Whose House Are You In? | Downtown Campus | October 4, 2026

All right.

Good morning, Spring Lake Church.

It's good to see y'all.

My name is Jeff Letter.

I'm the care pastor here.

If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, I would love to do so.

I get to oversee a few different areas, our G4 care groups on Monday nights, our care mentor team, as well as congregational care.

And so I'm just it's a joy to be as we to be with you today as we continue our series in Hebrews.

We're going to be in chapter three, if you want to turn there.

We're going to be spending our time covering that whole chapter this morning.

But before we kind of get there, I was just thinking as I prep for this message, like I'll be honest with you guys, like I struggle with this one more than I think I have in a while.

And I don't think this is because like God's made it hard to understand or that the author wasn't clear, but rather the way I approach the text, with Hebrews in particular, with my 21st century Gentile ears, there's some things that just don't naturally jump out at me.

And maybe you've had this experience.

So much of Hebrews is just layered with Old Testament context, and in many ways, it feels like it's speaking to like this shared history that I don't naturally connect to unless I really intentionally put myself there.

Most scholars believe this letter was written to Hellenistic or Greek-speaking Jews who were facing persecution for their newfound faith in Christ, which was causing some to turn away from the faith.

The big word there is just apostasy.

In the Roman Empire, to be a Christian was, in a sense, to be an atheist that rejects the pantheon of multiple gods.

And yet it's also not just that, it's not tied to an ethnicity or a nationality like the Jewish faith was.

To have a national God, or in the case of Romans, many national gods, that was understandable.

It was actually even encouraged.

The faith of these new Christians, it proclaimed a supreme God over all nations, tribes, and tongues, where like all were welcome, and one whose allegiance wasn't tied to necessarily a certain people group, but it was a shared allegiance to Jesus Christ by faith.

This new cult of Christianity, as they saw it, it it bucked that the culture's understanding of theology and like what it means to um what it means to actually baffling the world in terms of how they understand what it means to walk in a religious life.

I'm sorry I bumbled my words there.

Um but really I think the the biggest crux there is that it was also, besides not being tied to ethnicities, there also wasn't like a preferential status for like prominent citizens.

So whether you were rich or poor or slave or free, there wasn't like, hey, these people were gonna honor more than another crowd.

And then in this derision, many did experience persecution by Rome, which is actually it's detailed later in this book.

We'll talk about it eventually.

Um but when you combine that persecution with the public rejection of Christians by the Jewish community, then it starts to make sense a little bit more the temptation to retreat back into what is safe, what's familiar, and what's somewhat accepted space of the Jewish faith and community.

Now we are like in our culture, we're so individualistic in how we conceive of our needs and what it takes to survive that it's hard to imagine the interdependence that was necessary to survive in the first century.

In the wake of this trend that's taking place for the audience of Hebrews, the author starts appealing to this like collective, this shared history through Israel to demonstrate that to turn back now is to turn from what is ultimately infinitely superior in Jesus back to the old ways.

And again, for us as modern, like 21st century Gentile believers, it might appear puzzling.

Like, why would anybody turn back towards the law, turn back towards this sacrificial system where we weren't checking all the boxes?

But for this audience, it's tied to a deeper wellspring of shared history and roots.

It goes beyond intellect because this step towards Christ in many ways is a step towards literally a new identity.

So my challenge, because I had to do this myself as I just prep for this, is for all of us to remember this as we step into these texts, why the writer of Hebrews is working so hard and he's using so much Old Testament references and imagery to just to tap in to demonstrate that this actually this new identity is in fact an old one and what the old was always leading to.

That stepping into Christ's house, as we'll see in our text today, was being built since the very beginning by God through the law and prophets.

And that as Jesus would say, I came not to abolish that, but to fulfill the law.

So let's jump into our Hebrews 3 text this morning with those lenses.

Um, if you want to go there, either in your Bibles or your digital devices, um, if you want to tap into the notes, you go to the UVersion app, and under I think it's events, you can find notes and any like points and quotes we have.

We'll start in verse one of chapter three.

It says, Therefore, holy brothers and sisters who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.

He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house.

Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.

For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.

Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, bearing witness to what God what would be spoken by God in the future.

