You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, is seeing believing? Well, another way of putting that is, what does it take you to be persuaded? Exactly, and sometimes even seeing it won't do it. Is not enough.
Well, we're going to look at a case where that happened in the Old Testament and the writer of Hebrews is going to tell us we're all vulnerable to that. Today on More Than Ink. Good morning. I'm sitting across from the lovely Dorothy. And I'm sitting across from Jim. I'm not handsome. Oh, handsome.
Oh, man. That's okay. That's okay. I can handle it. And wonderful.
I'm not a thin-skinned kind of guy. Well, we're glad that you're with us. We're sitting here with our coffee again around the dining room table and looking so forward to looking at this section in Hebrews 3. We looked last week at the first six verses of Hebrews 3 and the writer, he says, look, you need to consider this Jesus.
You need to consider him a little bit more deeply, you know, and it'll serve to create for you a rock that you can hold fast to in so many ways. Now, he's going to come to the fact that with Israel there was a presumption that they were God's people because of, you know, their genetics and all that kind of stuff. But they did go astray.
Something kind of went wrong. And we're going to look at that example today. It's a great example to kind of not scare us, but sort of serve notice to us that it's possible for us to think that we're in God's family in his house, but we're really not. Well, the issue is really one of the heart. It's a heart issue. This idea of a hardened heart is going to come up again and again and again.
Do we just assume that we're God's people because of where we are or where we attend and have not allowed God's word to penetrate our hearts in a way that changes us? That's the issue. Yeah, yeah. The old saying is that just because you sleep in the garage doesn't make you a car. That's right. So going to church doesn't necessarily make you a Christian. And likewise, from a Jewish perspective, growing up in the house of Israel doesn't necessarily make you part of God's house. Even being genetically related to Abraham.
Yes, it's a problem. So wise up. So we're just going to read the whole passage for you. We're going to start in verse seven, then we'll come back. There's a lot here, but a great story about an actual occurrence back in the Old Testament. So do you want to read it?
I love to read it. Okay, here we are. Verse seven, chapter three. But we have that word, therefore. Therefore. So, you know, this is all so tightly reasoned because of everything I have said to you so far. Therefore.
Therefore. The Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their heart.
They have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we've come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence in him firm to the end. As it said, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
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. So that was a lot of reading. Yeah. But it's one event.
It's one event and so, so potent. It's like this massive turning place in the life of the nation of Israel. What happened there in the wilderness when they chose to not believe God. If you have kind of a rudimentary understanding of the Old Testament, remember Israel becomes slaves in Egypt.
They go there in refuge but then a couple hundred years later they find themselves slaves. And it turns out that Moses then is raised up out of the people instrumentally to lead the people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, the land of promise by God. So you all know that story.
You know that. You see the movie or you've heard the story. But I would encourage you, if you've never done so, go back to Exodus and begin in chapter one of Exodus and read it. That's what Exodus is about. It is a ripping good story. It is, it's a great story.
And it moves pretty fast. You could probably just not even stop until you get through the first ten, eleven chapters of Exodus because it just moves. You will learn so much about the history of Israel and so many pegs will drop in the hole for you.
It's a huge deal. So go back to Exodus and begin reading at chapter one and go as far as you can until you come up for air. And it's a good foundation for what we're talking about here because they do come out of Egypt. They cross the Red Sea. God parts the Red Sea.
Not Charlton Heston but Moses parts the Red Sea. And they come out and then suddenly problems start to develop when they're out in the wilderness. The wilderness of Zin they call it in Kadesh. But the problems start to come up because, hey, we left a wonderful place in Egypt where we had wonderful food. We were slaves, sure, but life was pretty darn good. Now here we are free but we're in the desert and there's nothing here. So you led us out of Egypt so that we would die out here.
What's God doing? And they said that repeatedly. They said that over and over again. And that's the problem that we're coming up with here today that the Rite of Hebrew says, watch out, don't go here. So did you hear the repeated words?
