This Advent season, we’ve been looking at the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews to celebrate our Savior, and we’ll be ending that series today. We have a lot to see.

But what have we seen so far?

We saw, first, that Christ is the revelation of God: when God wanted us to know what he is like, he sent Jesus. We saw after this that Christ is supreme above all things, worthy of more honor than the angels, reigning over all creation. After that, we saw what kind of a King he is: a King who humbled himself, who came down to the people over whom he would reign, so that he might understand what it is like to be one of us, and that he might take our sin on himself and reconcile us to God.

And finally, last week, the author compared and contrasted Jesus and another faithful servant of God, Moses, showing that as faithful as Moses was, Jesus is worthy of even more glory and honor. So after comparing and contrasting Moses and Jesus, he now starts to compare and contrast the different ways of responding to them both. (Keep your Bibles open in front of you—we’ll be skipping around a bit in these chapters.)

Hardness and Unbelief: Israel in the Wilderness

He quotes Psalm 95, which spoke about how the people of Israel acted when they were in the wilderness, after God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. V. 7:

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

8  do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

on the day of testing in the wilderness,

9  where your fathers put me to the test

and saw my works for forty years.

10  Therefore I was provoked with that generation,

and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;

they have not known my ways.’

11  As I swore in my wrath,

‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”

The people were promised rest if they followed God. Rest from their labors under slavery in Egypt, yes, but more deeply, rest from the uncertainty of living outside of God. The foundation of God’s covenant with his people was this promise: “If you obey my commandments, you will be my people, and I will be your God.” The culmination of this rest was to come when God’s people entered the Promised Land of Canaan—a land where they could live and prosper.

But we were in Exodus all year—what happened? What did we see over and over again? God leads them out of Egypt with miraculous signs…and they’re afraid of not having water. He delivers them from the Pharaoh…and they’re afraid of not having food. He frees them from slavery…and they make a false god to worship. Their hearts were hardened against God. As a consequence, the generation that left Egypt didn’t go into the rest of the Promised Land. They died in the desert, and it was their children who finally went in and took the land.

The question is, what was at the root of this “rebellion”? What hardened the people’s hearts against God?

The author tells us in v. 19:

19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Now if you know the story, this might seem really confusing. The people of Israel who wandered in the desert for forty years obviously believed in God; they had seen him act with their own eyes. They saw everything he did in Egypt; they walked across the Red Sea, on dry land, as God separated it. They saw his glory descend on the mountain, and then on the tabernacle.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that God existed.

And we could say the same thing about ourselves. Look again at v. 7, where we started. He starts the verse with “Therefore”—that is, based on everything I’ve just said, “do not harden your hearts.” Well, what did he say just before that? In v. 6, we read: And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

In other words, he’s talking to Christians here, or at least people who claim to be. He’s talking to people who more than likely believe in God.

But he knows that in any church there are people who claim to be Christians but who aren’t really living for God. And he knows that even those who have faith in Christ need stern warnings to wake us up on a regular basis. Like the people of Israel, who had seen God at work, who had come close to him, who had no doubt that God existed and was powerful.

So where did they go wrong? They clearly believed in God. So how was it that they didn’t enter the rest of the Promised Land “because of unbelief”?

The answer is deceptively simple. In the Bible, “belief” is more than what we usually mean by that word. It’s not just a matter of being “sure” of something. It’s not a matter of intellectual assent. It’s not only—it’s not even mainly—a matter of conviction.

It’s a matter of trust.

The people of Israel believed in God, but they didn’t trust him. They didn’t trust him to be the God he said he was. He had given them promises and warnings: promises for obedience, warnings for disobedience. They believed he existed, but they didn’t believe his promises or his warnings. When he spoke to them, they didn’t take him at his word.

This is a sobering thought: it is possible to believe in God without believing in God. Belief is more than conviction, more than certainty. Belief is trust in God and allegiance to God. Belief says, “I’m putting all my chips in on you, even if I still have questions.” There may be parts of our minds that have a hard time grasping or accepting certain things; but despite that uncertainty, we still make the choice to trust in the eighty percent we are certain of.

