Heb No.7 Carcases in the Wilderness 3v7-19

Now doubtless you already have your Bibles open at Hebrews and we're looking at the third chapter from the seventh verse right down to the 19th, a much larger passage of Scripture than confronted us last Thursday evening. And I remind you, as I mentioned a moment or so ago, that last time we were together in such a fashion as this, the subject that commanded our attention was the great contrast between this wonderful man of the Old Testament era, Moses, and that even more remarkable man of the New Testament age, our Lord Jesus Christ. And our author carefully, sensitively shows that Moses, despite all the many talents and gifts and abilities that were his, in the final analysis cannot really be contrasted with our Lord Jesus or come anywhere near his own attainments, for Jesus remains absolutely unique.

Moses was a servant of God, a faithful servant of the living God, but Christ was the Son of God, the one who not only was responsible for the creation of the world, but the one who has brought about the household of faith, that community of people, that all the righteous of the Old Testament and New Testament age associate themselves with. Now it could well be that the thought of Moses and his leadership of the ancient people of Israel, compelled under the direction of the Holy Spirit, our author to bring into attention that period of time, forty-odd years, when the Hebrews pushed their way almost in revolving circles, endlessly or so it seemed, aimlessly around the wilderness, and he draws many an example from their experience. The Old Testament Scriptures are written for us to learn thereby.

The failures of yesterday become the examples of today, so that you and I, as we read the Old Testament pages, may see from the folly of some of the incidents there, examples that we are not to copy and therefore be stimulated to a much better quality of discipleship. Now it was this business of discipleship that really concerns the writer of the Hebrew epistle. I wonder if you've realized on a broad level that every letter written in the New Testament was always inspired to correct deficiencies amongst Christians.

In one sense you could almost thank God for the inconsistencies of the early Christians, because if they had been a super, 100% absolutely sanctified body of people, well Paul had no need to have written to the Corinthians, had he? If they'd got nothing wrong in their handling of the gifts of the Spirit, in their understanding of the ethics of sexual morality, in their placing of deacons and elders, as Paul makes reference in other epistles, then there would have been no reason for Paul to have written the several letters to the churches which received them from his hand. And the same applies to this author of the Hebrew epistle. Why is he writing? Well he's writing because he has in mind Christian people who are erring.

They're erring to an extent that he has a nagging suspicion that it might be the case, and he prays God that he's wrong, it might be the case that they never really came to genuine faith. And so he wants them to test themselves. And for well does he refer to Old Testament examples.

He's writing to Hebrews, and in the Old Testament you've got stories chock-a-block of Hebrew people who failed God. He doesn't want these modern Hebrews in his day to do the same, and so he dips into Old Testament experiences, and he isolates failures, and he placards the failure in front of his contemporaries as he writes, and he says for God's sake, learn from that. Don't err in the way that they erred.

And of course the message, as I shall show you in a moment or so, of the writer of this epistle is not only applicable to his contemporaries, to those who received this letter in his day. This message applies to us today. How do you know that you're in the faith? He that endures to the end shall be saved.

There are certain evidences which, if they are not present in your life, would suggest most definitely that you ought to examine yourself to see if you are in the faith. Time and time again this writer, and the Apostle Paul, and Peter and John, will make the same plea. Always be examining yourself in case yours is a counterfeit faith, in case you've slipped from a mooring that you feel originally you were tied to.

Now is not this the burden of our author? Look at the second chapter, just for revision, to set the study this evening in perspective. What's he saying there? Well, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. And then the third verse puts it even more strongly.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and so on. You see what he's doing? He's saying to these readers of his epistle, take my words men, take my words women, and apply them to your own heart. Deal severely with yourself, examining, just in case you might fall short of what God intends for you.

And in the final analysis, you have become just a shipwreck, never a sailor on the good ship of salvation, never recruited in the first instance to the kingdom, to the ministry of Jesus Christ. Well then, when we come to this third chapter, and to our particular passage for this evening, we find that same personal concern. Look at it in the twelfth verse.

Take heed, brothers, take heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. So let's bear this in mind as we come to our passage, that our author is concerned for his readers of any era to examine themselves to ensure that they really are genuine Christians. Now when we come to these verses from the seventh to the nineteenth in the third chapter, we get found, we get in there waiting for us to discover a very important statement about the value of Scripture, the value of Scripture.

