Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Today’s sermon text is found in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4. We will sing that same song, Psalm 95, next Sunday, I believe, for the processional. It is a delightful song to take home. Take home today’s order of worship if you would, or if you have it already at home, to practice back and forth—husband and wife, parents and children, child to child. You can maybe learn it better this week, go a little quicker next week.

It’s a wonderful psalm, and it really is at the heart of today’s section in Hebrews. Today’s section of Hebrews is a sermon, a homily, in the middle of the great sermon of Hebrews on Psalm 95 and its application to their situation and now to ours. And so it’s very pertinent to this section of Hebrews. And so it’s also—we have, right in the way we sing it back and forth, one of the central exhortations found in today’s section in Hebrews 3 and 4, which is to encourage and exhort one another.

And this is one way to do it: to sing psalms back and forth, encouraging and exhorting each other to faithfulness to Jesus Christ. So turn, if you would, then in your scriptures or follow along in the handout we’ve provided. We’ll read chapter 3:1 all the way through to verse 14 of chapter 4. This is one long section, and while we dealt with the first six verses last week, I wanted to really speak to the entire section, seeing it as a unit, and we’ll do that today.

If you have the sermon outlines or the notes, the textual notes, all they really are this week is the overall outline. And then the second page is the text from Hebrews put into portions that’ll help us to understand the flow of it. And then the last sheet of the handout is the text of Numbers 14 that this section of Hebrews and Psalm 95 alludes to. And that’s why I wanted to give those to you. All right, please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Hebrews 3, beginning at verse 1:

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus, who is faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. For this one has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, in as much as he who built the house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is God.

And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward. But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope, firm to the end. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, and the day of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tested me, tried me, and saw my works forty years.

Therefore, I was angry with that generation and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.’ So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.” Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and 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.

For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. While it is said, “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your heart as in the rebellion.” For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt led by Moses? Now, with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest? But to those who did not obey.

And so we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear, lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them. But the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest,” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.

For he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this place, “they shall not enter my rest.” Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, again he designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today—after such a long time, as it has been said, ‘today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’

For if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest, a Sabbath celebration, for the people of God. For he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works, as God did from his. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing, even the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Let’s pray. Lord God, make us servants of Jesus, members of his army, those who are faithful, looking to the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus. May we endure whatever we need to endure, Lord, to be faithful to you, Father, now and forever. Make us, Lord God, not those sons of disobedience, but make us, Father, those who do indeed hold fast the confession of Jesus, optimistic, looking forward to the future, believing in your hand guiding and directing and controlling that future. Make us people of that faith, Lord God, today by your word. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

“See the Conqueror mounts in triumph.” What a wonderful song that was, was it not? Praise God. Ascension Sunday. That’s what this is. Next week we transition to the second half of the church year, Pentecost. And some of our songs had that transition in them, didn’t they? The ascension of Jesus and then the sending of the spirit of God. Ending of the first half of the church year, the Sunday of Ascension, which we celebrate today.

God in his providence has brought us to a particular text that, if we take it in context, bases the entire message of it upon the ascension—the passing through the heavens alluded to in the last verse, which matches up with the first verse of the entire section like bookends. Again, we have common terms repeated: again Jesus, we have a heavenly calling, he’s passed through the heavens, Jesus, and Jesus our confession and our confession. You see, these common phrases give us inclusio—the technical term.

I made an outline for Poland a couple years ago, and I had inclusio on it. “Why do you call it inclusio?” Well, I don’t know. It’s just what they call it, you know, and it’s something you ought to know if you’re going to be reading your Bibles and studying much. It’s just brackets. It’s a way to include a particular section of scripture to identify it. And the inclusio today—beginning and ending verse—that shows this as a unit says the entire thing: the one we look to is the faithful high priest who has passed through the temple, gone into the holy place, through that into the holy of holies, done his work, shedding his blood for us, and ascended.

You see, he’s passed through the heavens, the clouds in ascension, blessing us as the army—his army—in his ascension. But he symbolically does this through the ministration of the temple, moving through that temple, as we saw in John’s gospel, completing the work and going up, then the oolah ascension offering of the church, the firstfruits that lead us and guide us forward. Wonderful text of scripture here—way too dense to talk about in detail, but we can certainly talk about it in summary fashion.

But before I do, the title of the sermon today is a little misleading. I’ve got “Ascension Rest” and “Mom”—well, it’s Mother’s Day, and how can you tie the ascension of Jesus into Mother’s Day? Pretty easy, folks. It’s pretty easy because this entire section is an admonition to be diligent to maintain Christian faith, of course, in all of our lives. But it starts with the beginning of the week. It is an admonition to recognize that there remains a sabatismos. That’s why I didn’t use “rest” in addition to the King James and New King James Version. It’s not the same word as rest. It is a unique word, and it means “Sabbath celebration.”

There remains a Sabbath celebration for the people of God, and we are to be diligent to enter that. Now, ultimately there’s the great Sabbath celebration in the sky with our savior. But in the meantime, while we have time and calendars and weeks and months, I believe that this is a very important and strong text that urges us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as he’ll say later in this book, but to enter into the Sabbath celebration of the saints and the Lord’s Day, to keep the feast. Keep the feast.

