Harden Not Your Hearts
Hebrews 3:7-19
I'll ask you tonight, if you would, to take your Bible and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 3 for our continuing study in the book of Hebrews we come to verses 7 to 1?. Hebrews 3, 7 through 19.
From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is full of warning signs and they are meant by God to deter men from the inevitable wrath of God if men continue in the course of sin. All the way through the Bible in different settings and by different phrases and by different words God warns men. Because the old testament tells us that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The new testament tells us that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. And because it is not the purpose of God in the creation of man that man should be doomed to hell, God then, throughout all of His revelation continues to warn men.
And as we come to chapter 3 of Hebrews verses 7 to 19, we have just another of God's warnings to unredeemed men, men on a sinful course to turn to Jesus Christ before it's too late. Now let me just give you a little background in regard to this clear imperative that we find in these verses. As you remember the book of Hebrews was written to a Jewish community. A Jewish community which had been visited by certain first apostles and prophets and under the preaching of those apostles and prophets had heard the gospel some had believed . unto salvation, others had believed but had not committed themselves to that belief and were hanging on the edge of believing but weren't willing to commit themselves because of the fear of persecution and the love of their own sin. Then a third group weren't convinced at all and they were just there. So that when we look at the book of Hebrews we must be reminded that it was written with all three groups in mind. Parts of it are directed right at those new Christians, parts of it are directed to those non‑Christians who aren't really accepting anything and parts of it, this part for example, are directed toward those non‑Christians who have intellectual understanding, who know the gospel and are hanging right on the knife edge of decision.
And this passage that we come to tonight is one of those critical passages by which the Holy Spirit wants to give a great big supernatural shove to anybody hanging on the edge of faith in Jesus Christ and hasn't yet committed himself to that faith. And you know, there are many people like that. There are many people who intellectually have responded to the gospel. They believe it but they have never committed themselves to that faith. They've never gone all the way to commitment to Jesus Christ accepting Him as Savior and Lord, repenting from their sins and turning fully and wholeheartedly to Him.
And may I hasten to add that to know the truth and not to accept it brings upon a man a worse judgment than to really not know it in full and not to accept it. God does not think you've done Him a favor just because you like His gospel. In fact, if you hear it and you know it and intellectually assent to it but never commit your heart to it then the retribution and the judgment of God on you will be much sorer, much more serious than that on those who barely even heard the content of the gospel. And to whom much is given much is required.
And so verses 7 to 1? then, are the Holy Spirit's warning to one who knows the gospel, who knows the truth but because of the love of their sin and the fear of persecution or whatever it may be has not committed himself to the truth that he knows is real. It's as if there's a fire in a hotel and you're on the tenth floor and the firemen below are yelling 'jump' because there's a net available, maybe on a lower roof about the fifth floor and you look out the window and you really just can't figure out whether or not you ought to trust yourself to those firemen but the fire is moving through the apartment and you don't have a lot of choice. But rather than commit yourself to the trust of those firemen and jump out you're concerned with being able to hang on to your possessions so you grab them hoping you can make it by running back in and going down the stairs and you're consumed by the fire. Well if you want to put this passage in that context this is the Holy Spirit saying at the top of His voice ‑ jump, that's verses 7 to 19. You didn't know that did you? This is the Spirit of God moving on those hearts and saying to those who know the truth but as of yet because of the love of their possessions or because of their own concentration on their own ability and their own plans are figuring out their own escape and they find out that there is no escape unless you jump in total faith, committing yourself to Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews has a great fear for these Jews because they've heard the gospel. They heard it right from the mouths of the apostles and the prophets but because of the love of sin and because of the fear of persecution which is the sin of pride they shrink back. They would fall away from an initial profession in faith or an initial statement of confidence in Christ and begin to fall back Maybe they had run up and said ‑ you know, I like this thing about Jesus this is great. I might give my life to this ‑ and then they started getting fired at by their friends and they begin to fall away from the initial statement that they made. They're never willing to throw their whole weight on Jesus and as a result of that they become what the Bible defines classically as an apostate. You know what an apostate is? An apostate is an individual knowing the truth willfully rejects it and falls back. That's an apostate.
