Hebrews 3:12-19; Jeremiah 23:1-8
What is the dumbest thing you
have ever done? I don’t say it out loud, but it’s
probably related to losing your keys or dropping your smartphone
in some body of water. It may relate to the garage door
in the car or leaving your purse or your wallet somewhere. But
you have probably done what we say are some pretty dumb things
in life. It’s just part of our nature.
It’s who we are. Our passage today tells us though,
it tells us that the height of human stupidity, the height of
human foolishness is to fall away from the living God. It’s a bit different than losing
your keys, or backing into the garage door, or dropping your
smartphone. Those things can be bought, or
replaced, or repaired, or fixed. The height of human stupidity
or foolishness is to fall away from the living God. And our
writer in Hebrews, the preacher to the Hebrew audience in the
early church, says we should be alert. We should take warning. There’s danger. We should encourage
one another in order that we might persevere in the faith
which we have before God. Here’s what I want you to hear
today. Christians. Christians, don’t fall away from
the living God. Don’t fall away from the living
God. Don’t fall away from the living God. First, he gives us
a warning. We find it in verse 12, where
he says, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an
evil and unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living
God. What is the warning? He says,
Take care. It’s an imperative. It’s a wake-up
word. Take care. There is a serious
reality at hand. And that serious reality is that
you you might fall away from the living God. Be watchful. Be watchful lest you, having
an evil, unbelieving heart, fall away from the living God. What does it mean to have a wicked
and unbelieving heart? Well, you’re so calloused. You
can’t hear God. You can’t see God. You no longer
want His counsel or His advice. Think of Adam and Eve in the
garden. Sweet fellowship with God. And one rule, don’t eat
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so you
can imagine day after day, happy fellowship with God, holy living
and satisfied with every good thing which he has provided for
them in that rich and wonderful garden. But one day their hearts
become so hard that when Satan, the serpent comes and enters
and he sweet talks them into eating from that tree which God
had forbidden. They no longer want to hear God and listen.
And that is the warning that is before us. Don’t have a hard
heart that causes you to fall away from the living God. Be watchful. For wicked hard-heartedness
can lead to unbelief. It leads to apostasy, to departing
from the faith, from stepping aside from the faith you once
declared as yours, and from leaving the living God. What is that
we sing in the hymn, Prone to Wonder? Lord, I feel it, prone
to leave the God I love. It’s a serious, serious threat,
dear brothers and sisters, that we might walk away from the living
God. And let me tell you, let me encourage
you, let me exhort you in this way. There is not a one who is
exempt. It happens to preachers. It happens
to ordinary men and women and boys and girls. One day they’re
walking in the faith and the next day they are not. No one is exempt. But to deny
the Lord and Master, the one who has bought us and saved us,
is a treacherous and horrible thing. You know, we wear our
seatbelts, hopefully. We lock our doors at night. We
turn on our alarm systems. We stay within the rails and
the markers on the road. We follow guidelines in the workplace
and in the marketplace. How much more should we follow
the rules, the spiritual guidance that God gives us? Take care,
brothers and sisters, lest you having an unbelieving heart fall
away from the living God. Now, what is he saying to us?
He’s saying that there may be some in the congregation, there
may be some in the visible church who have tasted and seen the
Lord as good, who have, in a rage of emotions and feeling great,
have said, I love the Lord, I love Jesus, I need Him. But because their faith is not
rooted in the work of the Holy Spirit, they begin to say, God
can’t save me. God can’t help me. God can’t
deliver me. And so they begin looking for
other resources from which to live out of. And God says, do
not fall into unbelief and faithlessness and even hard heartedness. This
is what took place in the company of Israel in the wilderness.
God had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. He had brought
them into the wilderness of Sinai. And He was about to deliver them
into the Promised Land. And they sent a delegation into
the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb and others. They went and
spied out the land to see if it did flow with milk and honey.
To see if there were cities and places where they might live
and dwell. And those men came back after
40 days. And they said, it is a wonderful
place. It is a grand land that God has provided for us. There
are grapes. There are cisterns we will not
have to dig. There are houses we will not
have to build. God is being good to us. But guess what? There are giants. And so some
in the congregation said, well, because there’s giants, we’re
not going. God can’t give us that promised land because those
Canaanites are big. Those Philistines are scary.