You particularly find this in the seventh verse, where reference is made to the Holy Spirit speaking. Wherefore as the Holy Ghost says today, if you will, hear his voice, or in the NIV, so as the Holy Spirit says today, if you will, hear his voice. What's the writer going to do? Well, he's going to quote from the Old Testament, from Psalm 95, but I'm not concerned with that for a moment.

I'm not even concerned with what I made reference to a moment or so ago, the mistakes of the Israelites in the wilderness. I want to hold your attention to this one fact which comes out not only here, but elsewhere in Hebrews, that when this writer speaks, and when God speaks through men in Scripture, he is speaking for himself. The Word of God in Scripture has an authority in the estimation of the writer to the Hebrews which is absolute.

So here, in the seventh verse, he's going to quote from Psalm 95 because that makes reference to the experience of the Old Testament Hebrews in Sinai. But look how he introduces it. He says, wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith.

He's quoting, I repeat, from Psalm 95. Who is the author of Psalm 95? Moses? David? It doesn't really matter. As far as our writer is concerned, the author is none other than the Holy Spirit.

Now that's the most important thing for us to realize. Whoever was the human agency in the compilation of Scripture, the thing that is of paramount importance is that the men employed were under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and he inspired their writings. That's what Peter has to say in the epistle that bears his name when he deals with the whole phenomenon of the inspiration of Scripture.

Ah, but look, hold this in your mind for a moment because this is most fascinating reasoning that you find in Hebrews. Turn back to the first chapter, will you, and the first verse. We're still thinking about the authorship of Scripture.

In the third chapter, the Holy Spirit spoke through the psalmist. The first verse of the first chapter. What does that say? God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets.

I'll give you that in the NIV. In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. Who there is reckoned to be the author of Scripture? God the Father.

Who is reckoned to be the author of Scripture in the third chapter? God the Holy Spirit. Right, come through to the third verse of the second chapter, and here is an allusion to those who preach the gospel in the first instance, and indeed to the one who gave them the gospel. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him? Who is being referred to here? The Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the one who speaks through Scripture. So you see how fascinating is our author's doctrine of the inspiration and the authorship of Scripture. God the Father speaks through the prophets.

God the Son speaks out the gospel. And when He comes to the third chapter and He quotes the psalmist, He says it's none other than God the Holy Spirit. Father, Son and Spirit at the back of Scripture.

I find that to be a most interesting observation which it would do well for the liberal theologians to look into. Ah, but I'm not through yet, and I'm only on this first word of the seventh verse. I shan't continue at this rate, I do assure you.

Wherefore, well move on for a few words. As the Holy Ghost saith. That's a present tense.

He's not saying wherefore as the Holy Ghost said yesteryear. He's quoting from the psalm remember? And the psalm was written centuries ago. But he is quoting Scripture as though the Holy Spirit is speaking through Scripture at the very moment that he is quoting it.

Now that's a very wonderful thing. Warranting the observation of Dr. Hughes who I think I quote in your notes. The Holy Ghost has said these things not to provide a static record of past occurrences but to speak to us in our day.

So J.B. Phillips' rendering of that verse. These things are still being said for our ears to hear. Sometimes I'm asked as I was a couple of weeks ago, do I believe in the gifts of the Spirit today? Do I believe that God speaks dynamically and directly to people today? And the answer is yes I do.

I accept that the whole panoply of the gifts of the Spirit of God can be in play today. But within the ministry of preaching God has ordained that His Word shall come to life as the Bible is expounded and as the speaker is enlivened by the Holy Spirit so that what is shared with the congregation becomes God speaking through the speaker. I believe in a very high doctrine of preaching indeed.

That's one of the reasons why I spend not only a lot of time studying the Word of God, I'm now obviously speaking personally, but a lot of time imploring God particularly on a Sunday that He will speak to the people. Quite frankly I couldn't care if it was the organist who got up and spoke. On the human level it doesn't matter.

As long as God speaks through a man or even through a woman, as long as He speaks, as long as we hear His voice, Scripture is always contemporary and the Holy Spirit enabled exposition of Scripture is one of the media through which God brings His Word in every generation. So here in this seventh verse is a wonderful doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. It's the Holy Spirit, says the author, who spoke through David.