And this is all based, as I said, in the ascension of Jesus. So we’ve got the ascension of Jesus as the conclusion of the text. We look to the faithful one, that we may have faith. The word “faith” is first brought up in this book of Hebrews in this text that we’ll see in just a minute. We have faith because we’re looking to the faithful one who ascended. It’s the basis for all of this, as our firstfruits. And on the basis of that, we’re to be diligent to keep coming to church on Sunday, to enter into Sabbath celebration, to mark one day out of seven, the first day of the week, as this new creation—wonderful gift of God that we don’t have to wait for heaven to experience heaven here.

I know that’s true the rest of the week as well. We pray not just for Sunday, but in a heightened sense, and in the setting aside of this day, we enter into that joyous celebration of the rest of God. God gives us this.

Now turn to Leviticus. Brother Wilson’s Sunday school class knows where I’m going, I hope. Think of the Pentateuch as a unit. And think of the middle of the Pentateuch, the third book. The center of the Pentateuch is Leviticus. And the center of Leviticus is the third section, the law section, chapters 17-22. And at the center of the law section is chapter 19, which lists 70 specific commandments. It’s kind of what our author today in Hebrews does: he takes Psalm 95 and talks about the implication.

Well, at the very center, the beating heart of the Pentateuch, right, the very middle of the Pentateuch is chapter 19, a series of 70 commandments to us involving holiness and obedience. And there’s some in there toward the end that are a little difficult to apply, but you know, Mark Twain always said, “It’s not the stuff that’s hard to understand in the Bible that bothers me. It’s the stuff that’s easy to understand.” This is really easy to understand.

Chapter 19 begins at the first commandment—a summary commandment: “You shall be holy, for the Lord your God is holy.” You see that in verse 2. So this is the beginning of this particular section, the beating heart of the Pentateuch. And it begins with a call to holiness. And it doesn’t leave it to us to figure out what holiness is. He gives us a whole bunch of stuff that characterizes a holy life because we’ll mess it up if we try to figure out what holiness is.

If holiness, if we want to do it right and not thumb our nose at those stupid parents of ours who sin, we know that every day is a day of worship before God. And what’s with that special stuff? Well, that’s what he says. The very beginning of holiness in verse 3 is to fear God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning of holiness. But he doesn’t say, “Fear God.” He says, “Fear every man his parents. Because you can’t see God, but you can see your rulers—home, church, state, work. You can see your parents. And if you fear Yahweh, you’ll fear your mom and dad. Okay, that’s what it says. And it says it in that order, by the way. It doesn’t say “parents,” and it doesn’t say “fear your father, who’s the most important, and your mother.” It says “fear your mom, your ma, your mother. That’s what it says. And keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord.”

You see, throughout this text—we won’t look at it now—but over and over again, there’s two different designations of God: “I am the Lord your God” and “I am the Lord.” It marks off these texts in little discrete units. And so what it tells us is the beginning of holiness. The first part of it that gets us on the right path is keeping the Sabbath, entering into the joyous sabatismos, most Sabbathkeeping celebration of God on the Lord’s Day. That’s our feast. All of them rolled up together into one great feast on Sunday. Is to do that. But even before that, it’s to fear—to reverence, respect your mom.

Mother’s Day fits great with Hebrews and the call to enter into Sabbath rest based on the ascension of Jesus Christ because Leviticus, at the beating heart of the Pentateuch, begins by saying these things are wedded together: your reverence for your parents and specifically your mom, and Sabbathkeeping.

The Christian that has been taught the word of God and does not reverence mom and does not think that Lord’s Day observance and the keeping of this day as Father’s Day as well as Mother’s Day—Father and the great heavenly father—well, all I can tell you is you’re not on the road to holiness. And Hebrews today will tell us: be careful, because if you’re not consistent in holiness and keeping your confession to the end, don’t think that it’s going to be all right with you, that someday you’ll wake up, someday I’ll turn around.

I’m teaching Proverbs to the young children today. Wisdom cries out, and don’t think you can answer whenever you want to. No, it’s later in chapter 2 it says you can call out to her and she won’t answer you if you’ve never answered her. And Hebrews says the same thing. Don’t think it’s the guile and deceitfulness of sin that today’s text warns us against—to think that I could put it off, to think a little unbelief, a little hardening of my heart against my parents, against the Lord in his day is all right. No, no, no, no. You could be like those people at Kadesh. God said, “Forget it. You’re dying in the wilderness. You’re not ever going into my rest.” He told them. God warns us of that today.

Well, I’ve got some repenting to do to the moms today. I inadvertently—it was certainly not my intent—but I’m sure that to some of you, I communicated something in last week’s sermon that was not my intent. In my way of penance, my way of penance is to urge this text today for children to observe and respect and reverence their parents. And my way of penance is to give you some verses. And I’m going to be—I failed to bring them into the pulpit with me. My office is right here, though. So I’m going to ascend to my office, grab these references from Proverbs, be right back.

Well, here’s how I messed up last week. I said that it’s inappropriate to send your children to King’s Academy if you’re just tired. Well, what I was trying to say was this: if that’s the only reason—if you want to make your life easy at the end of it by not being faithful to oversee the instruction of your children, that’s bad. I did not mean to say that if you’re very tired and think you’re not doing a good job anymore and then think it’s okay to send your kids to King’s Academy, that’s bad.

