Hebrews 3:7-19

Okay, who's ready for Hebrews?

Hebrews chapter 3.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

Alright, let's get into Hebrews 3.

Now, one of the things that we said last week is that Hebrews is different.

It doesn't sound like Paul.

Some of it sounds like Paul.

Like the person who wrote Hebrews seems to have been like orbiting around some of Paul's teachings, but it's different.

It's very like kind of like galactic in its scope and how it spans back and forth through like Genesis through the up to the time of Christ.

It's a weird, different way of talking about how to be a follower of Jesus.

And so what I've found in my own spiritual journey and what I'm encouraging you to recognize as we're going through this is you may find, even if you've been walking with Jesus for a long time, you may feel like there's a disconnect between you and Hebrews.

Where it's just like, I get it in my head.

I know these things are important.

I know Jesus is better than angels.

I know Jesus is better than Moses, but like, what does that mean when I'm driving to work tomorrow or I'm going to school?

Or what does this look like?

How does this like give me direction and comfort and hope and correction in my life?

Like, how do you want to use this book, this chapter in my life?

Now, at the end of this message, we're going to talk a little bit about the rest, because this chapter and the next chapter is going to talk about how Israel was being led, it was being taken into this promised land.

God was taking Israel into the promised land and they were rejecting God's voice.

And so Moses was not able to lead them into the promised land.

What ended up happening was there was a whole generation that died off in the wilderness.

And we're going to spend some time in Numbers 14.

But here's the thing: a follower of Jesus, probably like Apollos or maybe Barnabas, is pastoring Jewish people who are following Jesus.

This is after Jesus has died and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

And what they're saying, what they're doing is they are giving instruction to these followers of Jesus to take and pull the examples from Israel and pull them into their spiritual life.

And one of the major themes that's going to come up is rest, finding rest, that God wants to lead us into our promised land, which is a place of rest.

Here's the interesting thing that I'm going to ask you to wrestle with through this sermon and through the week.

What does it mean to be brought into God's rest?

And here's what I'll tell you.

If you've been walking with Jesus for any length of time, and depending on what church you're at, there's like ten different answers of what it means to enter into God's rest.

If you grew up in a tradition of like the historic black church, and which has a its uh roots like in coming out of slavery and liberation, the slaves, Christian slaves, would look at this whole idea of Jesus being the great emancipator that leads us into our promised land, our rest.

That was so oftentimes seen as the uh experience beyond death.

After we die, we're gonna experience our promised land.

And the reason for that was because this condition of the slave was so hopeless that it was like there was this worship and anticipation of a next life, a future hope.

I grew up in a Christian tradition where uh they emphasized the grace of God and a strong distinction between the old covenant law and the new covenant grace.

And so what I was taught was that the entering God's rest meant that you're gonna enter into the new covenant grace of God, where you don't have to earn God's favor through works of legalism or works righteousness, but instead you're going to receive God's grace and you can just have this rest in your life.

If you come out of a Seventh-day Adventist tradition, then they're taking the Sabbath literally and they're saying the rest that Jesus leads us into is a proper, worshipful Saturday experience.

That every Saturday we practice as followers of Jesus a true Sabbath.

And that's that tradition.

So depending on what you come out of, like your Christian heritage, may have explained to you and told you what it means to rest.

What is he talking about?

And what I what I want to do, what I'm curious about, and I'm I don't have it fully nailed down, is I want to know from the text what is this pastor, what is he trying to teach these followers of Jesus to grab a hold of and expect when he talks about rest.

I know what I've grown up in, I know what I've heard from different traditions, but I want you to wrestle with me on what does it mean for Jesus to lead us in to a spiritual rest.

Okay, but to get there, we're gonna start in Hebrews chapter 3.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

But actually, no, we're not even gonna start in Hebrews 3.

We are going to be in Numbers 14, and we're going to come across in this text the second warning out of five in this book.

Do you remember the first warning?

The first warning that came up in our text?

The first warning that we encountered was back in chapter 2, which was a warning to pay attention, to pay attention to God's message.

It's within the context of mess, the angels serving as messengers for God.

And then it's like, look, if the children of Israel listen to the message that was delivered by angels, y'all who are followers of Jesus, you're even more accountable to pay attention.