Now in order to get this warning across the Holy Spirit uses an old testament account because He knows He's talking to Jews and He wants to talk to them out of their own context. And since Moses is already the subject of the passage in verses 1 to 6 He just picks up on Moses and uses an illustration from Moses that fits in perfectly. Now we have just seen in verses 1 to 6 the proof that Jesus is greater than Moses and the point of that proof is the whole book of Hebrews, for those of you who are with us maybe for the first time, the whole book of Hebrews the writer is endeavoring to present Jesus better than everything else. And that Jesus is the mediator of a new and better covenant than the old and if He is, He must be better than all the people of the old covenant. He's got to be better than the old prophets, He's even got to be better than the angels who mediated the old covenant, He's got to be better than Moses, He's got to be better than Joshua, He's got to be better than Aaron, He's got to be better than that whole group of people and so one by one the writer of Hebrews shows Jesus greater than all of these. And by the time we come to chapter 3, Jesus has been proven greater than prophets, greater than angels, and in the first six verses of chapter 3, greater than Moses who is the greatest of all. Some of them even assumed him to be greater than angels. And Jesus is greater than Moses. And since He's already talked about Moses He wants to interject this tremendous, powerful emphasis to those hanging on the brink of decision and He does so by using an illustration right out of the experience of Moses. Now this falls into four parts just for our study. They're not profound but they'll help you to break the passage down.
It falls into four parts, the illustration ‑ Israel, the invitation ‑ take heed, the instruction ‑ exhort one another daily, and the issue unbelief. The illustration, the invitation, the instruction and the issue.
Notice, first of all, the illustration. Now very many times when you preach, you know, you sit in your office and you try to figure out ‑ now, how am I going to start this sermon so I can get everybody's attention before the first half‑hour is already gone? How am I going to begin? Well, very often, you begin one way, this way or that way but sometimes it's good to begin with an illustration. And, then, once you've given the illustration, back up to the scripture and begin to prove your point. That's what the Spirit of God does here. Many sermons begin with a backdrop or an illustration and then comes the invitation and the instruction and that's the format the Holy Spirit chooses here. And the Holy Spirit chooses to begin this plea to that person who knows the truth, who knows the gospel but has never committed himself, by picking out something right out of the history of Israel during the time of Moses But His quote, interestingly enough, is from the time of David. Because David, hang on to this, is quoting about the time of Moses.
So He goes clear back to Moses' occasion in the wandering in the wilderness as quoted by David and requotes it. And David chose this particular statement a thousand years before and now this time the Holy Spirit makes the very same point. In verses 7 to 11 here are exact translations of Psalm ?5, 7 to 11, the same portion. Psalm ?5:7 to 11 and Hebrews 3:7 to 11 are identical.
Now let me give you the backdrop. David in Psalm ?5:7 to 11 says the very same thing we're going to read right here in a moment and it refers to Israel in the wilderness and what went on in the wilderness.
And It's a classic example for the point that the Spirit of God wants to make because the Psalm, Psalm 95, reflects on Israel's disobedience and rejection of Moses in the Exodus wanderings. Now let me give you the history. Israel's in the land of Egypt, in captivity. They've been there 400 years making bricks. It even got so rough Pharaoh made them make bricks with no straw and the straw was what held them together. They were oppressed, they were beaten and so God brought in plagues. You remember the series of plagues and they finally ended with the death of the first‑born, a great miracle. And then God said All right, Moses, gather them together and get them out of there. And Moses gathered them together and he marched them out of that place and Pharaoh said ‑ Get out of here is right, I've had it with you, can't take the plagues any longer. And they moved out and God said ‑Moses, you've got a problem in your way, it's called the Red Sea, and you don't have a boat. So God said ‑ Moses, only one thing to do, just ask the Red Sea to part. And Moses said ‑ Okay ‑ and the Red Sea parted. And the children of Israel walked across on dry land and Pharaoh thought ‑ that looks easy and marched his whole army in there and the Red Sea closed on them. And God was working miracles in Israel, miracle after miracle after miracle. And they got in the wilderness and immediately they didn't believe God, you see. That's a classic illustration of unbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence. God had revealed Himself, they knew how He had revealed Himself, they knew the truth of His revelation, they saw the disclosure of it and yet they did not believe. They would not commit themselves to faith in God. And so, they as a result had to wander and wander and wander and wander. And they wandered for 3? years in circles, just like this ‑ in the same little area because of their unbelief.
