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If you would remain standing and turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 3 verses 7 through
19.
Hebrews chapter 3, you can find that in the Pew Bibles on page 1188 if you need it.
Hear the word of the Lord from Hebrews chapter 3 starting in verse 7 through the end of the
chapter.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your
hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put
me to the test and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their heart.
They have not known my ways.
As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading
you to fall away from the living God.
But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may
be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Therefore we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence
firm to the end.
As it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.
For who were those that heard and yet rebelled?
Was it not all those who left Egypt, led by Moses?
And with whom was he provoked for forty years?
Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?
So we see they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we come to you this morning and we ask simply, Lord, that you
would feed your people.
You would feed your people from your word.
You would nourish them, exhort them, comfort them, glorify your name.
We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Have you ever gotten a splinter in your finger?
What about your eye or your heart?
One of the most famous fairytale authors was a Danish author named Hans Christian Andersen.
And he’s famous for many of his shorter fairytales, but his longest tale by far was called The
Snow Queen, which was part of the inspiration for the popular movie Frozen that came out
a few years ago.
Andersen’s original fairytales were much deeper and darker than many of their contemporary
retellings, and The Snow Queen is no exception.
The stage is set by the devil himself attempting to bring an evil mirror up to heaven, which
distorts all images to minimize the good and beauty and magnify evil and ugliness.
Heaven cannot tolerate evil, and the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, raining down
on earth, embedding itself in window panes, spectacles, and even in people.
One little boy in particular gets one in his eye and one in his heart, turning him
to only see evil in others with his eye and only love evil with his heart.
All of his friends and family aren’t able to get him to behave.
He can neither see good nor love it, and when the Snow Queen comes to enslave him, he eagerly
capitulates.
Despite all efforts to free him, nothing works until the tears of one who sought him out
of love fall upon his heart and melt that icy shard.
This prompts him to shed tears himself, which then expels the shard from his own eye.
The boy had a heart problem.
He hated those who loved him, and he loved those who hated him, and until that was addressed,
he didn’t even want to be free.
I think our text this morning, we find, is talking about a heart problem as well.
I’ve titled this message, The Heart of the Matter is the Matter of the Heart.
A couple weeks ago, we looked at a long passage in Numbers, chapter 13 and 14, that was the
critical tipping point in which Israel, instead of going into the land of promise, turned
back.
They doubly disobeyed God, first by refusing to go in when he said he was with them, and
then changing their minds and insisting on going in when God said he wasn’t with them.
Rather than making up for their initial refusal, Israel’s foolheartedly rushing into the land
was further confirmation that they didn’t think God’s presence made a difference, so
his absence wouldn’t be a problem either.
Israel’s faithless, unbelieving hearts were doubly exposed, confirming the just judgment
of God in preventing them from entering the promised land of rest.
The last chapter of our passage this morning in Hebrews, chapter 19, diagnoses Israel’s
problem of disobedience as tracing back to a failure of faith, unbelief.
The writer of Hebrews warns his readers, and us, in verse 12, to beware of an unbelieving
heart in ourselves.
So we’ll structure our time this morning considering the ubiquity of an unbelieving heart, the danger
of an unbelieving heart, and the remedy for an unbelieving heart.
Number one, the ubiquity of an unbelieving heart.
If you’re not sure how to spell it, it should be there on the bottom on words to listen
for.
But first of all, what in the world does ubiquity mean?
Ubiquity is simply a funny sounding word that means everywhere.
I could have just said the everywhereness of an unbelieving heart, but as you can tell,
that’s a little more awkward sounding.
Ubiquity is just a shorter, easier word that means that something is everywhere.
It’s pervasive all over the place, and in this case, we mean that everyone has one.
Our passage begins with a quote from Psalm 95, which is why we read it this morning in
our responsive reading to give us familiarity with what’s going on.
And it starts with a warning halfway through the Psalm where the writer of Hebrews is
quoting not to harden your heart.
Then in verse 10, he goes on, they always go astray in their heart.
What does scripture mean by the heart?
Well, Craig Troxell, who gave a lecture at Geneva College that we went to for Reformation
Day, he defines it this way, biblically.
He says, the heart is the governing center of a person.
When used simply, it reflects the unity of our inner being.
And when used comprehensively, it describes the complexity of our inner being as composed
of mind, what we know, desires, what we love, and will, what we choose.
The Bible groups what we know, love, and choose together in the heart.
Yes, these things can be distinguished, but they cannot be fully separated.
What we want to be true or not affects what we know.
What we love can blind us to certain things, and what we know affects what we love and
choose.