I did. Because as we read, what do we read, 10 or 12 verses, we heard over and over again, harden, do not harden your heart. We heard over and over again, today, while it's still called today. Today if you hear his voice. And we heard a word that we'd heard last week. We heard, remember last week it was translated hold fast. But this week it's translated hold our confidence firm.
Firm to the end. But it's the same thing. And I also heard the word rest, not as many times. Rest. But it's an interesting word that kind of, it's the equivalence idea of what happens when you get into the promised land, you find rest. And we ran into unbelieving. Unbelieving. Believing and unbelieving.
Yeah. So I mean we already flipped to the last chapter of the book and it says that they didn't get into the promised land, the land of God's promise because they didn't enter because of unbelief. What is it they didn't believe? They didn't believe that God could give them a great place to live there. Well, they didn't believe that he would do what he said he would do.
Exactly. Because they came right up to the edge of the land, spied it out, and then said, uh, no, we don't believe our God is big enough to do this. Which is appalling considering what they had seen in the wilderness. What he had done for them.
God parted the sea. Come on. Oh, well, before that. Yeah, come on. He led them out of Egypt.
Come on. After the ten plagues. After the plagues. On Egypt. And they saw God literally bring Egypt to its knees. And you still don't believe? Yeah.
So, yeah. So the issue is that they did leave Egypt, but they didn't have enough confidence to say that God could take them to the promised land. In fact, you know, as background reading, Numbers 14 is where you'll see this big grumbling take place. You know, this provocation of God because they grumbled about, hey, we're going to all die in the desert, you know. But Numbers 14 follows right after Numbers 13, and 13 is all about when they send spies into the land to check it out. You know, one spy for every tribe. So the 12 come back. And the report is it's a great place.
Totally great place. But, you know, they're giants. And so ten of the spies say, yeah, I don't think we should go in there. And two of them say, no, God can do this. He promised it to us. He promised he would. And look what he's done for us so far. And look what he's done so far.
Yeah. Good job, Caleb and Joshua. They were the two out of the 12 that said, you know, God can do this. His promises are good. They had confidence to the end coming from the promised land.
But everyone else said, no, we don't think so. Let's find another leader. In fact, let's stone Moses and Aaron.
Let's go back to Egypt. That's how fractured their confidence in God was, is that even though God promised it, despite the fact that he brought them out of Egypt with great miracles and signs, they did not have confidence that God could deliver, bringing them to the place of rest. Okay. So let's think for a minute because the writer here quotes Psalm 95. Psalm 95. And the portion of it he quotes is not the whole Psalm. So I would encourage you to go back and read the whole Psalm. He leaves out the first half.
He does. And the first half is all about recognizing God's salvation and God's power and giving him thanks and then humbling yourself. So all of that comes before the part where he says now today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as on the day of testing in the wilderness.
Your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years. Well, what works did they see? We already said beside the plagues in Egypt and the deliverance at the Red Sea. They saw God give them manna.
Yeah, every day. They saw God give them water out of a rock. They saw every day that cloud hovering over the tabernacle and every night the pillar of fire. They had things to see, touch, hear, smell, taste, evidences that God was with them. Plenty of evidence.
Plenty. And would do what he said he would do. Exactly. So that's absolutely inexcusable to come right up to the edge of the land. God said, here is where I'm taking you. And then say, nope, you're not big enough.
Yeah. Not going in there. It's a great example, too. We think that if you just show me the evidence, if I see with my own eyes, I'll believe it. But Jesus told us and in other places, well, actually, no. Even if you're presented with massive amounts of evidence.
That's right. You still, it's a hard issue about your willingness to believe and to follow. Deliberate refusal to be persuaded no matter how much evidence you're giving. Exactly.
That's the issue that the writer is taking on here. That they were unable to enter because of that unbelief. And that unbelief is linked with disobedience. Well, that unwillingness to believe that God means what he says. Yeah.
So I can lean on it and place my confidence in it and act. Yeah. And another good reason to read Psalm 95, too. The first half that he leaves out, he concludes with this image of us being sheep in God's and God's our shepherd.
