Hebrews: Don't Let Your Heart Grow Hard

Pastor Fletcher preaches from Hebrews 3:7-19. Discussion points: Our hearts are bent towards selfishness and sin, while God’s heart is bent toward grace and mercy for us; our hearts become calloused when we stop listening to the prodding of the Holy Spirit; spiritual encouragement is essential to help each other experience the gospel.

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  Scripture reader: [Hebrews 3:7-19] 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 40 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 and 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, for 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 who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 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 that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody. I've, had a couple of weeks to not be preaching. So it's good to be preaching again. And, my name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. If anyone's new, I, I hope that I get to know you, today. If not today, then next week when you come back.

  My family owns half of a humble multi-family home here in Somerville. And when we bought the house like 7 years ago, we noticed that there were flower beds all around the house. With well designed gardens everywhere without the, the trees bloom at different times of the year, which is really nice. But something else that we realized is that none of the like small shrubbery or plants were really taking that we were growing. It was really hard to get things to grow in our gardens. And it took years of kind of Turning over the soil, laying more compost down, doing it again year after year. But you know what, after a few years, the ground got soft and it sprung into life. And my wife's hard work paid off. And because it wasn't me out there, doing all of that, she was out there making it happen. And we saw fruit of all of the labor.

  And one thing that we can find in the scriptures is that unless you have regular tending to your heart, your heart will grow hard. Inhospitable and overrun with weeds, much like the gardens surrounding my home. Without regular attention, the human heart has a tendency to grow hard. It takes intentionality to not grow hard. All of us here have a natural bent for our hearts to grow hard toward the Lord and toward those around us. That is the message of Hebrews chapter 3, verses 7 through 19. So let's dig into this, OK? I just wanna walk through the passage.

  First verse, Hebrews 3:7, it says, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, we're just gonna pause for one moment. He's about to quote from Psalm 95. The author is quoting from Psalm 95 here, but I love that the author didn't say. Therefore, as the psalmist says, instead, the author of Hebrews recognizes that the ultimate author of all of Scripture is the Holy Spirit himself. That if you want to hear the voice of the Lord, The best way is to just open your scriptures, as the Holy Spirit has said.

  Let's continue. Today, if you hear his voice, whose voice? God's voice. Today, if you hear God's 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 40 years. Now, Hebrews is the type of book that you need to read, if you want to understand the Old Testament. In fact, I would say if you want to understand the Old Testament, where you should probably start is with an in-depth study of Hebrews, because the author of Hebrews understands the Old Testament, understands the narrative direction that that the Old Testament has. You know, it's hard to understand the Old Testament many times, but here, what's happening is the author of Hebrews is quoting from Psalm 95, and Psalm 95 is referencing all the way back to the book of Exodus. You see, this is like multi-layered references here. And you have to know your scriptures well to get there, but it's referencing the Psalm 95.

  Psalm 95 is talking about the Exodus. And in the Exodus, Michael last week taught on the first six verses of Hebrews 3, which talked about Moses. But here we're talking about the people wandering in the desert. You guys remember that story, where the people were led out of slavery, and they went into the Sinai Peninsula into the wilderness. And what did they do? They grumbled against God, they rebelled against God, they created a golden calf and said, This is our God. When the first rule that God gave them, the first commandment is, I am the Lord your God, you shall have no idols other than me. You shall have no other gods.

  And so they rebelled against God, and what happened as a result? They were left to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Their hearts grew hard against God. I, this passage is really interesting, Hebrews 3. When you look at this verse 7, OK, the one that we just read, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear his voice, you have 3 different sections here. You have this first section, verses 7 through 11. And then you have a middle section, 12 through 14, and then, or 12 through 14, that's right. And then 15 through 19 is a third section. So I want you to think about this at like an Oreo, OK? You have the top layer, you have the middle creamy layer, and then you have the, the bottom layer. The top and the bottom are the same on an Oreo, just like they are in Hebrews. OK?

