Hebrews - Part 7 Do Not Harden Your Hearts (Hebrews 3:6-19)

The first three rules of Bible interpretation are context, context, context, and that's kind of a joke if you've ever heard the real estate joke. But it's true, and we always have a context, and so when we're reading through the book of Hebrews, we're in chapter 3, verse, really verse 6, we always want to remember what the author's talking about and we also want to remember what the overall context of scripture is so we will get to well i think we'll get to one section today that is one of those verses that i think can go go either way in fact i think it's a really good like Presbyterian section. So, you know, for us to interpret verses, we have to always keep in mind all the other verses that we have in the Bible, all of the other sections and teachings.

And then the immediate context, of course, is not often the, a lot of times the immediate context of a section gives us instruction that a verse may not actually mean what we think it means, because it's not even what the section is about. So we just want to think about those things when we read. But so let's start with Hebrews 3.6, which we finished last week, the first part.

But I think in the context today, we start with the second part of Hebrews 3.6, and we are his house. And then the author says, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. And so I think the overall context that we're about to enter is that we are in the house of Jesus Christ, the house that was just described. So we're not in Moses' house.

We're not in the old covenant house that Moses was the steward over, that Moses was faithful over. But we're in this new house. It's Jesus Christ's house. And he says, and we're in it. And then he puts a qualifier if. If we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope, and so this is one of those statements that this is another statement people might call a difficult passage because it it actually makes it seem like you could lose your salvation for a minute there.

You know, if you hold fast to your confidence and you're boasting in your hope, could be read like, hey, maybe some people will have a confidence and they won't hold fast to it. And so, therefore, you could be saved and lose it. But if we understand, again, the overall teaching of scripture is that, no, you cannot lose your salvation. So that can't be what this verse means.

And then second of all, if you just read this one, it's not that hard to interpret. If indeed we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope, then we are his house. So what the author is really saying is that you actually know that you're saved if you hold fast to the confidence and the boasting. It's not the other way around that you get saved by holding fast in the confidence.

It's your confidence in your boasting, your hope is the evidence that you have been saved, that you are the house that Jesus Christ dwells in. And our confidence, of course, is in Jesus. And our boasting is in our hope. And I don't want to belabor this point too much, but I think if I was preaching through Hebrews, I might. we boast in our hope of Jesus Christ's salvation for us that is the only thing we boast in God chose what is lowly and despised in this world to bring to nothing things that are not and even things that are so that no man may stand in the presence of God and boast and so this is on my mind today because yesterday we encountered a number of Roman Catholics at Planned Parenthood, and one of the things that I was preaching to the Roman Catholics was, we have nothing to boast about before God.

Anyone who goes to heaven, if anyone ever asks you, well, how did you get here? There will not be even one moment of your answer that includes works you did. That is vital to our understanding of what we boast in. If you could stand before God and say, Jesus died for me, and I did this one thing that was also so important and righteous and essential to my salvation, you would violate all of the scriptures about how no one will boast in the presence of God.

So it is absolutely impossible and illogical that you will have any boasting except in your hope. That is what you boast in. And this is what offends people. What offends people is the fact that they cannot boast. that's the funny thing is as kind as people are and there's a lot of wonderful people out there i'm i you know i try to be a christian man and there's probably a lot of non-believers out there that you would consider to be you know nicer and kinder than i am but everybody has the underlying pride in their heart that wants to boast before a holy god that they somehow they somehow deserving of his love and favor And the only person who ever was innocent in the eyes of God was Adam and Eve.

They weren't one person, but in one sense, they were one flesh. and Adam and Eve immediately fell and we've all fallen with them. But so in the context now of boasting in our hope and holding fast to our confidence, maintaining the faith until the end, we have a quote now from the Old Testament. So in Hebrews 3.7, the author says, therefore, So because of the things I just told you, I'm going to tell you something else.

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 so that's a quote from Psalm 95 we'll go look at that in a second then remember the context same context The author says, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. This is actually a repeated theme throughout the book of Hebrews. He will say.

Hebrews could have been like four chapters. he's going to say the same thing over and over again to these people and uh and that's helpful for us to understand it i'm not saying it should have been four chapters and the bible is a perfect length but it he really repeats himself a lot and uh and one of those one of the reasons is that you know we're we're like dumb sheep we just we just need to see it over and over sometimes to believe it. God telling us one time something isn't enough for us. We are rather hard-hearted, as the passage even says.