Pay attention to the message that was brought to you.

We're going to come to the second warning here, which is a warning against unbelief, of having a hard heart and not responding to the voice of God, the promises of God.

He's going to pull from the example of the children of Israel.

Now, this morning, this morning, we are going to be on the Bible a lot.

I'm going to only be preaching half the time.

The rest of it's just going to be reading from the Bible, which is awesome.

Um, it's kind of like cheating as a pastor.

Um but I but this is this is the thing.

This material is it's spe it preaches itself.

And you know what?

The Bible is living and active.

Josh is breathing and active, but not like the Bible.

Like the Holy Spirit is gonna take this word and activate it in your life and in my life, way beyond just my preaching.

Like I'm just kind of like helping us understand what's here.

So in Numbers 14, we're gonna look at this story.

This is right after, right after the 12 spies go into the promised land, spy it out, come back, and 10 give a bad report.

Do you remember this story?

Do you remember the 10 spies who are like, yo, we looked at it.

It's beautiful.

This the fruit is amazing, but the people in the land are giants.

Like, how big do you have to be to be considered a giant?

You know?

I mean, these ten spies were completely intimidated by the individuals living, the tribes living in the land at this time.

Numbers 14, 1 through 38.

Let's read this together.

Then the whole community broke into loud cries.

The people wept that night.

All the Israelites complained about Moses and Aaron, and the whole community told them, If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in the wilderness.

Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to die by the sword?

Our wives and children are going to become plunder.

Wouldn't it have been better for us to go back to Egypt?

So we're jumping straight into the middle of it, because we can't afford in our time this morning to read two whole chapters.

But the story is this bad report has come, and this is how Israel responds.

God has set us up for failure.

Now, does the God set us up for failure?

No.

No.

I mean, we should just grieve over this example.

And the writer, the pastor of Hebrews, is taking this story and holding it up in front of you and I.

And he and he's saying, look at how dumb this was.

These are the people, yes, thank you.

These are the people that were delivered by ten plagues against Pharaoh.

They saw the entire Red Sea parted and the whole Egyptian army swallowed up.

They've eaten the bread of angels, as it said in the Psalm we read this morning, right?

They've been fed by God through the wilderness.

God split the rock and provided water in the wilderness, and yet here they are, having the promise of God that they can go into the promised land, and they're crying, and they're like, God, you've brought us into this horrible thing.

Man, so sad.

So they said to one another, let's appoint a leader and go back to Egypt.

Then Moses and Aaron fell face down in front of the whole assembly of the Israelite community.

Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb, son of Jephunah, who were among those who scouted out the land, they tore their clothes and they said to the entire Israelite community, the land we passed through and explored, it's an extremely good land.

Now, hold on just a second, right?

Do you see this?

This is one of my favorite things about God.

This is my just this little, it's a good land.

Because so many people think that to be a follower of God means that you're trading out the good life for like, you know, church lady life from Saturday Live or like the Simpsons version of Christianity, right?

Where it's just like, oh, you know, if I gotta be a follower of God, my life's gonna be boring and lifeless.

I gotta follow all these rules, and you know, who knows what God's gonna make me do?

It's gonna be horrible.

But I don't want to go to hell, so I might as well follow God, but I can't.

No, when God had his people, first of all, he found his people who were enslaved and oppressed in a horrible situation, and he delivered them.

Then he says, Look, I'm gonna give you not just a land, not just your land, but what does it say?

Read this.

What does it say?

He's gonna take you to an extremely good land.

That's your God.

That's my God.

That's the God you and I follow.

This doesn't mean you've got to turn your brain in knots in order to appreciate what God has for you.

No, they went in, they spotted out, and it was a good land.

God has good plans for you and I.

And you're like, well, life has sucked really recently, and it's been kind of hard, and I'm a little bit gun shy.

I've been hurt, I've had things happen to me.

Listen, yeah, God does allow his people to go through junk.

It's a part of his refining process, it's a part of his correction process, it's about him bringing glory to his name, but he brings us through a cycle into a good land.

And we're not just talking about heaven.

Now heaven's gonna be good, and our eternal experience is gonna be far greater than our earthly present troubles.

It's gonna outweigh what we're currently going through.