But Christ is faithful as the Son over God's house, and we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

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's why I was angry with that generation.

I said, Their hearts are always going astray.

They have not known my ways, so I declared an 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's called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

We've come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

And 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 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.

Church, let's pray.

Father, we want to come to your word that is living and active.

Um, as you say in your word, even in this particular book, Lord, that it's living and active and it's sharper than any two-edged sword, that it can pierce us, that it can get in there and do heart work, that you can literally help our mind understand, our ears to hear, and and honestly, Lord, keep them soft and tender towards your leading.

And so we want to submit this time to you.

Um, allow you to move, and pray, Lord, you would speak to us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, as you can see in our text today, we're continuing in that theme and that concept of Jesus as greater than, with Moses in particular, the focus of these first six verses.

The chapter begins with a therefore, which tells us that this is a continuation from chapter two.

So just a side note to remember the chapters and verses, um, those were added much later after the writing of this.

So this is why it's really important for us to like go to even a text or an epistle like Hebrews and read the full context, because the author was writing an entire idea and a continuing idea, not necessarily thinking, oh, they're gonna put numbers.

They're gonna put numbers and verses and chop it all up.

And so just to go back a little bit on what we talked about last week, chapter two just ended with Jesus being made human in order to become a merciful and faithful high priest who suffered living in a world of temptation, so that he is now able to help those who are being tempted.

So that when we turn to chapter three, it makes more sense why the author is calling fellow believers, which is why we see him say, brothers and sisters who share in the heavenly calling, to fix their thoughts on Jesus, which is actually our first point.

We got there really quick.

Fix your thoughts on Jesus.

Other translations use the word consider instead of fix, uh, consider Jesus.

And it's the same word that we'll see in Luke as Jesus says, consider the ravens, consider the lilies, as he encourages those who are anxious about God's provision to trust in him, to seek him first, because God cares for you and he'll give you everything you need.

Don't seek these things as an end in and of themselves, but seek the kingdom of God, and these things will be added as you pursue him.

So our text, we're we are to give thoughtful consideration to Jesus, who is our high priest, as Hebrews 2 states, but also it uses this word apostle, which is really interesting because this is the only time Jesus is called an apostle in the New Testament.

We generally, when we see this term, we generally think of them as referring to the disciples or the eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection, many of which wrote much of the New Testament.

But the word apostolos, which is where we get apostle from, is literally just meaning sent one, which is exactly what Jesus is for.

Trinitarian theology recognizes the Son is sent by the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit to seek and save the lost.

We recognize Jesus is sent by God the Father for a purpose, and the comfort is that he was faithful in that sent work.

As verse 2 highlights to the God who appointed him.

Now, there is much wisdom in paying attention to what we give thoughtful consideration of.

We'll still learning about the fascinating manner in which our brains are wired to work.

So I heard a well-known neurosurgeon just the other day, he said, your brain is literally structurally changing every second of every day, and it changes in response to the things that you think about.

In other words, attention isn't neutral.

What you repeatedly give your attention to actually shapes you, it forms you.

And 2,000 years before anybody knew the word or came up with the word, neuroplasticity, which is just really a big word for our brain's ability to like adapt and rewire itself based on what we think through, the writer of Hebrews he looks at suffering Christians who are tempted to walk away and he's saying, fix your thoughts on Jesus.

Don't fix them on what this is costing you.

Don't fix them on the people that are rejecting you.

Don't fix them on the security maybe you used to have.

Fix your thoughts on Jesus because what fills your vision will eventually shape how you interpret everything else around you.

So as you focus on Jesus, the author transitions to highlighting Jesus' superiority to Moses.

Now, the rest of the book is gonna highlight Jesus' superiority to like the law, the high priest, the sacrificial system in particular.

So we're just gonna focus on the man Moses this morning.

Now, recognize like Moses' prominence for the Jewish people is huge.

As a prophet, he alone is mentioned as speaking with God face to face.

His relationship was so close that he would come out of communion with the Lord with this like shining, like radiating face that honestly terrified people so much that he had to wear a veil when he just came out and communion with the regular people.

He's in the main author, he is the main author of like the first five books of the Bible that provide the foundation for how we understand like our identity, how everything works from creation to really even our value.