But for some of us, we read it a few times and we think, all right, I'll believe it. That's the testimony to the hardness of our hearts. But the idea here is that there are people in your midst who are going to fall away. and this is actually a really good passage for presbyterians uh to say hey you know um just like the israelites in the wilderness that's how the church is we've got some people who are saved some who aren't like verse 12 says we call them all brothers and uh but some are going to fall away and that's kind of the presbyterian view of the new covenant is that it's um what you say like a reduplication of the old covenant where we have all of the called out people of God, just like the people of God came out of Egypt, but not all of them made it to the end.

The Presbyterian view would say the church is made up of all the people of God, the covenant community of God, and it's made up of people who are believing, and there are people who have an evil, unbelieving heart as well. and only some will make it to the end. And so that is something that a Presbyterian might argue from Hebrews 3 if you were ever just wanting to bat those ideas around with someone. I will say this, that that on its surface would make sense because the Hebrews author is actually making an analogy between the old covenant of Moses and the new covenant with Jesus in reference to Psalm 95 that we're about to look at.

But you have to remember that the context was that Jesus is different from Moses. Jesus is better than Moses, and he is the mediator of a better covenant. And we'll see later that he's made the old covenant obsolete. And so the fact that God shows us pictures of the new covenant that teaches us truthful things about the new covenant, using the old covenant doesn't mean that every detail of the old covenant is repeated in the new covenant.

It doesn't mean it's going to be the same thing. It just means that God painted pictures for us using the old covenant to help us understand concepts that would be vital to our perseverance in the new covenant. And I don't expect what I just said to convert a Presbyterian either. But the point is, is that if you come to this text and you already have a Presbyterian mindset, it's going to read that way for you.

But if you come to this text having already understood the nature of an old covenant and a new covenant, the nature of the covenant of Moses and then the covenant of Jesus. And if you understand those distinctions as made by Exodus 36 and Jeremiah 31 and later in Hebrews and all the places that we already know how the covenants are made. you won't fall into that trap and you won't be easily persuaded by a good Presbyterian. One thing about Presbyterians is they're really good at like teaching and arguing their stuff.

So you have to be beyond guard kind of if you want to maintain your Baptistic confidence. So let's go to Psalm 95. And let's see what the author's quoting. He really quotes it pretty word for word I didn go look at it exactly but it really word for word close to what was there And so it's not like he's rephrasing things. It's not like he's taking something in the Old Testament.

And sometimes they take an Old Testament scripture, the New Testament authors, and they kind of rephrase it in the New Testament. or they put multiple verses together from multiple different passages, and they kind of show you that it meant something maybe a little different than you might have figured out just reading the old. They try to help interpret it. In this case, he really just kind of quotes it.

And so it's only 11 verses. I'll start at the beginning. I would also recommend if you're going to read Psalm 95, that you read Psalm 95 all the way to about Psalm 100 or maybe 103, all together as one block of things to study, because they really do go together in some wonderful ways. Let's see what the scripture says. Oh, come, let us sing to Yahweh.

Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. So we're talking about a joyful noise, salvation. He says, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. So this is the people of God worshiping Yahweh. He says, Yahweh is a great God and a great king above all gods.

It's wonderful. In his hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are also his. So he owns everything, right? The earth is his and the fullness thereof. He's the king.

He's the creator. He's sovereign. I mean, this is just exalting God. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. All right. This is amazing stuff, right?

You know, some of you guys here can't make a sandwich. You know, that's why you had to find a wife so someone would make sure you ate every day. God just made everything. This is amazing. And if he never saved anybody, if he never sent a savior, he'd be worthy of eternal praise for simply making you. But now he says, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

Now we get the quote. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof. Though they had seen my work, for 40 years I loathed that generation and said they are a people who go astray in their heart. And they have not known my ways.

He says, therefore, I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. So when God loathes a generation, that's not a description of the bride of Christ. People who God loathes are people that he hates. and the ones that he said they go astray in their heart and have not known my ways and won't enter my rest these are not his people i know in the old covenant they were his people they were the ones that were delivered out of egypt and they were part of the visible community of god but they had in their hearts hatred towards god so let's look at what this passage is talking about now.