Their swords are heavier. Their blades are sharper. Their
chariots are faster. There is no possible way. that
God can give us that land. Now, this is the God who saved
them from Pharaoh. This is the God of the plagues
in Egypt, the God of the Red Sea and its crossing, the God
who gave water from the rock and bread from heaven and who
met with Moses face to face on the mountain, who gave the law,
who was gracious and kind to them. And so what does he say
to this unbelieving people in the wilderness. If you don’t
believe, you don’t get the promises. And so what is he saying to us,
dear brothers and sisters of the faith? Take care, warning,
danger, danger, lest you have an unbelieving heart, an unbelieving
heart. and fall away from the living
God. Now, some of you, I’m sure, asking
this question in your mind, can one who comes to true faith in
Jesus ever fall away? And the answer is no. He who
began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. But it is possible, dear friends,
to be a part of the church, to be in the church, to participate
in the life of the church, and not to have a spirit-wrought
new life and new birth. Jesus says that we must be born
again. He also says, many will say to
me, Lord, Lord, on that day. And I will say, apart from me,
away from me, I do not know you. And so let me encourage you to
examine yourself, as Paul says, to see if you are in the faith.
Do you know that you’re a sinner? Do you know that if you’re a
sinner, you’re in the hands of an angry God and his wrath and
his curse and his judgment are against you? As it has been said
in church history, his arrow is aimed at your heart, your
death sentence is soon to be executed. Do you have faith in
Jesus? Do you know that you’re a sinner
and that you need a Savior and that only Savior is Jesus? It’s
not your self-worth, your self-righteousness. It’s not anything you can do.
You come empty-handed on your knees and Jesus stands ready
to accept you. And if you have truly come to
faith in Jesus, you will never, ever be snatched from His hands. That’s what Jesus tells us in
the Gospel. But if you’re part of the church,
you’re around the church, you’re in the church, and you’ve made
a profession of faith, but you have walked away from Jesus,
you have stepped away from Him, this passage is telling you,
it is preaching to you, it is saying, time is short, and do
not fall away from the living God, no, come to faith in Jesus,
and rest in Him alone for your salvation. So there’s a warning
in this passage. Secondly, in verse 13, there’s
an encouragement. In fact, it’s not just an encouragement,
it’s an exhortation. And we read in verse 13, it says,
exhort one another every day as long as it is called today,
that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We know what the buddy system
is. We find a buddy. We stick with them. We hold hands. We walk through the park together.
We go on a field trip together. We’re on the buddy system. If
I’m okay, he’s okay. Or if she’s okay, I’m okay. But
we stick together. And friends, that buddy system
is built into the church. God has given us the church so
that we might identify with the people of God on earth. He’s
given us the church that we might be together, that we might love
one another, that we might forgive one another, that we might serve
one another and encourage one another marching on our way to
Zion. The writer of Hebrews, as well
as other places in the Old and New Testaments, tells us over
and over, we are not home. We are marching to Zion. We are
making our way to heaven. And you might have this picture
in mind of the saints walking together to Jerusalem to worship
God. And what did they do as they
walked from their towns surrounding the city of God? They talked
together. They sang psalms together. They
encouraged one another. I was glad when they said to
me, let us go to the house of the Lord. We see Jesus and his
family in the New Testament going to temple, going to worship. We walk alongside one another
in this life. We’re marching to Zion. We’re
marching to the new Jerusalem. And so what is the one thing
we should do to encourage one another along the way? We should
exhort one another. We should speak words of encouragement
and exhortation to one another that we may not fall away from
the living God and that we will reach heaven’s shores safely
and whole. Now, the context of this passage,
we don’t know exactly how often the Hebrews met, but it seems
to say, because it says, exhort one another every day as long
as it’s today, that they met pretty often. And that’s why
it’s a good thing for the church to be together pretty often.
We keep the Lord’s Day morning and evening. We have Sunday school.
