Christian Community: The Remedy for Apostasy

Introduction

For some reason the human brain has a fundamental problem. The brain is a complex organ. The brain does so many lifesaving things. The brain helps doctors save lives. The brain enables musicians and artists to compose and create stunning and inspiring artwork. The brain enables engineers to create complex and lifesaving projects. The brain allows us to think and use our common sense that might not be quite as common as we think that it is! The brain is important but it has a fundamental problem… Sometimes we get a wire or two crossed in our filing system and we lose our on much needed information. Our problem is that we often forget things of all shapes and sizes.

Back in 2014 there was a report from the BBC that said this, "A wealthy man has come forward to claim a luxury boat that has been floating in a Swedish harbor for at least two years." Apparently the boat's Norwegian owner was going to sell the boat a few years ago, and then—oops! — it just slipped his mind. The vessel is valued at about $108,000.

Eventually, police issued a Facebook appeal for any information about its owner. The appeal was picked up by Norwegian media, and the wealthy owner was finally prompted to come forward and claim the luxury boat. He explained the reason he hasn't used it for two years: He forgot about it.

You and I will probably never be able to forget about a $100,000 item of any shape or size, much less a boat floating at sea, that belongs to us! That seems like such an expensive and costly possession to simply forget about… Yet, if you’re a Christian you are tempted to forget about the cost of your salvation each and every day. It’s so easy for us to get caught up in the busyness of this life that we fail to remember the victory that has been won for us on the cross of Calvary! We’re tempted to forget and we’re prone to wander. What is the solution to this problem? We need to be reminded daily of what our God has done. We’re without excuse, we can’t claim ignorance, we know what the Bible tells us… what we all need are people in our lives who are dedicated enough to help encourage us to trust in Jesus and follow Him each day of our lives. This is one of the reasons why corporate worship matters so much - each time we gather, we worship through fellowship, singing songs, prayer, and the teaching of the Word. I’m not sure about you, but I look forward to this gathering each week because I leave here feeling encouraged when I worship with my church family! This is what we need if we’re going to avoid the ever present danger of forgetfulness.

In this second warning passage in Hebrews - Hebrews 3:7-19 - the preacher of Hebrews will address the danger of people seeing the power of God and knowing His faithfulness yet, failing to truly have faith in the God of the Bible. The warning of forgetting what God has done and what our responsibility is today - to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. Let’s study from God’s Word and be challenged and encouraged this morning.

Hebrews 3:7–19 CSB

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your ancestors tested me, tried me, and saw my works 10 for forty years. Therefore I was provoked to anger with that generation and said, “They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.” 11 So I swore in my anger, “They will not enter my rest.” 12 Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. 14 For we have become participants in Christ if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start. 15 As it is said: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. 16 For who heard and rebelled? Wasn’t it all who came out of Egypt under Moses? 17 With whom was God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

The reasons that the Israelites had issues entering the land and holding the land is because they failed to remember what their God had done. Likewise, we will have problems in this life if we fail to remember our God and consider what He has done for sinners! When we hear His Word but fail to respond to Jesus, the results will be disastrous as we slide into the temptation of unbelief. See to it today that you do not harden your heart against God’s Word. Let’s pray and ask Him to open our eyes and hearts to see His Word like never before.

Consequences for Not Considering Jesus: Divine Punishment (7-11)

One of the greatest problems in our world is that people think that they are guaranteed tomorrow and, as a result, put off important things today. Have you ever done this? I’ll get to that important thing tomorrow because I have something else to do today. We have to prioritize things in life because we only have 24 hours each day and believe it or not, we do need sleep! But there is a temptation to put things off because we have a sense of entitlement about ourselves and our age. Albert Mohler shared a story once of a guest lecturer who visited his classroom and was talking about Church History, especially in the 1500s-1600s and shared this observation, “Young men will never understand people like Martin Luther because you go to bed every night confident you will wake up healthy in the morning. In Luther’s day people thought that every day could be their last. They had no antibiotics, no medicine, sickness and death came swiftly… Luther went to bed terrified as a young man because he recognized that God was holy and he was sinful and he was afraid that one day he’d go to sleep and wake up in hell.” Friends, the consequence for not considering Jesus today is that you are deserving of eternal punishment from God. This is the consequence we all deserve and the only hope that we have to avoid such a fate is the righteousness of Jesus Christ being credited to our account by grace through faith. The only hope that we have to avoid the punishment that we deserve is the Gospel message of Jesus Christ - yet, so many people think that they have more time and they put it off for later down the line. The preacher of Hebrews shares that if this is you, then today you need to get to business because if you don’t your heart might get hardened just like it did for the ancient Israelites. Where the Bible speaks, God speaks. To reject God’s Word is to reject God!

