Hebrews 3:13

The series of messages that I am doing are intended to help those who want to have a closer walk with God to know how to do it.  God wants our love.  For some of us, we are like the church in Ephesus that lost their first love.  If so, you need to get that second love, that deeper love for God back. 

We spoke of the need for prayer and the need to be a life-long learner of the Bible.  The third step you can take in your life to walk closer to God is to be involved in a local church.

What do we mean when we say that to walk closer to God is to be involved in a local church?  What kind of involvement do we mean?

When we challenged the graduates, we spoke about how God has given the church pastors and teachers to build us up in our faith.  We need to be involved in learning from godly teachers.

We also spoke about how God has given gifts to Christians for the benefit of all other Christians.  We need to take advantage of what others have to offer us as well as offer to others whatever we have.

This morning I want to mention a third level of involvement.  

We should be involved in a local church to such an extent that we connect with people who are able to help us fight sin in our lives.

This term I use, “fighting sin,” is not a term that some of you would use to identify yourself.  You are not aware of anything horrible that you are doing, so you don’t feel like you are in a battle.  But you are.

Others know what I am talking about.  You are a follower of Jesus and you fight with the words that come out of your mouth, temptations in sexual areas or with pornography.  You have anger issues or are fighting depression that relates to sinful choices that you have made.  You are trying to follow Jesus, but your sinful past keeps popping up in unexpected ways.  Fighting sin is real for you.  You are in a battle.  God has given you a new heart, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

God has given you a resource to use in fighting sin.  You can pray.  You can read your Bible.  But he has given you the church, other Christians to help you in your battle with sin.

Let’s take a moment to think about this.  The one thing that separates us from God is our sin.  The Holy Spirit works in us to make us holy.  The Bible convicts us of our sin.  God wants us a clean vessels that he can use. So he provided one more resource for us to help us fight sin.  He provided other Christians.

My proof text is Hebrews 3:12–13 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

We cannot with the long-term battle in isolation. I do not believe it is a coincidence that David was alone when he sinned with Bathsheba, that Sampson was alone when he fell with Delilah, that Judas acted in secret and alone when he betrayed Jesus.  The potential is in every one of our hearts to have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

Have you ever heard of Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker or Gordon McDonald?  What is common to all is that all were effective preachers who betrayed their trust before God.  It is not hard for people to isolate themselves, be deceived by sin and then fall.  We need to be careful that we don’t become smug.  When we isolate ourselves from other believers, we increase the danger of turning away from the living God.

Read the book of Acts and you will find that Paul was rarely alone.  The apostles were often together in a group.  Everyone who called themselves a Christian met with a group of fellow Christians for encouragement.

This passage in Hebrews 3 is the application of a message given by the writer of this book.  The author is a Jewish person, a good writer, who draws heavily on his knowledge of the Old Testament.  Hebrews 3 is an expository message on Psalm 95 from the Septuagint.  Psalm 95 is a Psalm of praise and warning.  The author connects the warning part of Psalm 95 to events in Numbers 13 and 14.

In Numbers 13-14 the nation of Israel had unbelieving hearts that turned away from the living God. Turning away from the living God is the big issue in the passage in Hebrews.  Let’s look at the story.

God commanded Moses to choose twelve leaders, one from each tribe, to go into Canaan, what is present day Israel to scout it out for an invasion.

The twelve men went, looked at the potential for battle and for the potential for living in the land.  They returned after forty days and gave the following report.

“We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey!  Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large…”

Calab, one of the men, spoke up and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” 

Ten of the men said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”  They then started to spread their negative report among the people. The people listened to them and came and said, “We should chose a leader and go back to Egypt.”

God speaks.  He says in effect, look at all the miracles I have done for you.  I parted the Red Sea, I fed you with manna from heaven, I gave you water and protection.  Yet you still do not trust me and treat me with contempt.  I told you to scout the land to prepare to take it, now you have seen the land, how strong the people are, how big the obstacles are and you are turning back.  You want to go back to Egypt of all places, back into slavery, back into the mess you were in before.