He's the writer of the law itself.

As the leader of the Exodus, the story forms the ritual identity for Israel.

And and honestly, this idea of the Exodus story becomes the main example, main metaphor throughout all of Scripture of how honestly Jesus delivers us.

If you look at the book of Matthew, it's practically a gospel retelling and a demonstration of how Jesus is the better Israel, the succeeded where Israel failed in the wilderness in particular.

Now, I say all this because the author was not meaning to like push down Moses and say he's not that big of a deal.

No, he's he's a huge deal, and the author knows this, but he's also demonstrating this is how great Jesus is.

They're not even in the same category.

Like you got a category error, if you guys are familiar with like debates there.

This is the author's point.

Everything that makes Moses so prominent and great is his role in serving the house that was pointing to was actually being built for Jesus.

Moses' efforts and his role in the Old Testament, it sets the groundwork and the foundation of a greater house whose owner is in fact Jesus.

God builds the house with Moses as a faithful servant to do what God asked of him.

With some exceptions, obviously we see in the text.

But he's looking to the day when the Son is not just the servant of the house God built through Moses, but rather he is the heir, is the one that it was all being done for.

Everything that was familiar with this audience was pointing towards Jesus.

Now, when it comes to word pictures, visuals sometimes help me.

So I actually asked AI to help craft this in visual form.

So I think it got a pretty good representation.

So this is the kind of the picture behind me here.

Um there we go.

Um as the picture demonstrates that the heart of it all is the best news of this whole section.

So it's it's one God, it's one house, it's one purpose.

And then in the middle, we got we are his people.

Like we are the house that's being built if we hold firmly our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

Now, this may be strange for our ears to think of ourselves in terms of like architecture, but this is truly a house in both senses of the word.

So if you think about, for example, the House of David series is on prime right now, like it's this familial identity as well.

This house that's being built for us is a lineage, it's a legacy, and in many ways, an identity to embrace, which is why one of the questions of today is like, whose house do you belong to?

Who are you building into?

In other words, what is your core identity?

The text says we are transferred to a new house and given a new identity, provided we hold firmly our confidence and hope in Christ.

Now, I know that if, that if that's in the text may worry some of us, so let's see how the author unpacks this idea.

In verses 7 through 11, we have an extended quotation from Psalm 95, which in itself is actually a reference to Exodus 17 in the wilderness of Israel.

So essentially we have a hyperlink to a hyperlink in our text today.

So if you notice the verse starts out with the Holy Spirit says.

And I think that's important not to go too far past, because if you ever wonder whether the writers were thinking that they were writing like God's word or believe that they were reading God's word, when you see things like this, they are utterly convinced this is coming from the Holy Spirit.

Then the quotation is really the second half of Psalm 95, which honestly I think you hear you hear the quotation and it looks heavy.

But the first part of the psalm is actually it's a praise psalm to God, um, the rock of our salvation, which in a lot of ways becomes a play on word, because we'll see in Exodus 17 is the moment where Moses strikes the rock to give water for the people.

And so he's like, hey, God is the rock of our salvation.

Interestingly, the translation of Psalm 958 says, if only you would hear his voice, which highlights the first time we see this word, hardening of hearts.

And then Hebrews has these words, as you did in the rebellion and during the time of testing.

Now, Psalm 95, if you go back there in your Bible, says the words, as you did at Meribah and during the masa in the wilderness.

Now, Meribah, if you go into Psalm 95, you'll see that literally that word means in the footnotes, it means quarreling, and masa means testing.

So the Hebrews writer, he uses the meaning of those terms and he when he brings it into the Greek in our Hebrews text.

And the reason I bring this up is that Meribah and Masah in the wilderness, they're not just words, they're also the names used in Exodus 17, where it's the place where the people doubt God after being delivered through the parting of the sea.

They're worried that they'll die of dehydration without water after being delivered.

God then instructs Moses to strike a rock, giving the people and their animals water.

And Exodus 17, 7 says, and he called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

So all of that, when we come back to Hebrews 3, that hyperlinks all the way back to the story, this is the hardness of heart we are seeing in the people who are delivered from slavery, but somehow still godding, doubting whether God is with them the first time trouble emerges.

