Jim Van Gelderen: Today in our podcast, we’re going to look at Hebrews chapter number three, and there is a picture of a Christian who ends up living a very defeated, unbelieving Christian life. And God exhorts us in this chapter not to go down a certain progression, because if we do, we’ll find out. Our hearts are going to get hardened.
The passage starts in verse number seven with the Lord, quoting here via inspiration of the writer of Hebrews. He quoting a verse from the book of Psalms, urging us not to harden our hearts. And certainly all of us out here listening.
You don’t want your heart to be hardened, and you certainly don’t want to make a decision to harden your own hearts. And God exhorting us, don’t harden your hearts. But in the following verses he tells us what happened to the children of Israel, and it certainly is a tragedy.
He, of course, is using the picture of when the children of Israel crossed the Red sea and then came up to Kadesh Barnea, and there refused to go into the land that God had told him. He’s already given it to him. And as a result, God said, okay, you’re going to wander for forty years.
And that they did. And that’s what he’s talking about in this passage of Scripture. I’ll begin reading here in verse number eight.
Harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness. That’s like the children of Israel did at that Kadesh Barnea when they said, no, God, we’re not going to go into the land. When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
Wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said, now notice what God said. They do always err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest.
Now he turns his thinking to us in his exhortation to us, here, take heed, brethren, that’s us, lest there be any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Now there’s four steps that I see in that passage to reach that awful point where your heart gets hard.
The first one is to to not know God’s ways. The children of Israel did know God’s ways. So when God said, I’ve given you that land.
Go in there and take it. They didn’t know God’s ways. And as a result, they drew back.
And in disobedience and they were led astray. They aired in their hearts. And the idea of that is literally being led astray.
Someone who deceives you. You may not think you’re being deceived. I don’t think they thought they were being deceived.
They thought they were making the right decision. But they were led astray. They aired because of the deception, which links to the third step, which is almost the same.
They were deceived by sin. And the fourth step is their hearts were hardened. Now they didn’t harden their hearts, but their hearts were hardened.
Now, it’s interesting in this passage of Scripture that three of the steps are simply something that happens to you. They were led astray. They were deceived by sin, and their heart got hardened.
And it all came because of one simple thing. They did not know God’s ways. Now I want to ask you, a teenager, ask your college student.
Do you know God’s ways? Now that word know there is not just talking about head knowledge, it is talking about knowledge gained by experience. Now, the important truth of knowing God’s ways is not just knowing what the Bible says about God and knowing it intellectually, it is proving it.
It is following Jesus. It is stepping out in obedience, trusting him for the strength to live the Christian life. And when you do that, you know what happens.
You begin to know God’s ways experientially. And God becomes a reality. It’s like the teenager who learns to tithe and trust God about giving.
He learns God’s ways that give and it shall be given unto you. And you learn that God will take care of you, that God will meet your needs when you do right. It’s the truth that you humble yourself on the side of the Lord will lift you up.
In other words, you learn God’s ways by when you sinned to go and get right with the people you’ve sinned against. If that’s part of the sin to get it right with God, and humble yourself on the side of the Lord and he lifts you up. He restores fellowship with God.
And when you do that, you learn by experience God’s ways. And as a result, you learn to trust God. It’s like giving the gospel.
It’s the power of God unto salvation. Well, you can know that in your head, but you won’t really know how powerful the gospel is, and that God will empower you when you give it, until you give it to someone who’s not saved, trusting Jesus to enable you to give that gospel and trusting him to a power in the heart. Then when you see God use the gospel, you’re knowing God’s ways.
You’re learning his ways. That God is a God that you can depend on. His gospel is powerful, and the list could go on.
There’s no temptation taken you. There’s a way out every time you’re tempted. And so we learn God’s ways by finding out what the Bible says about God and then following him, depending on him, trusting him, stepping out in obedience, trusting him to intervene.
Now, if you don’t know God’s ways, guess what happens? You’ll get led astray. There’s young people out here.
You don’t. You don’t give to the Lord’s work. Uh, perhaps, uh, you you don’t apologize and get things right with people that you’ve wronged and get right with God and humble yourself before God when you sin.
And as a result, you don’t know God’s ways. You might know in your head, but you really don’t know it experientially. You’re wide open to be led astray.
In fact, you’re already being led astray. And then what happens is you’re deceived by sin. Sin comes along and you’re deceived.
You’re duped by it. You don’t realize the awful consequences of sin because you’re deceived. And last of all, God says your heart gets hardened and you don’t harden your heart.
It gets hardened. So when God says to harden not your hearts, what he’s saying is, learn my ways, because that’s the only way to keep your heart from getting hardened. Because when sin deceives you, it will do the hardening of your heart whether you like it or not.
In other words, there’s only one step you and I have something to do with, and that’s knowing God’s ways. Because if we don’t, then we’re led astray and we’re deceived by sin and our heart gets hardened. I kind of put it this way.
There’s a camp I go to up in Colorado. There’s a raging river that comes through the middle, particularly when the snow melt is pretty large. And the camp people will tell the teenagers, if you get in that stream, it’s going to knock you off your feet.
Uh, it’ll take you downstream about one hundred yards, drop you about one hundred feet, and you’ll if you don’t lose your life on the first drop, you will on the second. And so they basically are saying, if you want to want to live, stay out of the stream. If you want to die.
Get in the stream. That’s the only way. The only way to put it.
Because once you get in the stream, it takes over. That’s what God’s saying here. If you don’t.
Oh my gods God’s ways, you’re you’re going to be led astray. You’re going to get in the raging river of sin. It’s going to carry you downstream.
It’s going to deceive you. It’s going to harden your heart. It has consequences.
So my challenge to every young person here, you got to start to learn God’s ways. You say how? Spend time in God’s Word.
Spend time praying, learning to know God, but follow him. Obey him. Do what he says to do, trusting him to intervene to grace you in that moment of need.
And you’ve got to learn his ways. And the only way somebody is godly when they’re fifty or sixty or seventy is they spent years, decades learning God’s ways and trusting him and realize he’s reliable. He’s a friend who can be trusted.
And you’re just on the front side of the thing. So your decision, young person, are you going to learn God’s ways? Going to Christian school and just learning a lot of verses is not what we’re talking about.
That’s good, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Some of you don’t go to Christian school. You go to church.
Maybe you get in a memory program. That’s all good. But the point, friends, is not just knowing in your head.
It’s believing it enough to follow God and watch him intervene in your life.
