This teaching by Shawn focuses on the importance of faith in the life of a believer, using the example of the faithlessness of the children of Israel in the wilderness. He emphasizes the need to trust in God and not harden our hearts in unbelief, drawing parallels between the actions of the Israelites and the potential pitfalls for believers today. The teaching encourages repentance for failing to fully trust in God and challenges listeners to hold fast to their faith until the end.

Watch on YouTube

Hebrews 3-End Part 1 Bible Teaching Script

Hebrews 3.
August 18th 2013

I am really blessed to be here with you, my brothers and sisters – my friends – and pray that the Lord will bless our time together.

Let’s PRAY, then we’ll take some time to reflect upon the word of God in song.

After a few minute of personal reflection we’ll get into our text for today – John chapter 3.

PRAYER
MUSIC
REFLECTION

Okay, we left off last week where the writer compares Jesus Christ to Moses.

And we ended where he pointed out (in his effort to show Jesus was superior or “better” than Moses) that Moses was “faithful” to all “His house” AS A SERVANT . . . but that Jesus, in the first line of verse six, was faithful to all the world AS A SON.

And we talked a bit about the difference between being a child of God or a Son (or daughter).

Whether you realize this or not but here in chapter three we are in the midst of a Master’s course on what it means to be a genuine, authentic, “from the heart,” sold-out Son or Daughter of Glory AND . . . AND what the opposite picture looks like . . . which is a person of NO FAITH.

It is the absence or presence, the strength or weakness of FAITH . . . that determines the walk, life, and yes, even the future status of every believer.

I’ve had a few comments from people about the idea of Sons and Daughters of God verses Children which we talked about last week – some concern came from people who are quite mature in their walk and a few from relatively new believers so I think it is important to pause for just a second and reiterate the importance of the means by which believers mature in Christ.

(beat)

It is all (and I mean ALL) about growing in faith . . .which then translates to growing in our capacity to love.

Faith always, always comes first, then out ability to love in some sort of proportional relationship.

Little faith, little capacity to love with agape love.
Large faith, the potential for large love.

It takes faith to believe God has forgiven me of my sins. But in believing this fact I am then better equipped to forgive others of their sins against me – and that is love.

It takes faith to believe God will avenge all wrongs. And with that faith in place I am able to turn the other cheek – which is loving.

It takes faith to believe God desires that I serve and help those in need – and that He is aware of all my secret in this vein. So by such faith I act by giving my time and resources unconditionally to others . . . and this is loving.

And if we step back and look at each of these scenarios, every one of them contains an element of walking by the spirit (instead of by the flesh) of suffering (to do His will over my own), and of being willing to be disciplined (or taught) by Him – which are the three elements we mentioned last week to becoming a Son or Daughter:

Walking by the Spirit
A willingness to be disciplined by God, and suffering. Remember?

Don’t ever let me (or anyone else) lead you to believe that becoming a Son means doing, doing, doing.

It means dying, dying, dying and letting God lead us toward greater faith on Him and less reliance on ourselves.

This is at the heart of the passages we are reading today in Hebrews chapter three. And as I said, there are some absolutely profound messages the writer provides . . . to those with ears to hear and eyes to see.

(PRAYER for the HOLY SPIRIT to teach us all things at this juncture)

Okay. After the line about Jesus being a Son verse 6 continues saying:

“whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.”

(NOW, in order to really capture what is being said here we have to do two difficult things today – we have to study the whole rest of the chapter in context with each verse presented AND we have to study each verse carefully.

Add in our time constraints and I am going to give it my best to capture the essence of the Big Picture of these verses and show how they relate to the utmost importance of faith, faith, faith. (verse 7)

7 Wherefore . . .

(as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

. . . 12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

7 “. . . To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation,
and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me,
and saw my work.
10 Forty years long was I grieved with this
generation, and said, It is a people that do err
in their heart, and they have not known my ways:
11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they
should not enter into my rest.”
Psalm 95:7-11

Alright, back to verse six. Now, today our study gets just a little bit dicey (not too bad, though – you can handle it) due to a kind of long parenthetical reference the writer includes in his epistle.

So let me turn to the “trusty board” one more time to help us all understand what is going on here.

(TO THE BOARD)

The writer of Hebrews has been comparing Jesus to Moses in a number of different ways from verse 1 through 6.

And then in verse 7 he writes:

“Wherefore . . .” to give us a warning or caution. (are you with me so far?)

Then right after saying, “Wherefore,” he goes into this parenthetical reference which lasts all the way down until the end of verse 11 where it stops.

And then at verse 12 he CONTINUTES with his thought tied to “Wherefore,” saying

“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief,”

So, if we took the parenthetical reference OUT we could really read it all together as:

“Wherefore, take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you a heart of unbelief.”

