Welcome to Day 2236 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Hebrews 5 Beware of a Hard Heart – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 05/14/2023 “Beware of a Hard Heart” Hebrews 3:7-19 Last, we continued our extended series through the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. We explored how the Messiah (Jesus) is greater than Moses. Today, in Hebrews 3:7-19 we are warned of having a hard heart. As we read this passage, look for references to unbelief and remember the concept of believing loyalty. Let’s begin by reading today’s passage.  So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ” See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. Warning signs and signals bombard us every day. From a simple “notification” that your smartphone battery is getting low to a flashing yellow light telling you to slow down, to countless similar alerts: “Watch Out for Falling Rocks,”…“Road Ends,”…“Slow! Children at Play”…“Speed Zone”…“Slippery When Wet.” Add to these the constant beeps, buzzes, bells, and blaring horns that keep us up-to-date on impending doom, and it’s easy to miss the alarms in life placed there to protect us from harm. As most of you can probably attest, one of the most annoying alarms is to wake you in the morning - it is so easy to press that snooze button in the morning, to silence the alarm. Firmly planted along the winding path of the letter to the Hebrews are several passages delivering stern warnings. They aren’t optional suggestions, simple advice, or false alarms. Instead, these are true and timely announcements of real danger from potential perils in the Christian’s life of faith. The same single-word message blares loud and clear in these passages: Beware! We’ve already seen the first warning sign in Hebrews 2:1–4, “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” The author invites us to slow down and observe a second warning in our following passage: “Beware of a hard heart!” It’s a message too many neglect, / but it’s one we all need to hear from time to time, / or we may end up careening off the path of Christian faith, love, and hope. 3:7–11 Given the Jewish background of his audience, the author was always eager to summon testimony from the Old Testament. Its language and images would have been immediately familiar to Jews, who would have been able to draw on a wealth of background knowledge that most Gentile readers couldn’t. The Old Testament text woven into this warning passage in Hebrews 3:7–11 is adapted from Psalm 95:7–11. We don’t know the original human author of this psalm, but the writer of Hebrews rightly attributes the words to “the Holy Spirit,” who stands as the divine author behind every word of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16), “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.” Israel left Egypt and traveled across the Sinai Peninsula toward Mount Sinai. The Israelites traveled to the Promised Land but failed to enter the first time they arrived because they were afraid of the Canaanites. They then wandered around in the wilderness for forty years before they finally made it back to Canaan. When the Holy Spirit inspired the words of Psalm 95, He inspired the author to point back to the time of Israel’s wilderness wanderings recorded in Numbers. The people of Israel had recently been delivered from bondage in Egypt, had passed through the Red Sea, and were headed for Canaan to take possession of the Promised Land as God’s special covenant people. The journey would have taken less than two weeks if they had taken a direct route across the Sinai Peninsula along a well-established trade route. But their sin against God and their hardness of heart led to a forty-year delay! Neither a map, a compass, nor a GPS would have done the Hebrews any good. They hadn’t simply lost sight of the road; they had lost sight of their God. Their problem was a heart condition. Instead of having hearts softened by God's unspeakable power and glory and overwhelmed by His goodness and mercy toward them,  they grew numb toward Him. Tough, not tender. Rough, not responsive. Hardened, not humble. This embarrassing scar on the history of God’s covenant people would be a painful reminder of the effects of a hardened heart. Although those tragic events of rebellion in the wilderness had occurred centuries earlier, the author of Hebrews brought it to bear on his readers because he saw in them a strikingly similar tendency toward dullness of hearing and hardness of heart. God knew the Israelites needed their faith refined and tested as they journeyed to the Promised Land. And God had shown the people over and over again that He who had guided them into the wilderness would also provide them with everything they needed. But sadly, they repeatedly failed to trust the Lord. We see an example of this in Exodus 17:1–7. Instead of responding in faith and obedience, the Israelites grumbled against Moses, God’s chosen mediator, and prophet. Moses’ response showed that they were rebelling not merely against a man, but against God: “Why are you complaining against me? And why are you testing the Lord?” (Exod. 17:2). In light of their complaining, Moses named the place “Massah and Meribah” (Exod. 17:7). These words mean “test” and “arguing.” It was to this demonstration of hard-heartedness