It’s precisely this inner aspect of our being that encompasses our knowing, loving, and
choosing, and that’s our big problem.
A couple of famous passages across scripture describe it pretty starkly.
For instance, in Genesis, chapter 6, verse 5, it says, the Lord saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.
Things were so bad that God wiped out millions and possibly even billions of people in a
worldwide flood that left fossils and scars over the entire earth that we see today.
And he would have every right to do it again today.
Thankfully, he made a promise to Noah, the one family that he saved, that he would never
do it again.
But every intention of the thoughts of his heart, the scripture’s most common way of
describing the heart is its thoughts.
In our culture today, we think mostly of the heart as referring to emotions only, but scripture
often describes the heart as thinking.
For in Jeremiah 17, verse 9, we read that the heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately sick.
Who can understand it?
Think of it.
At the core of our being is a corrupt, deceitful, desperately sick control center for our thinking,
feeling, and choosing.
Sometimes we talk about fooling ourselves.
This is because our thinking is not quarantined off from the inner aspects of loving and
choosing.
We’re complex, integrated beings, which unfortunately means our entire inner being is corrupt.
When I’m trying to explain this concept of how people come to be evil, I sometimes ask
parents, did you have to teach your kids to be good or bad?
What’s their inclination towards?
Have you ever heard of a child who didn’t know how to be selfish, disobey his parents,
or throw a fit?
Did he have to be specially taught those things?
This is a reality that most people will admit to.
They will all admit something is wrong, but what is it?
And I’ve never heard anyone give a better explanation for what we see all around us
than what the Bible says.
I’ve heard people say we need education, or meditation, or indoctrination, or even
reformation.
The Bible says we need regeneration.
The Bible says this inner inclination to want, think, and do evil comes from something it
calls original sin.
Humans don’t come from the womb perfectly pure, holy, and righteous, loving God and
all that he commands and hating everything contrary to him.
The first two humans, Adam and Eve, were born without this inclination to do evil, but
they chose to disobey God.
And so all their future children coming from them inherited this innate desire for sin.
The Bible uses various words to describe this.
The flesh, the old man, the old nature, the sinful nature.
God didn’t create the first humans with this sinful nature originally, but ever since
the first parents of all humanity chose to disobey God, all their children have been
born with this twisted nature as well.
Prefer sin over God.
We don’t just have a behavioral problem.
A problem is not mainly a lack of education, lack of money, not a lack of opportunities,
not a lack of connections, not a lack of health or IQ or self-esteem or emotional integration
or a lack of friends, a lack of love, a lack of housing, a lack of power, a lack of ideas.
Our problem is a moral problem.
We have a rebellious heart.
One of the primary deceptions of our heart is to tell us that the problems are all out
there, exclusively external, only on the outside.
We’ll blame anything and everyone for our problems for the way we are.
Any bad feelings, thoughts and actions can always be blamed on what someone else said
or did to us, including maybe how our parents treated us or failed to treat us growing up.
We can feel like the world is against us.
We’re surrounded by enemies, people that don’t support us that we need to cut out of our
life.
If we can just get rid of all that negativity that surrounds us, then we’ll be alright.
But what we need to understand from the scripture is that the enemy is on the inside.
Our biggest problem is not the people around us, the haters, the circumstances that just
bring out the worst in us.
The problem is that the worst is in us in the first place.
Our problem is rooted in the heart.
Our problem isn’t just a matter of cleaning up our act, getting better friends, fixing
our circumstances, changing our appearance or behavior.
There’s something wrong at the core of our being.
We don’t just think evil, speak evil and do evil.
We actually love it.
We actually want to do it.
Unless we think that this warning, this word to rebellious, evil, unbelieving hearts is
only for the people outside the church.
Remember what this passage is written to.
This passage in verse 12 is addressing brothers, brothers and sisters that is.
Or if we look back to verse 1 of chapter 3, therefore holy brothers.
This book was written to those gathered in the assembly, those in church, and the writer
says take care, we cannot ignore the warning.
Verses 16 through 18 of our passage, we see the writer of Hebrews making the point that
it was those who were members of the covenant community who turned back on the cusp of the
promised land.
They had all left Egypt, led by Moses.
They watched God smite the Egyptians with the plagues of judgment.
They walked through the sea on dry ground.
They saw the Lord’s provision of daily manna, water from the rock, and it was these who
turned back, refused entrance into the promised land of rest.
Hebrews does not want us to miss this warning, and I think the author means this in two ways.
I think one he means that there are, even within the covenant community, evil hearts
present, and so all members of the covenant community should be mindful of whether they
have been born again, regenerated, received that new heart in the first place.
