The Better Moses pt 3

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

It is always a privilege to bring the Word of God to the saints of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.

Today we are coming up on the end of chapter 3 from the book of Hebrews. Throughout this look at the first three chapters of Hebrews we have seen how the Author presents Jesus as being Superior in ability, nature, and worth than anything else. It has been a wonderful apologetic for the deity of Jesus that some groups would like to deny. There has also been much given to prove the humanity of Jesus. He became flesh and blood to save a creature of flesh and blood, namely us, humans. Hebrews gives us these deep doctrinal truths like Jesus being fully God and Fully Man.

But we have also been challenged to look work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We have been called to realize that if we truly believe that Jesus is the Christ and we have been saved than we must also realize that we are a holy and separate people. We exist in the world but not of the world. Through Christ’s atoning work on the cross, He has brought many sons to glory. We only experience lasting, eternal glory, through what Christ has done and given to us.

I understand that the kind of teaching presented here is challenging. It can be challenging intellectually, it can be challenging emotionally, it can be challenging spiritually. But that is because it must be challenging. I’ve said many times, the gospel is very simple, but it is not easy. Pursuing holiness for the glory of God is a joyful endeavor, but it is an endeavor nonetheless. If you are visiting here with us today or somehow coming across this message online and you are not regularly challenged by the teaching you are receiving, then you better begin to question if that teaching is one truly biblical, and two if it is of any real benefit to you! Our verses of the month, Colossians 3:16-17, remind us that our lives should be saturated with the Word of Christ and we should be teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Please run from sources of apathetic “teaching” and pleasing words that are given for the sake of comfortability.

To paraphrase Spurgeon, “Do you choose the type of doctor who never tells you the truth about your health?! Do you trust the doctor who falsely assures you that nothing is wrong with you when the whole time a terrible disease was spreading inside you? The doctor who prescribes maybe just a little aspirin and you’ll be alright? He tells you to skip the painful operation that the surgeon suggested for you? Church it would be a waste of time, no, more than that, a crime like murder, to teach easy things that do not challenge the soul. When we think about teaching, the question is not ‘is it pleasant’ but ‘is it true?’”

So today, as we continue through Hebrews, it is my prayer that you are challenged and more than challenged, convicted and moved to act. Not by the clever presentation of the preacher, but by the truth of the Word of God that pierces to the division of soul and of spirit, between joint and marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

If you would, open your Bibles to Hebrews 3.

When we left off last week, we had been looking at the urgency there is in responding to the gospel. None of us know how long we have left. Just this past week I was scrolling through social media and saw former students of mine, lamenting because a kid they went to school with, couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20, was a victim of street violence. None of us truly know how long we have left. Today is the day to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus!

Today, we are going to be using more of the life of Moses, as we have for the last few weeks, to spot the difference between true and false salvation. To reiterate what I’ve been circling around, repent and believe is an easy formula, you may think it is just two steps that are really two sides of the same coin, and that’s true! But also understand that coming to Christ is not something that can be taken flippantly.

Look with me at verse 14:

Hebrews 3:14 ESV

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

This morning we are coming right out the gate by confronting one of the most difficult doctrines in all of Christian theology. Perseverance. We briefly touched upon this when we looked at Hebrews 3:6 just a couple of weeks ago, but we will give it a bit of a longer look now. The Spirit says through the writer of Hebrews that we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

But it is here that we find the great, uncomfortable, challenging tension we must explore. The Baptist Faith and Message references Ephesians 4:30 when it makes the statement: “[The Holy Spirit] seals the believer unto the day of final redemption.” So if the believer is sealed and their salvation is secure, then how is it possible for one of the recipients of this letter to NOT be sharing in Christ by not holding their original confidence firm to the end? When we are saved, when we repent and believe, are we sealed or not?

What we have to understand is that this letter, the book of Hebrews, was written to group of Hebrew believers, a church. The church had been presented the gospel. Many believed. Many made public professions. But much like churches today, there were those within the group who had some knowledge of the truths of Scripture and became a part of this movement, they identified with the group, without ever really submitting to Jesus. In our modern context it may be something like, “Yeah, sure, Jesus is cool. But when’s the next potluck.” “Yeah, yeah, He died for sins, but like let me sing a solo!” There’s nothing wrong with potlucks or singing, but to truly share in Christ is for Him to be the first and primary love of your life.

John 8:31 ESV

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,

Jesus is not the doorman who gives us access to a social club for us to use for our own enjoyment. Jesus IS the club. Jesus said you are truly my disciple if you abide, if you dwell, if you remain, if you continue in His Word. Through faith and submission to Jesus we are not given a better life for our glory, we are given the best of lives for His glory! So to understand eternal security and perserverance is to understand that through faith in Christ you have been made into a new creature. And that new creature is shaped by and belongs to Jesus! Jesus puts it like this in the gospel of John:

John 10:27–29 ESV

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

The sheep in this image are followers of Christ. Those who are Christ’s sheep, know His voice. They follow Him. No one can ever snatch them out of the Father’s hand. They are secure. Once you’re a sheep you don’t then become a goat. Once you’re in the hand there isn’t anything that can pull you out. You are secure.