And the people of Israel wandering in the desert didn’t do that. They believed in God, but they didn’t trust him. They believed without believing.

That is the counterexample the author gives us, to show us what not to do. And he takes these two chapters to not only give us a negative example, but to positively show us what we are to do. If unbelief looks like this, what does actual belief look like?

This text seems to give us a lot of information, and it can be a little confusing to get through, because the author seems to go in circles a bit. But that’s actually telling us something. The author repeats himself over and over again, because there are a certain number of things he wants us to really focus on.

The first thing he wants us to focus on is the goal.

1. The Goal Is Rest.

The goal is rest—we see it repeated nine times in these two chapters.

For the people of Israel in the wilderness, the “rest” they were looking for was the Promised Land of Canaan. But that is obviously short term, and those who rebelled against God lost even that.

But, he says in 4.10,

there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

The Sabbath was the one day every week when the people of God were commanded to put down their tools and do no regular work. When Christ fulfilled the law of Moses, that law was no longer binding for us, but the author reminds us of the Sabbath because there is another rest that is waiting for all of God’s people. It is the rest that is waiting for us at the end of our lives, the rest that we will enjoy forever with Christ after his return.

This is the goal.

And we are called to work hard to enter it. 4.11:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

So the goal is rest, and secondly:

2. The Time Is Now.

Look at how often the author tells us that there is a specific time for us to act, and that time is now. In 3.7, the author quotes Psalm 95:

TODAY, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

3.13:

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “TODAY…”

3.15, again quoting Psalm 95:

TODAY, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

And again, in 4.7:

…again he appoints a certain day, “TODAY,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “TODAY, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

He says it more clearly than I ever could.

The author wants us to understand the urgency of the call he’s making here. He is exhorting his readers to perseverance; his goal is that those who read his words will enter the rest he’s talking about.

It’s not too late, he says. As long as it is today, it’s not too late.

So many people wait so long to truly do the work God has given them to do, because they think there is always time. But that’s just not the case. Today is the only day we ever know we have—and we don’t even know how much longer “today” will last for us.

Right now, it’s not too late. Don’t wait any longer.

So the goal is rest, and the time is now. We have to move, and we have to move toward a specific destination. The question is, how do we do it?

3. Listen to His Voice.

Chapter 3, verse 7 once again:

“Today, IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, 8  do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

We see the same thing in v. 15, and again in chapter 4, verse 7.

God is speaking to us, brothers and sisters. How do we hear his voice?

Well, we saw part of the answer to this question at the beginning of our series, at the beginning of this letter. Chapter 1, verse 1:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…

We hear God’s voice by listening to his Son.

But by saying that, the author isn’t comparing good and bad. He’s not saying, “Now that we have Jesus, whatever God spoke through the prophets can be ignored.” He’s talking about a progression in God’s revelation to humanity, but that past revelation is still vital.

Look at 4.11 again:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

That is the command—those are our marching orders: strive to enter your rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience that felled the people of Israel in the desert.

And right on the heels of that, we see the means God has given us to strive (I put the verse on the screen because I want everyone to see that these two go together.). V. 12:

12 FOR the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

We try to hear God in so many places, in so many ways. And some of us are so desperate to hear his voice that we’ll start imagining we hear him speaking to us in every ray of sunshine, in every singing bird…all the while forgetting that God already has spoken to us, he already has made his voice heard, through the Scriptures.

Now of course God does speak to us through the world he created, in our thoughts and in our hearts, but necessarily those things are subjective, and subject to error. Sometimes I might think God has spoken to me, when in fact it was just what I happened to be thinking at the time. (Two people can say they heard God speak to them, but he’s telling them both two contradictory things. At least one of them is wrong.)

How can I have real, objective certainty that God has really spoken to me? I go to his Word. As John Piper said once, “If you want to hear God’s voice, read the Bible aloud.”