that the author of Hebrews referred by quoting Psalm 95:7–8 (Heb. 3:7–8). Another test came to the people as the wandering nation set up camp at Kadesh-Barnea after receiving the Law at Mount Sinai. God instructed them to send spies into the land to size up its people, cities, and fortifications. Not that they needed to gather intelligence to make an informed decision about whether to take the land. God had already instructed them to take it. But reconnaissance was required to determine how to carry out the operation best. However, the spies returned trembling in their boots: “We can’t go up against them, they are stronger than we are” (Num. 13:31). They should have responded with, “God got us out of Egypt; He can get us into Canaan.” But they didn’t. They buckled under fear instead of standing firm in their faith. So persuasive were the words of the naysayers that the Hebrew people in (Num. 14:1–2), “Then the whole community began weeping aloud, and they cried all night. Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron. ‘If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!’ they complained.” They rebelled against the Lord by fearing the people of Canaan more than they feared the Lord (Num. 14:9). What was God’s response to the Israelites’ failure? He drew a line in the sand. He wouldn’t tolerate their incessant murmuring, rebellion, and complaining anymore. They had cried out, “If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness” (Num. 14:2). Now God responded with an answer to their prayer:  “Now tell them this: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very things I heard you say. You will all drop dead in this wilderness! Because you complained against me, every one of you who is twenty years old or older and was included in the registration will die’” (Num. 14:28–29). God takes hardened hearts seriously! Psalm 95:7–11 refers back to these two episodes of hard-heartedness in the history of Israel. And the author of the Hebrews uses this warning to drive home a crucial point. When faced with trials and tribulations in life that appear as if they may completely undo us, we need to trust God, who alone can give us rest (Heb. 3:11). The emphasis of Hebrews 3:7–11 is God’s disdain for hardened hearts. The message is clear: If God disciplined His people in the Old Testament for their lack of faith (belief), then His New Testament people were also subject to discipline. 3:12–19 In his appeal and application to his readers in 3:12–19, the writer of Hebrews highlights the first and last words of his quotation from Psalm 95—today and rest. The first word underscores the urgency of the warning to his audience. Those who hear the Spirit’s voice through the Jewish Scriptures and the author’s divinely inspired writing need to heed the warning and learn from the examples of the past … today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not after we’ve pondered the pros and cons or compared the cultural contexts of ancient Israel with our modern world. The moment we hear God speak; we should respond. To delay is to allow hardness to set in like rigor mortis until our faith and obedience are as lifeless as a corpse ready for burial. The stern warning hits the Hebrew believers in 3:12. Like their Old Testament counterparts; they ran the risk of coddling,  “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (3:12–13). Just as the Word of God comes to us fresh each day, so does the opportunity to harden our hearts against it. However, the turn away from God toward hardness of heart begins at the individual level (“that none of you” 3:12). The cure for this calcification is found in the corporate body, the church: “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’” (3:13). And we know that every day is today. This is what it means; “We have come to share in Christ” (3:14). Though we trust Him as individual sinners, the moment we believe, we are baptized into His body and become members of one another (1 Cor. 12:13), “But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.” The demonstration of our genuine relationship with Christ is seen, “If indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end,” (Heb. 3:14). On the surface, this statement makes it sound like staying strong and remaining firm in our faith until the end of our lives is the part we play in maintaining our relationship with Christ: We may think, “If I don’t remain firm, Jesus will boot me out!” I cannot emphasize enough that our acceptance before God is not based on our performance but on Christ. Our belief in Christ is what allows us access to God. It is more likely that this statement functions like the sobering assertion of 3:6 (if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.) The idea there, as well as here, is that the outcome of our lives demonstrates the validity of our claim: Continuance in faith is the ultimate proof of the reality of faith. That is, believing loyalty.   