But here is something to keep in mind. Sheep are stupid. Sheep wander. But Christ’s sheep, though they may wander and fall into sin and temptation will always hear the voice of their master and return to Him. The London Baptist Confession of 1689 puts it like this, “And though they may…fall into grievous sins, and for a time continue therein,… they shall renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end.”

I’m not the Holy Spirit. God has not given me the ability to assess who has backslidden in their faith and who it is that has made a false profession for the purpose of personal religion. But God has given me His Word and it tells me that those who know Him know are His sheep and know His voice and thus I am calling every single one of us to repent of the sin in our lives and put all our hope in the wonderful Savior Jesus Christ.

If you would, return with me to Hebrews 3:14

Hebrews 3:14 ESV

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

Look at the everything this tells us about the glorious salvation there is in Christ alone.

First, we see that we are not naturally, by birth in union with Christ. “For we HAVE COME to share in Christ.” We were not naturally sharing in Christ. We were born naturally into despicable sin. All of us fall so short of the glory of God. All of us are nothing more than sinners in the hand of a Holy God. But thanks be to God that Christ died on the cross to be the propitiation for our sins. He took the sins of all those who so ever believe in Him, all of His sheep, He took their sins upon Him and died to pay their price. He took the wrath of God owed for every transgression of every believer upon Himself. So that we may share in Christ.

Do you understand what Christ has done? Do you understand why He has done it? He has through His blood reconciled believers to a holy God. He has brought us together to be His people to work together for God’s glory. Not only has He united us to God, He has united us together as a church, as a body of believers.

We see that by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, we now SHARE IN CHRIST. What a grace it is that we share in Christ! I have heard many people talk about the sense of love and unity that there is in this church. And I have seen it myself. I truly believe it is rooted in a common sharing in Christ. And it absolutely must be! When we talk about the body of Christ, the church, being unified, we must not forget what it is unified in! It doesn’t matter if every single part of your body is working together in prefect harmony if you’ve lost your head!

Because we are share in Christ, are united in Christ, and centered in Christ, we follow His commands. We teach and admonish one another. We encourage and build up one another. We remind each other of the gospel and spur one another on to love and good deeds. We encourage each other to run the race with Endurance. That is why the gathered assembly is so important. It is one of most effective, if not the primary, means of grace by which God conforms us to His image.

I’ve recently been having physical therapy. In the shoulder, if I remember correctly, there are 17 muscles that work together. Well, one muscle, the scapula, is out of whack and so the others are compensating for it. The muscles are working together to take up for another.

Church, we must continually be encouraging one another to press on in the faith because that is one of the reasons for which God has given us the church! We support one another as we give Him all the glory in the local assembly.

As silly sheep, we are in constant need of reminder of repentance from sin and focus on the Savior.

We see our author in Hebrews pressing on the need to to turn the Lord without delay as we continue through the end of chapter 3:

Hebrews 3:15 ESV

As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

This is the same quotation from Psalm 95 that we looked at last week.

That psalm talks about how the Israelite people had seen all of the wondrous works of God to bring them out of Egypt and yet they still did not believe. Because of their unbelief they were not allowed to enter the Promised Land, the rest that God had in store for His people. In the last 4 verses of this chapter we are given 5 rhetorical questions that expound upon the mercy of God to provide salvation and the just punishment for unbelief.

Walk through these with me:

Hebrews 3:16 ESV

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?

Here we have the first two rhetorical questions. The second one answering the first. Who were the ones who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt by Moses? All of the generation that Moses took out of Egypt grumbled, tested, quarrelled, and rebelled against God!

Why does this matter to us today? Because sometimes those who should be the most familiar with the One True God revolt to the most extreme! We walked through it last week, but the Israelites had seen the plagues, the deliverance, the parting of the red sea, the pillars of cloud and fire, the manna from heaven, and yet they still rejected God. We think that they must have been so ridiculous. How could they not worship what was so clearly right in front of their faces? And yet, every Sunday churches are filled with people who are surrounded by sound teaching and the truth of the Word of God that pierces to the division of soul and of spirit, between joint and marrow, and yet leave that place unbothered!

The Israelites rebellion shows us that being outwardly identified with God’s people is different from being a heart. transformed eternally identified child of God. Sometimes those most familiar with God at an intellectual level, rebel the most. I’m reminded of the moniker “Preacher’s kid.” Growing up I was a preacher’s kid and thus everyone assumed one of two things when ever they met me. They assumed I would be the most pious creature to ever walk the earth, or they assumed I would be a hellion busting the gates of hell wide open. Now where would they get the idea for the latter? It is a sad reality that many pastor’s kids grow up in homes with a plethora of knowledge of the gospel and access to the Word of God and yet reject it and live for themselves.

We see in verse 16 that the Israelites had heard and yet they rebelled. It was all of those who left Egypt by Moses.

