Hebrews Study - Holding Fast Our Hope
Hebrews Bible Study • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, And saw My works for forty years. 10 “Therefore I was angry with this generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they did not know My ways’; 11 As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”
12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, 15 while it is said, “Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.” 16 For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
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Review:
The Book of Hebrews answers two big questions: Who is Jesus? How do we persevere?
Up until this point we’ve been answering that first question: Who is Jesus?
When we come to verse 6 where we ended last week, we start to answer the second question. How do we persevere?
6 but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.
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Are there any questions that come away from just that one verse?
Q1: Can the house fail to be the house?
Q2: Is the house that Jesus built left to maintain itself?
God’s sovereign faithfulness
18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
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The house of God is an enduring structure. Not even the powers of hell can prevail against it!
23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.
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If these things are true, why does the author of Hebrews need to say anything at all?
God’s sovereignty and God’s faithfulness doesn’t eliminate the call to faith fundamentally and perseverance in that faith.
(vs. 4) “The Builder of all things is God” - He is sovereign
(vs. 6) “But Christ was faithful [even more than Moses] as a Son over His house.
How does the author decide to characterize the house, the church? What are it’s fundamental characteristics that set it apart?
Where does confidence come from?
Where does hope come from?
Faith in a sure truth!
What truth is that in which we ought to have confidence?
What truth is that in which we ought to hope in?
The church’s fundamental means of perseverance is faith in the sure hope that is the gospel of Christ. The faithfulness of Christ to save according to His sovereign grace.
Let’s get a complete picture here so we know what this is and what this is not. I think this will help us as we continue our study of Hebrews. It’s important to see this relationship between God’s faithfulness to build the house and our role in faith and perseverance.
Hebrews paints a picture where God is faithful and active in the whole. At the same time we are responsive in faith and works persevering to the end.
There’s no place where we can say God was not involved.
There’s no place where we can say God work was not evident in us in fruitfulness. (There may be seasons)
Hebrews clearly eliminates a scenario where perseverance is not necessary.
The call to perseverance is not a call for man to build the house alone apart from God.
The call to perseverance is not a call for man to build a portion of the house which God decided not to build.
Every illustration falls short in some regard, but are there any questions here?
A warning: What does it look like not to persevere?
7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, And saw My works for forty years. 10 “Therefore I was angry with this generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they did not know My ways’; 11 As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”
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1 Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the command of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water that we may drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, “Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “What shall I do to this people? A little more and they will stone me.” 5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us, or not?”
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What’s going on in the hearts of the people of Israel?
They believed they were forsaken. They did not believe in the Word of the Lord given to them. They did not believe that the God who delivered them from the hands of the Egyptians by delivering them through the Red Sea was going to be faithful to them in the desert. “God started to build the house but he’s left us alone to finish it. Moses give us water or we’ll kill you!”
What was the word which God spoke to them that they should have believed in?
16 “Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I am indeed concerned about you and what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 “So I said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’
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What do you see here? What hope and confidence might Israel have had while they were thirsty in the wilderness?
The problem with Israel is their heart is hard. It’s just like Pharaoh’s heart. Hard and unwilling to believe the Word of the Lord given to Him. Unwilling to believe that God is faithful to His own and will deliver them.
Notice the relationship there between he heart and knowing the ways of God. “They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways.”
When we talk about perseverance we must address the heart.
The writer of Hebrews eliminates a faithless perseverance.
There’s a temptation to respond to licentiousness. “I can do anything I want because God is faithful” That’s the epitome of putting God to the test. We don’t want to be that, but we also can’t respond with a faithless perseverance where we remove God and it’s all up to us. That’s what Israel believed and that’s why they didn’t persevere.
Our perseverance must recognize God’s promise to bring His people into the promised land. Our perseverance must recognize God’s promise to build his church, to finish the work he began in us, to sanctify us completely, to glorify us, to keep his own. We can’t separate the two.
Questions??
That leads into the writer’s charge in vs. 12
12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
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Simple question. If a toddler came up to you and asked, “What does evil mean?” What would you say?
We tend to recognize the explicit, visible forms of evil right?
According to our text, what’s at the heart of evil?
Unbelief.
There’s little we can do about evil with mere commands. “Stop it!” doesn’t work very well because commands don’t change the heart. “Stop it or else.” might curb the behavior out of fear, but the heart still doesn’t change. The solution to evil and the foundation of perseverance is addressing the unbelieving heart.
Even with all the law given to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai. “Do this and you will live, don’t do this and you will die.” “Stop it or else.” It didn’t change their heart. It didn’t help them in their perseverance because the law does not grant one faith.
Okay we recognize perseverance is rooted in a heart of faith. How do we receive this warning?
Let’s recognize the context and the audience again.
The author of Hebrews is writing to Christian Jews. When he says brothers, I believe he means brothers in Christ, and yet I believe the writer knows there are some who’ve maybe professed faith outwardly, but in their heart, they have not received the Word of Christ.
Perhaps there are some who’s hearts have truly been changed, but are tempted to remove Christ from their walk and resort to a faithless life. A life of belonging to God but never really walking with him or believing in the Word of Christ.
In both cases, the call is to believe in the Word of Christ for life if they have never believed, or for fruitfulness for those who have believed.
That’s the emphasis of this whole letter!
1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.
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He’s calling them to be more than a jew outwardly as Paul says.
28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. 29 But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.
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There are those in the church apparently who are comfortable with a Christianity that’s always been on the outside. It may look like genuine in some places, but on the inside is an uncircumcised heart.
He points back to Exodus as an example. Look at all these who were Jews on the outside, but on the inside they did not believe. They fell away from the living God.
What’s the solution?
Encouragement!
Encouragement with what?
The gospel.
The gospel is how we are united to Christ for the unbelieving.
The gospel is the heart of our assurance by which we hold fast and persevere.
The disobedient. Those who did not persevere, were those who did not believe in the good news given to them. They did not believe God was faithful or sovereign to bring them to the end.
Our call to perseverance is a call to believe in God’s Word to us in Christ. He is faithful to save. He is faithful to preserve us to the end. In that faith we bear the fruit of walking in His ways and persevering to the end.