But you need to know that God has good plans for you, that you can be a person filled with hope, anticipating what God has around the corner as you're doing life, because God has an extremely good land for his people, but it's not guaranteed.

It wasn't because God reniged on his promises, but there was a process of entering the good land.

If the Lord is pleased with us, he's gonna bring us into this land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and give it to us.

Only don't rebel against the Lord.

Don't be afraid of the people of the land, for we will devour them.

Their protection has been removed from them.

The Lord is with us, don't be afraid of them.

While the whole community threatened to stone them, the glory of the Lord appeared to all the Israelites at the tent of meeting.

The Lord said to Moses, How long will these people despise me?

How long will they not trust in me despite all the signs I've performed among them?

I will strike them with a plague and destroy them, then I will make you into a greater and a mightier nation than they are.

But Moses replied to the Lord, The Egyptians will hear about it, for by your strength you brought this people from them.

Then they will tell all the inhabitants of this land, they will tell all the inhabitants of this land, they have heard that you, Lord, are among these people, how you, Lord, are seen face to face, how your cloud stands over them, and how you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

If you kill this people with a single blow, the nations that have heard of your fame will declare, Since the Lord wasn't able to bring this people into the land, he swore to give them.

He has slaughtered them in the wilderness.

So now may the Lord's power be magnified just as you have spoken.

The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love, forgiving iniquity and rebellion, but he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the father's iniquities on the children to the third and the fourth generation.

Please pardon the iniquity of this people in keeping with the greatness of your faithful love, just as you have forgiven them from Egypt until now.

The Lord responded, I have pardoned them as you requested.

Yet, as I live, and as the whole earth is filled with the Lord's glory, none of the men who have seen my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested me these ten times and did not obey me will ever see the land I swore to give to their ancestors.

None of those who have despised me will see it.

But since my servant Caleb has a different spirit and has remained loyal to me, I will bring him into the land where he has gone, and his descendants will inherit it.

Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the lowlands, turn back tomorrow and head for the wilderness in the direction of the sea.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, How long must I endure this evil community that keeps complaining about me?

I've heard about the Israelites' complaints that they have uh that they make against me.

Tell them, as I live, this is their the Lord's declaration, I will do to you exactly as I heard you say.

Your corpses will fall in the wilderness.

Just look at that verse in 29, because this is part of what's quoted in Psalm 95, and then it's also again quoted in Hebrews chapter 3.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

Your corpses will fall in the wilderness, all of you who were registered in the census, the entire number of you, twenty years old or more, because you have complained about me.

I swear that none of you will enter the land I promise to settle you in, except Caleb, the son of Jephuna, and Joshua the son of Nun.

I will bring your children whom you said would become plunder into the land you rejected, and they will enjoy it.

But as for you, your corpses will fall in the wilderness.

Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and bear the penalty for your acts of unfaithfulness until all your corpses lie scattered in the wilderness, you will bear the consequences of your iniquities forty years, based on the number of the forty days that you scouted the land, a year for each day, you will know my displeasure.

I, the Lord, have spoken, I swear that I will do this to the entire evil community that has conspired against me.

They will come to an end in the wilderness, and there they will die.

So the men Moses sent to scout out the land, and who returned and incited the entire community to complain about it to him, spread a negative report about the land.

Those men who spread the negative report about the land were struck down by the Lord.

Only Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb, son of Jephunah, remained alive of these men who went to scout the land.

Amazing.

So I guess we say, yeah, verse 38, yeah.

So that's the backstory, okay?

So we got the backstory.

This is what's going on with the children of Israel.

The writer of Hebrews, chapter 3, says, look, this is written for us to learn from.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

We're following Jesus, right?

We're followers of Jesus.

He has become our Joshua, and he wants to lead us into a promised land.

And we need to learn from the example.

So we're not going to read Psalm 95 because it's almost quoted word for word out of Hebrews chapter 3.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

But a few weeks ago, here's what I want you to remember is a few weeks ago when we were going through Hebrews 1, I had up here a timeline.

And it with these like little arcs, right, that pointed back.

And the writer of Hebrews was pointing back to Psalms, and then from Psalms, he was pointing back to Genesis 2.

The same thing is happening in our text.

That the writer of Hebrews is occupying, you know, that first century after Jesus' ascension, and he's pointing back to the Psalms, and the Psalms itself are pointing back to the experience of the children of Israel.

