Craving Egypt
Notes
Transcript
Prayer
1 Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.
Our challenges from last week were to fix our thoughts on Jesus and to make God welcome in our lives…to be the house of God…IF WE HOLD FIRMLY TO OUR CONFIDENCE AND HOPE
So are you holding firmly to your confidence of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done?
Because if we do not hold firmly…there is a dear price to pay.
He argues against letting our hearts get hardened to all that God has already done for us by giving us a case study of people who did not hold firmly to their confidence and hope…
A Case Study on Hardened Hearts and Discontentment
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”
Church do you remember the story of the Exodus?
God commanded Moses and Aaron to go back to Egypt and set his people free from their bondage. They were told to go and tell Pharoah to Let God’s people Go because
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
And they went. And after the 10 plagues of Egypt, Pharaohs hardened heart finally relented and he let Israel go…
And Israel, saw God’s deliverance through the Passover. The saw God’s miraculous hand of deliverance when they were facing the red sea as Pharaohs army was advancing behind them, but God showed up and the sea parted, making a way for Israel to cross the red sea on dry ground, but as the army followed them, the sea swallowed the Egyptian Army.
Israel was delivered, Israel was safe…but Israel soon longed to go back to the way things were. They quickly forgot about God’s amazing deliverance of their lives and they longed to go back into slavery.
2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
After only a month and a half in the desert, they were already complaining to the point of wishing they were dead! And as the Israelites continued to move toward the Promised Land, they kept looking back to Egypt with longing, wishing they had never left. The Israelites knew what Egypt had to offer them. They knew that if they went back to Egypt, they would once again be enslaved, but at least that was familiar, predictable, and even strangely comfortable in comparison to the unknown they were facing in the desert. Was God really carrying them to the Promised Land?
The author of Hebrews writes that this craving of Egypt and thinking about how good they had it began to harden their hearts.
But God showed up and showed off…and provided for Israel with manna and quail. Miraculously, God’s grace and provision showed up for them and they were cared for. But again…Israel began to look back to their old life. Their life of bondage and slavery.
And while God was meeting with Moses on top of Mount Sinai, giving him the 10 commandments, Israel began to worship the Gods of the Egyptians and carving for themselves a golden calf that they could worship instead.
We might think this is stilly at first, but how often do we do this ourselves?
How often do we look back at our old lives, our lives before following Christ, the enticing sin that once ensnared us and run right back to worshiping false Gods? This is why if we seriously consider taking a thought inventory, we might realize some of the things of our old lives that we are craving for. This is why taking our thoughts captive is so important. We can interrogate where they have come from and why are we thinking about them. And we can give those thoughts over to Jesus…
We don’t have to crave Egypt.
How often do we find ourselves in the very position that Israel was in… looking back longingly at things we’ve left behind. How quick are we at times to forget all God has done for us, and how He delivered us from slavery — slavery to sin. We might ask ourselves how we had so quickly descended from celebration God for all had done and for where He has promised to lead us into moaning and groaning about what it was taking to get there? God had heard our cries and delivered us from slavery — not just to our sinful nature, but also to various addictions and behaviors to which we had once been enslaved. Maybe we have started looking back to our old ways, our old idols and ways of thinking…maybe we have begun to meditate and possibly even romanticize them…
Just as God had to continually remind the Israelites of what He’d done for them and what He was going to do for them, We need to continually remind myself of the truth of who He is. We need to remind ourselves that our circumstances don’t define God’s character; His Word does.
That’s why the author then gives us another Challenge…
remember the first two challenges…fix our thoughts on Jesus…make him welcome in your life because we are the house of God…
He challenges us not to turn away from the living God
He challenges us not to turn away from the living God
12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
We do live in a wilderness of sorts. In bet ween the promise and the fulfillment. We have been saved but we have yet to be saved.
We know that God has promised us a life everlasting and we have a confidence and a hope for a future deliverance and for his return where he will set all things right again…but right now this world is tough. Right now we live in between the promise and the fulfillment so we need to make sure that our hearts don’t get hardened and we do not let the sin of unbelief take us away from God…
And that’s why God gives us one another.
That’s why he gives us a church body to belong to.
He gives us brothers and sisters who should be there for one another. Encouraging each other
He challenges us to encourage one another daily…
He challenges us to encourage one another daily…
13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
Encourage one another daily. We need daily encouragement to…
Over and over, the Bible emphasizes the importance of spending time with other Christians as a source of encouragement. But encouraging one another isn’t about lifting each other’s spirits. Paul is talking about something much deeper than our emotions. Biblical encouragement lifts our eyes and thoughts to the Lord, regardless of personal circumstances or world events. How, exactly, do we do that?
Paul says to, “build up one another.” That phrase isn’t just the opposite of tearing down—it’s a picture of steady spiritual progress. Believers are to help one another develop Christ-like character and grow in our relationship with Him. We do this intentionally by participating in a small group Bible study, praying together, mentoring a younger believer, etc.
But we also encourage one another by example. The way we live and respond in everyday life should point to the Lord and reflect what the Bible teaches. That means we need to study God’s Word, allowing His Spirit to instruct and edify us directly. The Bible draws attention to a few specific truths that are especially encouraging.
Fix our thoughts on Jesus
Hold firmly to our confidence and hope
Build eachother up so that we do not fall away
We, each of us are called to be ministers to one another and encourage each other on this journey between the promise and the fulfillment.
14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15 As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”
So hold to our original conviction to the very end…because there is still today.
And Jesus is calling out today for us to hear his voice…
He is calling out to you and to me saying…don’t harden your heart. You can hold firmly to the promises of God.
And if we do, we will enter his rest, but if we do not…
16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