Last week the preacher of Hebrews began comparing and contrasting Jesus and Moses to prove the point that Jesus is the greater deliverer of His people - even greater than Moses. This week we transition from the deliver of the people to the people who themselves are delivered. Think about the Israelite people who were led out of Egypt by Moses. Think of all the ways that God had provided for them. They were enslaved for 400 years and had grown greatly in number. They cried out to God for deliverance and God sent Moses to tell Pharoah to let God’s people go. Pharoah refused because we read that his heart was hardened for a time according to Exodus 7:14… so what does God do? God demonstrates His presence and His power on behalf of His people.

God sends 9 plagues and the Egyptian people are impacted negatively but the Israelites are unharmed. Finally, God prepares to send a 10th and final plague but this one is different and He requires the Israelites to do something. They are required to put blood on the doorpost of their houses so that the Angel of the Lord will passover their house. Any house without this blood will experience a devastating loss: the loss of their firstborn son. What happens? God comes through on His promise and Pharoah’s stance softens and he lets the people go. God provides for the people in the wilderness as He guides them with a cloud of smoke and a pillar of fire. He provides them with food. He provides them with materials and animals whenever they left Egypt. The people get to the Red Sea and they might be tempted to think that God finally dropped the ball and is going to fail them… but God once again comes through and delivers them as they walk across the Red Sea on dry ground and the Egyptian chariots are destroyed. The people receive the law from God, they worship God in the tabernacle, God provides food and water. You get the point, don’t you? God provides for His people! Yet, whenever the Israelites got to the edge of the promised land they get a little afraid because there were giants in the land that God had promised them. How absurd is this!? The Israelites heard God’s promise, yet they rebelled, sinned, were disobedient, and demonstrated unbelief in their God. The Egyptians were the most powerful people in the world at this time and God led them out of slavery. God parted the Red Sea. God gave them food from heaven. God led them through the wilderness. He gave them His law and a promise. Yet, whenever they were on the door of their promised place, they doubt that their God will come through because of the giants in the land!

Numbers 14:22 CSB

22 none of the men who have seen my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested me these ten times and did not obey me,

What a shame - God’s people tested Him instead of trusting in Him! They saw God do wonderful things for 40 years but they still hardened their hearts and doubted God’s power. Verse 10 tells us that they always went astray in their hearts. This wasn’t just a one time occurence where they disobeyed… they disobeyed and they continued to walk in disobedience as they did what was right in their own eyes and hearts. They saw God move but they didn’t learn from God’s actions. They didn’t know God’s ways and, as a result, they didn’t truly know God!

The result of rejecting to follow God’s way and learning from God’s Word is a consequence. For the people of Israel, the punishment they received for not trusting in God was not entering the promised land. They would wander through the wilderness for 40 more years and an entire generation would die off simply because they failed to trust in God’s power and promise! There is a consequence whenever we fail to trust in God. What does that consequence look like in our world? What did it look like for the audience of the preacher in Hebrews? If you and I fail to consider Jesus. If we fail to accept His Word. If we don’t pay attention to Him and we drift away from Who He is then we too will not enter His rest. Rest in this passage of Scripture is not sleep - any Sunday afternoon nap fans? Don’t ask a parent with a young child if they get to enjoy their Sunday afternoon nap because there is no such thing as rest in that season of life! Naps are great! Rest is wonderful for our health! But the rest that God promises His people is not so much a place as it is a person. We’ll look at this more next year in Hebrews 4, but if you know Jesus you know the rest that He alone brings to your soul! If you don’t know Jesus, if you haven’t considered Him or if you have straight up reject His Lordship, you cannot know that type of otherworldly peace because He is the Prince of Peace. You cannot have the assurance of eternal glory because outside of Jesus you are deserving of eternal agony. See, we must all pause and follow God’s ways not our own. The problem that the people of Israel had is that they continued to go left when they were supposed to go right and we do the exact same thing! We love to point our finger at the problems of the characters and people groups in the Bible but in actuality we quickly come away with the realization that we’re not really that different. Just like the people of Israel forgot God’s power - we forget all that God has done for us. Judges 21:25 tells us this

Judges 21:25 CSB

25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.

Do we act any different? Not really. Each of us are responsible to look and listen to Jesus, to consider what the Bible tells us that He has done for sinners. Instead of following our own heart and trusting our own eyes to lead our way, we need to listen to Jesus and obediently follow His voice as Hebrews 3:7 instructs us to do. If we fail, we will face a consequence of eternal significance - don’t put this off!

