Hebrews 3:7-11
If we were to advertise in the
newspaper for weeks and weeks with pictures and lots of space,
and we were to put a sign on our marquee, and maybe balloons
on all the corners of our property, and maybe one of those lights
that the car dealers rent sometimes that shines a light around the
city, and we let it be known that Jesus was going to be speaking
from our pulpit on a particular Sunday, guess what? We would
have a full house. We would have packed pews. There
would be no elbow room, no wiggle room. It would be a tight space. There would be people standing
in the sides and down the aisles. We’d be bringing in extra chairs.
We would have every space filled that we could find. Well, brothers
and sisters, let me tell you this. The book of Hebrews is
telling you that Jesus is speaking to you. And yes, He does it through
men. He does it through His ministers
of the gospel. He does it through His servants.
But every Lord’s Day, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, century
after century, for over 2,000 years now, when God’s Word is
faithfully read, and explained and proclaimed, Jesus is speaking
to you. And we wonder, why are our seats
not full? Why are the ears of the people
not listening to Jesus, the great Son of God, the Eternal One?
Why are they not listening? Well, our passage today gives
us some help into understanding the nature of man. It helps us
understand not only that Jesus is speaking, but that people
often aren’t listening. Jesus speaks to us by His Word
and Spirit through preaching in the context of worship. He speaks to us when we have
events in the life of the church that are word-centered, when
the elders call us together. He tells us in the fourth commandment
we are to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. We are to
follow the first, second, and third commandments. No other
gods, no idols. Do not take God’s name in vain.
And he tells us in the book of Hebrews, in a passage we’ll come
to in the weeks to come, do not forsake assembling together. And so we understand that Jesus
is speaking and God expects us to be in the audience. And he issues today in our passage,
and he’s going to issue it also in the passages in the weeks
to come, but he issues a warning to us, a wake up call. There
is a danger to not listening to Jesus. To not listen to Jesus
is deadly. It’s devastating. The consequences
are grave. And so there is blessing in God
speaking to us and saying, Wake up. Listen up. Open your ears. Put yourselves in the pew. Friends, there is a blessing
in possessing a firmly held faith in Jesus Christ. Now, in our
passage today, There is reference to Psalm 95. There’s reference
to Exodus 17. There’s reference to Numbers
20. And we’ve heard a little bit about the themes of these
passages from the Old Covenant and weeks past. But you remember
the people of God were in Egypt. They were laboring in the camps
of Pharaoh, and they cried out to God and said, we are worn
out and weary with these taskmasters. Rescue us. And so God raised
up a mediator. He raised up a servant in Moses
who would rescue and redeem them. Well, Israel was taken out of
Egypt. They went into the wilderness.
They crossed the sea on dry land. They needed bread, and so it
fell from heaven. The people of God on two occasions,
one in Exodus 17 and another in Numbers 20, they cried out
to God for water. We ourselves, our children and
our livestock are thirsty. We are going to perish in the
wilderness. And so God told Moses, take the staff, the same staff
that he used to do signs and wonders before Pharaoh, take
that staff and tap the rock. And from that rock, water will
come. And the people will drink and
be satisfied. Well, over time, life in the wilderness, life
in the hard times of wandering caused the people to complain
yet again. And they quarreled, they fussed, they whined against
God. And Moses said, God, I need your
help again. He said, take the staff, tap
the rock. And you remember the second time, Moses in his anger
tapped the rock twice. And God said, you have not treated
my holiness with respect. You will not enter the promised
land. But he also said to the people of God, because of your
quarreling, because of your testiness, because of your great sin against
me, your provider, you will not enter the promised land. So you
see, there is a danger in not listening. And God takes these
Old Testament stories ones which would have been well known to
the audience of Hebrews because of their attendance and their
listening ears in the synagogue. And he speaks of the wilderness
rebellion and God’s judgment. And he says to the Hebrews, and
he says to you and I who sit here today, this is a sobering
message. Listen to the voice of Jesus. And do not be rebellious. Do
not be hard-hearted. Do not put the Lord your God
to the test. Well, in this passage there are
five things that the writer speaks of about the people of God. And
these are things that we do not want to be true for us. Notice
the first thing it says of Israelites. They were hard-hearted. They
showed contempt to Almighty God. Now, what does it mean that they’re
hard-hearted? Some of you probably take some
sort of medicine to remove the hardness in your arteries. You
want your blood to flow. Maybe your cholesterol is high
and there’s been a clogging of your arteries. Well, that’s what
this hard-heartedness is. They have dried out. They have
dried up. They have become hardened toward
God. Their heart, their spiritual heart does not beat for God. It does not beat for Jesus. It
does not want to serve him. They have become weary. They
have become weary with God and his wilderness ways. And they
say he has brought us out here to die. And so there is a refusal
to obey him. There is a high level of disobedience
among the people of God. And he says it is unbelief. Unbelief. And so the message for us is
to look at these people in the warning and say, do not harden
your heart. Today, if you hear the voice
of God, do not harden your heart against him. Do not say he cannot
save me. He cannot heal me. He cannot
help me with my family or my struggles or my relationships,
or he doesn’t know what I go through. Never say that about
God. For we’ve just heard in weeks
past, we have a high priest who can sympathize with us. He’s
lived the hardships of life in every way and he knows us. So
the people of God were hard hearted. Secondly, they were rebellious.