  When you're looking at this, you have 7 through 11, 4 verses quoting Psalm 95. Then you have 15 through 19, 4 verses that are also referencing Psalm 95. And in fact, they say the same thing, verse 7, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Verse 15, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Now, when we take A passage like this, and you have one loaf of bread over here, and then another one over here and they're the same and you put them together like a sandwich. What is that called? Who's been, thank you. A chiasm. You've been listening. All right, so we have chiasms in the scripture. And when you have a chiasm, you don't call when you have a ham sandwich, you don't call it a bread and ham sandwich. You ignore the bread and you look at the ham, OK? The bread's important. You can't have a sandwich without the bread, but you look at what's in the middle, and with the chiasm, you always want to find what is in the middle of the chiasm.

  And here you have 3 fantastic verses that apply the truth of Psalm 95 to your heart and my heart and help it to come alive for us. So we're going to be spending the rest of our time looking at verses 12 through 14. And these teach this wonderful, beautiful truth that our hearts. are bent To grow hard. Toward God But God's heart. I bent to show us grace after grace, after grace, after grace. Our hearts are bent to grow hard, while his heart is bent to show us mercy and kindness and love.

  Verse 12, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an unbelieving evil heart leading you to fall away from the living God. So this passage starts with this warning. Take care. Hebrews is famous for a series of what we call warning passages. There's 5 or 6 of them. Throughout the Hebrews. They are notoriously hard to preach. When we, when we decided we're going through Hebrews, I said, well, here we go. You, you just have to do it. I think it's a rite of passage as a preacher to get to go through Hebrews and to explain these passages.

  They're difficult for this reason. There's tension on some core doctrines that we believe. Some things like once saved, always saved, or the perseverance of the saints, which means that once a believer comes to know Christ, That believer will maintain a faith in Christ until their dying day. Now there's tension here because in Hebrews, it's talking about people falling away. And trust me, we're going to go into this in more detail when we get to Hebrews 6, because that's what that passage is all about. So come back after Christmas, we'll be doing that. But today I'll give you just a little teaser of what we believe about this. We believe these doctrines, the, the perseverance of the saints, that once saved, always saved from God's point of view. That once God saved someone, he, he maintains them, he holds them tight in his hand. He does not let them go. But from a human perspective, it sure does look like people walk away from their faith all the time, does it not? And so from our perspective, it's difficult to see.

  And so the author is giving us warnings, saying, here's the path to where people would walk if they were to leave their faith and show that their faith was not actually genuine from the get go. And so that's how we understand this passage. It's, it's a warning passage. There's tension there, but I'm not going to go too much into depth. I'm gonna save it for Hebrews 6.

  Verse 12. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. So this part, this verse describes the process that a human heart goes down to become hard, inhospitable, and full of weeds. And I have a little illustration to to help us to walk through there. The first step in becoming a having a hard heart and developing a hard heart is ignoring God's voice. Ignoring God's voice. How many of you are sandals people during the during the summer? Any other sandals people out there? I grew up in the South. We have this brand of shoes called Chacos. Any other Chaco's people out there? You've seen me wear those weird looking Jesus shoes before though, I'm sure. I don't wear them to church anymore, because people are like, what is going on with your feet? And that's not a question you want to answer at church. And so I, I, I only wear sneakers now, but I love, I love my chacos. They're like a series of ropes. It just makes me feel more like Jesus to, to wear them. And when I, every year when I wear my chacos, the first couple of weeks, it's a labor of love because you develop blisters. And every time, every year, I have blisters when I wear my chacos.

  But after like 2 weeks, or really after that first good wear, you know, if I walk 5 or 6 miles with them, and then after that, I'm good to go. I've developed calluses. I'm not one of these people that takes those things to their feet, like, just bring on the callus. I just want more callus. Why would I, why would I take it away? I, I want more callus. And so the callus, makes my feet hard to where the blisters don't continue. Similarly, in our hearts, when we ignore the prodding of the Lord. It will soon become calloused and hard.