We’re sending Charity to Kings Academy, Lord willing, this fall. I didn’t mean that at all. I was just trying to exhort us in our old age to be faithful to press on as much as we can. You know, Tauashi is getting older, and if he’s too tired, if his body’s too worn out to go out and do landscaping when he’s 60, 65, I do not believe faithfulness means going out there and doing it if he’s not able to do it well anymore. And it would be faithful to him to hire other men and to oversee the business end of it and to do it that way.

So there’s nothing wrong with sending your children to King’s Academy. I was trying to exhort us and exhort moms to not do it in a way just to make your life easy for yourself and to kind of bug out of your responsibilities. And I don’t think women here do that, and I didn’t mean to imply that they do.

Now, here’s the text. Children, I didn’t give you a little outline today, but write these verses down, okay? Get out pencils, parents, give them to you. Here are some texts I want you children to read this week or even this afternoon. They’re all found in Proverbs. So I’ll give you chapters and verses: 1:8, that’s chapter 1 verse 8; chapter 4 verse 3; chapter 6 verse 20; chapter 10 verse 1; chapter 15 verse 20; 17 verse 21; 19:26; 20 verse 9; 20 verse 20; 23 verse 22; 23 verse 25; 28 verse 24; 29:5; 30 verse 11; 30 verse 17. Finally, 31 verse 1.

I’m going to try to—if I remember—I’ll post those out in the main bulletin board in this hallway of the educational wing, top floor. We’ll try to make sure they’re on the outline this week also for the sermon.

Now, what are those? Well, all those are references to mother in Proverbs. Proverbs, which is wisdom, trains a young guy to be a king, a young woman to be a queen. And it does it most of all by listening to one’s mother. By the end of the book, in chapter 31, Lemuel is a king because he listens to mom, and he actually quotes mom to us. “This is what my mother taught me,” he said. And then he says, “A wonderful wife, too. He’s gotten a great wife because he’s listened to his mom.”

The women in our lives are exceedingly important. By way of repentance for my statement last week, that could have been taken wrong and was, I think I would urge you children to read those verses and apply them. You can give your mother no better Mother’s Day gift than the reverence and respect that the scriptures command you to do. As the very first commandment of the beating heart of the Pentateuch, the first evidence of holiness is to fear your mom, to reverence your mom.

And so we have that connected to Sabbath observance. Sabbath observance is connected to ascension in our text. And that’s what we have. It’s a way to be faithful to him.

I also wanted to mention that I know many of you were praying for my talk in Salem, the 10-minute talk. I think it went okay. I wasn’t too edgy. I didn’t actually refer to the homosexual community as the three-frog demon army. I restrained myself, but I did refer to the homeschoolers as the kings of the east, that God had made a way in the Euphrates. Twenty years ago, the way has become easy for us, and we’re to lead our children, making them leaders of the culture as we move into the future. I think it was successful.

I was sort of led there on a ruse. However, I thought they wanted to hear a talk by me. What they actually wanted was to give me this award—home education freedom award. They give this every time they have one of these rallies in Salem, seven times I think now. And they gave me this one because this was the 20th anniversary of the passage of the homeschool bill of 1985. So there are, you know, the old guys and the old gals in this church, us who are prone to tired and weariness.

You know, I got this, but you know, Howard L. and Valerie and Debbie H. that went down to Salem with my wife once and had to lobby when Howard and I were out of vacation time. You know all the story. You’ve heard it before, I suppose. But this is really for all of the members of RCC, you know, who helped so much in that effort in ’85 to open the way. God opened the way by using our efforts so that we could move into homeschooling and build for the future.

May God grant us the grace to be effective in our combat against the opposition in these culture wars that we’re facing. So it was a good day and a day that should be encouraging to all of you as well—that your actions are rewarded by men, but more importantly by God.

Now, let’s talk about the text and let’s begin to think a little bit about the structure of this text. I think there’s a couple of things we have to keep in mind as we look at it.

What we’re going to see in this text is type and antitype. Once more, we do not have this big bold distinction between the Old Testament saints and the New Testament saints. All contrary, exactly reverse. He uses an experience of the Old Testament church in the wilderness and their failure to go into the promised land as directly related to the situation that the saints that he’s writing to—the Hebrew saints that he’s writing to—were in themselves.

So once more, we don’t see radical discontinuity. We see very overt attempt to overlay the two and see them continuous. And not just that, but what we’ll see in just a minute as we look at the text specifically—it’s the type, the real events that happened, the type in the Bible. It really happened, but it really pictures something that’s going to happen in the future. The antitype, the fulfillment of it, the antitype (not anti, the following of the type, the thing it points to).

So Moses is a type—a real guy—but he was a type of Jesus Christ, who was the great, the greater Moses. David, etc. And so we have a type here that’s focused. And this is why I’ve given you Numbers 14 with all those words in bold. If we understand what the author is doing here, he’s relating this incident—not when they were upset about water, but he’s relating the incident at Kadesh when the spies went in and the Jews refused to enter into the promised land, believed instead the evil report of the 10 spies as opposed to the good report of Joshua and Caleb.

So they were supposed to enter in and be faithful, optimistic about the future that God would give them victory over what looked like impossible guys to defeat. Now, they had seen God’s deliverance of them from Pharaoh and Egypt and the best soldiers in the world at the time. But these people they saw in the land were even bigger than Pharaoh and his men. And so they had wicked unbelief. Fear was part of what they were going through, but they hacked it in unbelief.