Now this is his whole point – don’t let your hearts get hardened because the end result is UNBELIEF! So he says:

“Wherefore, take heed brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.”

Listen, with sin having been wiped away by our God and King, there remains only one sin for which there is NO FORGIVENESS in this world NOR IN THE WORLD TO COME –

Unbelief. Faithlessness.

As a means to provide the Hebrew reader (and then us) with examples of faithlessness . . . and the end results of it IF it is allowed to grow and coat the hardened heart, the writer appeals to a very familiar story for any Jew – the story of Moses leading the children of Israel OUT of Egypt (bondage) and into the wilderness and how the children of Israel responded.

And instead of retelling the entire tale from Exodus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, he simple quotes Psalm 95, which gives us a summary of his point.

It is this quote from Psalm 95 that makes up the parenthetical reference of our chapter today.

And the quote is SUBSTANTIVE! Meaty! And oh so applicable.

You see Psalms 95 references how the Children of Israel continued to “harden their hearts toward God when they were in the wilderness under Moses instead of looking back on all the miracles they had seen and choosing to trust God.

Got that?

So . . . again.

His point is to warn the reader against hardening their hearts to the point of unbelief.
And he quotes from Psalms 95 as an example of what not to be like as Christians.

So I am not going to talk about the “wherefore take heed instructions until after we explore the Psalm 95 reference.

Got it?

(BACK FROM BOARD)

So (again) in verse six we read:

“But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.”
7 Wherefore (now the PARENTHETICAL REFERENCE begins).

The first thing we notice about the quote from Psalms 95 is that the author tells us that the Holy Spirit dictated it or said it.

“as the Holy Ghost saith,”

Anyone who does not believe the Psalms are inspired might first take a look at this support that it was “God Breathed.”

Recall what Paul said in 2nd Timothy 3:16

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

This passage, while applicable to the New Testament was specifically referring to the Old Testament, and that word for “inspiration” in the Greek is “theopneustos.”

If we break it down it is THEO (referring to God) and “Pneustos” with a P (as in “pneumonia” or “pneumatic”) and it means breathed – “God breathed”

“All scripture is God breathed,” 2nd Timothy says. And just how did God breath the scripture out?

2nd Peter 1:21 says it pretty well:

“For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

It is interesting and beautiful that God also breathed into the formed clay during the creation of Adam and he became a living soul.

In other words, the breath of God inspires or gives life. When God breathed into Adam He became alive.

When Men and women read God’s word (which originated from God breathing on men and inspiring them to write) we are also made alive or inspired, hence the import of the Word in a Christians life.

Critics of the Bible say things like:

“The Bible was just written by a bunch of men.”

In a way this is true. But they neglect to add that these men spoke and wrote when the Holy Spirit fell upon them.

In any case the writer of Hebrews tells us that it was the Holy Spirit who uttered both Psalm 95: 7-11 and the events Psalm 95 refers.

Again, Psalm 95 (verses 7-11) talks about how the children of Israel, while in the wilderness, having come out of Egypt, had hardened their hearts against God (in a number of different ways) and how God was grieved over their unbelief.

And in the end we will see that as a result of their unbelief they were not allowed to enter into the promised land.

Again, this teaching is being presented as a PICTURE to believers, to Holy brethren as the chapter starts out calling the intended audience.

So that is a summary of these passages in Psalm 95: 7-11. But this is what the passages actually say (and what the writer of the Book of Hebrews wants the readers of his epistle to understand):

7 (“To day (children of Israel) if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore (God said through the Holy Spirit) I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

“Today,” the writer quotes from Psalm to these Christian believers, “Today is the time to believe and resist the temptation to harden the heart toward unbelief. Today . . . now.

I would suggest the term has significance because doubt is sort of like the mirror negative of faith in how it works.

What I mean by this is it begins in small ways and snowballs forward until it has consumed a soul.

This SEEMS to be a principle no matter what the object of our faith appears to be. It’s like a universal rule.

If you have established your faith in the wisdom of seagulls the destruction of such faith BEGINS with a single doubt – which, if allowed to thrive, could grow into another and another.

So whether the object of our faith and devotion is true (as in the True and Living God) or is false (as in faith in David Koresh or Communism or Mormonism) the destruction of such faith is cumulative – and so the directive is “Act today! Now!”

“Today, if ye will hear” he quotes (verse 8)

8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

In other words, the writer challenges us and the Christian recipients of his epistle,

“Don’t harden your hearts (as in the day when the children of Israel provoked God – or another way he puts it “in the day when they tempted God when they were in the wilderness”) – He goes on in verse 9, adding or reiterating the event he is talking about by quoting God, who says)

9 “When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years” Don’t harden your hearts like they did back in the day.

They saw my works (my miracles) but they still tempted me, tried to “prove” me, and hardened their hearts along the way.