And this word rebellion connects to the word Meribah, where they
complained against God and said, we need water. And so when they
complained, he named the place Meribah, a place of quarreling,
a place of rebellion. You know, we’re living in an
era where we use euphemisms for sin. We don’t fall short of God’s
glory anymore. We don’t transgress His laws. No, we have lapses. And maybe
a few missteps, maybe maybe our motives were misunderstood by
you. And so we have redefined sin
and we have used euphemisms, better ways of saying something. But friends, it’s not true. We
must see our hearts. We are rebellious against God. We are flat out angry with Him. And this is said of a people
who cried out to God because they trusted in Him and that
He could save them. And He came and saved them. And
now in the midst of salvation, they’re saying, He doesn’t love
us. And so they form and fashion idols and worship them in the
golden calf. And they say to Aaron, take us back to Egypt.
The leeks and the onions were better than this manna and water
that which we are now eating. Friends, rebellion against God
is serious business. And he says to us today, if you
hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Do not rebel against
the God’s word. You know, one of the saddest
things I face as a pastor. It is when you sit before somebody
and you give them biblical counsel and they say, no, no thanks.
They’re not rejecting me. They’re rejecting God. And friends,
that’s what we have to understand in preaching and in every opportunity
of the ministry of the Word. God is speaking. And if the Holy
Spirit is at work, God is true and good. Remember Adam and Eve. Don’t eat. If you eat, you’ll
die. Remember Adam and Eve. They saw
that it was good. They were rebellious and they
sinned against God. Blatant disregard for the Almighty
and His Word. And so friends, today if you
hear God’s voice, do not be hard-hearted. Do not be rebellious as the Israelites
were at Meribah. There’s a third characteristic
this speaks of. Let’s call it being testy. You
say that to your children from time to time, don’t you? Don’t
be testy with me. They tested God in the wilderness. The song of Israel was not trust
and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Yahweh. No, it was defiance. It was to complain and to fuss
and to say, He’s brought us out here to die. He is no God. He
is no Redeemer. He’s a murderer. And He can’t
save us, nor can He feed us in the wilderness. And what does
the passage tell us about these testy Israelites? They have forgotten
the works of God. Friends, you may be in the wilderness.
In fact, that’s what the Bible says of us. That’s what Hebrews
in the latter chapters is going to say. We are strangers. We
are exiles. We’re on the way home, but not
yet there. We are in the wilderness. We’re
in a foreign land. We’re in exile. We’re in Babylon. Use every spiritual metaphor
that we find in the Bible. That’s where you are. You’re
not home, for heaven is home. And we never say to God, just
because we’re not in heaven. And just because we’re not yet
at the great feast and living not yet in cities with streets
paved of gold and where the throne of God is and where the river
of life flows from it and the walls and the gates are high
and made of gold and beautiful stones, we’re not there yet.
But we don’t say just because we’re not there yet, God hates
us. He’s forgotten us. this cancer, this sickness, this
daily stress and struggle. He must hate me. No, we don’t
say that. We march to Zion with our eyes
fixed on heaven. and our hearts beating for Him. We are not a testy people because
we know the mighty acts of God. He is the same yesterday and
today and forever. And what He has done in the past,
He can do again. He can speak and He can give
us water and bread can come from heaven. We need not fear. Friends, God can provide every
good thing for us. And so today, if you hear His
voice, do not harden your heart and be rebellious or testy. And as you make your way through
this list of the Israelites’ hearts, it seems to get worse
and worse. And the fourth thing is a very
damning, it’s a very judgmental statement about the people of
God. And it’s one we ought to hear with both ears. And it’s
one we ought not to respond to and say, those Israelites, those
testy, rebellious, hard-hearted Israelites, no, we need to put
our name in the blank. This is Brian. This is whatever your
name is. Put it in the blank. It says
they go astray in their hearts. And friends, brothers and sisters,
is that not the nature of our hearts? We go astray. What are
we saying? Prone to wander. Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave. The God I love,
here’s my heart, I’ll take and seal it, seal it for thee. And so we are prone to wander,
prone to go astray in the heart. And you know why? God has us
in worship week after week. You know why we sit under the
authority of the word? Why Jesus speaking to us is so
important. Well, it’s like life is driving
on a mountainous road and we need guardrails. We’ll slip and
we’ll slide and we’ll make poor judgments and we’ll be down the
cliff spiritually and towards death. But God gives us guardrails. He gives us parents to teach
us what is right and wrong. He gives us the word to declare
His will for our salvation and for all things necessary for
life and godliness. He gives us parameters. He boxes
us in. He hems us in. And our nature
is to be hard-hearted and say, I don’t need your word. Or our
nature is to be rebellious and say, I don’t care what you say,
I can manage on my own. Or we can be testy and complain
against God’s good providence. But friends, in order to avoid
going astray in heart, we need the guardrails of life. We need
to be in the Lord’s house, on the Lord’s day, with the Lord’s
people, sitting under the Lord’s word, hearing from King Jesus
often. It’s why He gives us the church.