Well, that was a real set of occurrences. But it’s used—it says the fulfillment of that, ultimately its application, and the fulfillment of it ultimately is in Jesus and his church. And there are members of the church of Jesus Christ who will refuse to enter into victory, holding back instead like the people in Kadesh did. And so it’s type and antitype.

But more than that, what the author will do here in a moment is he’ll go back to the archetype—the first type, the beginning of all this—which is the creation rest of God. So this text draws together the creation of mankind and God’s rest, and then the incident at Kadesh when they refuse to go in, and he says, “Forty years you’re going to die in the wilderness. They don’t enter his rest.” And so he takes this rest as being the rest that ultimately God had already entered into, and then applies it to the New Testament, to the rest we’re to enter into, ultimately eternally with God in heaven—that great Sabbath celebration in the sky.

But beyond that, also its immediate application in us today and keeping Sabbath and doing the Lord’s Day and entering into rest, and seeing this as the beginning of going victoriously into our world. The way that the Jews held back from going in to conquer their land, we can hold back from going into our workplaces tomorrow and our schools and the culture and the politics. We can hold back and be closed instead of victorious as part of the army of God. And that is unbelief. Jesus says, through this text today.

So that’s what he’s drawing—is that connection. Now, think of it. Forty years in the wilderness, 40 years after the ascension, God is going to destroy the apostate church of Jerusalem. And he’s going to destroy that city. And so the Hebrews are on the verge of making it through that, then witnessing the judgement of God upon the apostate church that they’re being tempted to join, and the way opened for the church then to evangelize the Roman Empire successfully.

They’re on the verge of victory at the end of their 40 years—the 40 years of the church age from Pentecost up to the destruction of Jerusalem. There’s this inheritance that’s coming, and they’re almost there. Just like the people in Kadesh were almost there. They were on the verge. They were close enough to send spies in. God had promised it to him. The guys who were faithful—Joshua and Caleb—says, “We can do it. God will give us the victory. Let’s go forward.” And those people didn’t want to go forward.

You see, they held back. And these Jews—these Christians in the book of Hebrews—are, you know, tempted to hold back from aggressively pressing the claims of Jesus Christ in their own way, in their own life, in their own big urban environment where they were intimidated. They were afraid of living for Jesus. They were afraid of not being signified.

Now, I was instructed last week at the end of the sermon that another reference to “semper fidelis” in the Marine Corps is that means they’re always faithful to one another. They’re faithful to the community. You see, there’s no rebellion in the Marine Corps. They’re simply—they’re always faithful, not just to their task individually, but corporately. And that’s an important part of Hebrews, and it’s an important part of this text. They’re to encourage one another so that nobody fails to go in.

And if we look at Numbers 14, this is what happens. Joshua tries to encourage those people. You see, so we go from being faithful in our individual tasks to now a corporate faithfulness, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. And all this stuff is brought into the text before us.

Now, if you have one of the handouts, look at the way I’ve structured this for you—the Hebrews 3:1-4:14 page. And I want to point out something here to you. A couple of things here to you. Actually, one more point about Numbers 14 and its parallel, its reference in Psalm 95, and here in this text.

What did we look at to see the faithfulness of Moses and how Jesus would build a faithful house last week? Do you remember? It was Numbers 12. See, so the author of Hebrews, as he’s building his case, as he’s presenting his sermon, is tracking the book of Numbers. Very significant because Numbers—the whole, you know, the overview of Numbers, the fourth book of the Pentateuch—is the numbering of the army, the preparation of the army to go forward into the Sabbath rest of God in the land, which means being pioneers in a dark land and not being fearful, but being courageous to move to the future as the army of God.

You see, that’s what Numbers is about. Jesus is like Moses—faithful. He’s going to build a faithful house, and you’re part of that house if you’re faithful to do what? To move into the rest of God. Lord’s Day celebration, certainly, but beyond that, what goes on in the rest of the week? I hope nothing we’re doing here at Reformation Covenant Church gives the impression that we think the only thing that’s important is Sunday. Just the reverse.

You see, now we’re trying to—we’re trying to—we are self-consciously trying to revivify the church as an institution in our day and age, because in American culture, the church is irrelevant. Peter Leithart’s book against Christianity for the church—maybe it makes the point too much, but the idea is that in America, it’s all individualistic. We have no mutual encouragement of each other. That’s sort of optional, whether we go to church or not. It’s optional whether we exist in a community that exhorts and encourages each other to faithfulness.

But in the Bible, it’s not optional. And so we’re trying to revivify the institutional church, the importance of Lord’s Day worship, the importance of the word preparing us for mission discipleship and community in the rest of the week. But may God grant that we don’t overshoot and end up stressing the church or the worship of the church somehow in opposition to what you folks do as you move into the week in your homes, your businesses, your workplaces, your recreations, and your political action. That would be horrific.

That’s the fear of some, that in this attempt to revivify worship and the importance of the leaders of the church—and that’s important here as well. What do the people want to do at Kadesh? Well, they grumble against the leadership because they don’t believe that God can give them victory. And what they want to do is—it says they want to elect new leaders and go back to Egypt. You see, and the author of Hebrews is saying, you know, listen to your men, listen to me as we preach the word of God. What you want to go back to is Egypt, not Israel. See, we’re the true Israel of God moving forward.

