seducers shall wax worse and
worse deceiving and being deceived. So this age is not going to get
any better about this deception. It's going to get worse and worse
according to that. And then look back at that passage I read in
2 Peter. I want to point out this 17th
verse here one more time. 2 Peter 3 and verse 17. You therefore, beloved, seeing
you know these things before, See, we're taught these things.
We're warned about these things. We understand this deception.
Seeing you know these things before, beware, lest you also,
being led astray. That's the same verb right there
that's used over in our text. Being led astray. Lest you also,
being led astray with the error of the wicked, fall from your
own steadfastness. But what's that remedy? Growing
grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him
be glory, both now and forever. So resist the temptation. How
do you do it? You pray. You read this Word. You study this Word. You fellowship
with believers. You make yourselves available
to the preaching of the gospel. That's how you resist the temptation. And last of all, you rest in
Christ alone. How do we do that? By looking
to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. That's the next
verse after Hebrews 12 and verse 1. Laying aside that sin that
so easily besets us, how do we do it? We look to Jesus, the
author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of God. In closing, as the last remedy
here, I want us to look at a passage here in 2 Corinthians 10. We rest in Christ alone by bringing
every thought into captivity to Christ's obedience. Let's
read here in 2 Corinthians 10 and look in verse 3. It says, for though we walk in
the flesh, we are still in this world and walking in these old
bodies that we have with that sin principle. For though we
walk in the flesh, we do not war against the flesh, for the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God
to the pulling down of strongholds. Casting down imaginations and
every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ. And that's not working on your
obedience there. That's bringing every thought
into His obedience. into his faithfulness to do all
that the Father sent him to do, to work out that righteousness,
to establish it, to bear away the sin of his people in his
body on the tree, and to justify and forgive his people based
on his finished work alone. Bring every thought into captivity
to his obedience. In other words, what I'm talking
about is resting in Christ alone, and that is the remedy. We regard
the possibility, we resist the temptation, and we rest in Christ
alone. So, my exhortation, sinners,
harden not your hearts against this Christ.