The people said, “We were wrong.  We will go and fight the people.”  God says, “Don’t go.  It’s too late.  I will not go with you.”  They go anyway and are soundly defeated.  They now wander for forty years, one year for every day the spies were in the Promised Land.

How does the episode in Numbers 13-14 tie in with Psalm 95 and Hebrews 3?  The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95.  It is the passage from which he builds his whole sermon.  And how does this tie in with us?

Hebrews 3:7–11 7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:  “Today, if you hear his voice, 8do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. 10That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ 11So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

The tie in comes in that it is just as easy for our hearts to become hard as it was for Israel in Numbers 13-14. 

When we test and try God’s patience by continual rebellion against what he has clearly said to us, we run into problems.  Our hearts become hard.  Every time we say “no” to God, we place another layer of hardener on our hearts.

If you were to read Psalm 95, you would find that two place names in Psalm 95 are translated here in Hebrews 3.  In Psalm 95, the word “Meribah”, which is a place in the Sinai desert, is translated as “the rebellion” in Hebrews 3:8.  The word “Meribah” means “the quarreling” or “rebellion.”  The word “Massah” in Psalm 95 is another place name from the desert.  “Massah” is translated “testing” here in Hebrews 3:8.  These come from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament. 

 The author takes this translation and applies it to what happened at Kadesh Barnea in Numbers 13-14.  It would be like an author writing down the words, “the city of brotherly love” when speaking of Philadelphia and then applying the phrase “city of brotherly love” to Palermo.

In Kadesh Barnea, twelve spies were sent out. The Majority report from ten was, “Don’t go.  The people are big and strong. We will lose.”  The Minority report from the two was, “Go.  God is strong. We will win.”  The people disobeyed, so they did not get to enter the land.  Why? Because they did not believe!  God told them to go and they did not go.  They turned back.

The writer to Hebrews has Jewish people who have heard about God’s love and grace in Jesus who are thinking of rejecting Christ and returning back to Judaism.  Jesus has brought them out of Egypt, out of sin, and has promised a rest for them in heaven.  Meantime they were in this world and struggling with the sin of rebellion and disobedience.  He warns them, “do not harden your hearts…”

 I fear that some of you here are struggling with obedience to God.  You are faced with a command of God that seems difficult to you.  You see that the benefit, the fruit of obedience would be good, but everyone and everything makes obedience look very difficult, if not impossible.  Your unsaved friends are telling you to hold back.  Your family is not sure that you should do what is so clearly the will of God.  Your own heart is quivering at stepping forward.  At this point it seems that it would be much easier to find a new leader and retreat back into what you have been saved out of.  The battle is real.

The battle may be in the area of priorities.  One can always tell what a person’s priorities are by what they do.  If a person says that they believe that prayer is important but doesn’t pray, then prayer is not a priority for that person.  If a person says that knowing the Bible is a priority, but doesn’t read it or go where it is taught, then knowing the Bible is not a priority.  Whenever we have a choice between two options, the one we choose is the one that is our real priority.  We need to make sure that our priorities are godly priorities.

The battle may be one of relationships.  God is clear about purity and the importance of marriage.  Yet, the world tells us that sleeping together, living together, being with someone with different religious views is ok.  God says different.

If we have been called out of Egypt, out of sin, we do not need to return there.  We need to go with God into the rest he has for us in Jesus.  Why would we want to return?

Hebrews 3:12–13 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

First, we would return to Egypt because we are victims of deception.  We believe something is good that is bad.  That is what Israel faced.  What looked bad, fighting a strong enemy, was actually good because God was in it.  What looked good, finding a new leader and going back to Egypt, was bad because God was not in it.  Israel was deceived.

Second, we would return to Egypt because we have allowed our hearts to be hardened.  We harden our hearts by repeatedly saying “no” to God.  I have seen some people who have been Christians for a long time who have developed hard hearts.  They are comfortable with their Christian faith and ignore the voice of God speaking to them.  I have seen non-Christians listen to God speak to them.  Some have seemed on the verge of faith in Christ, but have hardened their hearts and said “no” to God.  If you say “no” over and over, you will come to the place where saying “yes” will be most awkward.