Now this becomes a picture for us. It becomes a picture for what David says in Psalm ?5 as he warns in his day, see David was warning a thousand years before Hebrews was written, by saying, ‑ People, don't you in my day ‑‑ in David's day, don't you harden your heart against God like Israel did in the wilderness. And now the writer of Hebrews is saying, ‑ Now you Hebrews, living when I'm writing, don't you do what David warned the people not to do in his day which the people in Moses' day had done. You see, things haven't changed a lot. And I can stand up in front of you tonight and say ‑ Now, friends, what I'm going to say to you is don't do today what the writer of Hebrews told the Hebrews not to do because David told the Hebrews not to do it and Moses said they did it. And so we see the pattern tracing itself all the way along.
Now, let's begin in verse 7, and we're really quoting out of the Psalms, "Wherefore," (of course that ties it with what's just been said and you could put all of this as parenthesis, you could jump down to verse 12 and say wherefore take heed brethren because this part in the middle is a parenthesis) "Wherefore as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of trial in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me putting me to the test, proved me and saw my works forty years". The Holy Spirit here says to these Hebrews who are on the edge of decision but have never made that commitment, Don't harden your hearts, here today and do today what God wants you to do and don't do what the children of Israel did even after they had seen the proof of it for forty years, they continued not to believe Go Don't do that. Now I want you to notice something in verse 7 that's tremendously important. Verse 7 begins, "Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit saith", isn't that an exciting statement? Because in Psalm 95 guess who's talking? David. In Psalm ?5 David is speaking but when this account goes back to Psalm ?5, it says ‑ wherefore, not as David saith but what? As the Holy Spirit saith. What does that mean? That is one of the classic illustrations of what divine inspiration is. Inspiration is the Holy Spirit speaking through the mouth of God's agencies. And, my friends, what David said was not his own opinion, what David said was not his own choice of words, when David opened his mouth the Holy Spirit spoke. That's divine inspiration. The Bible is written and you open it's pages, when you read a verse those are not the choice of men those are the words of the Spirit of God who is the author of scripture. And so, isn't it fantastic, the Bible says the Holy Spirit was speaking in Psalm ?5. II Peter 1:21 says, "For the prophesy came not at any time by the will of men but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit". The Holy Spirit wrote every word of scripture. That's why we believe it is gross injustice, it is sin in the first degree and it opens the flood gates to every kind of heresy possible when you deny the absolute verbal inspiration of scripture, we believe God wrote it and original autographs to the very word. And that's why Jesus could say, You can remove one tittle from My word ‑ because God is the author. That's a footnote.
"Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts". What does today mean? Well, He uses it in verse 7, 13, 15; chapter 4 verse 17, verse 7, I mean, He uses it repeatedly the word today. It's the word of urgency. Today doesn't mean, necessarily, 24 hours, it means in the day of grace. It may mean less than 24 hours, it may mean now, this very moment. If you know the truth of Jesus Christ, if you know the gospel of Jesus Christ don't do what Israel did when they knew God's truth, when they saw God's revelation, don't harden your heart. It's so foolish. II Corinthians 6, verse 2, "I have heard thee in a time accepted and in the day of salvation have I helped thee: behold now is the accepted time: behold now is the day of salvation". God always says ‑ now, is the day of salvation and I always think of Moody when he preached and he said go home and think about what I've said. And one night, in Chicago, he said ‑ Go home and think about what I've said, come back tomorrow night ready to make a decision. That night the Chicago fire broke out, half his congregation was dead. He said, ‑That's the last time I ever told anybody to go anywhere and think about it. Now is the moment of salvation. And so the word of God says, "Harden not your hearts but today hear His voice". You see, salvation is a now thing.