Well, God grant that we not so overshoot the mark in trying to revivify the church that all of a sudden the church and its institution is equated one with the kingdom of God or the work of the people. No, no, no, no, no. This is important, but it sets up the rest of the week. “Today” in the text before us doesn’t just refer to today, Sunday. It means today, tomorrow—whether you’re going to be faithful to speak to Jesus Christ and to apply the work of Jesus Christ in where you go. Like the text we read, last Joshua, right? What are they going to do when they go into the promised land?

God says, “Wherever you put your foot, I’ve given it to you, but be faithful.” He says, “Be strong, courageous. Don’t depart from my word.” That’s the victory. You see, moving into the week with confident expectation that God has made us more than conquerors through the person and work of Jesus. That’s what this text calls us to do.

So the structure of this is that, as I mentioned earlier, you see at the beginning and the end, the first and the last section here—the last section is just a verse, but you see those underlined words that show that this is a unit. And so it begins with what we talked about last week: looking to Jesus, who is faithful, more faithful than Moses. Moses was great. Not discontinuity, but, you know, in terms of faithfulness, but discontinuity in terms of God—the creator. Jesus is the creator and owner of the house. He’s building a faithful house.

And at the end, same thing: be faithful. You gotta hold fast to that faith, and it repeats these common words—Jesus’s ascension through the heavenlies is the basis for our heavenly calling, same word, you see? So we live in the ascension power and perspective of Jesus Christ now.

Moving in from that, what happens then is the author has a big block where he quotes from Psalm 95. Now, he doesn’t start at the first half of Psalm 95. He’ll get there by implication. What’s the first half? Well, “Oh, come let us sing it to the Lord. Let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let’s rejoice. Let’s enter into Sabbath celebration. Let’s do praise God and Lord’s Day worship.” That’s the first half. And the second half is this warning. And he starts with the second half. And he quotes the last half of Psalm 95 with its statements of warning.

Now, connected to that, at the end, drop down now to the next-to-last section. What is that? Verses 12 and 13. And it’s a section that’s very common. We know this section—the word of God is living and powerful and more active and piercing and all this sort of stuff. So it’s talking about the power of the word. Psalm 95, the power of the word. You see, connected together. The word, he gives it to them. That word is going to be powerful to discern what their situation is and what they need. They match up. The next sections match up as well.

Now, in the third section—I’ve got third and fourth section of chapter 3 split apart a little bit, verse 16: “For who, having heard, rebelled,” and that’s split apart a little bit from the structure in the first section. Those really belong together. You’ll notice at the beginning of that section: “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.” And then look down at the last verse of that section, verse 19: “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Only places where the word is used in Hebrews—this specific Greek word. So it’s definitely to show us this is a section, you see? Unbelief.

Now, it’s got kind of two halves. There’s a chiastic structure, and then there’s a back-and-forth where he knits together citations of Psalm 95 and specific citations from Numbers 14, because that’s what he’s doing as he starts this thing up—going back and forth between the two. But that’s a section, you see. And matching that section, you drop down to verse 6—yeah, verse 6. You see, I’ve underlined the word “disobedience” at the beginning of that section. And then down in verse 11, “disobedience.” Again, just like in the section in chapter 3 where we’ve got “unbelief” and “unbelief,” now we’ve got “disobedience” and “disobedience,” and the only place they’re used. So again, a marker to show us that this is a section.

So those two sections, if you think of them together, what it’s giving us is unbelief and disobedience. And that’s exactly what the text is trying to show us—that disobedience and unbelief are the same thing, okay? And so it does that. And it does that with citations from Psalm 95 at the center, up there, of that section. And then in the fourth section, the center there as well. So that goes back and forth in terms of that way—disobedience and disobedience.

That leaves chapter 4 verse 1 through verse 8 as the central section of the five here. So we’ve got Jesus and Jesus, we’ve got Psalm 95 and the word of God, right? Then we’ve got unbelief and disobedience. And at the very heart is this chapter 4 verse 1 through chapter 4 verse 8, and that whole thing is all about entering into the rest of God relating it to the Sabbath rest of God on the seventh day, okay?

So that’s the overall structure. And now we’re going to talk a little bit more about specifics as we go through this again.

In the opening section that matches with the last section, Jesus is the cause of our heavenly calling. He’s our high priest. We hold fast our confession of Jesus, who is faithful to God. And so it’s Jesus’s faithfulness that pushes into effect the rest of what this long section of scripture is going to tell us.

Now, notice in verse 7, moving on to the next section, something important I want to point out in this section. You know what? This is a citation of Psalm 95, as I said, and you know, we could point out that he’s making direct application of an Old Testament text to the New Testament church. So again, we see that basic continuity of what the author is going to do here.

Notice, too, that in verse 8, it talks about the “day of trial in the wilderness.” So by way of application, the Hebrews are being told they’re in a wilderness, but they’re on the verge of entering the promised land like the people at Kadesh were.

But the most important point I want to point out of this text is verse 7: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says”—not “said,” not “as the Holy Spirit said,” not “as the Holy Spirit scribed,” as the Holy Spirit wrote when Psalm 95 is inspired, but “as the Holy Spirit says.” The present ministry of the Holy Spirit is emphasized in this text. The Holy Spirit speaks through the word. The Holy Spirit is saying something to them. And today to us, the spirit of God is talking to you. He is speaking to you. You see, and he’s speaking to you Psalm 95, the second half of the section, warning you not to have unbelief.