It's going, it's kind of jumping back and forth chronologically, all for our benefit to learn these valuable lessons and to hear the warning.

So now let's look at Hebrews chapter 3, 7 through 19.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, so this is the quote, this is beginning in Psalm 95, just for us it's mid-verse.

He begins to quote, 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 ancestors tested me, tried me, and saw my works for forty years.

Therefore, I was provoked to anger with that generation and said, They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.

So I swore in my anger, they will not enter my rest.

Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that there won't be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin's deception.

For we have become participants in Christ if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start.

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

For who heard and rebelled?

Wasn't it all who came out of Egypt under Moses?

With whom was God angry for forty years?

Wasn't it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?

And whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who disobeyed?

So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

So this is the text, okay?

So the the writer, the pastor who is basically writing down his sermon and recounting Psalm 95, wants to deliver a warning.

Are you ready for the warning?

Are you ready to hear it?

Okay, here it is.

Verses 12 and 13.

Watch out.

That's the warning.

When you go, when you go to the gas station, and there's that propane refill tank, there is also a large sign on the side of it that says, hey, don't smoke here.

But it's kind of like this alert, right?

Watch out! Don't smoke here, right?

Is the idea.

This is not the place to light up.

This is not the section.

That's the idea.

Watch out.

The posture here is an alertness.

Watch out.

You have you ever played that game when you're a kid here at school and somebody's like, think fast, right?

And all of a sudden you got this ball flying at you, right?

That's the idea.

Watch out.

The disposition of Christians.

Is one where we're alert.

Jesus taught this over and over and over again that there is this temptation as a follower of Jesus to become lethargic.

To sit back and say, okay, I'm set.

I'm a follower of Jesus.

I got my recliner.

I got my pina collada.

Maybe I got a hammock.

And I'm going to just cruise.

I'm going to just coast into eternity.

And Jesus over and over again is saying, no, sir.

The disposition of a follower of Jesus is one who is sober-minded.

Sober-minded means that you're not holding on to a balloon, helium balloon, kind of drifting away, but your feet are solidly on the ground, right?

How many Christians have you met in your life where you tell them about your real life and they got platitudes?

Like they're reading out of like one Hallmark gift card after another.

And then it's like they're reading off their coffee mug.

And it's like, no, no, no, no.

I'm living real life, the real life that you're living, right?

And you need to be sober-minded, awake.

And yes, I know that God's word applies to my life, but come on, come back to reality.

Look, being a follower of Jesus should be a very real, concrete experience.

One where you are alert, you're awake, you're not disengaged from reality, but you're more engaged than anybody else.

And the Holy Spirit is there helping you be connected with real life, alert, wide awake.

And so the warning here is to watch out.

And here, there's something that you're supposed to be watching out for.

And it's this threat.

This internal threat.

Did you know that you walked in this morning, and your greatest enemy, the threat that you're being warned about, is in you.

Now we got all kinds of threats as Christians.

We got the devil coming at us, we got the world trying to tempt us, but there is an internal threat that you and I are being warned about.

And this is it it's a growing evil, unbelieving heart, heart that has become hard and calloused.

Oh, wow, that's such a temptation.

You know?

Now, for those of you that weren't born yesterday, you know that life is full of disappointments, confusion.

You know, I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little bit older.

Some of you are a little bit older than me.

But I thought by this time in my life, I would have it figured out.

And life would make a lot more sense.

But you know what?

Life can be a little bit confusing sometimes, right?

Life can be messy.

A couple of weeks ago we had um we met for New Year's, right?

And there was just a handful of us, and we talked through um what do we talk through?

Psalm.

We're talking through a psalm.

Psalm 23?

123?

It's totally lost.

But oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we were talking about the evil, right?

The evil guy.

We were talking about like who's evil.

Oh no, it was Psalm 1.

And when we're we were asking the question, like when he says, like, blessed is the one who does not sit in the seat of the mocker or stand in the way of the wicked, and we're like, who is that?

It was like, is that the one, are those the people who are um, you know, not believers yet?

And God's like trying to say, hey, like stay away from people that aren't following Jesus.

But then we we acknowledge, like, you know, there's a lot of people who say they're followers of Jesus and are hurtful, extremely hurtful, right?