Incidentally that's interesting isn't it? To those who've got no understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost at all, the Holy Spirit was speaking prior to the advent of Jesus on this earth. He was speaking centuries back when David was alive. You see the Holy Spirit as well as Father and Son is timeless, is eternal.

And if the Holy Spirit speaks then He must be more than an influence. He must be a person because only people speak. And He also, as I've argued, is as much the author of the Old Testament as God the Father and God the Son.

Isn't it amazing what you can get out of one verse of Scripture when you examine it? I'd love to take this verse by verse but I worked out that by the time I was through expounding it I'd just be ready to book a room in Tring House. So I'm having to take it a little bit more with large lumps than just a verse at a time. But here's how to approach Scripture.

Here's how to approach exposition. The Holy Ghost speaking today through Scripture and through the preaching of the Word of God. Well having said that let's just accelerate a little bit and come to what our author is particularly wanting to illustrate.

And that is the bad example, as I referred to five minutes ago, of the Old Testament Hebrews. He's going to lift that out of the psalmist, Psalm 95, who in turn was thinking back to the book of Exodus and indeed all the books of the Pentateuch and he's going to apply it to his readers in the generation to which he was directing his remarks. Now those of you who are working from the A.V. will see that the seventh verse right down to the eleventh is in brackets.

That means to say it's a quotation. It's a quotation from the psalm that I read a little while ago, Psalm 95. Easier to spot that in the N.I.V. because it's in inverted commas and it's also written not just in prose.

Why is he quoting from Psalm 95? Well he is talking about the great problems that Moses had taking the Israelites through the wilderness of Sinai. Now when that happened on numerous occasions they provoke God. That's what he says in the eighth verse.

Don't you harden your heart as the ancient Israels did in that time of rebellion when they tested and tried God for forty years. Now has the author of the epistle got a particular incident in mind? Well it would seem that he has because if you turned back to Psalm 95 in the N.I.V. you'll find there that reference is made to two geographical centers or rather one center that has two names. I'm reading now from Psalm 95 and verse 8. Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah as you did that day at Massah in the desert.

What was that reference and what do the words Meribah and Massah mean? Well the reference was to when the Hebrews were without water and you remember when they were in this predicament that they as they often did rebelled against the Lord. It's all contained in Exodus 17 the second verse. The Israelites with murderous intent they come to Moses they say give us water that we may drink and Moses on the human level cannot respond to what they have to say but he sees their aggression not just as directed towards him but directed towards God and he says why do you tempt the Lord? And Moses in this dilemma goes to God and says what shall I do? Verse 4 of Exodus 17 these people be ready to stone me.

Do you recall how God says we'll take a rod and a smite and water will gush out and Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel and you find in the seventh verse of Exodus 17 that he called the place the name of the place Massah and also Meribah because of the chiding of the children of Israel and because they tempted the Lord. Massah means temptation. Meribah means strife and when our writer makes reference to this incident in Hebrews it seems as though he has this in mind.

Harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of temptation when your fathers tempted me, proved me, grieved me. Put those words tempted and grieved back into the Hebrew and you get Massah and Meribah. So it seems that the writer has this incident in mind.

It seems as though the psalmist had that incident in mind and yet whether it was that one or one right at the end of their wilderness experience when there's almost a duplicate of that situation the point is this. They rebelled against the Lord. They caused him a great deal of heartache to the extent that God says when your fathers tempted me, proved me and saw my works forty years I was grieved with that generation.

Numbers 14, you've no need to look it up. I beg your pardon, Numbers 20 and verse 10 and what follows gives the most almost identical situation to Exodus 17 but the distinction is that that was almost at the end of the wilderness wanderings. Exodus 17 is at the beginning and during the whole of those 40 years what do you find the Israelites doing? Tempting God, testing God.

We haven't enough water. We haven't bread. We want flesh.

What you do for us isn't sufficient. It would be much better to go back into Egypt time and time and time again. They were saying this to the extent that when God sums up their experience he says I was grieved with that generation.

Forty years they tempted me. The permanent and prevailing bent of their character was the deliberate rejection of God's leading and as a result they lost everything. They lost their right to go into the promised land and that loss was colossal.