You may not have it tomorrow. Today signifies the present time of grace and men today as in the time of Hebrews and in the time of David and in the time of Moses had the privilege of hearing God's voice as God spoke. And notice that it says, "If you will hear". Hearing God is a matter of your own will but as always there's that possibility of hardening the heart as Israel did and seeing the sad results.
And so in verse ? He says, "Harden not your hearts as they did in the day of provocation in the day of trial in the wilderness". You know, hardening your heart is also a matter of personal action. In I Tim.
I think it's chapter 4 isn't it verse 2 where Paul says that the heart of a man or the conscience of a man can become seared as with a hot iron like scar tissue? You can harden yourself against the gospel.
You can become, and the word seared means burned and when it's once burned the skin then, is insensitive. When I was in college I was thrown out of a car going about 75 miles an hour and I slid about 100 yards on my southern hemisphere and was thrown out and I slid and, of course, initially I had third degree burns because of the friction. And then from then on my back was cleaned out about a half‑inch deep, 64 square inches of it, and all of the scar tissue that has replaced that is now insensitive. It's been seared. And you know, it's what happens so many times to somebody who hears the gospel repeatedly, that the today, my friends, the today only lasts as long as your conscience is sensitive to God then when today is over it's tomorrow and it's too late. That's what He is saying. Today if you will enact your will to hear God's voice, don't harden your heart. And you heart gets harder every time you say no to Jesus Christ when you know the truth. When your heart is soft and when your conscience is convicted and when the intellect is sensed to Christ and when the understanding admires Him, that's the time to move when you're still pliable you're still responsive. Cause someday you may experience that kind of hard heart that Proverbs 21:29 talks about. That kind of hard, stiff, stubborn and rebellious insensitiveness, then all of a sudden it doesn't mean anything. And there are people who because their wife brings them or because their wife wants them to come to church or there kids because their parents bring them they sit here, they've heard the gospel so many times they can't respond to it because their conscience has been seared and there may be only little places of sensitivity the Spirit of God has left to appeal to. And so, says the Spirit of God, don't harden your heart. You know the truth, respond to Christ.
Now notice in verse ? how He picks out a specific illustration.
It says, "Don't do it as in the provocation in the day of trial in the wilderness". Now the words provocation and trial or testing are important words. And they take us immediately right back to a record of Exodus chapter 17 which I want to take just a moment to share with you Exodus 17, verse 1; "And this is their record of their wandering in the wilderness and all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of sin (it's with a capital S but it could well be with a small s) after their journeys according to the commandment of the Lord and camped in Rephidim and there was no water for the people to drink". Now their camping around with no water. "Wherefore, the people did chide with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? Wherefore do ye tempt the Lord?" In other words, what are you tempting God for, God's provided for us all along, what are you bringing up this big issue, making an issue out of it. You know that God's provided, why are you testing God again? This is inevitably what they kept doing. They never would believe God so they kept saying ‑God, just do some more things so that we'll know you're for real.