All that to say, the human experience can be painful, difficult, and confusing.

The temptation and the response to that is to grow a hard heart.

Another reason why we can grow a hard heart is not just because our experience, but because sin is tempting.

It's like, yeah, I know what God generally says about that thing over there.

But really, you know, come on.

Is it that big of a deal?

And we do it.

Maybe it's like the condoned Christian sins, right?

The condoned sins of gossip, slander.

Those are the ones you can get away with, right?

There's the ones that we're all good at pointing our fingers at, you know, uh stealing, killing people, you know, sexual sins.

But then there's the internal condone sins.

All of those things, participating in those things, all are part of just kind of shutting our heart down to the ongoing prompting of the Holy Spirit.

You see, when we become a follower of Jesus, we are changed.

From being in the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, there's an internal born-again-ness.

So what comes alive is our spiritual capacity to be a friend of God.

We're given at that moment, we are given a new heart, new desires.

The Holy Spirit comes into us.

So when we become a follower of Jesus, a lot of stuff happens at one that one point.

And the Holy Spirit's working on our hearts.

But the more that we do not listen to the Holy Spirit, there is this hardening that can occur.

And so this pastor is saying, listen, you need to be on guard against this internal threat of having an unbelieving, evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

And that's the symptom.

It's like if this morning you're like, how do I, how do I know that my heart is moving towards hardness rather than a softness?

The answer to that question is, are you open to God's speaking to you right now?

Are you okay with God having full access?

Or are you saying, God, I I want to talk, but I don't want to listen?

Right?

You ever had those kind of relationships where it's just like, this is all good until I gotta sit here and listen to you.

If you listen to me, I'm happy with this, right?

But but there's to be like in Paul, Paul had this relationship, right?

Paul had a relationship with the Corinthian church.

And one of the things he asks of them in 2 Corinthians, so what happens in their relationship is there's um Paul leaves, he plants a church, he leaves.

He's out of out of town, right?

Another group of Christian leaders come in and begin to slander Paul and say, you know, yeah, he planted the church, but he's kind of like he's a second-string quarterback.

He's not really that great, you know.

He's Jared Huntley compared to um Lamar, right?

Paul, you kind of got ripped off.

Well, we're sorry, like, but we're really the good apostles, right?

And some of the Corinthians were getting caught up in this, and they were listening, and they're like, oh yeah, you know what?

Paul, maybe he was kind of scrawny and bowleg, and he had that problem with his eyes, and sometimes when he talked, he wasn't really that convincing.

He could write good letters, but you know, maybe we did get ripped off, and these are the real apostles that are finally in town.

And so Paul in 2 Corinthians, he's writing to them, he's already corrected them, and he's already having to kind of defend his ministry and appeal for his relationship with them.

And one of the things he says is, open your heart to me.

Open your heart to me.

Our hearts are open to you, open your heart to me.

Now, there are some Christians that do not like the idea, the idea of you need to ask Jesus into your heart because there's no Bible verse about it.

And it's true, there is no Bible verse about opening your heart to Jesus.

We're called to follow him.

But the place in which we're doing our following of Jesus, the center of who we are, is our hearts.

It is the center of where we make decisions, it's where our values lie.

It's not just where we feel, you know, and fall in love or whatever, but it's where we have convictions and we value things, and it's what it's what produces the words that come out of our mouth and the actions of our life, are the well, they're welling up, they're coming from the wellspring of our hearts.

And so the question for you and I, when we see this text, is Am I turning away from the living God?

In my heart, this is not, it has nothing to do with coming to church.

It's nothing to do with my ability to read the Bible.

The question is, is the disposition of my heart open, turning to him, or am I turning away from him, unwilling to listen to him?

And that's a daily thing.

This is not just a one-time decision, like I chose to follow Jesus, but this is like, where am I at today?

It may be different from yesterday, but I've got to be on guard.

I've got to watch out that I don't have this unbelieving heart.

Much of our modern conversation about what it means to be human is both kind of in the arena of knowing facts or biochemistry.

So as we face, let's think about Baltimore City as a whole.

We've got people that are, we've got homicides, right?

So that's a major issue.

We've got addiction.

We have um uh we have broken families, right?