We have midweek Bible studies and gatherings and fellowship
events. Maybe some of you hang out together at home or at the
coffee shop or in other places or venues. But we get together
often so that we don’t distance ourselves from the people of
God. And so the Hebrews most likely
met together often, frequently. It’s what others in other church
cultures do. We should be together often,
primarily on the Lord’s Day. But in our homes with hospitality
and around meals and all sorts of things, we need daily encouragement. Because we have daily shortcomings
and failures and falters, and so while it is today for tomorrow,
maybe too late, while it is today, we encourage we exhort one another
to follow after Jesus. And what does he say specifically
that we should exhort one another in? Well, Maybe this will point
out a little bit of how we should change our language. What do
we always talk about? How’s the weather? Sure doesn’t
seem like winter, does it? How about those Tar Heels? Or
that Wolf Pack? Or those Blue Devils? We talk
about things, and it’s okay to do so, but they’re trivial. They don’t make the world go
round, and they certainly don’t move heaven and earth. And notice
what he says in verse 13, we should exhort one another in. Exhort one another every day
that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. When is the last time someone
in your life said to you, I see where your eyes are gazing, I
see where your heart is focused. I can I can tell something is
amiss in your life and it’s idolatry. It’s ungodliness. You have been
deceived. By the shininess of sin, when
is the last time someone in this church said that to you? And
we may not want to know the answer. Now next week, if we ask, we
should hear something different. But what are we to do? I mean,
yes, we talk about the Tar Heels and the weather and the Blue
Devils and the Wolf Pack and what we did and Christmas. We
talk about all that. That’s fellowship, right? We
enjoy each other. But we must exhort one another. Have a good
friend in the faith who every time I leave his presence, he
says, press on. Keep the faith. Don’t lose heart. And his language to me is so
very different from what I hear from so many other brothers and
sisters. How about those heels? Nice weather
we’re having today. is very different from press
on. Keep the faith. Fix your eyes
on Jesus Christ. Cast aside every sin and weight
which entangles you and holds you back from running the race
that is set before you. Those are two different conversations.
One on this plane and one on this plane. And so you see what
the writer of Hebrews is encouraging us to do. Exhort one another. Now we don’t want to have this
ministry of exhortation where we take it upon ourselves to
become pharisaical and point out every fault. I remember early
in ministry had to separate physically two men in the church. One of
them had taken on with himself this ministry of confrontation. And he would put his finger in
the chest and say, this cross you’re wearing, it means nothing
because I see how you live. And he was attracting fistfights,
literally, from some of the young boys in the church. And he had
to say, you know, brother, it doesn’t quite mean that. You
know, have a relationship with somebody, get to know them, then
speak God’s Word to them. But no, we should speak God’s
Word comfortably with those whom we love. We need to get to know
one another. See what makes one another tick
and how we’re living life. And while it is today, before
it is too late, before we get hardened by sin and by its deceitfulness,
we need to speak of the realities of holiness. And sinfulness and
warn one another. Now, what is this deceitfulness
of sin that hardens our hearts? Couple examples, some of you
probably read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. And, you know,
young Edmund, who loves Turkish delight. And the white witch
promises him more Turkish delight if he’ll but come to her palace.
And she lures and entices him, and he goes, and it’s a deadly
event for him, spiritually. And he has to be rescued, he
has to be redeemed, and he’s a fool for taking delight in
this little dessert that can do nothing for him but make a
quick meal for his stomach and a short-lived sweet to his tooth. Or think of Adam and Eve. What
did Satan say to them? Did God really say you may not
eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Oh, he’s holding
back. He’s withholding from you all the good things he’s keeping
to himself. It’s like you kids who think mom and dad party at
night. You know, they send you off to bed and they open the
fridge and they get out the good stuff. That’s what Satan was
saying to Adam and Eve. God is holding back from you.
And so what does it say? It says Eve took the fruit. And
it was a delight to her eyes and she ate it and she gave some
also to her husband. Friends, sin is deceitful. And when it’s deceitful, it then
moves in your world and in your heart and you are hardened and
you live not by praise God, from whom all blessings flow. But
I wish I had what my neighbor had. or I wish this, I wish that,
and so we fail to give thanks to the Creator because we now
worship the created. And that is what we are to warn
each other from. We are to say it’s trickery,
it is deceitful, it is counterfeit, it cannot bring you lasting treasure.
God alone can give you what is truthful and honest and real
and eternal. You know, there’s a comparison
we might think of here. Encouragement in the church may
sound like the Word, and biblical words, and don’t do it, and press
on, and keep the faith. But there’s another set of words
that can come in the congregation, and it’s the words of grumbling.