And God said ‑ I'm sick and tired of being on trial by you. And so h says ‑ Why are you putting God to the test? "And the people thirsted there for water and people murmured against Moses and said ‑ Why hast thou brought us up out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?" Gripers. "And Moses cried unto the Lord saying What shall I do unto this people? They're almost ready to stone me.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people and take with thee of the elders of Israel and thy rod wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thy hand and go. Behold I'll stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb and thou shalt smite the rock and there shall come water out of it that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel." He hit the rock and water gushed out. Now watch this, "He called the name of the place Massah (which means trial or tested) and Meribah (which means striving) because of the striving of the children of Israel and because they tested the Lord saying, Is the Lord among us or not?" The stupidest thing they could ever test God on at this point. God has just released them from Egypt by fantastic miracles, fantastic plagues that He brought, the opening of the Red Sea, manna in the morning every day, the cloud, the whole thing leading them through the wilderness as a people and now they say ‑ Is God among us? Ridiculous. But you see that's the character of unbelief. It never has enough proof. You don't need more proof, don't my friends, about whether God is real, you/need more proof about whether Jesus is real, you need to come to the place in your life where you hate your sin enough to commit yourself to what you know is the truth. That's what you need. And as long as you keep putting God to the test, you're never going to know the truth. And so you see what happened, they put God to the test so he called it Massah and Meribah because there was striving and testing. And the word Meribah or striving is the same word provocation back in Hebrews chapter 3 verse ?. And Moses called that place provocation or striving, provoking and trial or testing. So we know exactly to what he refers in verse ?. Don't harden your hearts like the people did when they got thirsty at Meribah and Massah. That's what he is saying. Don't do it. And don't be always testing God, the Bible says, "Thou shalt not tempt thy God", Jesus said that very statement, didn't He? From Deuteronomy to speak to Satan. So they had failed to believe God's promise. God had given them enough evidence to convince anybody ten times over but they loved their sin, they loved their selfishness, they loved their own plans and their own ideas and they would not put themselves in God's hands.
Notice verse ?, "Don't do it as when your fathers put me to the test". Kept on putting me, it wasn't just at Massah and Meribah they did it, they did it all the way through the wilderness. They kept on putting me to the test, kept on proving me and saw my works for forty years and still they never believed. Don't be like that. Don't be that person that hangs around all these years, all these days, all these months you've seen what He's done, you've seen what He's done, you've seen what He's done; you've never commit yourself to it. You keep asking for more evidence, more evidence, more evidence and, my friend, it's a cop‑out. You don't need more evidence you're just unwilling to commit yourself to Christ because you love your sin.
That's the whole thing. So they kept on testing God. Course, the classic illustration of this is Numbers 14, you know, where the majority of spies brought back to Kadesh, they went in there from Kadesh to spy out the land, remember that? And they all came back and said ‑ Oh, are we in trouble. Those guys are giants and we are like grasshoppers. And I call that the grasshopper complex. The grasshopper complex, you walk by sight you end in defeat. Oh, they' too big. You know what happened because of that? Cause they brought back an evil report God said ‑ Not one single one of you of male age to be in the army of Israel will ever enter the promise land because of your unbelief. Two of the spies brought back a good report, Joshua and Caleb and out of that whole generation the only two that entered the promise land were those two because they believed God. And God answered Moses as Moses pleaded that God not wipe out the whole nation because of their unbelief God said this ‑ "All those men that have seen My glory and My signs which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, you would have tested Me ten times and have not hearkened to My voice surely they shall not see the land which I swear unto the fathers neither shall any of them that despise Me see it". He said in effect, they had enough evidence to believe that I could lead them into that land and lead them into a land of glory and milk and honey but they wouldn't believe Me so they're not going to see that land.
My friends, that's when today is over. Did you get that? You can stand on the verge of receiving Jesus Christ so long and you can flirt with the idea and you can say ‑ God, prove it some more I'm not sure, I'm not too ready ‑ and one day God's going to say ‑ You've had enough evidence, my friend, from now on it's over. It's not today, it's tomorrow. You shall not see My promised land. And that's why the Bible says today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. In Deuteronomy 2:14 it says, "Until all the generation of the men of war were consumed from the midst of the earth, they wandered". They wandered for 3? years until that generation died out because of the depth of ‑ unbelief. It's a sad thing. They thought they needed to test God, they didn't. And all for 3? years, they murmured and murmured and murmured. In Deuteronomy 9:7 the Holy Spirit said, "remember and forget not how thou provoked the Lord, thy God to wrath in this wilderness from the day thou did depart from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you've been rebellious against the Lord The whole time they rebelled. They tempted God. They kept saying ‑God, if you're for real, do another trick. And they tested Him and they tested Him and they tested Him. And it was only a cop‑out because they weren't willing to give up their sin.&nb