And I mean, we never do that, right?

Like that doesn't sound like us at all.

No, I this is where thematic patterns they repeat themselves in the people of God.

If you'll remember the first generation that goes into the wilderness would be characterized by this grumbling, this lack of trust in God's provision, this constant testing of Him, so much that eventually, when they don't believe God can give them victory in battle in the promised land, God then has them wander for 40 years.

And that generation never gets to enter the promised land, although their children would in the next generation, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb.

God doesn't want to see the same pattern repeat itself with these Jewish believers as they encounter difficulty.

So he's pleading with them to hear God's voice in this moment, which is our next point that we need to listen to Jesus.

This is a sobering plea as we move from us being God's house if we hold firmly by this quotation.

Now we could walk away at this point and we could believe, hey, we're just supposed to work harder, hold on tighter, but notice what's in the middle of this quotation.

In Hebrews 3, verse 10, it says, Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.

Hebrews 3:10

He says this and then begins verse 12 with, See to it, brothers and sisters.

So the conduct of the people revealed that their hearts were far from the Lord and they have not known my ways.

Now the word known in the Hebrew is Yadah.

Now, if you remember our intimacy sermon from just a few weeks ago, that this is the same Hebrew word for Adam knew his wife, and they conceived and bore a son.

So this is this knowing is an intimate, this knowing is a relational sense.

And he's saying they didn't really know me, which is why they didn't enter my rest.

So then, when the writer then transitions to see to it, brothers and sisters, it's an appeal that you do know the Lord.

And as a as a demonstration of that knowledge, don't let sin and unbelief take up residence and cause you to turn away from the God you actually know.

Now I appreciate Paul Tripp here.

He points out that this there's a progression from sin to unbelief to turning away.

Because we often see our sin in isolation.

I think a lot of times we're not aware that sin is doing something in us.

Sin never leaves you where it found you.

So every time we give ourselves to sin, sin is doing something to us.

Thomas Watson, um, an ancient brother in Christ who's now with him now, said there is death and hell in every sin.

Sin is always working in the direction of death, hardening, deforming, deadening.

But the Holy Spirit is doing the opposite work.

He's producing life, softening, convicting, transforming, making us look increasingly more and more like Jesus.

Sin is always trying to make you more like hell.

The Spirit is always forming you for heaven.

And that's why the writer says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

The external turning away from the living God is the direct overflow of a heart that is allowing sin and unbelief to do its inevitable work.

This is why repentance is so important.

It's the opposite turn towards the living God, and that work is not happening in isolation either.

And so there's an invitation for us as having the type of community that does this in verse 13.

It invites other people in this work of fighting against the hardening of our own hearts when it says, but encourage one another daily as long as it's called today.

That word encourage can also be exhort, and it's from the same root we get paraclete that's used of the Holy Spirit as the comforter, the advocate who's on our side.

Now, this is not to say that we become the Holy Spirit to our brothers around, but rather we lovingly engage where we see our brother or sister starting to let sin and unbelief take the wheel and drive in their lives.

We need community around us, not only for this encouraging work, but also to see our blind spots.

That's the hard part about spiritual blindness.

Paul Trippstone for saying that too.

I I know I quoted him earlier, but he says the hardest part about spiritual blindness is you don't know you're blind.

That's a very, very big difference than any other kind.

This requires us to have people close enough to be able to see and speak into our lives.

And I would say that's most often and effectively done through our own invitation to others to do that.

I still remember a time in my life in early young adulthood where I had a lot of godly brothers and sisters around me in a season where I was I was just struggling with sin.

It was it was a hard season.

I had a counselor at the time who encouraged me to share with these brothers that I was doing life with where I was struggling, to kind of invite their voices into my life for wisdom and accountability and encouragement.

Honestly, I was terrified of what they would think of me.

I saw all of them as mature, godly men who likely didn't struggle with the same things I did and would probably just kind of judge me in that moment.

I didn't want their opinion of me to falter.

And so I let shame keep me isolated.

Eventually I became desperate enough to unload what I was carrying, and the most beautiful and surprising thing happened.

One is in that moment when I did finally open up and say, hey guys, I just need to talk to y'all about something.

This was after our small group one night.