Commands for Christian Communities: Encouragement, Perseverance, and Genuine Belief (12-19)

The preacher of Hebrews snaps back to present in verse 12 by instructing his brothers and sisters how they fight against this urge to follow their own heart instead of trusting in the Lord alone. What do we need to do as Christians to win this battle of unbelief? If we know that the Bible is God’s Word for us and that it is all inspired by the Holy Spirit and that we must pay attention to Jesus and consider what He’s done for us by dying in our place on the cross, what must be our response? Our response must be one of genuine faith in Jesus. Notice, verse 12 doesn’t just say that for the new believers, you really need to watch out and make sure that you’re head is screwed on straight. He doesn’t say for the men or the women or for the elderly or the young believers… He says that everyone needs to watch out and fight against this temptation to look inward and fail to consider Jesus and place their faith in Him. This is something that we must do daily in our lives and this is a command that we cannot take lightly but it’s also not the only command in the text.

Individually, we guard our hearts and corporately we are called to encourage one another to hold firm to Christ. Do you know someone with the gift of encouragement? Aren’t people like that a blessing in your life? If you don’t know someone with that gift, find such a person and friend them because we need people like that in our circle when tough times hit. Several years ago there was an intern working for a political candidate and this intern was hard at work early one morning in the mailroom getting things cleaned up and organized for a meeting that was going to happen hours later… The candidate walked into the room, expecting to see clutter and mail everywhere but instead saw a spotless room and gave the intern a pat on the back and simply said, “I’ve never seen this room so clean, thank you so much for doing a great job!” The intern was speechless and a moment later tears began to roll down his face and he said that this was the first time that someone in his entire life had told him that he had done something good. Teachers know that positive reinforcement is so important for students and this is true for people of all ages, shapes, and sizes! It is a blessing to be encouraged by someone else and we shouldn’t have to go our entire lives without someone there to tell us good job - the preacher of Hebrews tells us to encourage one another daily. Is this something that you do consistently? Let’s look to an example in the Bible who excelled at encouragement.

Have you heard of the person in the book of Acts called Barnabas, do you know what that name means? That name means the Son of Encouragement - he was so supportive and encouraging of the other apostles and followers of Jesus that he willingly sold a field and brought the money to the leaders of the early church to go and help others. If you know the book of Acts you know that the people that come up after him are the opposite type of people as Ananias and Sapphira lied and then they died. Think about this today… Barnabas and Ananias and Sapphira were all apart of the same church in Jerusalem. They heard the same sermons from Peter in Acts 2 and 4 and they would have been gathering with other believers throughout the week as well. They knew the right answers. They went to the same church. Yet, one did what they were supposed to do and the other 2 didn’t - what was the difference here? It wasn’t the pastor. It wasn’t the sermon. It was the heart. See, some consume and consume and they attend and they serve even, but they have never trusted in Christ as Lord and Savior.

How can encouragement help guard against unbelief?

Whenever you know that someone else loves you and that you’re not in this fight by yourself, you have a confidence and boldness about yourself that wasn’t there before. Think of Elijah in 1 Kings 18 against the prophets of Ba’al - there are 450 prophets of Ba’al and Elijah is all alone. He trusts in God’s power and God provides and demonstrates that He is the only true God. Elijah is literally on this mountain top moment as God has delivered Him in this showdown yet in the very next chapter - after God has saved his life and intervened dramatically, we find this

1 Kings 19:10 CSB

10 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of Armies, but the Israelites have abandoned your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are looking for me to take my life.”

Elijah throws himself a pity party because he thinks that he is all alone. God reveals to him that there were 7,000 others like him in the kingdom who had not bent the knee to Ba’al and that he wasn’t as alone as he originally thought. Here’s our problem: We’re not as strong as we think that we are. As the hymn puts it, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it… Prone to leave the God I love.” This is our temptation and the lie of self cries that we don’t need help. We don’t need community. We can make it find ourselves. But the Bible tells us that this isn’t true. We DO need community. We DO need encouragement. How have you been encouraged in your Christian community? I have been encouraged multiple times as we worship God together here at FBC Salem. It has been encouraging on days where I might not be feeling the best to see so many of you here with a smile on your face but more importantly, a smile that is genuinely on your heart. It’s encouraging to know that there are brothers and sisters in our church family who are devoted to check on one another and to help straighten us out whenever we’ve gone astray. This is the encouragement that we all need - this is the encouragement that God’s Word demands of us because as we encourage one another to persevere and stay true to Jesus, we fight against the enemy of unbelief. We fight against the enemy of lukewarm Christianity. We fight against the enemy of cultural moralism. We fight against the enemy of full blown apostasy. How do we fight? We fight together. We fight knowing that God is at work and we encourage each other to look to His Word instead of to our feelings