This warning in 3:14 reminds us that we’re not meant to be spectators but rather participants in the arena of the Christian life. To use a football analogy, if we’re blocked and tackled by painful trials and tests, we must always keep our orientation toward the end zone and focus on our Master. This is where the Israelites in the wilderness went wrong. They lost their grip on God’s promises and abandoned His commands. They wandered in the wilderness instead of heading straight for the goal line. As a result, they failed to enter into rest—from their wanderings and trials—in the Promised Land (Exod. 3:8), “Their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey.” They died in the wilderness of Sinai. Their outcome is a constant warning of the effects of a hardened heart—all the more reason for believers to hear God’s voice through His Word and to examine their heart condition daily for signs of hardening (Heb. 3:15). In 3:16–19, the author draws subtle but clear parallels between the historical experiences of the Old Testament Israelites and the spiritual experiences of New Testament believers. For any among us who might think, “That will never happen to me.” 3:16–17 proves that it can happen to anybody. Those who came out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses and who had seen the astonishing signs and wonders of deliverance—they were the ones who later provoked God and sinned, leading to their punishment in the wilderness (3:16–17). The warning in Hebrews 3:7–19 against hard-heartedness is simple but sobering. Unbelief has serious consequences both for the non-Christian, who may resist their opportunity to trust Christ alone for salvation until it’s too late, and for the Christian who fails to obey the voice of God in His Word and grows hard of heart. For unbelievers, persistent hardness to the gospel bars their entrance into the eternal “rest” of heaven. For the believer, / hardness toward the things of the obedient Christian life / shuts the gates to the joyous “rest” of intimate fellowship with their Savior. And just as the salvation from sin that comes through Christ is superior to the rescue from Egypt that came through Moses, Christ’s offer of spiritual and eternal rest is far superior to the temporal rest offered to the Israelites in the Promised Land. The author of Hebrews helped his audience to understand his warning by looking back at the historical situation that shaped the corporate memory of both the Israelites in the Old Testament and the Jewish believers of his audience. Under Moses’ leadership, the ancient Israelites suffered forty years in the wilderness because of their unbelief. Deceived by sin, they provoked God time and again. The rest He had promised them disappeared as they opted for their way instead of God’s way. The author called his audience to look inward to care for their similarly sinister hearts. But if we leave this warning in the first century as a mere relic of Christian history, we’ll miss the author’s point entirely. Hard-heartedness is not a disease limited to ancient Hebrew Christians! No man-made cure has ever been discovered, and no amount of self-reform could inoculate fallen humans from hard-heartedness. This is why the warning of Hebrews 3 needs to be taken to heart by all of us. Application: Hebrews 3:7–19 Backward Glance, Inward Look, Upward Call When preventing physical heart disease, most of us know what to do: Avoid smoking, exercise regularly, eat sensibly, and monitor our cholesterol frequently. However, what can we do to prevent spiritual heart disease? Hebrews 3:7–19 answers this question for us in two points. First, we need a daily dose of mutual encouragement (3:13). We must “encourage one another day after day … so that the deceitfulness of sin will harden none of [us].” When did you last do that for someone … or allow someone to do that for you? This is more than simply making an encouraging phone call or sending a friendly email. (Although those acts of kindness are essential) It involves spending time with one another, life-on-life—the kind of fellowship one finds in a close-knit church community. You get to know the struggles and temptations of others while they get to know yours. Only then can you begin to exhort and encourage one another in this way. Second, we need the daily discipline of personal perseverance (3:14). We’ll show forth the evidence of our faith “if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.” The endurance of our faith in times of testing demonstrates our readiness to enter into God’s rest. When we come to a barrier that causes our stomachs to churn, we need to instantly fall to our knees and seek refuge in Him. He alone can give us (Phil. 4:7), “Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Only then will we understand what it means to enter His rest completely. Next, we will continue our series on our adventure through the book of Hebrews. The first section will last seven weeks and is about “Christ Is Superior in His Person.” Next week, the message title is “Stop Churning and Start Resting.” So please read Hebrews 4:1-11 for next week’s message. Thank you for joining me on this leg of our Wisdom-Trek. I hope these verses have inspired you to actively embrace wisdom’s call and make her a daily presence in your journey. As we continue our journey, may we navigate life’s challenges with wisdom and grace. If you found this podcast insightful, subscribe and leave us a review, then encourage your friends and family to join us and come along tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy. As we take this trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Everyday! See you next time for more wisdom from God’s Word!