Untitled Sermon (3)

Intro

Imagine a scene: A table is set in a beautiful home at Christmas time. The decorations are warm, the meal is delicious, presents are under the tree, and everyone is home for the holiday, healthy and glad to be there with you.

There is so much grace and treasure mounted up under that roof.

But there is only one problem…

Not one person commented on your new flower arrangement over the mantle.

No one appreciated you for how much hard work you put into making such a special night. No one did as much as you in the kitchen to prepare the meal. Your husband was just in the way and asking too many questions. The children were underfoot. Uncle Steve was talking about his failing kidneys too much. And you slightly burned the dish you were most excited about.

The whole ordeal has become overshadowed. The night was supposed to be so full for you, but not it was only a burden.

We laugh, but it’s an unfortunate and horrible reality.

In so many areas of our lives we are surrounded by grace upon grace and will let the most fickle of things keep us from enjoying them.

How many good marriages have grown cold over trifles and petty grievances? It happens a lot. O to see how God sees our pettiness and to reject it with ferocity!

Setup

I tell you this story because such was the case with the Israelites in the wilderness—a story to which our text uses as an illustration.

They had been delivered from slavery by God. They had been protected from Pharaoh’s army. They had the sea literally split apart so that they could walk away from bondage on dry ground. They had God to stop their enemies from pursuit. They had the gentle shelter of God’s presence by day in the hot sun under His cloud and the tender warmth of his presence in fire by night. When they were thirsty they were given drink and when they were hungry they were given bread that tasted like cakes baked with oil.

But there was one problem…

The menu was too restrictive. They wanted more than just bread. More than what God was giving them in the moment. They want so much, that they want to be away from God.

This story becomes a warning repeated throughout scripture. It’s a picture of those who are on the one hand attached to the covenant community (they have crossed the red sea and have been delivered from Egypt,) but they are not believers in God and they do not enter into either the land of Caanan or of God’s rest. The story is picked up by David in Psalm 95 to which our text from Hebrews is quoting, and David is also exhorting those not to grow hard in heart, that they may enter into God’s rest to come. Clearly, the rest was not the land of Caanan, because David was saying this from the promised land; he was in Jerusalem.

This warning to examine your faith, to not grow hard hearted so that you might enter into God’s rest, is a repeated biblical warning that is very strikingly recalled when Jesus stands and says that He is the one that will give you rest (Matt. 11:28).

The Bible speaks of three different categories of people. Those who are unbelievers and not in the covenant community. Complete outsiders.

Those who are believers and who are in the covenant community. Those who both identify with God’s people and trust in God.

And there is a third category, the category to which our text is issuing a warning: Those who are in the covenant community, but are unbelievers in God.

Those who are baptized or take communion, those who go to church and are outwardly attached to the community of faith, but they don’t have faith of their own.

They hear the words of Jesus, they hear about His call to rest, and they are growing calloused and hardened to Him.

Our text is telling us that the same warning that was so necessary to those in the wilderness is necessary for us.

You can have all sorts of marvelous grace and completely miss it. You can look at it and scoff, hardening your heart to it.

Jesus can be God who came to rescue the sinner. He can display perfect holiness which obliterated all the religious hypocrisy (He can be the real things!), He can suffer for our sins on the cross. He can wrangle sin and death to the grave, and He can come back again in the resurrection. He can pour all of this good news at your feet — you who so desire this love and need this rescue. I mean, what else could we ask Jesus to do? Where else do you need Him to step up and help you? Tell Him where He has let you down. He hasn’t.

But there is only one problem…

He wants you to honor your parents.

He won’t let me be free to look at porn and sleep around.

He is demanding that you forgive others.

And in turn, these are the kinds of things that harden your heart. They are falsely believed to be cruel or unreasonable and false, to make Christ seem unreasonable and false, when they are lies that will lead you to hell. They are the stupid bait for stupid fish with a hook inside. They are the petty blindnesses of someone who can’t read the room and see that they are sitting on a pile of treasure and mercy and complains of being poor.

Outline:

Two things that we should dive into from this text as we heed this warning:

1. The sin of unbelief

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” (Hebrews 3:12, ESV)

An unbelieving heart is evil and it leads you to fall away from the living God.

We are often not frank enough on this point.

We can treat doubt as if it is humility or that it is pious, or that it is trying not to be presumptuous, but doubting the promises of God is a sin. It’s a sin that needs to be stopped, not coddled.

Doubting God and unbelief, if not checked, leads to a callousness and hardness of heart, which leads to falling away from God.

So the call here is to “take care” (as the text says) to examine ourselves. To ask hard questions about our own hearts to examine our faith.

It’s a charge to be honest and to take stock.

And here is where we need help. We can try to do this in a number of ways that are really unhelpful.