When you read of the description of the promised land the writer of Deuteronomy, Moses, he almost is at a loss in the Hebrew language to be able to set it forth accurately. The land that you're going to, why he says it's a land of hills and valleys and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. It's a land which the Lord thy God careth for.

The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it from the beginning of the year unto the end of the year. What will it be like when you get to Canaan? It will be like heaven upon earth. That's what Moses says in Deuteronomy 11 and all that they lost.

They never entered into the land of promise. Why? Because of their disobedience. Because they were tempting and trying the Lord their God all the time.

Hadn't they a right to be disobedient you say? They were going through the wilderness of Sinai the pressures were there. It was a hot climate. It was scrubland through which they were moving.

But bear in mind these were people who were born as a nation through a miracle. At least they were released from slavery as a result of a miracle. God passed over Goshen and went into the camp of the Egyptians and slew their firstborn.

They'd witnessed those plagues. They'd watched the opening of the sea. They discovered that when Moses spoke, water could come from a rock.

Bread could fall from heaven. These were people whose experiences whose experience was studded with the miraculous. And God was asking for a degree of faith to match the evidence that they experienced of his benevolent sovereignty in their situation.

But they didn't mix, as I'll show you next week, the preaching of Moses with faith from their own hearts. They were not convinced despite all that they had seen. And though God was long suffering and though he extended the period of Moses' ministry, he came to the conclusion that that generation, because of their unbelief, would never enter into the land of Canaan, into the land of promise.

They were unfit to enter into the rest that they would have known in that land which God had mapped out for them. God by the Spirit doesn't play with words. I declared, verse 11 NIV I'm reading from, I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest.

Now that's the illustration. It's somber. I know nothing more tragic in the New Testament than this illustration turned out by the writer of the Hebrews and also reproduced by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10.

The picture of these squabbling, disobedient, faithless, immature Hebrews never entering into Canaan rest. That was the illustration. And it ran from the 7th to the 11th verses.

And it was based on the quotation from the psalmist who in turn was going back to the book of Exodus and Deuteronomy. But now is the application. You see, any preacher worth his salt will apply what he has to say.

And sometimes he'll hurt with what he has to say, not because he wants to hurt, but because he's bound to. His office compels him to. And this was a great preacher, this writer of the Hebrew epistle.

He's not just concerned in a historical excursion into the Old Testament books or into the psalmist. He's concerned to placard a bad example and then to apply what he has presented to his readership. So that 12th verse to which I referred a moment or two ago, take heed brothers, lest there be any of you who has an evil heart of unbelief.

Let me read it to you again in the NIV. See it, see to it brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. Notice the pastoral concern.

He calls these men brothers. He doesn't stand on such a high pedestal above them that he's talking down to them. He identifies himself as being part of their kith and kin.

Probably he came from their church originally and he's so concerned for his brothers. Take heed, lest any one of you might find that that illustration fits him. And what are they to do? To ensure that they don't depart from the living God.

To ensure that they don't have an evil heart of unbelief. So contrasting that full assurance of faith to which you refer to in the 10th chapter. Well, he doesn't say go to the pastor or go to the elders or the deacons.

In the 13th verse, he gives a comprehensive plea to every member of the church to which he directs his remarks. Help one another. Exhort one another daily.

Minister to one another. Encourage each other in the faith. We don't realize that the ministry is as democratic as the Bible really spells it out to be.

This is why I reject any religious title as far as I'm concerned as a preacher. I believe in the democracy of ministry. I believe that people are given special gifts within that democracy.

But I believe we've all got a ministry. We are all to love one another. We're all to pray for one another.

We're all to comfort one another. We're all to admonish one another. And there are five scriptures I could give you for those injunctions I've just quoted.

Look, says our writer, today, this important period is a moment when you should be helping one another in the faith, just in case any one of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. In the thirteenth verse when he makes reference to today, which is repeated again in the fifteenth verse, he's really employing that word not in terms of twenty-four hours, but in terms of the period of opportunity. The period of opportunity.

It's the today of gospel proclamation. It's the today of response. As far as the Israelites were concerned back in Exodus, that today lasted for forty years.

They had that opportunity, that length of time, to get right with God, but they didn't. And today is the era of gospel opportunity. The first hour dawned with the ministry of Jesus.

The last hour will dawn when Jesus returns. It's that day of grace, postponed in the economy of God, says Peter, because he's not willing that any should perish. Today is the day for ministry.