I encountered the grace of Jesus from each of them, but I also encountered a whole group of godly men struggling in the same way that I was struggling, and they had the same need that I did, and they were really happy that I just opened the topic because all of them were like, Man, me too.

I mean, it was a hashtag me too in the good way.

What resulted was a beautiful season of walking with five brothers in need, just as I was.

And we all got to stop pretending.

We got to start walking in the light and victory and our struggle.

The crazy part is we'd been in a small group for over a year at that point.

I lived with a few of these guys.

So it's not like there wasn't proximity there.

I had no idea that they were struggling in the same way I was, even though we were occupying the same spaces in multiple points of our week.

And I just wonder how many of us have that same thing happening in our life groups, in our Bible studies, our friend groups, that just need someone to be bold and invite someone into their struggle.

Like we all need people in our life to play this work of daily encouragement so that we don't allow the trajectory of sin to not only lead us to death and destruction, but harden our ability to hear Jesus' voice in our life.

And this is in many ways the gap that also G4 is seeking to fill if you don't have these types of relationships to encourage growth, not just in that ministry, but really all of our discipleship ministry, that we would all grow in depth and willingness to open up our lives to one another.

If you don't have people in your life like this, find them, invite them in, or come into another context where it's designed for that.

And that's what G4 is on Monday nights.

The writer continues in verse 14 that we have come to share in Christ with another if statement, if we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

And this is our final point that we must cling to Jesus.

Now, no doubt this text has made some of us nervous, wondering, do I have a hard heart?

Like, am I in danger of no longer hearing his voice or entering his rest?

Is that what's happening here?

And that may leave us asking, so what do I need to do?

And I don't want to dismiss that concern because I think the warning here is real, but hear this clearly.

There is nothing you can do to save yourself.

There's nothing you can do to earn your place in God's house or make yourself worthy enough to stay there.

And at the same time, Hebrews is absolutely calling us to respond.

The answer isn't try harder, it's turn to Jesus.

Fix your thoughts on him, listen to his voice, cling to what he's already done for you.

The same grace that first softened your heart toward Christ is the same grace you need every day to keep turning toward him, to allow that to be soft and fertile soil, to be malleable.

So when you sin, run to him.

When you doubt, bring it to him.

When you suffer, rest in him.

When you hear his voice, respond to him.

Don't confuse perseverance with earning your salvation.

Perseverance is continuing to come back to the Savior who's already done for you what you could never do for yourself.

So today, if you hear his voice, don't turn away, turn toward him.

We know from texts like Ezekiel and Jeremiah that it's actually God who takes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh that are malleable, that can be formed by him so that we may know him.

Even when we turn to Jeremiah 17, we see this juxtaposition between where your trust is and where it should be.

This is what the Lord says Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

That person will be like a bush in the wastelands.

They will not see prosperity when it comes.

They'll dwell in the parched places of the desert, in the salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

They'll be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It doesn't fear when he comes.

Its leaves are always green, it has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.

Who can understand it?

The ending there doesn't exactly jive with our follow your heart, Disney culture.

Go where you feel feel your heart leading.

This whole text centers on not the strength or the quality of your trust or your faith, but upon the object upon which it rests.

You can have all the faith in the world and place it in the wrong person or place and come to ruin as a result.

I guarantee many of you have likely felt the weight of placing your trust in the wrong place, the wrong person, the wrong thing, and you found that it didn't deliver on its promises, or at least maybe what you hoped it would bring.

And this feeds into that line earlier in our text: the deceitfulness of sin.

I've become increasingly convinced that freedom from sinful struggles will not come until each person is convinced that their sin will not satisfy them or accomplish what you hope it will.

Most of us with any kind of like vice in our life that we're struggling to find victory over somehow still believe that it's doing something for us.

And this is as true for the addict as it is for the one who's struggling to trust God in some area, both of which are seeking some kind of peace.

And note again where the word says peace is found.

Isaiah 26 says, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you.

Who is the one keeping perfect peace in this passage?

It's God because He's worthy of your trust.

In the same way, I can believe with all my might that like this stage will hold me, and that's not gonna matter one lick if somewhere in the process in engineering and architectural planning, somebody missed something and didn't do a good job.