  Have you ever felt so convicted over a sin? So convicted over something you said that was dumb, that you regret, so convicted over something you did that you regret, that you just wish the feeling would go away? And so you try to ignore it. You try to numb it, you watch something, you scroll through something, you just try to numb it. I have bad news for you. If you ignore it, it will go away. And that's bad news, because that's the first step towards a hard heart. That is the voice of the Lord bringing conviction. Now, sometimes we do feel something that's not the voice of the Lord bringing undue conviction, and so we have to discern those things. But it's a sad day when our hearts grow hard to the voice of the Lord.

  The second step toward a hard heart is practical unbelief. Practical unbelief. Now, I know a lot of you in here are thinking that this doesn't pertain to you. Because you're a believer, and so you don't have any unbelief in your life. If I believe in God, I don't have unbelief. But the reality is that the scripture describes unbelief as the default mode of the human heart. It's like that slime on your car from the all the salt. It just it's gonna be. You have to wash it off. You can't prevent it. It just comes back every time. And so you, you have to deal with it time and time again.

  Unbelief is the default mode of our hearts. To believe that God is not good, that he is not sufficient, that he does not care for us. When we think about sin, we usually think about a list of don'ts. When you think about sin, you usually think, don't cheat, don't murder. Don't lie. There's so much more to the heart of sin. What causes you to do those things? At the heart of our sin is unbelief, unbelief that God is good enough to satisfy. Unbelief that he is who he says he who he is. Unbelief that he cares for us. Unbelief that he is good. To sin, at the heart of sin is really to believe that a temporary thing can give you the satisfaction that only God can give you. And so at the heart of sin, what do you find is that sin isn't so much about a list of things to not do, but it's about a set of things that are good that become ultimate in your life.

  Anytime you have a good thing that becomes an ultimate thing, it starts to harden your heart. Because that is unbelief that God is the ultimate thing. When work becomes the ultimate thing in your life, you start to shape your entire life around it, and it becomes your God, and it hardens your heart, helping you to ignore the voice of God. When family becomes the ultimate thing in your life, which is a good thing, I love my family. But when family becomes ultimate, your life starts to revolve around your family and your heart becomes hard. When success, when money, when finances, when security become ultimate, your heart becomes hard to God.

  For example, I have 3 kids. They're aged 5, 9, and 12. And so a lot of times, on a, on anytime that they're home, the one thing I'm wanting is the thing that eludes me the most, which is a little peace and quiet. Any parent can can sympathize with me here. And when peace and quiet become ultimate, I treat my children as if they're not image bearers of God. I might yell at them or tell them to go away when they're just being kids. I'm not being soft to care for their needs, and eventually it spreads, and then I find myself doing something like yelling at the dog, like the dog didn't do anything. Don't get me wrong, my dog is terrible. She's so grumpy. She's not pleasant. But I do find, I just, it's, it's this. The virus is spreading in my heart of self-centeredness that comes from this lack of belief that God can bring me peace. And so I start seeking peace at the expense of my family, instead of seeking peace with the Lord, seeking rest from him, treating people as if they're image bearers of God and as I love them.

  Everyone here is struggling with this. No one's a grace graduate. We're all constantly needing to be remade by the gospel, because our hearts eventually grow hard. And if you allow yourself to go on in unbelief, you will eventually fall away. You will eventually fall away. We have to consistently come back to God over and over and over again. I think that we're hesitant to do that though. I think we're hesitant to confess these sins to the Lord. Because we imagine God being kind of like the Scrooge character with unlimited resources that and he'll maybe, you know, give you a $20 bill on Christmas or something, but not really wanting communion and peace with you.

  But friends, if you see unbelief in your heart, if you see yourself ignoring the voice of God. You need to know that though your natural tendency. is to become hard toward God. God's most natural tendency is to show you grace after grace after grace, that he longs for you to come to him with your sin, with your failures. In fact, when you minimalize your sin, you minimize his glory. It brings God glory. To forgive you of your sin. It brings God glory. Otherwise you're saying, oh, I'll keep this sin to myself. I'm not really going to allow God to get the glory for dying on my behalf for this one. I'm not gonna give that one away, but he delights to take our sin. It brings him glory.

