Sermon Tone Analysis

Hebrews 3:13

Scripture Reading

Introduction

As you a church, you have the wonderful opportunity to be working through the one another commands in Scripture as your pastor is away on Sabbatical.

These commands form an extremely important part of our life and faith together as believers.

They show the importance of community.

The demonstrate for us the importance of inter-dependence.

We as Christians cannot live isolated and insulated lives.

Rather, we are to be practicing our faith as a community.

The One Another command that we will be considering this morning is to “Exhort One Another.”

Or, translated differently, to “Encourage One Another.”

As I’ve studied and prepared for this message, I’ve been personally challenged with the importance and significance of our life together as a community.

The reason is that this one another command speaks to the core of our identity in Christ, and our support and encouragement of one another in the context of a Spiritual battle wherein Satan is striving to draw people away from the faith.

This command is exceedingly important, and I trust that we will see something of that through our study of this passage this morning.

To set the picture in our own minds, and to start from a place of truly understanding the weightiness and significance of this command, I would like to remind you of a number of prominent Christian leaders who have recently abandoned the faith, who have left the church.

One notable Christian is the Hillsong songwriter, Marty Sampson.

He wrote:

"Time for some real talk… I'm genuinely losing my faith… Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet – they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people… but it's not for me.

I am not in anymore."

Another very prominent Christian leader and pastor, Joshua Harris, who was probably more highly esteemed in our own circles recently renounced his faith and divorced his wife.

He said:

"I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.

The popular phrase for this is 'deconstruction,' the biblical phrase is 'falling away.'

By all the measurements I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian."

Dave Gass, the former pastor at Grace Family Fellowship, pastor at Covenant Church and Cedar Community Church, took to social media and announced:

"After 40 years of being a devout follower, 20 of those being an evangelical pastor, I am walking away from the faith.

Even though this has been a massive bomb drop in my life, it has been decades in the making."

And then also very recently, one of the contributors to John Piper’s Desiring God website announced on Instagram that he was renouncing his faith.

He said:

"What I really miss is connection with people.

What I've discovered is that I'm ready to connect again.

And I'm kind of ready not to be angry anymore.

I love you guys, and I love all the friendships and support I've built here.

And I think it's important to say that I'm just not a Christian anymore, and it feels really good.

I'm really happy.

I can't wait to discover what kind of connection I can have with all of you beautiful people as I try to figure out what's next.”

Now, whenever we hear of these so-called “high-profile” Christians falling away from the faith, particularly when they’ve some kind of profound impact on our own lives, we can become unsettled.

How does this happen, we may ask?

And that is indeed a valid question.

Now, more importantly, however, is the fact that it is not only high profile Christians that are tempted to fall away from the faith.

It is the everyday, ordinary professing believers that experience crises of belief, and can quite easily fall away.

Sometimes that is a sudden and outright rejection of the faith, but very often it is a slow and subtle drift, as questions and concerns arise over time, or the worries of this world weigh a Christian down and lead them to forsake the faith.

Satan is the great deceiver, and his mission in this world is to either keep people who are lost in darkness where they are, or to draw those who are redeemed back into darkness.

And while theologically we may say “once saved, always saved,” we need to understand that it is yet by the grace of God that we truly are saved and not self-deceived.

And further to this, we need passages such as the one we will consider today to continuously remind us of the perils of drift.

We need passages such as these to exhort us and remind us of our weighty responsibility towards one another to ensure that we continue to exhort one another as a community.

It is as we engage in our God-responsibilities that He is pleased to continue His work in our midst.

As we begin today then, let me ask at the outset....

Where are you in your faith?

Are you encouraged?

Or are you facing a season of doubt?

Perhaps you’re in a place where you’re just trying to hold on… afraid of the consequences if you lose faith…

I pray that today you would be encouraged wherever you are.

I pray that you would be encouraged to stand firm.

To encourage one another.

To be encouraged if you’re facing doubt.

I pray that even if your faith has only begun to show signs of weakness; perhaps you just have a coldness or coolness in your faith; perhaps you’re tolerating small sins, or slightly bigger sins in your life; perhaps responding sinfully to circumstances; I pray that you would be awakened to the seriousness of this condition, but also to the wonderful joy and blessing of community as a means of God’s grace to you.

We are going to consider this passage under three main headings…

The Danger

The Historical Example

The Call

1.

The Danger (v.12)

In verse 12 of this passage, the writer to the Hebrews issues a warning to the church.

He writes...

Brethren / Brothers

We must see immediately from this verse that this warning passage (as with the others in Hebrews) is addressed to Christians.

It is not addressed to only "professing believers" - thus trying to warn those who are self-deceived.

Rather, it is really addressed to those who are true believers in the faith.

It is these true believers in the faith that need to hear these warnings.

Now, immediately we consider this, the question in our minds may be, is it thus saying that true believers can fall away… and thus they need this warning?

And my response to that would be, I do not believe so.

Rather, what I believe to be the case here is that true believers need to hear these warnings and cautions to be careful of an evil heart of unbelief, and that God uses that very caution in order to preserve His elect.

In other words, the elect of God, true born-again believers, will hear these warnings and they will stir up in their hearts a righteous and holy fear of falling away, and God by His Spirit will keep His elect.

Obviously, those who hear such warnings and fall away will show themselves to not have been true believers.

As Christians then, our responsibility is to heed the warnings, and to put into practice the exhortations.

Evil heart of unbelief

The concern of the writer here is that these Hebrew Christians may be led down a path of unbelief.

In seeking to understand his concern, the context of Hebrews is important.

The Hebrew believers were, for the most part, Jews who had turned to Christ for salvation.

They were Jewish Christians.

As Jewish Christians in the early church, they were facing intense hostility from those Jews who rejected Jesus Christ as God’s chosen Messiah.

They were being attacked for having “abandoned the Jewish faith” and for following Christ.

They were under intense pressure to reject the call of Christ to follow Him, to abandon their profession of faith, and to return to the Jewish traditions.

At its root, their faith - their belief in Christ, the Son of God was being attacked.

It was their obedience to what Christ taught that was under attacked.

They are tempted to move away from faith to what the writer calls an evil heart of unbelief.

That leads us to consider, secondly…

2. The Historical Example (vv.16-19)

Verses 16-19 of this text present a series of probing questions to the Hebrew believers.

The questions are presented in such a manner as to lead the Hebrew believers to consider their own state, and not to rely on any so-called profession of faith without sticking the course.

The questions are based on the quote from Psalm 95 that we find in verses 7-11 of our passage.

Let us read those verses together briefly for context.

With that quote of Psalm 95:7-11 in mind, the writer to the Hebrews begins his questioning in verse 16.

Israel Rebelled Against God

The first question is posed in order to lead these believers to consider precisely who it was that provoked God.

It was not those who had known nothing of the saving works of God.

It was those who had seen the power of God at work in delivering them from slavery in Egypt.

They knew the salvation work of God.

There is a parallel text in this regard that it would be for us to consider briefly.

In writing to the Corinthians, Paul states very clearly that when the Israelites were delivered from captivity, and led in the wilderness under the leadership of Moses.