So it’s the present action of the Holy Spirit. And this matches to that last section that says, you know, if the Holy Ghost is talking to you, you better listen. Don’t lie to him. Don’t disobey him, because you’ll be destroyed. The word of God is powerful and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, discerning who you are.

The spirit of God doesn’t speak the way we speak. God doesn’t speak falling words—words that come out and fall to the ground. God issues performative utterances—is the technical phrase. What he says happens. And he’s telling you here to be careful not to hold back from pressing your faithfulness to Christ into the future, not to have an evil heart of unbelief, thinking, “There’s no way this has become a Christian nation again.” Don’t do that. He says, “Press forward. Press forward optimistically.”

And he’s saying that if you don’t, that word preached, the Holy Spirit’s word, if you rebel against it, you will be destroyed. That’s what he’s saying in the last half of this when it talks about the word of God.

Before the word of God, it says we are naked and powerless. And that word “powerless” means that God has you in a headlock. It was the word that was used in the Greek of the time to say, well, you’ve got some of these wrestlers, and they grab somebody in a headlock and kick their legs up from underneath them and—bam—they’re down. You see, that’s what God has you in right now. This text is the Holy Spirit saying it to you today. The Holy Spirit says this. He’s got you in a headlock right now. You may not feel that way, but you are powerless before God Almighty in his word. And so the Holy Spirit is saying this to us.

Now, look at the next section in verse 12. And this is the same point. The application is beware. The Holy Spirit is saying this to us: “Beware. Be careful, brothers.” Calls them brothers. But he says, “Be warned lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.” We think, “Well, little unbelief is not that big. Oh, it’s unbelief is evil. It is an evil heart of unbelief.” And then—and that matches up in this section before we get to the back-and-forth of Psalm 95 and Numbers 14 in the initial section here. It matches up with “do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,” right? Evil heart, don’t harden your hearts.

And if we move in then, what does it say? How are we to avoid doing this? How do we hear the Holy Spirit and be faithful to him? He tells us something really important in the next verse. And it’s so hard to get done. But “exhort one another daily while it is called today.” Our job is to be exhorters of one another.

To exhort means to rebuke, to admonish, all in love, no doubt. But it says that we need to hear each other’s voices. And this is very significant. It ties it structurally here to “if you will hear his voice” at the end. “Exhort one another while”—well, it’s “today.” Today, if you will hear his voice. How do you hear his voice? When you and I speak to one another in terms that are constant, the truth of the scriptures is applied to your life. The Holy Spirit is speaking to you.

Now, the Holy Spirit can use urges and promptings of your heart when you’re alone, you know, but even there, don’t think he’s going to speak to you something other than what his word says. I think the Holy Spirit tells us to pick up our tacks at home because there’s a verse that said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and peace is the order of God in the context of our lives. I think the Holy Spirit is telling every child here, when they walk into their room: straighten it up. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who bring God’s order to a situation, you see? Now, the spirit of God speaks to you in that way, ministering the word of God in specific applications.

So I’m not denying that. I’m not denying the Holy Spirit speaking to you directly through the word. But what I’m saying is that Hebrews says, in this text of scripture, says you don’t want to fall into the abyss. You don’t want your corpses rotting in the wilderness. Exhort one another daily. That’s the voice of Jesus. Be the voice of the Holy Spirit to one another, exhorting and encouraging each other to faithfulness.

Why? “Lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” See, we need to do this because if we wait for the spirit to speak through the word to us individually, and that’s what we always think of it as, the problem with that is the heart is wicked, deceitful, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? You see, there’s a deceitfulness of sin at work in the context of our world. And our hearts can become hardened through the deceitfulness of sin when sin says, “It’s not that big a deal what you just said. This sin isn’t that much of a problem.”

There’s a new movie out that has the deceitfulness of sin in it: “Kingdom of Heaven” and the great hero Orlando Bloom. I know you teenage girls—Orlando Bloom. And now he’s a warrior, even. Oh, this is wonderful. Well, he’s the hero, right? Faithful knight. Be true, be honest. Don’t do anything wrong. Don’t do anything evil. And he sleeps with another man’s wife. He participates in adultery. This hero—the deceitfulness of sin.

The point of the movie is it’s all about you and God. And do what’s right in your own conscience. And by the way, that may involve sleeping around here and there on occasion. That’s what Orlando Bloom does. Horrible. Horrible. The deceitfulness of sin says, “Well, you just gotta follow your feelings and emotions. It’s not that big a deal. You know, it’s important that you don’t, you know, mistreat the Muslims, but it’s not important one night you sleep with another man’s wife.” You see, adultery is an attack on the community and the basic building blocks of community, the family. It’s a horrible sin.

And so the deceitfulness of sin is why we need to exhort one another daily. Are we doing that? I think we do a lot. I think we need to be exhorted to continue to do it. And this text should put the fear of God, literally, into us—that we not be hardened by our own sin, stray off the path, enter into an embitterment against God. You know, you think, “Well, I’ll just have this area of my life that sin is taking its root in, and it’s segmented over there. Or I’ll repent of this at some point in time.”