Meribah and Massah, these are words that aren't, you know, you don't hear these even at church very often. It's not like we say these words. And so we turn back now to Exodus 17. And now we're going to read about this passage where these people tested God. So in Exodus 17, he says, all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of Yahweh and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

So God has released the people from Egypt. And if you remember anything about the Israelites being released from Egypt, by miraculous signs and wonders, God completely delivered them from the slavery that they had begged to be released from. And then their response essentially was, did you deliver us from that just to not take care of us? Like we don't have the food we want.

We don't have all the good foods that we even got to eat while we were slaves in Egypt. And now we don't have water to drink. And we can look back and we can say, oh, these guys were idiots and like how unfaithful and like we're so much better. But just remember, we're no different. We're only different because they screwed up first. So we've learned from this already.

So we know like, yeah, we really shouldn't complain. But there's a deliverance that God gives people from the slavery they're in, and his deliverance that he gives them from the slavery they're in doesn't always result in amazing prosperity. In fact, Jesus promises that you'll suffer if you're a Christian. And so when we look at this, what we want to see is that these people were delivered, but then they don't trust God for everything else.

So if God could deliver from Egypt by sending gnats and flies and locusts and changing water to blood and killing firstborn sons and all that stuff, you think God could find them water, right? But they don't think so. So therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses said to them, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test Yahweh?

So Moses is like, Come on, guys. Let's not argue about this. But the people thirsted there for water. So they wanted what they wanted, and they wanted it now. And the people grumbled against Moses and said, why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? So now it like is this why you delivered us And the same thing could happen to a Christian You know you were floating along in this world You had some sense of enjoyment.

You were enslaved to some sin, but you had a nice house and a good job, and people liked you, right? And then God delivers you from your sin, and then all of a sudden things start going bad. All of a sudden things in this world get difficult because, well, things get difficult in this world. and you kind of look at God like well why did you deliver me from from my previous state is it is it just so I can suffer and the answer could be yeah and we don't like that answer we like to think hey now I've been redeemed now I'm not stealing I'm not lying I'm trying not to lust I wouldn't hate anybody.

I'd want to be respectful of my parents. I'm trying not to covet. I'm trying to do all these things for God. And now guess what? I expect results. I expect to make more money than I did before and more money than the other guy that's doing evil.

And I expect good health. And all of a sudden we have all these expectations of God as if now we're the ones working to get these results. And it wasn't just still all him doing everything for us the whole time. but so Moses cried to Yahweh in Exodus 17, 4, and he said, what shall I do with this people? They're almost ready to stone me, so, you know, I don't think Moses is exaggerating.

You know, I think these people are looking at Moses like, hey, you're the reason we're in trouble here, and that's one of the hardest things about leading people is it's like, hey, I'm not promising prosperity here. Just follow me, and so Moses is like, what am I going to do with them they're going to stone me and lord and now he says to moses well pass on before the people taking with you some of the elders of israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the nile and go so he tells him to go he says behold i will stand before you there on the rock at horab and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it and the people will drink and moses did so in the sight of the elders of israel interestingly enough there's a website called westernjournal.com and they have a lot of articles about like conservative stuff and and uh it's it's one of those kind of like below the radar news sites and it's not bad they've got a lot of good stuff but they have an article on their website right now about how people think they found the rock at horro uh that was split they found this like split rock like okay i don't know but it's neat that they were looking i guess but he says behold i'll stand before you and you will strike the rock, water will come out of it, and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

They called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested Yahweh by saying, is Yahweh among us or not? And so here is this time where God was very gracious to the people, and rather than strike them dead for their complaining, he actually gave Moses supernatural ability to cause water to flow out of a rock that they were able to then drink. So he satisfied their thirst.

He gave them the thing that they wanted, miraculously proving to them that they were, in fact, in the care of God, and that they had nothing to fear. And these people had the choice at this point to repent of their evil and trust God, or they could continue to have evil, unbelieving hearts that only wanted God when he was providing the things they wanted and weren't interested in God when it was, hey, you're just going to do things maybe my way instead. And the lesson that the author of Hebrews wants us to realize is that these people saw his works for 40 years.

But in Hebrews 310, they always go astray in their heart. They have not known my ways. And so there are people who will travel with the people of God. They will enjoy the benefits that God gives to his people. They will even, in a sense, drink from the fountain of water that's been provided. There's people who will take communion.

