Exhort and Encourage for the Sake of Faith

Hebrews 3:7-19

Main Idea: Israel failed to enter God’s rest because they presumed on God’s kindness and had their hearts hardened by sin. Therefore, exhort and encourage one another to hold firmly to your confession until the end so that an evil, unbelieving heart will not lead you away from faith in the living God.

1. Learning from a Bad Example (3:7-11)
   1. The Holy Spirit says: Hebrews and inspiration
   2. The urgency of believing today
   3. Rebellion and rest: why Israel failed
2. Exhorted to Endure (3:12-19)
   1. An evil, unbelieving heart
   2. Holding firmly to faith

Years ago I attended a lecture that profoundly impacted me. The lecturer was Heiko Oberman, a prestigious history professor from the University of Arizona and one of the world’s greatest scholars on the Reformation. Oberman was about seventy years old at the time; I was in my early twenties.

Halfway through the lecture, Oberman became unusually frustrated with the class. The group did not frustrate him because of misbehavior or lack of attention. The class frustrated him simply because we were young! “Young men will never understand Luther,” he said, “because you go to bed every night confident you will wake up healthy in the morning. In Luther’s day, people thought that every day could be their last. They had no antibiotics. They didn’t have modern medicine. Sickness and death came swiftly.” Oberman was right. To fully understand Luther, we needed to know he faced the reality of eternity each day—and so do we!

Closing his eyes at night terrified Luther because he was afraid he would wake up in hell. His angst grew out of his recognition of God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness. Only the imputation of Christ’s righteousness found in the gospel delivered him from that fear.

The prospect of God’s judgment is indeed terrifying. Only the gospel provides us the assurance we need that we can have a right standing before a holy God. Yet as the author of Hebrews reminds us, the gospel not only delivers us from the penalty of sin but from the power of sin as well. Christians must persevere in the faith in order to reach the promised land. We must continue to hold firmly to the gospel, lest the holiness of God shut us out of his rest and Luther’s nightmare become an endless reality for us. This is the message of the remainder of Hebrews 3. The author exhorts God’s people to endure.

Learning from a Bad Example

Hebrews 3:7-11

In verses 7 through 11, the author draws attention to the first generation Israelites and their rebellion against God in the wilderness. God warned those Israelites to endure in their faith, but many of them failed. Instead of trusting in the One who rescued them from slavery, they provoked God and were shut out of the promised land. Hebrews 3:7-11 admonishes us not to be like faithless Israel.

The Holy Spirit Says: Hebrews and Inspiration

The writer of Hebrews does something spectacular with the introductory clause in verse 7. He prefaces a quotation of the Psalms with the words, “as the Holy Spirit says.” In doing so, the author dramatically affirms the divine inspiration of Scripture. The author highlights the Holy Spirit’s role in the formation of Scripture a little later in the book as well (Heb 10:15).

“As the Holy Spirit says” accomplishes two tasks. First, it teaches us that God is the author of Scripture. It teaches us, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21). When Scripture speaks, God speaks (Warfield, Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 119). When we hear Scripture, read Scripture, study Scripture, or encounter Scripture in any way, we can be confident God is speaking to us.

Second, it affirms the living character of Scripture. The author does not use the past tense. He does not say, “The Holy Spirit said.” He uses the present tense. Every time we open the Bible, the Holy Spirit speaks. Even though the biblical authors recorded these words long ago, they are still living words. The author of Hebrews explicitly argues this in the next chapter: “For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword” (Heb 4:12).

The Urgency of Believing Today

In the main argument of this text, the writer of Hebrews returns to the Psalms for support and to model how to read the Old Testament in light of Christ. The verses quoted here are from Psalm 95:7-11. In stark contrast to Moses, the people of Israel in Moses’s time were faithless to God. Thus, the author uses these verses from the Psalms to exhort us not to repeat the faithlessness of the Israelites. Psalm 95 warns God’s people not to harden their hearts and turn away from the God who saved them. This is precisely what happened to Israel. They murmured against the Lord, grew discontent with his redemption, and pined for the pleasures of Egypt (Ps 106:6-43).

The author presses the word today on his hearers with a sense of urgency. The urgency remains for us in our current context just as much as it did for the original audience. Today is the day of decision. Today we will either walk with God or walk away from him. As Luther recognized, today is the day of salvation because today may be our last. The original audience could not presume upon another day. Neither can we.

The phrase “if you hear his voice” is very important. Entering God’s final rest depends on hearing and heeding the voice of God. For anyone to hear God’s voice is a result of an act of mercy and salvation. God speaks in order to save his people. The original author teaches his audience that God has graciously spoken so that they might be saved. Now they must obey God’s voice and faithfully follow it into eternity.

Rebellion and Rest: Why Israel Failed

The author also shows his audience why Israel failed to enter the promised land: they hardened their hearts. The Lord tested them in the wilderness (v. 8) and they failed. The forefathers of the nation failed to keep their hearts God-oriented. Though they saw the “works” of God “for forty years” (v. 9), they put God to the test and rebelled against him.

Israel presumed on God’s kindness. God graciously preserved them for forty years. He delivered them. He kept them alive. He provided manna for them. He guided them through the desert with a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. And yet they presumed on that grace and grumbled against the Lord.

What is the “rest” Israel failed to enter? The word rest in verse 11 refers to the land beyond the Jordan River. God swore in his wrath that the people of Israel would not enter Canaan, the land he had first promised to Abraham and his descendants (Gen 15:18-21). However, the context of the author’s argument indicates that Canaan looked back to the rest of Eden and also typologically foreshadowed the future eschatological rest of the new creation. This is why the writer of Hebrews uses this Psalm and the story of Israel in the wilderness to exhort his readers to remain faithful. He wants them to make it to the true land of rest.