Yeah, wisdom is calling out through my church, through the conscience of God as his spirit ministers his word to me that it’s wrong, but I’ll just wait. I can always repent later. Ah, he says here, “No, beware. They died in the wilderness, folks. Don’t do that.” That’s the hardening of the deceitfulness of sin.

Matching that, “if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end”—and see, we have that. In addition, in verse 5: “Be on your guard. Be wary. And be wary of most of all of yourself and the deceitfulness of sin as it seeks to tell you it’s not that big a deal this particular sin, or maybe it isn’t even sin. Maybe I have a justification for acting the way I am, even though I know it isn’t right. But we need other people around us to tell us it’s not right.

We’re afraid to do that. We’re afraid to tell each other, “I just don’t think that’s right, what you did there.” We’re so desirous, in our cultural context today, we’re so desirous of friendships. We all feel alienated, particularly in this country where rugged individualism is the big deal. Orlando Bloom was a 21st-century American inserted into a 12th-century movie where men’s views of things were completely different. But he is like us. And because of that, we feel a need for friends. And the last thing we want to do is get somebody ticked off or alienated.

And so we air on the side of not saying anything. Folks, you know you do, and I know I do, but that’s not helping anybody. And in fact, what is your responsibility if you see your neighbor, your brother, your wife, your husband sinning and don’t speak up about it? You leave them to the deceitfulness of sin, and this text says they may slip away because of you. You may slip away because you are unfaithful to exhort one another. You know, blood guiltiness on your hands. We don’t want that. We want to help our brother.

It’s not helpful to him to cover stuff over again and again. So this section here, and then the middle is “for we have become partakers of Christ.” Our union with Jesus Christ is at the center of that section. And the context of all of that is the body of Christ exhorting one another in the context of the deceitfulness of sin.

The next section is a back-and-forth between Psalm 95 and Numbers 14. That’s why I put the references for you there. Three things, back and forth: “Whom having heard, rebelled? Well, it was those that came out of Egypt. With whom was he angry forty years? Well, it was those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness. To whom did he swear that they would not enter his house? Well, it was those who did not obey.”

So back and forth. This first section is driving home that Numbers 14 is the position that the church is in Hebrews. And then at the end, “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief,” and we go to a present tense. We go from past tenses here, back and forth, to now in the present. Then we can see now that their problem was unbelief, and we also see that it’s a danger to us.

The next section, beginning in chapter 4 verse 1, we have a promise now. So you see the text is warning, it’s saying, “Be faithful,” for and after. And then it’s saying, “Be warned, beware.” Because you’re on the verge of apostasies, telling the Hebrews. And be warned. But then at the very center section here that begins in 4:1, we have the promise. See, we have the warnings, and we’ve got the promise.

“Now, therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear.” We’ve got the warning again, but it’s set in the context now, not of Numbers 14. Now he’s going to take us back all the way back to the archetype of rest—God and his rest in Genesis 2. And he’s going to take us to this wonderful promise that this rest he’s exhorting us to move into is the actual possession now of those who believe. And this is a great promise, then, of God to us.

And he draws this correlation. And here’s the first reference to faith (pistis in the Greek) in verse 2 here. “The word was preached to them as well as to us. But the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith.” See, faith is a big deal, right? Chapter 11, the hall of faith. The rest of Hebrews—faith. Here’s the first instance of it. The first occurrence of a term in a Bible book is important. It sort of sets the stage for understanding it normally. And here, what is faith?

It’s the assurance of things hoped for, yeah? It’s that. And what does that mean? John Forester sent me this quote: Good. “Faith is thinking and acting according to God’s word in spite of the feelings within me, the circumstances around me, and the consequences ahead.” That’s good. That’s faith, right? My feelings, the circumstances, the possible consequences. I still gotta act in faith. But this faith, the spin that Hebrews puts on it, is a little different.

Faith here is an optimistic looking forward to the future, to the promises of God. They had unbelief, not believing that they would have victory as they went into Canaan. That’s what faith is here: a belief that God will grant us victory as we press the claims of Jesus Christ. And when we get to chapter 11 in months from now, we’ll see that same thing there—that faith has a forward-looking aspect to it. It’s not a static, one-dimensional “I’ll keep doing what Jesus wants me to do in the present, trusting, you know, not knowing if it’s good or bad in the future.” Uh-uh.

The future is promised to us to be blessing and victory in Jesus. And this first occurrence of faith here—that’s what’s going on. Faith in Hebrews is a belief, an optimistic looking forward to the future. And it bases this on the Sabbath rest of God after creation. The Sabbath rest of God after creation is what this is based on, in chapter—in this section of 4.

“He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way. And God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again in this place: they shall not enter my rest.” So faith is an optimistic looking to the future that believes that as we exercise that faith now, we have the present rest of God today. It’ll be made more manifest. But we enter that today because the rest that we’re to enter into is outside of human history. It’s not tied to human history.

God has established his works. The doctrine of sovereignty is inevitably tied to the doctrine of creation. He sets everything up. And because he does that, he foreordains whatever comes to pass. And what’s coming to pass is the kingdom of God is being established on earth as it is in heaven. And it is faith to pray that today as we always do. But it’s faith to pray it, believing, and as a result, not sinning, but being faithful to Jesus Christ.