We should never presume that being in church, singing the hymns, praying the prayers, knowing
the lingo can substitute for being born again, for being given that new heart.
But secondly, I think he means that even those who have received that new heart, who have
been born again, were not fully free from the presence of sin.
Being confident that you have received that new heart doesn’t mean you don’t need to
take care.
We still have a part of our heart, part of our old, unbelieving, God-hating, sin-loving
nature that, if we will follow it, will lead us to fall away, to rebel against the living
God.
Look at verse 12, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving
heart, leading you to fall away.
This evil, unbelieving heart that leads those to fall away, as it says in the ESV, that
same term is the Greek word for the term that we call apostasy.
And what’s notable about apostasy, it’s leaving the faith, and it can only happen to those
that are inside the covenant community.
People who never go to church, who never profess faith, who never claim to be a part of the
community, cannot apostasize.
Apostasy can only be done by those who have come in, who have professed faith, and appeared
to be believers.
So we’ve considered the ubiquity of unbelieving hearts everywhere.
Everyone has one.
So secondly, we’ll consider the danger, the danger of an unbelieving heart.
And first, the dangerous subtlety of hardening your heart.
Look at verse 8, begins with this exhortation, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.
The writer of Hebrews says that this exhortation comes from the mouth of the Holy Spirit, and
it’s a warning for us today, today if you hear his voice.
Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.
What does it mean to harden your heart?
We sometimes speak of our physical hearts, our physical arteries hardening up, becoming
less flexible, more rigid.
There’s a story in the Old Testament, in the life of King David, of a foolish wicked man
named Nabal.
David’s men had guarded Nabal’s sheep for months, and then asked for a little food when
it was time to celebrate and shear the sheep.
Nabal selfishly refused, and even mocked David and his hunger.
But a few days later it says that God struck Nabal, and Nabal’s heart became like a stone
within him.
Stopped beating, it became hard and stiff like a rock.
We need our physical hearts to stay soft and strong to keep pumping our blood.
But we also need our spiritual hearts to stay soft.
The scripture pairs this idea of stiffness, hardening the heart or the neck, as indicative
of stubbornness, rebellion.
A stiff neck on an ox won’t let you put a yoke on it.
The stiff neck of a person won’t bow, won’t submit.
A hard heart won’t listen.
It isn’t open to correction or instruction or obedience.
And this is put directly in contrast to hearing and listening.
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.
Hardening your heart is resistance to outside influence.
The hardness is not simply inflexibility, since believers are told to hold fast, hold
tightly to Christ without wavering.
But it’s a rejection of the outside voice of the Lord.
Verse 13 says that you can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
So sometimes hardening comes subtly from deception.
We have to be on guard against the subtle deception of sin that creeps in where we can’t
even see it.
And that’s why we need others to point it out to us.
Verse 8 and 15 tell us specifically to avoid hardening our hearts.
Sometimes as reformed Christians, we can focus so much on God’s sovereignty that we can actually
exclude any idea of man’s responsibility.
Now this passage specifically reminds us it is our responsibility to not harden our hearts.
People who don’t go to sleep loving Jesus one day and wake up the next morning completely
rejecting Christianity, if you look back, you will always find a pattern of hardening
your heart, not listening to God’s voice.
It comes on gradually.
Do you read your Bible regularly listening for God’s voice?
Are you open to hearing the Spirit call you out through his word?
What about for the Holy Spirit to call you out through the words of another believer?
What about encouragement?
Sometimes we can feel so self-assured and unswayed and ungrateful that we don’t even
take compliments from others.
Are you open to hearing, well done, good and faithful servant from the mouth of a fellow
saint as the Holy Spirit’s intended encouragement for you?
The deceitfulness of sin is such that we can even harden our hearts in the name of piety.
Don’t reject God’s words of warning or comfort.
Listen when you hear God’s voice.
Be receptive to him.
When I’m evangelizing strangers on the boardwalk or other places, I find young people are always
the most open to hearing the gospel and receiving it by faith.
They haven’t had as long to harden their heart.
It’s not as hard as someone who’s spent decades hardening and hardening and hardening their
heart against the voice of their creator.
And the writer of Hebrews is saying you have a choice, a responsibility.
Don’t harden your heart when you read God’s word, when you hear his voice.
But second, the dangerous result of hardening your heart.
Why such a strong warning?
Because the Israelites lost Canaan by hardening their hearts.
They had spent months ignoring God’s warning, disbelieving his promises, doubting his goodness
and power.
So on the edge of the promised land, they refused to obey God and go in.