There's people who will pray. There's people who will listen to podcasts, who will go to church. There's men who have pastored and even preached the word. But in their heart, they are still evil. they have unbelief and for some reason some people actually in their sin they just enjoy religious things i i wasn't like that i never understood that i wanted nothing to do with christianity while i was a non-believer uh but after becoming a believer i found out that there's some people who in their unbelief actually enjoy uh playing christianity i guess for lack of a better term.

And so God has said in Psalm 95 about the generation in Exodus 17 that they're not going to enter the final rest. They're going to be part of the community that has change in this life. They're going to be part of a community that even witnesses my goodness and drinks of my kindness and is nourished by the things that I do for my people. Yet in their heart, they're not going to make it to the end.

They will not hold fast to the confidence in boasting in their hope because in verse 12, they have an evil, unbelieving heart that leads them to fall away from the living God. And so what the author here is telling people is, hey, don't be one of those people. He says, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart. And then he tells them how.

He says, exhort one another in verse 13. We're back to Hebrews 3. Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And so we have a command to exhort one another. We care for one another. And we care for one another in a way where, and I don't want you to overthink it maybe, but when you see a Christian who seems to be failing to carry out the commands of God, or who their outward way that they are speaking sounds more like the Israelites complaining that they didn't have water rather than just being faithful to God.

Your concern for your Christian brother is that they need to be exhorted back to their faith and hope that they have professed. Because you fear that they will not enter God's rest. and now when we're talking about God's rest we're not talking about the land that the Israelites eventually entered after the 40 years we're talking about glory with God we're talking about heaven and so you have brothers and sisters next to you at church and there's some of them that don't belong and you need to exhort them and you need to try to help them to see their sin in the hopes that God will save some of them who are maybe false converts right now. I know there's people on this call that maybe at times were a false convert.

They were in church and they were listening to the things they were even teaching. They were doing all the Christian things outwardly, but they had evil unbelieving hearts and they didn't even realize it until somebody pricked their conscience by bringing up the word of God to them. And so exhort one another every day, he says, as long as it's called today.

So, hey, as long as you have a chance, do this. Don't grow weary. And why? That none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. This whole thing is about hardening your hearts. Verse 8, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.

Every day, every day that a sinner does not repent and turn to the God that they have heard of, their heart is hardened a little bit. This is why when somebody says, well, I'll figure that out later, we say, don't delay. The presumption that later you will have a soft enough heart to figure it out is maybe even more presumptive that you'll be alive later in life to figure it out.

You don't know if you'll be alive five minutes from now. If you've heard the word of Christ, you're to believe it now. You refuse to believe it, could just be a hardening of your heart that will keep you from believing. So we talked to a Catholic guy yesterday. He said In a couple of years I going to sit and really think this stuff over And I was like Don wait Don wait If right now you are open to the things of God study it ask the questions you need to ask and beg for mercy And so we don't want anyone hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Hebrews 3.14 now, for we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. So now he clarifies that the ones that share in Christ are the ones who hold their original confidence firm to the end. So if somebody's gone, they went out from us because they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

Those who are part of the faith and then leave, we're never part of the faith, truly speaking. But just like with Moses and the people in the wilderness, there are people who will gather with the people of God, who will enjoy the benefits of the people of God, who will be nourished even by the things God provides to the people of God, who eventually will not enter the final rest. And so this is once again about holding your original confidence firm to the end and so in hebrews 3 15 then the author repeats repeats part of the phrase he says as it is said today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion he just he just repeats what he wrote earlier it's not like i need to teach you this verse like we just went over it he's just repeating, do not do this.

Don't let your heart be hardened. And it's a lesson even if you're a Christian and you're truly a Christian, you don't want your heart hardened. But we all have to have that suspicion, like we want to continue in the faith. We want to continue to grow. And then he says, for who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt by Moses?

He says, these are the ones who rebelled, the ones who were delivered. It was all of them. He wants us all to have a little, I think, a little healthy fear in us. Like, hey, we've got to stay vigilant in this walk. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, and we will persevere to the end because Christ is the one who holds his sheep tight. But your responsibility is to cling as well.