I could have incredible faith in that it's actually gonna hold me up, but if if it's misplaced, I will come to ruin.

Not because my faith wasn't strong enough, but because it was in the wrong place.

All that to say, Hebrews is begging the believers, brothers and sisters, hold fast.

Keep what has already been purchased for you in Jesus, because he's worthy.

And in that holding, he is the one who will never let you go.

Listen to Jesus' words making this promise in John 10.

My sheep listen to my voice.

I know them and they follow me.

I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand.

My father has given them to me, is greater than all.

No one can snatch them out of my father's hand.

I and the Father are one.

So notice this starts with listening to Jesus' voice because they know and follow him.

And then the promise of Christ, not that the sheep's grip will necessarily be strong enough to hold on, but that he will never let go.

Rather, it is God the Father and Jesus who are doubly holding on to you.

So as you hold on to Jesus or cling to him, as our third point highlighted, he is also holding on to you as well.

So if you hear his voice of conviction drawing out, respond, because even the hearing itself, you hearing his voice is evidence that your heart has not hardened past the point of redemption.

And my final part, I just want to emphasize: if you're worried in a text like this about hardening and whether you've been hardened, that worry itself is evidence of softness, not hardness.

The reason this text so emphasizes holding fast to the end is because there's always a chance to respond when you hear his voice.

It is the continual progressive rejection of that voice over time that desensitizes us and mutes our ability to hear God's voice.

Now we'll do a deeper dive on this topic in the follow-up in a few days, but um it shows over and over again, and I want to emphasize again, the hard-hearted person is the one who does not hear the voice of God and honestly doesn't care about it either.

Your concern, your desire to be soft-hearted, even if you feel yourself particularly hardened in this season, is evidence that the Holy Spirit is up to something.

So respond while you can hear, and don't take God's grace for granted or prevail upon his kindness.

Because none of us are promised tomorrow, and all of us are gonna give an account of the stewardship of our lives one day.

Our perseverance doesn't make us God's house, it reveals that we belong in it.

So take heart in our Savior who is for you and desires to help you, even as you stumble your way towards him, and maybe your desires wax and wane.

There's a beautiful quote that highlights this.

If you are part of Christ's own body, your sins evoke his deepest heart, his compassion and pity.

He takes part with you.

That is, he's on your side.

He sides with you against your sin, not against you because of your sin.

He hates sin, but he loves you.

We understand this, says Goodwin.

When we consider the hatred a father has against a terrible disease afflicting his child, the father hates the disease while loving the child.

Indeed, at some level, the presence of the disease draws out his heart to his child all the more.

So, brothers and sisters, hear this word from Hebrews.

If you hear his voice today, run to him.

Stop running away from him with your ears plucked.

One of the greatest moments of growth I see with folks looking to mature in Christ is the response when they fall, when they sin, when they miss the mark.

Do they run to him or do they run away?

Do you run to community or do you run in isolation?

Remember how we started.

Fix your thoughts on Jesus.

Listen to his voice.

Cling to him, especially when you see yourself hardening in one area or another.

If we will commit ourselves to that work while he holds on to us, then we will demonstrate that we belong to him and his house and we will enter his rest with thanksgiving and joy when the Lord calls our number.

Church, let's pray.

Father, we thank you.

We just want to like first and foremost praise you for Jesus.

We don't have to wonder where we stand with you because of the forgiveness of sins and the new life that's promised in Christ.

Lord, I know that there are times where we doubt that.

We doubt that we're forgiven.

Not that we doubt you, but more so that we doubt that we have sinned past the point of redemption.

And yet, Lord, you're the one who can remove hearts of stone and give hearts of flesh, soften those areas, help us see, open our ears, and give us the courage to respond.

And I know that each one of us may be in different places as we're sitting here this morning.

There may be certain areas that there's that tug, there's that conviction, there's that word.

And I pray, Lord, you would give each one of us the boldness and the courage to step in, to invite, maybe invite others into our struggle to run to you and find your grace is sufficient.

Your power is made perfect, not in our strength, but in our weakness.

You want us to depend on you.

You want us to run to you.

Help us to rest in your finished work and what you've done and respond in faith all the more.

Pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.