Unbelieving Hearts: Hebrews 3:7-19

I know you know this, but here’s a simple reminder about how to study and apply God’s Word: (reminders don’t hurt us too much bc we tend to be forgetful… or neglectful). What should be your goal with God’s word today? 1. Work to understand the text. 2. Consider what it says about who God is. 3. Consider the instruction or implication for a needed human response. 4. How should you apply the truths specifically to your thinking, speaking, desires, and behaviors?

The faithfulness of Moses and Jesus, to now the responses of their followers…

The exodus generation’s failure.  (examples, even negative ones, can be a means to motivate us – 1 Cor. 10:11 NIV These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.) So today we are given a Bad Example – for which the basic thrust becomes, “Take care that this isn’t going on among you!”

Read Passage and Pray – 6 key points to note in this warning about unbelieving hearts:

1. The Holy Spirit speaks with authority and urgency. (v. 7)
   1. Citing Psalm 95:7c-11, calling the Holy Spirit the author, and expressing what he “says”
      1. It’s quite a turning point in Psalm 95, the first part of which you heard earlier. Here the author quotes the rest of it, the negative warning of wrath that follows a positive call to worship. (Read it there in Psalm 95)
      2. Referring to what the Holy Spirit “says” reconfirms that God’s written word is based upon God’s authority, and it expresses current relevance.
      3. Among other key words that the author draws out from the quote to emphasize (like test, rest, and heart – to name a few), the author will emphasize the word “today” to express that this is both current and urgent.
   2. Today, if you hear his voice – I trust that you listen to God’s word as completely and perfectly authoritative for your life, and that you believe it is urgent to listen and obey! (God’s word is powerful and practical. It communicates God’s immensity and immediacy.)
2. Do not test God’s righteous zeal for his glory and will. (vv. 8-9)
   1. Exodus 17:7 as emblematic of their grumbling unbelief. – When they grumbled against him, God provided them water from the rock. – “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?”
   2. Deut. 6:16 preparing the next generation (beginning in Deut. 4)
   3. And remember Christ quoting Deut. 6:16, remaining faithful when tempted in the wilderness!
   4. Deut. 6:4 and 7:9-11

• The wilderness generation provoked God’s wrath and were disciplined. (vv. 10-11)
  1. Numbers 14 (explained also in Deut. 1)
  2. Even Moses and Aaron were held accountable for disobedience to God in Num. 20 (where the name Meribah is used again to describe Israel’s quarreling against God)
  3. They missed out on the promise of rest in the land. (Moses pleaded with God in Deut. 3, but God would have none of it.) God would make good on his word, but they missed that blessing. à I wonder how many times and to what alarming degree we forfeit God’s blessing, of deepest joy and greatest fulfillment, due to our own sinful negligence of trusting obedience?

1. Apply this warning to your Christian community. (vv. 12-13)
   1. As much as it should be a gimme that we believe God and faithfully follow his instruction, it's not. (Having received mercy and heard his voice, his command) How come?
      1. From v. 12 – The central importance of the heart à unbelief is due to a hardened, sinful heart – AND disobedience is born out of unbelief
      2. (applied to the Hebrews as a danger to) Doubt the Lord and return to religion instead of maintaining their original commitment to and confidence only in Christ to save them and continue working in them.
      3. The analogy shows that if you don’t stick to salvation by grace through faith, you demonstrate your distrust in God and prove yourself to be like the disobedient, disbelieving generation that incurred God’s wrath and missed out on his rest.
   2. The importance of the community of faith’s responsibility to one another.
      1. Take care that no one among you is in fact an unbeliever. – Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you… But exhort one another… that none of you…
      2. Personal commitment & community encouragement – community engagement in the faith of its individual members
      3. Guarding one another from the deceitfulness of sin
   3. The only condition is that faith must be genuine. (vv. 14-15)
      1. Understanding the conditional statements (v. 6, 14): One extremely important factor is the point I made just moments ago regarding the plurality of the statements and the individual responsibility before God.
      2. What’s up with the author of Hebrews constantly threatening apparently Christian people with their lost-ness? àI can’t know your heart, so you best examine yourself. (2 Cor. 13:5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!)
      3. It isn’t that saved people can’t sin and botch our fellowship with God so badly that we see plainly that we’ve behaved just like the world. – But the critical difference is that God convicts and restores the wayward son (who cries out in repentance for forgiveness). The one who goes on sinning reveals his true identity (slave to sin and death, separated from God) – clearly not an identity found only in Christ!
   4. So don’t be among those who miss God’s offer of rest through persistent sinful disobedience, revealing an unbelieving heart. (vv. 16-19)
      1. Fun series of rhetorical questions. (that follow and flow from vv. 14-15) [read and comment on 16-18]
      2. The conclusion, v. 19: Disobedience is rooted in unbelief. In fact, unbelief is itself disobedience. (Heb. 5:9 & Rom. 2:8 “but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.” – Unfaithfulness (disobedience) and unbelief go hand in hand. – Faithless: The heart of the problem of disobedience is unbelief.
      3. Where do we go from here?
         1. To believe in the power of God and His grace extended to you in the gospel is to declare, “I can’t, God can. Lord, save me.” And to continue in the Christian life is still, “I can’t, God can. Lord, shape me.”
         2. We want the benefits of God’s blessing without yielding to God’s will. – But it can’t work that way. God’s blessing is directly tied to his will for us.
         3. Fixing your mind on Christ in belief then brings both eternal spiritual rest… and even current temporal rest—from religious merit, from the angst of worldly achievement, from worry about your circumstances, and from worry about your standing before God.
         4. Next week: Enter God’s rest through a tested heart of faith.

Unbelieving Hearts (Hebrews 3:7-19)

The Holy Spirit speaks with authority and urgency. (v. 7)

Do not test God’s righteous zeal for His glory and will. (vv. 8-9)

The wilderness generation provoked God’s wrath and were disciplined. (vv. 10-11)

Apply this warning to your Christian community. (vv. 12-13)

The only condition is that faith must be genuine. (vv. 14-15)

So don’t be among those who miss God’s offer of rest through persistent sinful disobedience, revealing an unbelieving heart. (vv. 16-19)

Take It Home: (Discussion questions for Discipleship Groups, families, and personal reflection)

• God speaks today in his Word. Think of “big-picture” ways and even practical ways this can prove true in our lives.
• Have you experienced suffering and trials such that they helped you realize and rely upon the genuineness of your faith in Christ? Share and explain.
• Since we are tempted with sin and tempted with religiosity, what preventive measures can we take to confront the deceitfulness of sin in our hearts?
• Thinking biblically, what varying roles can we play in one another’s lives in the local church and in the broader community of faith?