So you cling as if you're the one clinging with the hope and confidence that it's actually him that's holding you in his hand. It's not a contradiction. It's not self-refuting. It's just the way God's designed things. And it's your desire to cling is actually given to you by God who's clinging to you. and so you cling and you hold on and you don't rebel and you don't give up and you don't complain and you don't quit and you don't just start doing all the littler sins that are in your heart that other people can't see you watch for those things because i can't see them and even if you go to my church i can't see them because you're on zoom even if you went to my church i can't see all your secret things in your heart if you go to my church and you go through the motions for the most part I not going to have a lot of reason to think you one of the people with an evil unbelieving heart that being hardened You need to investigate your own heart You need to be honest about what in your heart You need to confess your sins to one another that you may be healed And the person who wants to do that is a person who you have great confidence in.

The guy that never wants to confess anything, never has anything going on, that guy we should be a little bit afraid for. So you ask probing questions, you try to help people. He says, with whom was he provoked for 40 years? was it not with those who sinned whose bodies fell in the wilderness? There was a bunch of people that didn't make it to the promised land.

People who were on their path to the promised land, but they didn't make it. These were the ones that provoked God. These are the ones that God loathed. But he didn't, he didn't necessarily show them as loathing in signs and wonders he just let them hang out until the end and then not make it what a horrible thing to spend your life actually deceiving yourself into thinking you're a christian and then die and wake up in hell and i don't want that for anyone he says and to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest but to those who were disobedient he says so we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief so again the book of hebrews is about the new covenant the covenant of faith it's about the fact that it's belief in jesus christ that saves your soul it's not belief in the old covenant or the saving nature of the old covenant that didn't have a true saving nature and he brings it all around here.

It's unbelief is why the disobedient didn't enter. So it's not that God looked at their works and said, well, you know, some of these guys' works were pretty good, so they entered the promised land, and some of these guys' works were pretty bad, so they go to hell. We see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. The unbelief was manifested sometimes only in an evil, unbelieving heart that outwardly could obey the old covenant law of God pretty well. he's trying to instill in us this understanding that we have a new covenant that is based on how your heart disposition towards God is, is manifested.

And so when we love one another, when we care for one another, we're going to exhort one another while there is still today. And we are going to help each other see that sin is serious and your sin is not just your outward actions. In fact, if you've been a Christian for just a few years, you're probably pretty good at hiding your sin. Most of us know how to dress up on Sunday, and we also know how to dress up our outward actions so that the only people that really see how bad we are are the ones that we live with, and they know we don't blab everything we see, right?

And so that why we want to dwell with one another in unity in the church so that we may even be exposed so that we may have more opportunity to expose our sin to one another and then be able to get forgiveness and be able to get help and counsel And so your unbelief is something that in your heart if it there And it needs to be rooted out by you and by one another. I think we're to exhort one another. And so we love one another, we care for one another.

And that is why we talk about hard things. It's why we ask people questions. It's why if you're a man, you should know things. You can go up to another man and just ask them. And it shouldn't be like you're a bad guy because you ask somebody, hey, are you actually struggling with the thing that the researchers say that two-thirds of Christian men struggle with?

You read statistics, it says two-thirds of Christian men struggle with pornography, right? So there's five of us in this little Zoom call. It means three of us. So I don't think it'd be crazy to look at one another and say, hey, have you looked at porn lately? Do you masturbate? Like, I don't think that's a crazy thing to just go up and ask other Christians.

Now, I know some will act all offended, but why? Why would you be offended if you're not doing it? Say no, right? And if you are doing it and you hate it, then you repent and you say, oh, yes I struggle will you pray for me will you help me it's only the unrepentant who's going to be offended by probing questions ask people how's your how's your study time how you know how many hours this week did you spend in prayer you can ask people questions that if you really love them and there might be a way you have to ask it and you might have to sweet talk some people a little bit but I think we really need to just be more bold about some of these things.

Like Jason Roberts was saying yesterday, I think some of us just need thicker skin sometimes, you know, don't be so easily offended. But, you know, if you're concerned about whether or not someone's going to heaven, you're going to have to bring these things up. And so love one another and help people to see that even in the The called out people of God in the visible gathering of the church will say there will be people who we need to help to grow in the Lord.

And some of those people will actually have evil, unbelieving hearts and they'll fall away. But some of those people, their hearts will be softened by your loving exhortations and reproofs. So I'll stop there and I'll open it up for people to have comments and questions and maybe share what you learned in your study. I do like to hope you guys are reviewing the passage before we get to Friday so you will kind of know what's going on.

Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.