Verses 6 and following: “Therefore, it remains that some must enter it. Somebody’s got to enter. Who’s going to do it? Where are you going to do it?” There remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God. Verse 9: That is a Sabbathismos. It is the basis for us using the term “Christian Sabbath.” It can be translated more literally, certainly, than “rest.” There remains a Sabbathkeeping to the people of God.

Beyond that, though, now we’re brought into the first half of Psalm 95 because Sabbathismos says it’s a Sabbathkeeping, but the context where it’s used in other places in the Greek is a joyous celebration. We’re exhorted to keep Sabbath, to keep the Lord’s Day the whole day long. It is a day, but it’s one of joy and celebration, not of dreariness.

And the Bible here repeats the one commandment out of ten that people say isn’t repeated in the New Testament, but it’s repeated very explicitly right here: “There remains a Sabbathkeeping, a joyous celebration, the Christian Sabbath, the Christian Lord’s Day, that is a prefigurement of what heaven will be like.” We experience it here today, here and now. We move into the future. We actually participate in that future in Lord’s Day rest.

“Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest.” Wonderful text. And then the word of God. We’ve talked about that. And finally, the concluding statements. Wonderful set of scriptures warning us against the deceitfulness of sin and, on the other hand, promising us that as we’re faithful to God, we enter into heaven on earth here and now, and also will enter into that in the eschaton as well.

I want to stress, in conclusion, this idea that we need to hear from each other so that we don’t fall into the deceitfulness of sin. To some people, sin says, “This sin is not sin at all. It’s not sin to do this or that. Well, what’s wrong with this?” And if we see our brothers sinning in a way that they’re not aware of sin, we have an obligation to deliver them from the deceitfulness of sin.

To others, it’ll say, “This sin is really pleasurable. This is really fun.” It’s deceitful because it says, “This is going to be great. This is pleasurable. I want to do it. I can always repent later.” You know, there’s a great quote from Thomas Goodwin, the old Puritan: “A man’s lust, both body and mind, do strapado a sinner’s expectations.” Strapado—what is that? Well, it was what the Spanish Inquisition did. They would take somebody they were torturing. They’d wrap chains around them and they’d haul him up real high to the top of a building like this, and—boom—let him go. And it wouldn’t probably kill him the first time, right? It crushes a lot of bones. Haul him back up, let him go.

That’s what sin does. “This is going to be fun. There’s going to be a high associated with this. We’re going to have a good time now.” Yeah, but Goodwin says, “Whoa, we better watch it because sin strapados you. It hauls you up and—boom.” Then when it’s over—and it always will be—God has the last word on it all. His word is sharp and more sharp than any two-edged sword. The strapado comes. Sin has its punishment that it enacts upon you.

Sin says it’s not all that important, right? It’s not important. There’s a great quote from Malcolm Muggeridge. He said this: “The saddest thing to me in looking back at my life has been to recall, not so much the wickedness I have been involved in, the cruel and selfish and egotistic things I have done, the hurt I have inflicted on those I loved—although all that’s painful enough—what hurts most is the preference I have so often shown for what is inferior, tenth-rate, when the first rate was there for the having. Like a man who goes shopping, comes back with cardboard shoes when he might have had leather, with dried fruit when he might have had fresh fruit, with processed cheese when he might have had cheddar, with paper flowers when the primroses were out.

Alas, so much of my life has been spent pursuing this fictional good and forgetful of the other, the real good that is ever inspiring and ever renewed.”

You know, the word of God says that it’s sin to settle for second best. We want to press toward the mark, toward the sure blessings of God. We want to be blessed best in that way. You know, C.S. Lewis was asked once, was asked, “Who’s the happiest man in the world? Who has the greatest happiness?” Here’s what he said: “While at last, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best. I have an elderly acquaintance of about eighty who has lived a life of unbroken selfishness and self-adoration from the earliest years and is, I’m sorry to say, one of the happiest men I know. From the moral point of view, it is very difficult. I’m not approaching the question from that angle.

As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I did not go to religion to make me happy. I always knew that a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

May God grant us that we do not sin by seeking for happiness. Bob Dylan—all people can lecture us on this. He was asked by Rolling Stone magazine in his Christian period, “Are you happy?” Happy. “I don’t use the word happy. That’s a yuppie word,” he said. “Blessed? Yeah, I’m blessed.”

See, we’re blessed by God. We’re blessed by God as we avoid the deceitfulness of sin, as we build Christian community, as we exhort one another to faithfulness to Jesus, and as we free one another from the bonds of sin that otherwise entangle us and cause us potentially to face that crushing of bones of the strapado as sin brings us crashing down under the judgment of God.

May he make us on guard, sanctify, faithful—faithful to one another, faithful to Christ. And as we go about doing that, the call from today’s text is: Beware. Be on guard to avoid sin creeping in, because it’s deceitful. It’ll strapado you. It’ll make you feel good for the moment, but at some point in time, the Lord God has the final word on all of these things.

Let’s pray. Father, help make us, Lord God, faithful to one another, faithful to Jesus. And make us weary, Father, lest sin, the deceitfulness of sin, slip into us. We thank you for this wonderful day of celebratory Sabbathkeeping in your presence, for the Christian community we rejoice with. May we, Lord God, be exhorted to community today. Exhort one another, encourage each other. And as we move into this week, may we have a renewed commitment to deliver one another from the deceitfulness of sin, knowing, Father, that you bring us into your very Sabbath rest, the joy and blessing of that, as we’re faithful to Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.