The Urge to Encourage: A Matter of Life or Death

Context: Jesus is better than Moses

Jesus created the cosmos. In God’s household, or God’s people he has a privileged seat as the Son of God, while Moses, though due great respect, is a servant in the house like the rest of us.

Read verse 6

If indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, then we show ourselves to be God’s house, or God’s people—the church (1 Tim 3:15)

This is the opening to a warning the author is about to give. If we don’t hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope, in the gospel, then we aren’t God’s people.

Warning Passage Hebrews 3:7-4:13.

This is a quote from Psalm 95:7-11. The author is giving us a warning not to neglect our confidence and hope in the gospel.

Read verses 7-11 Therefore…if you want to be found as God’s people....therefore...

Now notice here that he takes the time to say that the Holy Spirit said this. And the Holy Spirit said, “Today.” It seems like the author is implying that even though this text was written in OT times, it is also for us. It wasn’t just written by some guy way back then for them, but also as a prophetic hymn for us.

The Urge to Encourage One another (Heb 3:12-14)

Read verses 12-14

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God (NIV)

Notice:

Ask: WHO is he commanding here?: Brothers and sisters, you all who identify yourselves as Christians

WHAT is he commanding them to do?: Take care, see to it that…that none of you has a sinful....

He’s saying, all of you who identify as God’s people, take care, see to it, that none of you, no one among you falls away, turns away, from the living God.

We are all supposed to make sure that others around us who identify as Christians don’t have evil, sinful, unbelieving hearts.

BUT…verse 13…BUT instead do what?

Do what?: exhort, encourage one another

When?: every day as long as it is called today.

Why?: that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Encouragement from Christians prevents hard hearts

The encouragement of other Christians prevents your heart from being hardened.

The encouragement you give to other Christians prevents their hearts from being hardened.

Can we pause and take that in for a second...human agency is indispensible in divinely holding our original confidence firm to the end. God uses us to keep others faith enduring to the end. God uses you to keep others faith enduring to the end.

sin is deceitful: sin tries to deceive us to worship something other than God…to worship idols.

If you are a Christian, remember where your sin brought you in your former life:

Isaiah 44:18–20 ESV

18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. 19 No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

Examples of idols we worshiped: They blinded us.

When we gave into sin it hardened our hearts.

Is that you? Is your heart hardened toward God? Are you blind to what you are worshipping?

I urge you, see Christ in all his glory. The perfect Son of God who suffered and poured out his blood on the cross, so that you could be forgiven, and turn from serving those idols that have no power and bring death, to serve the living God.

I don’t think the author is trying to make all of us doubt our salvation here, but I do think he is saying like Jesus did...

Mark 4:14–20 ESV

14 The sower sows the word. 15 And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

He’s saying…if you aren’t accepting he word of God and bearing fruit…you aren’t part of God’s house.

He’s saying…those who endure to the end and still trust God show themselves to be in God’s house. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking that you had that one experience at a youth retreat and now haven’t born any fruit in following Christ.

And so look at what he’s saying…it is your job to take care, to make sure that, there are no, evil unbelieving hearts in any of us who identify as Christians.

How do we do this? What does it look like to exhort, or appeal to, or urge someone strongly?

Helping each other see when sin is deceiving us

Examples: Bro, I keep hearing you talk about how if you just had a wife or...

Consider one another

And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works,

Hebrews 10:23–27 ESV

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. 26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

I want you to notice that the author here is explicitly encouraging you to put yourself in spaces where this can happen for you, though that is certainly true.

He is primarily saying:

Do this for other people!

Watch out for each other!

Consider one another!

I believe we can glean something here. He is not saying to consider yourself first, but to consider others first.

God causes your faith to endure through you seeking that the faith of others endures. The one that encourages the faith of others is the one whose faith is encouraged.

What is love and good works?

Look at 10:25-26 with me.

Remember, in Chapter 3, he is talking to people that identify as Christians.

“Not neglecting to meet together…BUT encouraging one another.”

How are those opposites?

I think he’s saying don’t neglect to meet together because there is something special that happens in Christian fellowship that is encouraging, upbuilding, that stirs one another up to love God and love others and to do good things.

There is something special that happens when Christians come together.

Examples:

What love it is to do this for other people?

Do it even more because judgment is coming, and you want yourself and, what these two passages are pointing to, we want others to be found holding their original confidence firm to the end.

Again, why do this?

read verse 14-18

Author’s Explains his quote of Psalm 95

The one’s who heard and rebelled were those who Moses led out of Egypt (Exodus 13-15)

The plagues

the passover lamb

the angel of death passed over them

the Egyptians gave them all of their riches

He led with a pillar of cloud and fire

Crossed the Red Sea

The one’s who provoked him grumbled against him at Meribah and Massah (Exodus 17:1-7; Num 14)

Exodus 17:7 ESV

7 And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Numbers 14:28–30 ESV

28 Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: 29 your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, 30 not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.

He’s saying… God gave them salvation! Look at what he had done! And they still didn’t trust him. He saved them and now he wasn’t going to give them water to satisfy them, to take care of their needs?

Those who are disobedient don’t enter God’s rest (Heb 3:18)

Summary of why they were not able to enter God’s rest: They were not able to enter because of unbelief (Heb 3:19)

They didn’t trust in God to save them and satisfy them.

Entering God’s Rest (Heb 4:1-13)

Therefore, we should fear if we haven’t entered that rest (4:1)

They heard the good news and didn’t believe, but rebelled (Heb 4:2)

God had promised in Exodus 6:1-9 that he would deliver them from Egypt.

God promised:

Deliverance

Faithfulness to his covenant

Hope of entering the promised land

They simply had to trust him.

Those who have believed enter that rest (because they did not???) (Heb 4:3-5)

There is still time to enter God’s rest for those who haven’t (Heb 4:6-8)

Joshua didn’t give them that rest. That’s why in Psalm 95 the Holy Spirit through David, said…verse 7

Resting from your own work is what people who have entered God’s rest do (Heb 4:9-10)

The ESV Study Bible Chapter 4

The promise of entering now into this rest means ceasing from the spiritual strivings that reflect uncertainty about one’s final destiny; it means enjoyment of being established in the presence of God, to share in the everlasting joy that God entered when he rested on the seventh day (v. 10).

Let us (together) strive and enter that rest (Hebrews 4:11-13)

Don’t be like the Exodus generation (Hebrews 4:11)

Don’t let each others hearts be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. See to it, take care, that there aren’t evil, unbelieving hearts among us.

Exhort one another every day. Stir one another up daily.

What do we stir one another up with? The Word of God

The Bible exposes what is going on in our hearts (heard and trusted) (Hebrews 4:12)

We will give an account (Hebrews 4:13)