They had never fallen out of love with Egypt.
Despite all they had been through, they still had evil, unbelieving hearts that did the
opposite of what God said.
Now, we’re not at risk of losing Canaan today, here and now, but we’re at risk, the writer
says, of falling away from the living God, of missing eternity, apostasy.
God’s diagnosis of Israel’s disobedience in verse 10 is that they never knew his ways.
Therefore I was provoked at that generation and said they always go astray in their hearts.
They have not known my ways.
Sometimes the most cutting words that a spouse can tell the other after even decades of marriage
is, you don’t really know me, do you?
When God says this about Israel, he’s saying something profound.
To know God’s ways is to love him.
Israel never had a heart for God, after all.
God put Israel to the test to see what was in their hearts.
We might have been surprised, considering they were part of the covenant community,
but what came out was not a surprise to God.
He had seen it all along, because the Lord tests the heart.
Verse 10, God responded in wrath.
It says, I was provoked with that generation.
This word provoked is translated in other places as, vomited out.
It’s a violent word of action.
Verse 12 warns us not to fall away from the living God.
That phrase, fall away from the living God, the writer of Hebrews will use it again in
chapter 10, verse 31.
He says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The writer intends us to catch some of that fear, to guard us, to warn us of the danger.
In regard to our hearts, God speaks in the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 18.
He says, cast away from you all the transgressions you have committed and make for yourself a
new heart and a new spirit.
Why will you die, O house of Israel?
The consequences of a hardened, unbelieving heart are not minimal.
They’re eternally devastating.
To be excluded from God’s rest means exclusion from heaven.
The only alternative is hell, where God’s wrath is poured out against all wickedness.
Hell is not a passive absence from God.
It’s an active experience of the living, holy God’s wrath against sin forever.
Well, we’ve looked at how unbelieving hearts are everywhere, how dangerous it is to harden
your heart in unbelief.
So finally, let’s look at the remedy for an unbelieving heart.
The remedy for an unbelieving heart.
After focusing on these first two points, it might be tempting to despair or at least
spiral into introspective doubt.
How do I know if I have an evil, unbelieving heart?
And if I realize I have one, what should I do?
Well, the first thing you need is to get rid of your evil, unbelieving heart.
You need an especially lethal weapon to get rid of this internal villain.
The cross of Christ in his crucifixion, his death, is the only instrument capable of destroying
your unbelieving heart.
Just like the old fairy tales in which only the dragon’s own claw or tooth could pierce
the dragon’s scales, only the wrath of God poured out against sin can kill that old heart.
The twist is that you can die now, before Judgment Day, spiritually.
You can become one with Jesus, go into the grave with him by faith, and have your unbelieving
heart killed now.
But you don’t just need your old heart killed, second, you need to get yourself a new heart.
Have you ever tried to give yourself a heart transplant?
I hope not.
I expect you can see the folly of even attempting such a procedure.
The same is true regarding a new spiritual heart.
What do you need for a heart transplant?
First you need a donor, and then you need a surgeon, neither of which can be yourself.
So you ask, how can you get one?
Well, ask.
Yes, but in what manner?
Like a request for ice cream?
I have seen some kids ask for ice cream as though they might die without it.
But I think we all know they won’t.
No, ask, like not only your life, but your eternal future depends on it.
The Bible calls it calling on the name of the Lord.
Scripture says there’s a donor for the new heart that we need.
It’s Jesus Christ who rose from the dead.
Jesus is the donor.
He has the new heart that we need, and the Holy Spirit is the transplant surgeon.
Verse 14 calls it sharing in Christ, for we have come to share in Christ if we hold our
original confidence firm to the end.
You have to participate in Christ’s death and resurrection to have that new heart.
Another way to say it is, Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me.
When your old heart dies and you get a new one, it means you have a new life.
We call that regeneration.
In verse 12 of chapter 3 of Hebrews, we have the warning, take care, that you don’t have
a heart that will lead you to fall away.
And then verse 13 gives the remedy, but exhort one another every day.
As long as it is called today, then none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of
sin.
See, our salvation is both definitive and daily.
You notice we even have two sacraments that reflect this salvation.
Baptism, once for all, definitive, you’re in.
And the Lord’s Supper, again and again.
We need that sustaining grace.
While God sovereignly keeps those who are His, He doesn’t do this magically.
He does this divine keeping in rather ordinary looking ways.
We call them the means of grace.
The Lord keeps us walking with Him by faith to the very end, but this happens in community.
Exhort one another.
First, you need others to exhort you.
This is something we commonly think of in terms of our need to be in church.
We need to have others who know us.