Today is a time when people can be encouraged to keep their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are to continue in the faith, verse fourteen, having been made partakers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end in the confidence we had at first.

This man, you see, is not convinced of salvation just because of some emotional response. He wants to see more. He wants to see an endurance, for true faith will produce its fruit.

So he goes on in the fifteenth verse to quote again from the psalmist, today if you hear God's voice, don't harden your heart as they did in the time of the rebellion. Don't be insensitive or insensible to the claims of Jesus Christ. And just in case they haven't got the message, he's a superb preacher, a superb teacher is this writer, because he goes over his material again and again and again.

You know, like the quote I gave you of some darky preacher in the southern states of America, and he was asked what his system of homiletics was, and he says, I have three points. He says, I tell them what I'm going to tell them, and then I tell them, and then I tell them what I've told them. And this is what he's doing.

He's told them what he's going to tell them, then he tells them, then he tells them again what he's told them. He's going to rub it home. So in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth verses brought out more clearly in the NIV, there are three questions put up.

Who were these people who heard and yet were still rebellious? Verse sixteen, not cast in the interrogative, in the AV. Who were these people? Well, they were none other than those who saw the goodness of God displayed. Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? Can you believe it? That anyone could have been with Moses and have followed those thousands of people out of the land of bondage.

They'd been enriched by the Egyptians. They'd gone out wealthy people. They'd seen so much of God's miraculous dealings for their advantage.

Yet it was these who rebelled and never entered into God's rest. Second question, verse seventeen, with whom was he angry for forty years? And the answer is the same. Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? Ah, writes one old-fashioned commentator, what a long line of graves, the saddest in the world.

They came out of the bondage of Egypt under faithful Moses, but they fell as corpses in the wilderness. They abandoned God and God ultimately abandoned them. Only Joshua and Caleb made it into Canaan rest.

Forty years, wandering around on a journey that should have taken forty days. And the reason for the length of the journey was the disobedience of the Hebrews, which so concentrated itself, they were not allowed to move into Canaan rest, decaying corpses in Sinai. What a long line of graves, the saddest in the world.

But just in case you haven't got the point, the writer risks annoying you. And he puts his question again, verse eighteen, 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.

Isn't it interesting that when a writer argues why these Hebrews never went into the land of Canaan, he says nothing about the golden calf. He says nothing about the outbreak of immorality that there was in the camp which made their names stink amongst the primitive tribes through which, through whose land, through whose land they were passing. He's not really concerned with the manifestation of the sin.

He picks out that general characteristic of sin which is the most serious of all. It's the sin of unbelief. God can do nothing in bringing a person through into Canaan rest if there is unbelief.

You see what Palestine typified, as I shall show you more clearly next week, is that eternal rest of God to which all the children of God are moving. It's that rest of the new heaven and the new earth. It's that rest of God when all the labour and all the sorrow and all the injustices and inadequacies of this world are erased completely.

It's that to which we're moving. Here we have no continuing city. And even Canaan, literal Canaan, was just sacramental of that Immanuel's land to which every believer is moving.

But you can't move to that land unless you're a believer. And if you're not a believer, if you prove to be demonstrably an unbeliever, then you can never be carried through into the rest of God. And you'll be like one of those Israelites of old whose corpse decayed in Sinai under the hot sun, bleaching away the whiteness of the bones.

It's a somber study this evening, but it's a necessary study that these people never entered into God's rest seemed impossible. That the writer, the readership of the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews should never enter into God's rest, it seems impossible. But it might be the case if they've neglected their salvation, if they never originally had an anchorage in Jesus, if they deluded themselves.

Therefore, you're to examine yourself just in case you happen to be in the category of the ancient Hebrews. And God, by His grace, will allow you to take remedial action so that you can be numbered with a minority, Caleb and Joshua, and ultimately move through into the eternal Sabbath rest of God. May the Lord have blessed this study to you.

Father, as we've looked into your Word this evening, a somber passage, we thank you for the way Scripture does speak to us today. Thank you for so many truths that are concealed within that third chapter, and pray that some of them may have become perhaps just a little bit more clear as a result of us spending this hour or so together. And if that has been the happy conclusion, then may glory go to our Lord Jesus Christ for His sake.

Amen.