Rest in Scripture metaphorically refers to God’s blessings of safety, security, and salvation. Hebrews develops this picture by bringing a uniquely Christological component to a theology of rest. Hebrews 4 teaches that Jesus Christ is our Sabbath rest. Not a place but a person—Jesus Christ—most fundamentally gives us rest.

The warning in these verses is sobering and serious. Just as he did with Israel, God will shut out from his rest those who rebel, walk in unfaithfulness, and presume on the grace of God. Like faithless Israel, those who presume on the grace of God will die on the wrong side of the Jordan. We must hold firmly today lest we wake up outside God’s eternal rest.

Exhorted to Endure

Hebrews 3:12-19

In verses 12-19 the author shifts away from showing his audience Israel’s unbelief to exhorting his audience not to fall into unbelief. He exhorts his people not to follow in first generation Israel’s faithless footsteps. Instead, he encourages them to endure in the faith so that they can enter into God’s eschatological rest.

An Evil, Unbelieving Heart

Verse 12 begins the author’s application of Psalm 95 to his audience. Israel sinned because they did not believe God. They had an “evil, unbelieving heart.” This type of heart ultimately sets us on the path that leads away from the living God. Thus, the author exhorts his brothers and sisters to check their hearts so that they will not end up hard-hearted like Israel.

How do we combat evil, unbelieving hearts? Verse 13 provides the remedy. Christians “encourage each other daily, while it is still called today.” Paul gives the same command to the Colossians when he encourages them to teach and admonish one another “in all wisdom . . . through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts” (Col 3:16). Immersing oneself in the community of saints, in the care and watchfulness of the local church, in the preaching of God’s Word, and in the exhortation of fellow believers remedies an evil, unbelieving heart. These things protect us from falling away. The author again highlights the urgency of this task. We must immerse ourselves in these things “today.” Tomorrow is no guarantee.

The author also describes an “evil, unbelieving heart” as one that has been hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. The Old Testament diagnoses the hardening of the heart as a terminal disease. A hardened heart leads to eternal death. Each of us at some point had a hard heart, but God, because of his love for us, replaced our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh (Ezek 36:26). While we were dead in our sins and opposed to God, God brought us to life by his grace (Eph 2:1-7). God’s miraculous work on hearts of stone grounds our endurance and helps us fight evil, unbelieving hearts.

The danger of having a hard heart is not just that you might stumble. The danger of a hard heart is that it will lead to a final denial of God and rejection of his grace in Jesus Christ. The danger of a hard heart is unbelief. Hard hearts do not recognize or accept their need for a savior. Therefore, the ministry to which the author exhorts his brothers and sisters is no small ministry. Exhorting brothers and sisters in Christ to watch out for an evil and unbelieving heart is an urgent task for gospel faithfulness with eternal significance.

Holding Firmly to Faith

The “reality that we had at the start,” mentioned in verse 14, is a conversion—one’s first confession of Christ when God regenerated the heart by the power of the gospel. While the author reminds us that God sovereignly ignites our conversion, perseverance in our faith (fueled and motivated by God’s grace) is our responsibility. Ultimately, we cannot keep ourselves. God is the One who began a good work in us and will bring that work to completion in the end (Phil 1:6). God is the One who will uphold and guard us by his power through faith (1 Pet 1:5).

Verses 15 through 18 push forward the author’s argument for perseverance in the faith. In verse 15 the author quotes Psalm 95:7-8 to once again reiterate the importance and urgency of hearing and obeying God’s voice. The questions the author asks in verses 16-18 underline a central theological issue—the fatal error of unbelief. The Israelites committed many sins in the wilderness but only one prevented their entry into the land of promise, the sin of unbelief. Verse 19 powerfully demonstrates the need to persevere in faith. Without faith we will not enter the promised land. The faithless will not enter God’s eschatological rest. The faithful hold firmly until the end.

Reflect and Discuss

1. The author of Hebrews argues that one of the reasons Israel fell away was because their hearts were hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Is there any sin in your life that you entertain and refuse to put to death? Are you at total war with your sin, or do you pick and choose your battles? Explain.
2. Do you regularly confess your sin to other brothers or sisters in your church as a means to prevent the hardening of your heart? Which relationships exhort you to endure in the faith? How do you encourage others to endure?
3. In what ways do you, like Israel, presume on God’s kindness? Do you expect God to grant you tomorrow? Would today look any different in your relationship with the Lord if you knew it was your last?
4. How does the author of this passage use the reality of God’s wrath to motivate his audience to hold firmly until the end? Do you typically think about God’s wrath as a motivation for persevering in your faith? Why or why not?
5. In what practical ways can you encourage brothers and sisters in your church to persevere in the faith? Identify other places in Scripture that show us how Christians can exhort one another.
6. How does the miracle of rebirth help us endure in the faith? Does the miracle still flame your affection for Christ, or have you simply grown accustomed to it?
7. In what activities or things do you pursue rest? If Jesus Christ is our ultimate rest, what does that say about the “rest” we experience this side of heaven?
8. The perseverance of the saints is one of the most comforting doctrines in all of Christian theology. How might it help you and others to endure in the faith?
9. In what ways is the divine inspiration and living character of Scripture tied to perseverance in the faith? How does the author of Hebrews use Scripture to spur his audience forward toward God’s eschatological rest?
10. Spend time reflecting on “the reality that [you] had at the start,” to which the author of Hebrews refers in verse 14. What is the significance of the word “if” in this verse?