Philippians 1:6 CSB

6 I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Our salvation is a gift of grace. Our belief is a gift from God. We are commanded by God to encourage others, persevere, and genuinely believe in what His Word tells us. If you get those wrong, you demonstrate that you have not yet entered Christ’s rest. You have not yet been saved. How do we know this? We know this because genuine faith leads to a life of obedience. As James argues in James 2:14-26, faith without works is dead. So it was for the Israelites in the wilderness and for us today. We can know the right answers. We can have experienced the miracles. We can be a charter member of a church… but if we’re not living it out and if we aren’t encouraging others in the context of the local church to persevere, we’re demonstrating a fundamental lack of faith in our God.

Here’s some good news, church: The grace that saved you will sustain you - this doesn’t mean that we are passive in this life, we are called to run this race actively and fight against our fleshly desires and the things of this world that attempt to get our eyes off of Jesus. This requires hard work and fight, but there is a reward… Our hope is eternal peace and rest with Jesus! Perseverance becomes our present reality when we trust in the promise of our God.

Conclusion

The problem that many individuals have is failing to understand that we need help. Not only do we need help from our heavenly Father and not only do we need salvation from our sins from Jesus Christ and not only do we need the Holy Spirit to guide us and open our blinded eyes to see the truth of God’s Word, but we also need our brothers and sisters to help us in this journey called life. Today let’s consider 4 ways that Christian Community helps us against the temptation of unbelief

Encouragement through Christ

Hebrews 3:13 is such an important verse for believers as it reminds us of the importance of regular encouragement. Ask yourself this, “Am I an encourager or a discourager?” It’s so easy to discourage others and it’s so easy to ignore or take for granted the people that God has placed around us… even in church. This text reminds us of the importance of encouraging others and coming alongside our brothers and sisters in their time of need. Make sure that you strive to encourage your family members and help them grow to be more like Christ instead of falling into temptation. Be like Barnabas with your church family and encourage them to look to Jesus!

Assurance through Christ

Because we have this assurance we can persevere through times of sorrow and suffering. Our perseverance does not save us, but it demonstrates that we have been saved because a normal human wouldn’t persevere and maintain their faith in God during times of great difficulty. That perseverance isn’t natural to a sinful person, but to those who are saved, perseverance will happen through actively dying to self and following Jesus Christ. This happens in Christian Community.

Rest through Christ

In Christian community we are able to find rest and hope not in who we are but in Whose we are! As we gather and worship Jesus, we remind one another to not run after other things but instead to find our ultimate hope and joy in Jesus. As a body we point one another to the finished work of Jesus in our good days and equally in our bad days.

Salvation through Christ

Just because you come to church it doesn’t mean that you’re a Christian… there were some attending this church who weren’t genuine Christians and the preacher of Hebrews continually warns them to come to Jesus today and repent of their sins. What holds our church together? It isn’t our programs or events. It isn’t our leadership. It isn’t even us as individuals - all of these things can help bring us together or tear ourselves apart - but ultimately what holds us together is the Holy Spirit of the living God and we only have the Holy Spirit by being saved by Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died for His church and He alone unites His church. Our Christian community must remember that we aren’t strong enough to save ourselves… we all need Jesus and we all need to keep looking to Jesus with everything that we do outside and inside the walls of this physical church building - because after all, the theme of Hebrews is all about Jesus!

If you notice, what acrostic do these 4 words make? Ears! What do we do with our ears? We listen. The only hope that we have in this life is to listen to what the Bible tells us about Jesus. This is the exhortation in Hebrews 2-3, to pay attention and consider Who Jesus is what Jesus has done. Encourage others in our congregation and in other congregations to continue looking to Jesus and proclaiming His Gospel message. Find your assurance in Christ alone, not in your works or status. Finally, rest in Jesus today. Don’t continue looking for satisfaction in other sources. Repent of your sin and enter His promised rest as you trust forever in His grace.

May we never forget what our God has done for us. At FBC Salem, may we be people who daily go to war with our sin and persevere in the good and bad times as we encourage one another to seek first God’s Kingdom as we bring Him glory with all we think, say, do, and don’t do. In a world where people are falling away, lets be a people who stand faithfully on God’s Word today, tomorrow, and every day. The grace that saved you will sustain you.