And yet we must pause here for a second to glorify God. Because, God is faithful to the faithful. None of the original generation that was brought out of Egypt would be allowed into the promised land, except for Joshua and Caleb. Joshua and Caleb were faithful in their service to the Lord. We aren’t told specifically, but it would seem that they refrained from the same testing and quarreling that the rest of the original generation took part in. They were the only ones pardoned some such a fate. We don’t have time to go into the full details but if you want to look into their story, look up later Numbers 13 and 14. You will see that the sinful Israelites wanted to stone them for their confidence in the Lord to provide against all odds! It reminds me of the stories I hear of pastors, and I know good and well that pastors are far from perfect, but sometimes pastors that are committed to preaching and teaching the whole truth of Scripture, even the convicting parts, are run out of town by their congregations that don’t want to hear truth but want to culturally identify as “Christian”.

But I bring up Josh and Caleb to highlight that God is always faithful to those who truly believe in Him! This should bring all of us hope! Spurgeon wrote, “You may be in so great a minority that in all your acquaintance there may not be one godly person, yet the Holy Ghose will not take the matter in the lump, but He will choose you out, and mark you, and distinguish you.” Meaning that our faith is not to be in the people around us but in the God above us. And when our faith is in the God above us, our confidence remains firm to the end. God will never leave us nor forsake us.

I tell you this so that you will ask your self what your faith is in? Is it in the group you are a part of? Or is it in the finished and complete work of Christ? Because only one of those is the right answer!

Let’s press on:

Hebrews 3:17 ESV

And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?

God was righteously angry with the people who rejected Him in the wilderness. They had seen His power, might, and glory, yet were unfazed. As we saw last week, after ten times of testing God, He tells them that they will not enter His rest, but will spend the next 40 years wandering through the wilderness. And that’s what happened. For four decades they traveled up and back, right and left, zig and zag, making virtually no progress towards the promised Land.

During this time of wandering, you would think that the people would have more time to reflect and repent from their wicked ways that incurred such a judgment. But we see in verse 17 of Hebrews 3, that they continued to provoke the Lord. The people would be punished for their sin, for the wrath they were storing up against themselves from the Lord. Their bodies would fall in the wilderness.

We see one instance of this in Numbers 21.

Numbers 21:4–6 ESV

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

Many of the people died there in just this instance. You can see in those first few verses, just how hard their hearts were against God. They called the food that God miraculously provided for them day in and day out, WORTHLESS. And they were met by temporal judgment. Snakes invaded the camp. Many people of Israel died.

The people were punished because of their unbelief and rebellion. Look at the rest of our section of Hebrews:

Hebrews 3:18–19 ESV

And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

This section ends rather simply. They were unable to enter the rest because of unbelief. How do we know they didn’t believe? Because they were disobedient. There is a direct tie between unbelief and disobedience. When we looked at verse 12 last week, we saw that the unbelieving heart is an EVIL heart. The rebelling, disobedient, evil, unbelieving heart is not granted entry to God’s rest.

So how do we avoid such a fate:

Spurgeon “The way to keep from hardness of heart, and from the deceitfulness of sin, is to believe.” Believe what? “Believe in the living God, and in His righteousness, and in your obligation to serve him—then sin will appear exceeding[ly] sinful. Believe in Christ, who took your sin, and bore it in his own body on the tree—then sin will be seen in its black colors. Believe in the Holy Ghost, by whose power you can[sic.] be delivered from the deceitfulness of sin; and as you believe, so shall it be unto you, and you will stand fast where the half-believer slides.”

I repeat the formula of salvation quite a bit. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Each and every one of those are essential. Without God’s grace there would be no mercy on the sinner. Without Christ there would be no payment for the cost of our sin.

And what we have been getting at as we talk about faith is the necessity of true, lasting, faith. The reality is that all of us have faith. We have faith in the cooks at our favorite restaurants that they won’t poison our food. We have faith in the highway department to have put down pavement as we drive down the road, even if we can’t see around the corner. We all have faith. The question is, do you have God-given faith that Jesus is your Savior?

Really quickly as we close, I want to take your attention to two Scriptures. The first of which is the rest of the story of the fiery serpents we read a moment ago:

Numbers 21:7–9 ESV

And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

In this story, the people realized they have sinned. And God provides a way to salvation for those who have the faith to be obedient to His command. If they were to be saved from the snakes they had to trust that God would saved them by looking at the serpent. Those that looked as God commanded them to do would live!

Now keep that in mind as I draw you attention to the book of John, right before everyone’s favorite Scripture:

John 3:14–21 ESV

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

When we look to Jesus and believe in Him with faith given by the grace of God, we are saved for eternal life. Not just for our own personal amusement, but to be empowered to live lives that glorify him. We are saved by God and press on to work for God. May it be clearly seen that all we have done has been carried out by God.

Believe in Him and be not condemned, but empowered to honor and serve Him.

But whoever does not believe is condemned already. Hear these words: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

Come to Christ today, respond boldly and publically.

Let’s pray.