And it’s the words that we read of from Psalm 95, and from that
Exodus and wilderness generation. They didn’t speak the Word of
God to each other. He’s a good God. He keeps His
promises. He gives us water from the rock
and bread from heaven. He parted the sea. He killed
the firstborn of Egypt. He rescued us from Pharaoh. No,
they grumbled and they murmured and they said, God cannot save. We were better off in hell. And
so you see the contrast of grumbling in the congregation and encouragement. in the congregation. We are to
continually exhort one another as long as it is today. There’s
a third thing in this passage. There’s the warning. There’s
the encouragement and then there’s this challenge to persevere.
We find it in verse 14. Verse 14 says, we share in Christ
if we indeed hold out our original confidence firm to the end. What is he saying to us? He’s
saying the Christian life is a race. That’s going to come
in the latter chapters of Hebrews. It’s a race. No, it’s it’s a
marathon and it’s a long haul trip. There’s a title about spiritual
life, a title to a book. It’s called A Long Obedience
in the Same Direction. We’re going to the finish line,
but it’s a long, agonizing, toilsome trip. It’s it’s like Pilgrim’s
Progress we read as children and even as adults, it’s a it’s
a hard fought, dangerous journey. But God has us on this journey
and he says you can finish the race. You must finish the race.
Stick to it. And he gives us fuel for the
journey. And what is that fuel for the
journey? We share in Christ. We are literally partakers in
Christ Jesus. We have everything we need for
life in this world, spiritually and physically, in Christ Jesus. He gives us everything in His
Word for life and for godliness. His Word is our only rule of
faith and practice. And so we share in Christ, we
live, we run, we journey out of that reality. And he says
to the wilderness generation, you’re not going to make it to
the promised land if you don’t hold firm and fast in your confidence. But what is he saying to us?
It’s not the promised land. It’s the promised land. It is the new heavens and the
new earth. If you don’t finish the race,
if your faith falters, And what does that mean? It means your
faith is not genuine. If your faith falters, you will
not make it. And guess what, friends? The
promised land was in their grasp. It was soon coming. It was theirs
to take. And they said, no, we don’t believe
you. We don’t love you. We don’t care
for you. You are not our Lord and master. And so, friends,
heaven is at your grasp. Lay hold of Jesus and hold fast
firm in the faith running the race that is before you. Jesus
Christ gives you the necessary means to persevere and to make
it. But again, let me ask you, are
you really a Christian? Have you really come to faith
in Jesus, recognizing that you’re a sinner in need of a Savior?
And do you truly share in him? Are you a partaker in Christ
or have you just prayed the prayer and said the statement and said,
I hope that one day I’ll be in heaven because God is better
than that. Jesus is greater than that. He
says to you, come to me, all you who are weary and I will
give you rest. And he gives you the food and the fuel and the
tools for the journey. If you don’t share in Jesus Christ,
if you are not a partaker in Jesus, you will not finish the
race. You cannot. You will stumble. You will fall
and you will fail. But in Christ Jesus, if your
eyes are fixed upon him, not on your sin and not on idols,
if you’re firm in your faith, not doubting he will see you
through to the end. That is the great grace of our
great God. And so Christians, let me echo
the warning I gave you at the outset. Do not fall away from
the living God. And he gives us three questions
here to remind us of Israel, but maybe it’s a good question
for you. Who was it that heard and rebelled? Was it not those
God saved out of Egypt? Who was it that provoked God
and for 40 years in the wilderness they put him to the test? It
was those who sinned and they died. Who was it that God swore
would never enter His rest? It was those who are disobedient. You see the contrast. Unbelief
and belief. Faith and faithlessness. Obedience
and disobedience. Friends, this little section
in Hebrews is kind of like that Scared Straight program. You
know when you’re in elementary school, they, I don’t know if
they do this anymore, it’s probably not politically correct, but they
take you to the county jail. and they slam the door and they
make it clink and shake and sometimes they put you in there. Of course
that would probably do psychological damage nowadays. But you know
the scared straight program. You don’t want to be in here.
Or before the prom they put a wrecked car out in front and you have
that little assembly that says don’t drink and drive on prom
night because your car will surely end up like this. This is one
of those scared straight kind of programs. Don’t be like Israel. Don’t be hard hearted and unbelieving
and faithless. And deny your Lord and master,
Jesus. So here is a warning. Here is an encouragement. Here
is a challenge to persevere that you may enter the rest, not of
the promised land, but of the new heavens and the new earth.
Friends, let me say it loud and clear today. If you hear the
voice of Jesus, do not harden your heart. But believe in him
resting in him alone for your salvation.