Third, we return to Egypt because we do not believe.  “The Bible sounds good,” we say, “but it’s not practical where I live.”  I will tell you that if that is so, you live in the wrong place.  The Bible is God’s handbook for real life.  Your ideas may work for a while.  But your pride and arrogance before God will cause you to come to the place where you stumble.

Fourth, we return to Egypt because we sin.  The word has the idea of “missing the mark.”  An archer would shoot an arrow.  If he missed the piece of bark designated on the tree, he would “miss the mark.”  I don’t care what name you give it when you turn away from the living God. The result is the same. You miss the mark.

So how do we stop this deception?  How do we keep our hearts soft?  How do we keep the faith when the enemy is so powerful?  How can we stop from missing the mark? How do we stop from turning back?

The Bible’s remedy is to connect with the church, to connect with believers.  13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

How are you doing in your spiritual life?  Is your heart on fire for God or are you going cold?  What are you struggling with in your life?  You need encouragement.

The person beside you does as well.  Someone may have come here today and said to himself, “This is the last time I will be in church.  I am struggling and no one cares.  Jesus doesn’t help, prayer doesn’t work and the Bible is a puzzle to me.”  Who will encourage them?  Who will listen to their cry?  Who will pray with and for them?  Who knows them well enough to come alongside them with godly advice?

That is your job.  Every one of us is to both receive and give encouragement.  We cannot do that if we are alone.  We cannot do that if we do not fellowship with one another.  We cannot do that if we walk in the building, talk to no one, and walk out again.  We cannot do that if we put up walls or excuses to being encouragers to others and to receiving encouragement.

We need it daily.  Sunday morning is not enough.  We need to encourage one another every day.  Whether it is when we meet one another, encounters through telephone calls, email or facebook, whether it is attendance at services of the chrch, we need encouragement today.  As long as it is called “today” encourage one another.

If you say that you don’t need daily encouragement spiritual, you are already deceived.  God’s word says that we need it.  If we say we don’t, we are the ones who do not recognize its important.

What is saddest about this is that without the encouragement, we will fall into sin.  That sin will separate us from God.  When our hearts are hard, we will be deaf to the voice of God. 

If we want to be close to God, we absolutely need the church, the body of believers, other Christians to encourage us in our walk with God.

So what would I suggest to you?

First, I would encourage you to ask this question: why not be with the believers when they are gathered together?

We so often ask, “Why should I go?”  I would suggest that you ask, “Why should I not go?”  I will tell you that the question you choose is indicative of your heart.  If there were some place you really want to be, you would only miss being at that place if something more important came up.  If there is a place you don’t want to be, it would take a real good reason for you to show up.  I would encourage you to ask the question, “Why shouldn’t I be with the believers when they gather together.”

Second, I would encourage you to look at the church as three circles.  The larger circle is the celebration gathering.  That is what we do this morning.  The second is the large group meeting.  This group is smaller than the celebration and allows for more interaction, but is still larger than the third circle, the small group.  The large group might be some larger Sunday school classes or evening service.  The small group is where a few people intentionally seek to help one another with the Nitti gritty of the Christian life. These are the people who really encourage you on a personal level.  This happened for me at prayer meeting Wednesday night.

Each one of the three circles has a distinct role.  The small group is intimate.  Much good can be done there.  But small groups can unintentionally take on a life of their own that separates them from their function as a member of the church of Jesus Christ.  We are called to serve one another.  The larger group provides personalized instruction and an opportunity to see the needs and use the gifts of the greater body.  The celebration service is a time for the whole church to join together in unity to hear a common message that will promote unity and to experience the fuller aspect of worship to our Lord.

I would encourage you to incorporate at least one experience in each of the three circles on a regular basis.

Third, I would encourage you to encourage.  I would encourage you to encourage daily.  We are beaten down enough by life that we need people to encourage us and to encourage others.  Sometimes we encourage by praise, by thanksgiving.  Sometimes we encourage by rebuking and then helping someone make necessary changes.  Our reason for encouragement is to help people walk with God. Whatever form you use, I would encourage you to encourage.

May God bless us as we seek to obey his word and do his will.