And he's leading us out into pasture and stuff. I mean, it's exactly what happened in the Exodus. The shepherd leads them out.
Right. And they're not willing to believe that he's going to take them finally to the good place of rest. So, and we've talked about the fact, we did in John, we looked at John about the fact that shepherds speak and the sheep hear his voice and they follow his voice. Well, in this particular case, they stopped hearing his voice and they hardened their hearts. So, well, yeah, Psalm 95.
Today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts. Right. Because if you hear it, right, wasn't Jesus always saying, hey, if you got ears, listen up. Right. Not just the audible hearing, but letting it penetrate.
Right? What don't we say to each other when we're not being understood? We say, you're not hearing me. You're not hearing me. My words might be registering in your ear canal, but my meaning is not penetrating your understanding. That's what we're talking about here.
In one ear, out the other. If you hear his voice, right, if you know God is speaking, don't harden your heart, don't let your heart be penetrated by what God is saying to you. Yeah, exactly. It's a whole different relation to God's word. You can be exposed to it, and this is where I come back to the Christians being in the church and thinking they're Christian. You can be exposed to it, but if there's no transaction internally where you embrace it and then put your confidence in God and react as a result to it, it's just going in one ear and out the other. I think for the nation of Israel, a similar thing is going on here because they presume they were in the house of God because they were genetically related to Abraham.
So that just seems right. But it turns out that even despite all the evidence of leaving Egypt, all the evidence that they had, they still harden their hearts and instead of following the shepherd into the place of great pasture, which is the promised land, they decided not to listen to his voice anymore. And instead, they replaced that trust with grumbling. And a refusal to give him thanks. And a refusal to give him thanks.
And actually put him to the test. It says, Psalm 95 is what's being quoted here. I don't know if we mentioned that. We did. Yeah, so you really want to look at Psalm 90.
Well, yeah, we mentioned something when my thinking about it. But yeah, they put him to the test. They said basically, I will not follow unless you prove to me it's an okay deal. That's the putting to the test. And that's where God says, guys, I've given you enough evidence, more evidence.
So this grumbling. In fact, when you look in Psalm 95, it says don't harden your heart at Meribah. Meribah is not actually a physical place. It's a state of mind. Because Meribah means to quarrel or strife or to provoke God. So don't harden your hearts like that place where they provoked God because of their unbelief.
You know, they wouldn't believe him. Or on the day at Massa, Massa is capitalized, but it's not a place either. You know, and it's a condition of mind and heart. And it's actually about trial and testing and stuff like that or despair. So here you were in your day of trial.
You're having this kind of, you know, wondering what life is all about kind of thing. That's the trial. And you would not, you would not put your confidence in me. And instead you actually quarreled and argued with me and provoked me and said, prove to me this is okay. And made a demand to say, I'm not budging from here unless you prove to me here and now that you can, that you're God, that you'll do what you said you will do. When he had been doing it all along.
Yeah, yeah. So that's the great rebellion. It talks about in verse 15. That's the great rebellion, as it's said in quote, in quoting from Psalm 95 verses seven and eight. Look today, today, today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as during that rebellion. So how many times has the writer of Hebrews now made reference to this in Psalm 95? At least three times. Yeah, it's, it's repeated. So if he is actually taking the Psalm and rewriting it, this is, this ought to capture our attention. Yeah.
I mean, if you hear, don't harden your heart like they did when they rebelled. Right. And the today word is a nice kind of urgent thing. Like don't delay, don't delay.
Don't say, well, I'll think about it for a while. If you hear his voice, just like sheep follow shepherd, don't delay, just go. Now's the day of salvation, says the scripture in a number of places.