Now stay with me.

How (exactly) – OR – in what ways were the children of Israel’s hard hearts manifested when they were in the wilderness with Moses?

How did they specifically “tempt the Lord?” and test and get Him to prove Himself when they were in the wilderness?

(beat)

This is really important to understand because in the very same ways that the faithless children of Israel departed from the faith and established hardened hearts BELIEVERS today can, will, and take the very same approach to hardening their own.

So let’s look at the things that the Children of Israel did that got God’s anger up with them, and ultimately lead to their hearts being hard with unbelief, which then lead to them not being allowed to enter into the promised land, okay?

And REMEMBER! REMEMBER!

The things they did THAT really truly angered God was entirely based in faithlessness, my friends.

In failing to put their faith and trust in the true and living God!

We have to note that God did not get wrought with them for their failures in the flesh NEARLY as much as it was crimes and sins of sheer faithlessness that got His anger riled.

Now, the first “provocation” occurs in Exodus 15. The COI had seen a number of miracles at the hand of God –

They had seen and knew of all the things He did with Pharaoh and the plagues . . .

. . . then he put a pillar of fire between them and the pursuing armies to protect them . . .

. . . then Moses split the Red Sea . . .

. . . then they crossed it on dry ground while surrounded by high walls of water . . .

. . . then He destroyed the Egyptians who pursued them by closing the sea in over them.

And so we, who have come to faith, can look back over our lives and SEE the wonderful works God has done in delivering us from captivity.

In working in and through our lives. In protecting us and shielding us, and removing us from the captivity of spiritual bondage.

You with me? All of this “picturing” what God does in each of our lives when we become His.

And once the COI are in the wilderness what do they do? They begin to doubt – to lose faith.

And it came by way of complaints.

Complaints are the product of worry, and discomfort, and irritations and they are truly based in the nascent workings of faithlessness. ADDITIONALLY, complaints are merely a manifestation or revelation of what is in the heart.

What’s did Jesus say to the Pharisees?

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks?”

The complaining was evidence that they had no faith in God, that they had lost contact with, or never had hope in his ability to save and lead and help them.

But we have biblical instruction, given to guide our thoughts. Remember?

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

I do not think there is a single passage that
Better describes the ultimate mindset we Christians ought to fully receive.

Can we take a minute and collectively and individually repent for our FAILURES to live up to this advice?

Take a minute with me – right now – and let’s repent for FAILING to

“Trust in the LORD with all our heart; and (for leaning to our own) Understanding. (That we will . . .) In all our ways acknowledge Him, and (allow Him to) direct our paths.”

Now, the FIRST complaint the Children of Israel offered up was they arrived at a place called Marah and the water there was not potable.

It was a challenge. It was a trial of their faith.

How did they respond to this trial? Exodus 15 says they

“Looked to the heavens and said, Oh Lord God we trust you and will wait on you to care for us?” No?

No, they murmured and complained to Moses saying, “What are we gonna drink?”

Faithlessness.

They would have been better to look to the heavens, sit down in the dust, and pray that God would refresh them – to wait on Him to refresh them.

But that’s NOT what children do. They whine, complain, throw tantrums, fear, and doubt.

And so it is when we seem to be lacking the living water He gives. So it is with us when we experience a little spirit thirst.

Do we sit and wait, or do we wet our whistles with other God’s, doubting the willingness and ability of ours to refresh us according to His will?

The next act of faithlessness the Children of Israel took to provoke and tempt the Lord occurred in a land that was literally called, Sin.

There it appears they suffered from lack of food. How did they respond?

The same way. They complained and murmured to Moses.

Moses lets them know that in no uncertain terms that they are “not murmuring against him but against God.”

He is the source and they had seen Him save and work. But they insisted in NOT walking and waiting in faith, but to question the Lord God, and doubt whether He would supply them their needs . . . or not.

“You’re not complaining against me,” Moses tells them, but against the Lord God, who has proven time and time again that he will feed you.

God hears them, and sends them bread – manna from heaven. Another radical miracle. Did it soften their hearts or increase their faith?

Nope. They just went from one faithless worry and complaint to the next.

IN Rephidem they found themselves thirsty again. Everytime they were thirsty or lacking water God provided. But did they remember this? Never.

And they complained and complained in faithlessness, and actually said:

“you have taken us out from our home and comfort in Egypt only to die of thirst out here!”

So God told Moses to go to a rock and smite it – and it would bring forth water – which he did . . . and it did.

And Moses called that place, “Massah,” due to the chiding the COI did there, asking:

“Is the Lord among us or not?”

Faithlesness.
Hearts of unbelief.
Doubt, manifested in complaints.
Worry that provoked God to anger.

As a believer have you ever asked,

“Is the Lord here with me or not?”