It’s why He gives us the word. It’s why He gives us the sacrament.
We come to this table today weak and wounded and needy. And we’ve
gotten ourselves off the beaten path and we’re dirty. And we
are defiled and we need God’s grace to help us. But what God
says here of the Israelites is deeper than just simply they
go astray in heart. He says they are always sinning
against me. This is their way of life. They
hate God. They hate His law. They hate
His parameters and His boundaries. And they are always sinning against
Him. And the fifth thing it says of
them, They’re hard hearted, they’re rebellious, they’re testy, they
go astray in heart. They do not fifthly know the
ways of God. They have stopped up their ears.
They do not listen to the law and the commandments. I mean,
here is Moses, the great lawgiver in their midst. I mean, next
to Jesus, one of the greatest prophets God has sent to the
face of the earth. And they do not know the ways
of God. They’re ignorant of them. They are not hearing. They are
not listening. They refuse God’s word. And it said, do not walk
in his ways. We read of Enoch in the Old Testament,
in the book of Genesis, he was a friend of God and he walked
with God. He knew the way of God and he
walked in the way of God. So, friends, we must hear from
the word of God in order to know his ways. Notice how at the end
of this passage, as we get to verse 11, it speaks of God’s
judgment. And it says, God, in verse 10, God was provoked. And
in verse 11, he swore in his wrath, you will not enter my
rest. Now, you probably don’t shudder
when anybody says this anymore because we hear it all the time
on television. We hear it all the time in casual
talk. But you know what God is saying
to the Israelites? He’s saying, go to hell. Away
from me. Out of my presence. I am tired
of you. I’m sick and tired of you. I’ve
had enough. I’ve given you chance after chance after chance. And
this is one of those statements in the Bible, like Nahab and
Abihu, where fire comes down from heaven and absorbs them.
Or Ananias and Sapphira who steal from God and they are struck
to death. Or the earth swallows up the
rebellious in the camp of Israel. Or the snakes that come into
the camp and poison, bites the people. Or Miriam and others
are struck with leprosy. God says, I am done with you. I am angry, your sin, your sin
is great. And what does he say to them?
You get no rest. You get no promised land. You
get no Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. You don’t
get that, you lose it. St. Augustine, probably one of
the greatest theologians after St. Paul in the 4th century,
said in his confessions, where he tells of his coming to faith
in Jesus, he says, our hearts are restless until they rest
in Thee. And friends, if we do not have
God, we are restless, we are aimless, we are wandering, we
are meandering, and we will die. And that is exactly what God
did to the Israelites in the wilderness. That generation that
saw the mighty redemption of God, they died in the wilderness
because God was angry with them. His judgment was just. And so we need to recognize,
dear brothers and sisters, that Jesus is speaking to us. This
is His voice. This is His living word. This
is the voice of the very God. And He says today, which is now,
And he says in this message which has been preached and proclaimed
from generation to generation, if you hear the voice of God,
do not harden your heart against Him. No, hear it with faith.
Hear it with conviction. Hear it with repentance. Hear
Him as the doctor who’s giving the prognosis. And His doctor’s
orders are, you listen to me. You listen to what I say in my
word. and you be faithful and you be
you be zealous for good works. Friends, this is a wake up call.
This is like the message of Noah or the preaching of John the
Baptist or the prophets from of old. Hear the voice of God
and you will find rest. But if you disobey the voice
of God, you will find death. Today we hear the gospel of the
Lord Jesus, that Jesus comes into the world like us, in our
nature, with our infirmities, and he takes on our sin at the
cross and bears the wrath of God. God says to Jesus the same
thing he said to this generation, go, go to hell. And the wrath
of God is poured out on Jesus for you. Friends, that is the
gospel. And we must lay hold of it. We must believe it by
faith and receive it and rest in Him alone for salvation. Nothing
in our hands can we bring, but simply to the cross we cling. And so we hear the gospel. But we also come to the table,
a table that Christ has set for us. And he set it for weak and
weary and wounded sinners whose ears are stopped up. And he’s
saying to you again, listen, I am Jesus. He prepares this
table for the weak and the wounded and the sinners. And he says,
come, you need to eat. Come, you need sustenance. Come
and get it from the word, but also from the sacrament. Friends,
you understand the weight of failure. To hear God’s voice,
it is it is life or death, it is eternity, which is at stake,
and if you fail to hear, you will not rest. But if you hear
Jesus, he says to you, come all you who are weary and heavy burdened
and you will find rest. So which will it be? stiff-necked
or firm in the faith.