Yeah. Hold, hold that original confidence firm to the end. Hold that confidence, not just in our, not in ourselves, but in who God is and his promises to take us to a great place of rest. I mean, I love using that word, a great place of rest and the New Testament kind of equivalent of that word rest in the Old Testament is the word abide. So it's a abide in the New Testament is deliberately not moving around. It's like, it's like, you know, staking out some land and saying, this is where I'm going to put down stakes. This is where I'm going to stay. This is the place I'm living here. Well, that was what God was promising to them in the promised land, a place of rest. You can put your feet down here, your stakes down here, there'll be life I'll provide for you. There's rest, no more moving around, no more traveling across the desert, no more living as slaves in some foreign land. You can rest here.
It's a great image of what God promises to us when he promises what it's going to be like when we live in the house of God as his family. You can rest here because I will provide for you. I will protect you. I will care for your needs. I will shepherd you.
He's worthy of our confidence. So you know, that sets me thinking about Jesus in Matthew 11 when he says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, like laboring beyond belief, and I will give you rest. Rest. Rest. So this idea of rest that the writer of Hebrews is opening here is a huge Old Testament picture that Jesus then owned it and said, I am the one who will give you rest. And so really, for the next six, seven, eight chapters in Hebrews, we're going to be talking about rest. It's a big topic. Rest in Christ.
Yeah, it's a big topic. This is what God intends for us. This is what Jesus, the apostle, was sent out to accomplish, is to bring us into a place of rest. And to speak to us that message with the authority of God, there is a rest and you find that rest in him.
There is a rest for the people of God, there really is. But you know the danger, and this is the danger he's pointing out to here, it's pragmatic and it's real. And here's the example, like he says in Psalm 95, he says, they put me to the test, you know. There are people who go astray in their heart, they go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Well, what do you mean they don't know my ways? They saw I'm part the sea. Well, yeah, they kind of saw it, but they didn't really internalize it. So there's a massive warning here for us.
Oh, it's huge. Right? And now, therefore, the Holy Spirit says, not Psalm 95, not David, the Holy Spirit is saying to you through the apostle, the sent one, Jesus, today, if you hear my voice, you got ears, listen up, don't harden your hearts. So look at verse 12, take care, brothers, lest there be in any one of you, he's writing to believers. Yeah, these are believers. In any one of you, an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. There's...
There it is. There's drift, there's neglect, there's... And it's all rooted in unbelief. Yep, they go astray in their heart. Yeah, he calls them holy brothers at the beginning of the chapter. So this is a danger to believers. And that should... Boy, that should get our attention. Yeah, yeah. That we do you think of yourself as vulnerable to having a heart that is hardened, as he says in verse 13, by the deceitfulness of sin.
Somehow I have allowed myself to neglect the truth of Jesus and begun to believe that sin offers me a better deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a better deal than what we have. So if you put them back in the desert, wandering around, they're thinking they got a bad deal because they had pretty good provisions back in Egypt. I mean, there's some great produce that comes out of the Nile Delta.
There's just no question. Isn't it interesting that in none of those arguments when they're whining about how good things were in Egypt, they seem to have forgotten the fact that they were slaves. Slaves. Well, you know, we overlook a few things because standard of living is better there, even if we are slaves and we're not at liberty and stuff like that.
Well, and we all kind of tend to reinvent the past when we're looking for evidence to support our position now. Yeah. So while they're in this moment of stress and trial in the desert, they're making a fundamental decision. Do we entrust our future and our care into the promises of God or instead do we believe our eyes in this desert and think that God cannot do this and so we will take charge of the situation and go back to where we came from.
And that's their straying hearts in this entire... I mean, really, that's the question that begs right here is how willing are you to entrust your entire life and your future to a promise from God? Is that promise worthy?
Is it sound? Should we really hold fast to that promise? Does God come through on his promises?
That's really what was at stake here in the desert. Yeah, and see, that's when, going back to the beginning of the chapter, consider Jesus. Consider Jesus. Consider who he is and what he has done because God never asks us for blind faith. He does ask us for faith, to believe that he will do what he says he will do, but he never asks us to trust him blindly. He has always given us enough evidence to stand on, to trust that he will do what he has said he would do because he has always done what he said he would do.