Exposing ourselves to the living and active Word of God is a long and arduous process, because it’s not enough to just land on a verse and pluck it up for ourselves. We need to take the time to prayerfully learn this book inside and out, to know what the whole Bible says about different subjects. It takes time, and it’s less immediately gratifying.

But when we do—when we strive with the tools God has given us, when we allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate the words he inspired in Scripture—we will set down roots that go deep into the bedrock of our salvation. Because when we set ourselves in front of this Word, we expose ourselves to a surgeon’s scalpel. God’s Word cuts deep: it pierces to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It exposes all of us.

We are called to let the Word of God cut us deep, to let it excise what needs excising, repair what needs repairing. We are called to listen to his voice.

And when we do, we are called to a specific response.

4. Come to Jesus Together.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…

Do you remember why the Israelites in the desert didn’t get to enter the Promised Land? Chapter 3, verse 19 again:

So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

We saw before what belief entails. It’s not about intellectual assent. It’s not mainly about conviction or certainty. It’s about trust.

And here is why I love this text. It may be tempting for us to take these things the author is saying for us personally. And we should do so; every step I take toward Christ is a decision I have to make.

But I’m not alone on this road, and this text makes that abundantly clear. Chapter 3, verse 12 again:

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 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.

We see it again in chapter 4, verse 11:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

His language is subtly suggestive: reading this naturally, we would have expected him to say, Let us strive to enter that rest, so that we may not fall by the same sort of disobedience.

But that’s not what he says. He says: so that NO ONE may fall.

It’s a subtle reminder that he’s not speaking to his readers as individuals here, but as a body—he’s talking to us, not me. We exhort one another every day, so that NONE OF US may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We strive to enter that rest, so that NO ONE may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

The image here is not of a single person climbing up a mountain, but rather of a group of people carrying one another up. Someone will start to fall, and those in front and behind will grab an elbow and keep him on his feet.

We strive together, in order to persevere together.

This is very difficult for some people to accept, either because they’re too proud to accept that they need help, or because they’ve been burned one too many times and have a hard time trusting others. And even if we don’t have a problem with the idea of needing one another now, there will come a time when it will feel so much easier to just drop the hands of the people next to me and go the rest of the way on my own. It’s often harder to go together than it is to go alone.

So we need a really solid reason to believe this, to believe that not only must we work to enter God’s rest, but that we must do it in such a way that, Lord willing, no one falls by the same sort of disobedience the Israelites showed.

What is that reason? V. 11 again:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword…

Simply put, the Word of God tells us that belief is a community project. We strive together, we exhort one another, to enter the rest that God has promised us, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

So what does that look like?

It actually looks a lot like what I’m doing right now. I know that many of you are exhausted at the end of this year (and there are several people I’m thinking of who aren’t here today). I know that some of you are doing fine, but you’ll soon need a reminder to get you back on track. I know that others among you are wounded, grieving, suffering.

And I know that some of you are pretending. You know exactly what to say, you know exactly what to do, to give the impression that you believe in God. But you believe without believing. You’ve hardened your hearts, and slowly but surely, you’re falling into the same trap as the Israelites in the desert.

Whatever the reason, you need help—the same help I myself need just as often as anyone.

The stakes are simply too great for us to drop anchor here.

So where do we turn, in order to head towards the rest that is promised to us? We turn toward our great High Priest. Chapter 4, verse 14:

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus knows what it’s like to be us. That’s why he came. He was tempted in every way as we are. He understands, and he has sympathy for us. Jesus has not abandoned us; he has not abandoned you. He is a good High-Priest, a perfect High-Priest, and even if your situation seems desperate, you can still today hold fast your confession and come to him. Believe in him. Trust him.

…Now of course, if you take the opportunity to speak like this to someone else, the way they respond is up to them. The person in front of you, who will need to hear these things, may wake up and strive to enter that rest, or he may harden himself even further. The important thing is that we seize the opportunity, today, and that we be there to help our brother or sister stay on their feet.

Belief is a community project.

And for all of the many things going on in our church—for everything we’ve had on our plates this past year, and everything that’s coming this next year—this is the only project that really matters.