  Isaiah 55. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Hear this, let him return to the Lord. That he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. He doesn't just kind of pardon. He abundantly pardons. And he doesn't just abundantly pardon with a hard heart, he does it with compassion. He loves us and cares for us and wants us to come to him over and over and over again. And so the first step in moving towards a soft heart again, if you find yourself falling away, if you find yourself with a hard heart, is to go to God. To worship him, to have communion with him.

  But we can't do that all on our own. We know we, we don't have the spiritual fortitude for it. And so we need encouragement. We need encouragement. Our encouragement can support our communion with God. Verses verse 12, 13, 14. Let's look at this passage again. 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. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

  Let me make this really clear. What the author is saying, is that you can experience the gospel. When you trust in the Lord, you can experience the gospel, and that encouragement is the way that one believer passes the experience of the gospel to another. That you can pass the experience of the gospel to another, that you can experience the grace of God through encouragement. Look, as an image bearer of God, you have a superpower. You can bless and you can curse. I think we've all experienced what it means to be cursed. Maybe you have an employer tell you that you did a really bad job with something. Maybe you have a neighbor tell you that they don't like your kids. Maybe you have someone drive by you and wave with only one finger. Those are all examples. Of cursing. And they're too too. Regular in our society.

  But you also have the power to bless. To have someone to speak a word of peace and kindness into your life. A parent to tell you that they're proud. A coworker to tell you that they're impressed. A friend to simply ask your opinion on an important subject. It's a way to bless. It's a way to bless. I try to remind myself of the blessings. I try to forget the curses. That's so hard. My mind is bent to remembering the curses and, and just like focusing on them. And for every curse, I will remember it 10 times longer than I'll remember the blessings. And so one thing that I've done is I've created a folder in my email inbox. So if you're gonna bless me, email is great. And I labeled it encouragement. And anytime I need encouragement, which is not often, I had forgotten that this existed until I was about to preach the sermon. I was like, wait a second, I have an encouragement folder. And I went and opened the encouragement folder, and there were emails from some of you.

  An email from one of you describing how much a book that I had recommended had encouraged your spiritual life. Such a blessing. I mean, it's just great to see you moved by the spirit, through allowing me to recommend a book. Like that's simple. But then taking the moment to send the encouragement. Another encouragement from one of you: describing a family member visiting our church. And feeling encouraged that he could come back to church and be welcomed.

  I found myself scrolling, looking for encouragement this week, scrolling through texts from my old youth pastor who was here this summer, who is like a spiritual father, just rooting me on. Saying, I believe in you. I love you. You're doing a great job. I see the way your people respond, the way they care for you. Just words of encouragement, affirmation. We don't have this enough. We need this, do we not? You need this. We need this in our, because this is how we experience God flowing from one another. We can experience this is what the church should be. Words of encouragement from me to you and you to me. Flowing back and forth, that we can do this.

  Ray Ortland says it this way, I've never met anyone suffering from too much encouragement in Christ. Have you? Encouragement is what the gospel feels like as it moves from one believer to the next. The Greek word for encouragement in the Bible is parakaleō. It literally means to call along one side. To call along one side. When you encourage someone, you are coming alongside them, as if you're putting your arm around them. And going with them into the battle of life. And I actually love it. There's actually a place in the Bible that takes the word parakaleō and turns it into a noun. That there is a paraclete. And Jesus describes this and saying, I will send another to you. The Paraclete. The Holy Spirit sent to comfort you. To come alongside you. To encourage you. To help you to experience the gospel, to walk hand in hand with you arm by arm. To be an encouragement that God hasn't left us alone.

  Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. He has come to comfort you. He wants to be near you. As this week, I'm gonna give you a challenge. I'm gonna challenge everyone here. If you are hearing my voice online in this room to encourage someone every day this week. OK, that's where it's a challenge. OK? You could do it if I just said encourage someone this week, to be like, oh, OK, good, check. Every day this week. Let me give you some guidelines. Encouragement is not flattery. OK. I don't like flattery, actually. I mean, I do kind of like it, if you want to flatter me. I mean. But it feels fake, right? Flattery is emotional manipulation. Flattery is when you tell someone something that you, you think that they'll find encouraging so that they'll like you more. You're manipulating them to have feelings towards you. That's not encouragement.

  Also, encouragement is not a drive by Bible verse. All right. How many times have you gotten that? Like, hey, I just want to encourage you this morning. John 3:16. It's like, yeah, I guess there's some encouragement in that. I didn't need it from you. Also encouragement is the word that the scripture uses most often when talking about helping each other in our spiritual lives. But the word that we use most often is accountability. I only want to think about accountability during tax season. Accountability is important. But often I think it puts the emphasis on the wrong, on the wrong part. Because encouragement is meant to come alongside someone to encourage them to lift them up. But when we focus on accountability, which is, hey, call me out when you see me doing the wrong things. Then where's the encouragement in that? We need to be accountable. We need to be confronted when we're sinning, but we need the encouragement 10 times more.

  And so we need to come alongside each other. If you're not encouraging someone, it's really hard to hold them accountable. We need sincere, here is what encouragement is, OK? If you need to load some guardrails for your assignment this week to encourage one another. Encouragement is sincere. It is strength focused. And it's specific. It is specific. It is sincere, and it is strength focused. Let me give you an example. Hey, Cindy, you're the best. Keep it up. People love you. Thanks. Hey, Cindy. I really appreciate the way that you handled that difficult situation with our coworker, Jim. That took a lot of courage, and you were actually way nicer than I would have been in that situation. I think you're actually gifted at handling difficult situations. Specific, sincere, strength-focused. You have to have a little bit of insight, thoughtfulness, intentionality to really encourage. We could all use a little bit more thoughtfulness.

  And look, we're about to go into the holidays. There's gonna be a lot of curses spread around here. We need, we need to support one another. We need to encourage one another. We need each other during this time. In a world where it seems more and more people are falling away from Christ all the time. This is the prescription that the author of Hebrews gives to us. Do not harden your hearts. The prescription for helping people who have hardening hearts is to experience the gospel, and the way that we can help people experience the gospel is through encouragement. And we each need that.

  So let me ask you, let me finish on this church. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in rebellion. Whose voice are you listening to? What lies are you believing? Where are you failing to trust in God? Where is sins deceitfulness come into your heart. Today, if you hear his voice. Don't swipe through, don't keep scrolling, just allow God to break you. When the voice of God breaks you. The Spirit of God fills you. And the love of God heals you. Are you ready to be healed? Are you ready to experience that anew?

  And today as we come to the communion table, I think that my, my encouragement would be, don't come to the communion table with a hard heart. In fact, Jesus tells us to evaluate ourselves. Are we walking in step with the gospel? Are we letting practical unbelief run rampant in our life? And if so, repent, come back to the Lord, confess your sins. We, I would love to pray with you. We'll pray we'll have some people in the very back here to pray. And if You need to come repent, experience the gospel again, and then you can take communion with us. If you've never become a Christian, we encourage you to not receive communion. And instead, you receive Christ, you receive this good news of the gospel, so that you can be made new and you can come receive communion with us next week. And so if you would stand, if you were able, as we pray and, and prepare ourselves to receive this meal from the Lord.

  Father, as we come to your table, God, I pray that you would give us soft hearts. That we would be hearing your voice. God, I pray for anyone here who's experiencing conviction, or a softening, maybe a a crack in the armor, a place where they need to repent. God, I pray that they would come to you, and your heart is bent to show grace upon grace, to show kindness and love and mercy and forgiveness. And so would they come to you time and time again, when they come to you again this morning? Would you prepare us to receive this meal, to be reminded that your body is broken for us, your blood was shed for us, that we do this in remembrance of you. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.