We need to have people in our homes, be in people’s homes.
People that we can’t be fake with.
To see things in our life that we would not see otherwise.
We were not given the resources to be self-sufficient in our own Christian walk.
You were made to be dependent on God, but also on other Christians.
Some of God’s wisdom, comfort, and exhortation that He has ordained for you to receive, you
will only get through other believers.
But secondly, you need to exhort others.
This might not be something we often think of as a safeguard for our own faith, but it
is just as important to give exhortation as to receive it.
I think of this sometimes in evangelism.
Evangelism we might say, one of my mentors, Dr. Kravendam says, is part of your sanctification.
And this is because you can’t share what you don’t know and treasure and believe.
I still remember in 2015 the daughter of a pastor came to the Boardwalk Chapel one summer.
She came for a week and there was one night me and some others were urging this troubled
young man to put his trust in Christ, to cast himself on the mercy of Christ, embrace the
gospel because it was the only way.
And this young woman who had been participating in the conversation with us up to that point
began to back things off and began to stop pressing, suggesting that, well, we don’t
want to impose our beliefs on you.
We don’t want to claim that we’re the only ones who know the right way of salvation.
And started to backpedal.
Of course, I continued to press the young man.
And later that evening, the woman was troubled.
And after having looked depressed and sad all week, she came beaming the next morning
with a smile on her face that she had trusted Christ for the first time.
She realized she wasn’t able to share until she had had that new heart herself.
And when we are trying to exhort others of the grace, of the warnings, it makes us consider
whether we believe it ourselves.
We need to look outside ourselves, look for helping one another, look for ways to encourage
our brothers and sisters, and you may find that it helps you as much as it helps them.
And finally, in conclusion, I think verse 14 of our passage is the focal point.
It says, for we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence
firm to the end.
This is the key, sharing in Christ.
It tells us what it looks like, holding our original confidence to the end.
This doesn’t mean that Christians never doubt for a second, or that the strength of our
confidence is what we rely on.
It means that we keep looking at Christ.
And when we do, we don’t have to keep asking whether he’s willing to save us or able to
save us.
It’s obvious.
We know he is.
We know he can.
I think our main problem is we quit looking.
We look away.
And when we’re looking elsewhere, it’s harder to remember how willing and capable our Savior
is, which is why we need our fellow saints to grab us by the chin and point our eyes
back to our Savior.
The word translated firm here is the same word used in chapter two, verse two, for since
the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, Christ has been proved to be reliable
He is our original confidence and he is firm.
God never calls for trust, belief, faith against reason or without reason.
Faith in Christ is not like a blind leap in the dark.
It’s like saying, I do, to the one you’re already in love with and want to spend the
rest of your life with.
Have you come to share in Christ?
Have you called on Christ to be your Savior, to kill your old rebellious heart and give
you his heart?
There’s no time like the present.
As long as it is called today, there’s still time to be prayed, still time to be saved.
When we look at verses 16 and 18 of our passage, it can look at first that disobedience kept
Israel from reaching the promised land.
Their sin brought judgment upon them and kept them from entering heaven.
But notice what verse 19 says, it diagnoses that problem differently.
It was not disobedience or sinning and rebellion that kept them out, it was unbelief.
All of those rebellion, disobedience were symptoms and manifestations of unbelief, which
came from hardening their hearts.
Sin, disobedience, rebellion, incurs God’s wrath and anger, no question, but everyone
has sinned.
What kept Israel out was unbelief.
They never caught hold of the remedy, they had no desire for a new heart, they didn’t
trust God, believe his promises, fear him, love him, or desire his presence.
And for you too, the only thing that can keep you from entering God’s presence in heaven
is unbelief.
But conversely, that means no matter how much you’ve sinned, how rebellious you’ve been,
how long you’ve been disobeying God, while it is still called today, all that is required
is belief.
Belief doesn’t save us as though it were a single good work to make up for everything
that we’ve done.
Belief is the way that we embrace God’s offer for salvation, in which he unites us to Christ,
fills our old heart, transplants within us the heart of Christ.
And as Hebrews has been emphasizing here, while it is still called today, you too can
call on the Lord for mercy and be graciously given this free grace.
Amen, let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you that it is still called today and that you still hold
out that offer of salvation, that those who call upon the name of the Lord can be saved.
Lord, we ask that you would look upon us this morning and you would have mercy, you would
prompt us, give us faith to see you, to seek you for mercy, and to find that grace for
help in time of need.
We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Let’s respond by turning to hymn 466.
Hymn 466, my faith looks up to thee, and if you would please stand as we sing.