There is a way to do this rightly, and there are a number of ways that lead to despair.

One wrong way would be that we can start to look at all of the external boxes and begin to cross those off the list, thinking that they must prove our faith.

We can think, I take communion every week; I am baptized; I attend worship regularly, so that must prove enough.

But we must remember that these things nourish our faith and they encourage our faith, but they are not replacements for faith instead of faith. Checking these kinds of boxes in your mind is unhelpful here. The text is pushing us a bit farther.

Another wrong way would be that you aren’t checking external boxes but you begin to look at your internal feelings.

What do my feelings say?

And here we find all sorts of chaos. There will be days when we feel like you are doing great and they must prove your faith and days when we aren’t and maybe you doubt. He loves me; He loves me not.

But that’s not how to approach this. We are called to examine ourselves, yes, but we are called to do it by biblical standards.

What does it really look like to examine where our faith is at?

Do you confess Jesus as the Son of God? (Romans 10:9; 1 John 4:15)

“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:15, ESV)

Has God given you His Spirit? (1 John 4:13)

“By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” (1 John 4:13, ESV)

Do you love other Christians? (1 John 3:14)

“We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.” (1 John 3:14, ESV)

Do you have humility, like a child? (Matthew 18:3)

“and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3, ESV)

Do you understand spiritual truths? (1 Corinthians 1:18)

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18, ESV)

Do you obey God’s commandments? (1 John 2:3)

“And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” (1 John 2:3, ESV)

Does God discipline you when you sin? (Hebrews 12:5–8)

“And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” (Hebrews 12:5–8, ESV)

Does sin scare you?

The question is not am I perfect, the question is is my faith alive? Am I considering Christ?

And it might be helpful here to say that there is a difference between a doubt and a question.

A doubt can’t be answered, but a question can.

We are not to engage down the rabbit hole of doubts, spiraling into uncertainty. What if’s are counterproductive. But questions are helpful and can be answered.

What if God won’t forgive me? Is an oppressive place to be and you can be there for a long time.

But, will God forgive me? Is a great question. One that can be answered definitively.

Ask those hard questions and measure them up against scripture.

For some, and this goes back to a heart of doubting God’s promises, they don’t like to have the question finally answered and settled.

They take a certain pride or pleasure in the uncertainty of their faith, they feed introspection, and feign humility.

Again, not trusting the promises of God is a sin. I

If you see the work of God upon your life, receive it, accept it, and enjoy it.

2. The Importance of Exhorting One Another

“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Hebrews 3:13, ESV)

A help in examining ourselves is each other.

An exhortation is an encouragement—a call and plea to see things rightly.

How great would it have been in the wilderness for someone to stand up and say, you know what? We are are totally belly-aching and growing sour. Look at all that God has done for us. Look at His grace and kindness to us. Don’t grow hard and callous.

That is what the writer of the Psalms and this letter of the Hebrews is doing, and they are commending for us to do among each other as well.

And this is why shepherding and church membership and church fellowship and covenant keeping is so important.

We want to be the kind of people that are pushing each other towards heaven. And the truth is, that’s often uncomfortable. There’s no way around that. It looks like sometimes seeing a friend beginning to go astray or grow insensitive to the Lord, to see them duped by the deceitfulness of sin and develop a heart of complaint and grievances. We aren’t to a sympathetic shoulder for doubts and complaints. They aren’t to receive a warm reception by us. They need to be challenged and done away with.

An exhortation looks like calling them back to the truth. An exhortation might look like challenging some of their decisions with their time, attention, or with their entertainment and influence.

A good friend and a good church who does this kind of thing in love and with tact and with kindness is to be deeply appreciated.

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” (Proverbs 27:6, ESV)

We don’t just have elders and shepherds at this church that don’t really do anything. We want membership to look like a relationship of exhortation — of encouragement and challenge that holds onto Christ’s promises together.

And the inverse of this is also telling. When someone doesn’t want accountability and exhortation. They don’t want to come around and be in the company of those whose lives and loves challenge them. It takes on a number of excuses: I don’t really fit in, or I don’t think they like me, is often an excuse for their lives challenged me and I don’t like it.

We need to watch ourselves when you don’t want accountability.

Closing:

This text is about the assurance of salvation

For my part, it’s not that we want to preach in a way that makes you doubt yourself. The goal is not to push until you really just can’t be sure of anything. No, we are to encourage and to exhort the right kind of assurance. The one that actually saves you — Christ.

Listen to how we are to know such things:

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13, ESV)

Don’t give undo sympathy for doubt — We’re not giving them an audience

Do you have Christ? Do you believe in Christ? Then you know

Charge: Don’t harden your heart.

Look to Christ and rest.