What are the some of the other issues that kind of are are chronic ills in Baltimore?

Other stuff that comes up.

We have joblessness, we got poverty, right?

We have homelessness, yeah.

We have um uh there's issues around race and animosity that exists amongst race, there's class warfare, yeah, homelessness, hopelessness, yeah.

Uh depression.

I mean, that's not just a Baltimore City thing, but just despair and hopelessness, right?

Yeah.

A lot of the answer for those things, um, a lot of the what we what we find as like kind of the solutions that are proposed are either education, let's educate our way out of the mess in Baltimore, or it's a biochemical thing where it's like let's medicate our way out, right?

Now, psychology is also trying to stand there and saying there's this immaterial aspect of humans.

It's like, and and and this is what the space where therapists operate, which and there's a lot of good work being done by psychologists.

The problem is with psychology is that it is flawed if it doesn't acknowledge a moral component of the heart.

The good side of psychology says, yeah, there's an immaterial side where stuff is going on based off of shaping or environment.

You know, a lot of us as Christians are going to say, hey, there's an internal wiring that's just rebellion towards God.

But the Bible is over and over again saying, look, at a heart level, at a heart level, this is where you relate to God and you need to guard your heart.

There's a one author that says this God does not display his work in abstract terms.

He prefers the concrete.

And this means that at the end of your life, one of three things will happen with your heart.

It will grow hard, it will be broken, or it'll be tender.

When you face disappointments in your life, you need to understand that the first thing, the first way to respond to the disappointments in your life is to have a tender heart before the Lord.

It is only safe to have a tender heart if you're a Christian.

You have utter hopelessness to have a tender heart if you do not know Jesus.

Because you do not know if God's in control.

And the things that have disappointed you, you have no way to map that on to reality.

You don't know if this is predictable, if this is going to keep happening.

But if you are a Christian, it is safe to have a tender heart.

Now the gravitational pull is away from a tender heart.

The gravitational pull is to be brokenhearted and have a hard heart.

But you just need to know that it is safe as a Christian to have a tender heart.

And what this, the author, the pastor of Hebrews, is trying to pastor us, he's saying, listen, be on guard over your heart.

Be on guard.

Know that the natural drift of your heart is towards a hardness and towards a lack of belief, a cynicism.

You may feel confused, you may feel disappointed, and you may be afraid to trust God, but listen, listen.

The God you're following is the one that parted the sea.

He delivered Israel from Egypt, he fed them in the wilderness, and he's worked in your life to deliver you from your own sin.

And Jesus died on the cross, he already died and rose again.

You cannot erase the fact that what Jesus did on the cross, he already did it.

It's historical.

It's a historic fact.

And so the goodness of God has already been displayed as a historic fact, and you can't get away from it.

And our own hardness of heart and unbelieving is evil.

The pastor calls it how it is.

The pastor writing Hebrews just says this is evil.

It's evil because God's already proven himself to you and I.

Trying to guard our hearts because we don't trust God to take care of hearts.

We don't want to be set up for failure.

Listen, saints.

Listen.

God loves you, and He has made it possible for you to have a tender and an open heart.

He went to the cross, was nailed to that cross, fully exposed, with his arms completely open, so that you can now live in that posture, and that even as the blows come down on you in life, you can know that there is not anything that hits your life that is purposeless, that is meaningless, that cannot be used for the good, your good, and God's glory.

And God is doing this work where He's leading us to, into His rest, to a good land.

And I don't know all that that is.

I don't know what that means for you and I personally.

It's personalized by the Holy Spirit.

But this is the God of the Bible, and this is a warning.

This is not just like a, this is packaged.

Listen, listen, it's really important that you get this.

Listen.

This is packaged, not as a like um like I'm gonna put my arm around you and say, hey, why don't you try this out for a while?

No, this is like a kick in the pants.

Like, wake up.

Wake up, watch out for your heart.

And so may the Holy Spirit minister.

Like you don't need a kick in the pants from me.

You need you and I need a kick in the pants from the Holy Spirit to be on guard about our hearts being hard.

So I've got a couple of assignments for you and I this week.

What are you wrestling with in your heart?

So there's three questions I want you to ask.

This is the first piece.

What are you wrestling with in your heart?

You see, the heart, our heart is where we wrestle with life.