Think about this for a minute. ANYTIME we, as believers, wonder “if the Lord is with us,” we are standing in the midst of a trial of our faith.

Our true and living God is FULLY aware of it, and according to His wisdom acts.

Do we trust it? Do we believe He will?

Because it is by and through such trials we grow and are able, in the future, to face and walk through far deeper waters.

The next great act of provocation came when Moses went up to Sinai to receive the law.

The Children of Israel were left alone for quite some time and they got anxious. In short order, worried that they would be left alone to fend for themselves in the wilderness, they demanded that Aaron make them a god that would lead them and that they could worship.

So Aaron created a golden calf that represented, in my opinion, the God who lead them out of captivity.

On this idol they focused their attention. I’m sure it served for some as a place to focus all their frustration and fears. For others it was an icon they could see, and for others it provided comfort by hearkening back to the idols they grew familiar with in Egypt.

Idols that the Children had not completely left behind.

We do it all the time as believers who walk by faith, don’t we?

We used to do drugs all the time – now only when we are stressed or fearful.

We used to lose our temper, but now only when we feel distant from Him.

We used to get plastered – now we just keep the edge of with a nightly buzz.

We only sneak porn every now and again.

We only gossip when it would help the church, never to hurt.

All vestiges of our former lives – still lingering in the immediate past, waiting to share the throne with our king.

A dangerous and precarious state of mind and heart.

Because the children of Israel looked back to the golden bull idol God literally wanted to wipe them out – destroy them completely and start over.

Moses convinced him otherwise.

Believers run the same risk – destruction – when they keep former idols in their reach . . . when God seems distant or absent.

Gotta be careful we don’t allow ourselves to faithlessly keep vestiges of our former lives around – all it says is, “I don’t fully trust God can supply all my wants and needs.”

But such things will only seek to rise up to their former place in our lives and take control.

In another incident of faithlessness, and in another instance of longing for elements of “their former lives,” (even if it was lives of bondage) the Lord had been providing them with manna from heaven and they got tired of it, I mean ungratefully tired of it.

Numbers 11:4-6 says:

“And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?
5 We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:
6 But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.”

Pictures, folks, pictures.

When times get lean, we not only wonder who will feed us but we relish the times we were full and fat when walking in the world!

How before we were Christian the good times, the socials, the money, the concerts – and now, now, “here I am, barely even to keep my head above water!”

In terms of Moses leadership over the Children of Israel, there is a final failure of faith on their part.

It occurs in a place called Kadesh.

Moses had sent spies into Canaan (the promised land) and the spies came back with both fruit and a report of giants in the land – lots of them.

And fear overcame their faith. Numbers 14:1 says:

And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.
2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!
3 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?
4 And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.”

So the writer of Hebrew says,

7 Wherefore . . .
(as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

. . . 12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

We will cover verses 12 through 19 next week.

(TO THE BOARD)
The writer of Hebrews has been comparing Jesus to Moses in a number of different ways from verse 1 through 6.
And then in verse 7 he writes:
“Wherefore . . .” to give us a warning or caution. (are you with me so far?)
Then right after saying, “Wherefore,” he goes into this parenthetical reference which lasts all the way down until the end of verse 11 where it stops.
And then at verse 12 he CONTINUTES with his thought tied to “Wherefore,” saying
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief,”
So, if we took the parenthetical reference OUT we could really read it all together as:
“Wherefore, take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you a heart of unbelief.”
Now this is his whole point – don’t let your hearts get hardened because the end result is UNBELIEF! So he says:
“Wherefore, take heed brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.”
Listen, with sin having been wiped away by our God and King, there remains only one sin for which there is NO FORGIVENESS in this world NOR IN THE WORLD TO COME –
Unbelief. Faithlessness.
As a means to provide the Hebrew reader (and then us) with examples of faithlessness . . . and the end results of it IF it is allowed to grow and coat the hardened heart, the writer appeals to a very familiar story for any Jew – the story of Moses leading the children of Israel OUT of Egypt (bondage) and into the wilderness and how the children of Israel responded.
And instead of retelling the entire tale from Exodus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, he simple quotes Psalm 95, which gives us a summary of his point.
It is this quote from Psalm 95 that makes up the parenthetical reference of our chapter today.
And the quote is SUBSTANTIVE! Meaty! And oh so applicable.
You see Psalms 95 references how the Children of Israel continued to “harden their hearts toward God when they were in the wilderness under Moses instead of looking back on all the miracles they had seen and choosing to trust God.

Got that?
So . . . again.
His point is to warn the reader against hardening their hearts to the point of unbelief.
And he quotes from Psalms 95 as an example of what not to be like as Christians.
So I am not going to talk about the “wherefore take heed instructions until after we explore the Psalm 95 reference.
Got it?
(BACK FROM BOARD)