So we can really lean on evidence from the past in terms of who God is, but we never need to, like they did, demand evidence of the future about what God's going to do because then what you're doing is you're putting into question his promise of good for you and you should never do that. In fact, the writer here of Hebrews says that, look, if you want to share in Christ, that's verse 14, like you're sharing in what Christ has come to bring to us as the mediator and the apostle. If you want to share in that, you exercise your share in that by holding your confidence in that promise. That's how you do it. That's how you hold fast the original confidence right to the end, right to the edge of going into the promised land.
Just hold to that promise. That's how you actually participate in a share of what Christ is bringing to you. And remember what he's done.
Exactly. And give thanks. And it gives you plenty.
And humble yourself. As Psalm 95 says, let's bow down, let's worship, let's give thanks to our creator and our shepherd. So as I've been preparing to talk about this today, it set me thinking about 1 Corinthians 10 where Paul says, all of this happened to them for our benefit.
Our benefit. This is not just some Old Testament story made up a thousand years ago. Those were real people at a real place in time experiencing real events. And Paul says that was all for your benefit.
So you won't stumble the same way they did. And if it can happen to people who saw the red, the red departed, if it can happen to those people that their hearts go astray, it can happen to you. People who ate manna every morning for 40 years. Reminded every day.
Exactly. Reminded every day of the provision and loving kindness of God. So I would encourage you to open to 1 Corinthians 10 and read the first 13 verses because you all know there's no temptation taking you, but what's overcoming demand, right? That's verse 13. What you don't know is the first 12 verses that come before it where Paul says, now don't stumble the same way they did. They were tested in the wilderness and they tested God.
Don't let that happen to you. So that's just right along with what the writer of Hebrews is saying, don't drift, don't neglect, hold fast, remember what Jesus has done and who he is. God means what he says.
Hold your original confidence to the end, what his promises are. So the problem in the desert and the problem with us isn't that God did not come through on his promise, his promise was there and he'll talk more about this as we go on. God's promise was still active and it's right there on the table. The problem was we just didn't believe it. We didn't think he was capable of doing it. We don't think he really loves us enough to actually have that come to place. And deliberately refused to be persuaded. That's the issue with unbelief.
And we're going to get to that in a few more weeks. The writer of Hebrews is going to open again this discussion of the difference between honest doubt and deliberate unbelief in the face of God's faithfulness. That's what hardening is. Right. So in your reading of the beginning of Exodus too, you'll discover that Pharaoh hardened his heart, God hardened Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
Well how was that hardening happening? Through deliberate, willful rejection of God's truth and unbelief, a refusal to be persuaded that God is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do. Right, right. So if you want to take part in a share of what Christ is bringing to us and the promise of rest, and everyone does, it really comes down to placing your trust in who he is and what he's accomplished.
Which is what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3. You gotta believe who I am. I'm the guy who's making this happen. And if you're not going to believe that, well I'm sorry, you don't have a share in this promise of rest.
Right. So listen up. Because Jesus said, you got ears? You got ears to hear? Then hear. Then hear.
Let it penetrate you. So in the very sobering last verse of this chapter, so we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Wow. If it can happen to them, it can happen to you. Yeah.
They care brothers lest there be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart. And don't let your heart stray to go astray. Well we're out of time again.
Wow. This is, by the way, this topic is not going to go away. He's going to amplify this whole thing, but what a great example. I would encourage you also to hit Exodus and get more familiar with the actual narrative. Deuteronomy 1 is a great place.
It's more from a commentary perspective. Deuteronomy 1 is an excellent summary. Talking about it. So those are really good reading ahead. Also Psalm 95 we mentioned, it's almost verbatim quoted here. Read Psalm 95. But read it in the whole context.
The first half as well as the second half because the writer here quotes the second half. So anyway, so I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. Oh, we're having a great time. I hope you are. As we look at these marvelous truths, God has in store for you rest. That's what he wants for you.
A place of rest and having confidence in Christ is how that comes about. So be with us next week on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Yeah, does that work? I don't know.