And what I want to encourage you is to take a minute.

I want you to take a minute this week, and I just want you to think about what's going on in your heart, not just your brain.

But what is the wrestling going on in your heart?

Now, why?

The Bible oftentimes describes this wrestling.

Like Mary hid stuff in her heart.

The Pharisees, they were just kind of like wrestling is the word.

They were like upset with Jesus in their hearts over what he was doing.

Our hearts are a place where wrestling goes on.

And I want you to think, what are you wrestling about?

And are you letting the Holy Spirit win?

The second thing, this is one of those examples of the wrestling for Hebrew or Luke 24, 32.

We're in our hearts burning.

Yeah, this is another time.

There's this like heart wrestling that's going on.

Our hearts were burning within us while we he was talking to us on the road to Emmaus.

Second question: What commitments or determination are you holding on to in your heart?

You see, our hearts are where we we decide like this is what I'm doing.

This is where we purpose things.

When you stick it out and you're committed, you make that decision in your heart, at least the biblical concept of your heart.

So what things are you do you have there?

Not just your ideas, which are a dime a dozen, but what are the convictions of your heart, the commitments?

And third, what are the primary emotions floating around in your heart?

The reason I'm asking you these three questions is because I want you to engage not just your head, not just your biology, I want you to engage your heart.

Because this is what the warning is about, is what is going on in our hearts.

Are you thinking about that?

Are you just thinking about how you feel?

Okay, that's part of it.

That's part of it.

But there's more than that.

What are you feeling convicted by?

You see, our hearts is what the Holy Spirit is working.

So the Holy Spirit can guide our thinking significantly, but the work of God in who we are flows from our hearts.

And so I just want you to be engaged there.

The second thing, besides those three questions, the second thing, I want you to ask yourself, is my heart soft and tender towards the Lord, or am I rejecting him?

Simple question.

It's the disposition right now.

Am I soft towards the Lord in my heart?

I think we should ask that question every day.

Every day.

And the third thing is God attempting, is God attempting to break through my hard heart by causing painful circumstances to occur.

Okay?

That's a tough one.

There's a tough one.

There's some of us where our hearts have gotten hard, and because our Father, our gracious heavenly Father, loves us, He's letting life suck a little bit.

Now, some of you are going through hard stuff not because of this, okay?

Some of you are sick, some of you are going through trials and difficulty, and it's not because you got a hard heart, okay?

But it is worth asking the question.

It is worth asking the question, am I going through something difficult in my life because there's some form of hardness in my heart where I'm not letting God work in me?

Okay?

Those are the three questions that I want you to ask this week in your own life as you engage this text.

Now, we're gonna come back next week.

We're gonna jump from three into four.

There's some stuff, there's a lot that we didn't cover this morning out of chapter three.

One of them is just this whole idea of how we work with each other because we're called to warn each other.

I didn't cover that at all.

But our time, our time is up.

Let's um let's pray.

We'll take communion.

We'll have to see if our sound system, our songs are working or not working.

Um and then uh we'll take communion together.

So, but let's let's close out of the um sermon.

It was just with a word of prayer.

Bow your heads with me, and uh I want you to pray just as much as I.

I'm gonna pray over us, Lord.

Some of us uh had got hard hearts a long time ago, and there's parts of our hearts where that we don't want to be tender.

And uh, Lord, we just come before you.

You designed our hearts.

Sometimes it hurts to have a heart and to engage life fullheartedly.

It's much safer to shut down.

But Lord, you want us to trust you with our hearts, you want us to say yes to you.

And so, Lord, we just ask that you would circumcise our hearts, you cut away that fleshy part of our hearts.

Help us to trust you.

We're sorry, we repent of the hardness of our hearts, we want to be a believing people.

That when you say you've got good for us, extreme good, we want to say, okay, we trust in you.

Lord, you know the things that intimidate us, you know the things that we're insecure about, you know the things that we Things that we're afraid of, you know the things that we're tempted by, all the reasons why we we shut you down and have a hard heart, God, you know those things.

Please, Lord, strengthen our faith to trust you.

Give us a hearing of faith.

Pray for my brothers and sisters that you would lead them into their good promised land of rest.

And that you teach us more about what that means, what that looks like.

We love you.

Thank you for our time together.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.