Hebrews: The New Covenant Administration of Christ Max A Forsythe (c) Anno Domini 2002

From the Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Presbyterian Church in America

"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 forty 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, 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."

Introduction:  It is always with great pleasure that I turn to passages like today where the Lord's servants comment on other passages in His word so that we may more clearly understand what is necessary for our salvation.  Our passage in Hebrews today is just such a passage.  Our verses follow immediately after the great theme that Jesus is greater than Moses.  And so, the writer of Hebrews would encourage us to pay careful attention to this One who is greater than Moses.  Look at the admonishment in verse twelve where we are strongly encouraged to resist the normal worldly human reaction to God's voice.  When the Lord our God speaks, our hearts and minds, our emotions and our wills should respond to the King's voice. 

How often do we have a minimal appreciation for the Kingship of our Sovereign Lord?  How often we are content with a minimal kindergarten understanding of the riches and complexities of the glorious grace of our God and King.  A news commentator once made light of the common baby boomers experience a decade or more ago.  He held a mock interview with some upwardly mobile yuppies - who were horrified of turning forty and terrified of being fifty!  He well understood that there are very many overage teenagers in this country who finally are being forced to consider the fact that growing up is hard to do. Life is finally passing them by and they have yet to consider the meaning of life. 

One of my students once shared her disgust with some forty year old teenagers who hung around with her "ex-father".  While she was walking home from school a car load of lewd and crude drunks tried to pick her up.  As she hurried to cut across a yard, she heard her father's voice telling the others to leave that bird alone, because she was his daughter!

Our writer urges us not to be like the worldly, but instead to listen to the Master's voice in the inspired script of Scripture.  In the lifetime of this letter writer, the Jews of Jesus' time were on the verge of making the very same mistake as those who accompanied Moses in the Exodus.  In the case of the reader's of Hebrews, the author's goal is to show how the way of Christ is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith.  The author, as one commentator: Thomas Hewitt urges us, "viewed any return to Judaism as an act of unfaithfulness towards Christ and unbelief towards God."

Or as one Catholic priest, who was fired from a position of critical studies in Israel, had it:  modern Judaism is a dead end street.  Judaism was indeed God given, but having served its purpose it must of necessity give way to Christianity.  Paul in his time lamented the failure of many of God's people to come fully to Christ.  Even today, there are some who little appreciate the fullness of Christ.  Ten years ago, the United Church of Christ "summoned its people to a changed, positive reassessment of Judaism."  This same Church went on to circulate a document stressing the permanent validity of the Jewish faith.    The article where I found this then went on to imply that any Christians who believe that God rescinded the covenant with Israel are on the wrong bus!  And in some places those who take this position are even shamed as being anti-Semitic! 

Development:  So we see that even today people will harden their hearts and refuse to hear the sovereign words of our King and God.  The writer of Hebrews will encourage us in the next chapter to be careful that we have not fallen as short because the promise of entering His rest still stands.  Let us within Christ's Church pay particular attention to the Gospel of Grace preached to us from Scripture.  Even so, let us accept that Gospel in full faith so that we may partake of salvation rest today, tomorrow and forever more. 

Our writer is careful to point out the necessity of focusing on today by showing that Joshua's occupation of Palestine was not the final end, but through the psalmist's offer, found in the book of David:  it is still available.  Today is still the day to accept the offer of salvation and to make Jesus your Lord and King.  Would you wait, would you wander through life straying farther and farther from the Kingdom of God?  To not listen and accept God's free offer of grace is to remain disobedient, and we see in the revelation of the Holy Spirit in the quoted psalm, that the disobedient will not enter into the Kingdom of rest. 

F.F. Bruce advises us that “the New Testament bears witness, in a number of places, to a primitive and widespread Christian interpretation of the redemptive work of Christ in terms of a new Exodus:

1.      the death of Christ is itself called an ‘exodus,’
2.      He is the true Passover, sacrificed for His people,
3.      ‘a lamb without blemish and without spot,’
4.      The early Christians are like ‘the church in the wilderness,’
5.      the baptism into Christ is the antitype of the passage through the sea,
6.      the sacramental feeding on Him by faith is like the manna and water,
7.      Christ  the Living Rock is their guide through the wilderness,
8.      the heavenly rest which lies before them is better than Canaan,”

In his first letter to the Corinthians (10: 6-7) we read:  “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.  Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’”

And so it went there in the antiquity of Israel’s early experience as a nation and a church!  Sin was compounded by sin and for forty years the good Lord in all His patience provided graciously for their every need.  But because of their ungodly refusal to submit their trust to Moses and the Lord Almighty  God declared that they would never enter into their rest.  And so it was, once the warriors who refused to fight for Canaan were laid in their graves  then God allowed the younger generation to enter Palestine. 

F.F. Bruce brings this desert warning into a special context for the first generation Christians:  “Although the writer does not say so in son many words, it may well be that he saw a special significance in the ‘forty years’ of Psalm 95: 10.  We have evidence of a belief that God’s dealings with Israel, which began with a probationary period of forty years, would be rounded off at the end-time by a probationary period of like duration; and (if this epistle was written shortly before AD 70), it was nearly forty years now since Jesus had accomplished His ‘exodus’ at Jerusalem.  Hence the urgency of the present appeal to the readers to take heed ‘so long as it is called To-day.’”

Application:   Forty years is generally considered a generation since that is usually the active years granted to most men and women  that period of time when their influence is the greatest.  I can remember when John F Kennedy took the White House and my father remarked that he was the first president of his generation.  Bill Clinton was the first president of my generation!  Both my father and I were disappointed at what men our own age could and could not accomplish!  Reagan was the last leader of my father’s generation and I think that Dad appreciated the end of his era better than the beginning!  I have hopes that my generation will do better as time marches on as well.  Of course, in both cases: successors did not have impossible standards to follow after!

And so it goes within the churches of Christ as well, some generations are wicked, perverse and even pagan in their beliefs, standards and living practices, at least there are some exceptions  even as the first generation of Christians realized when they came over from the Old Covenant Church to that of the New Covenant in Christ.

However, the generation that was refused the eternal “rest” in Christ paid enormously for their failure.  In the first exodus  the generation that believed not in the God of Moses simply died in the wilderness.  In the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD  the fighting and dying were absolutely horrendous in the siege and destruction.  And the captured Jews were taken to Rome to build the Coliseum and when it was finished, those still alive were forced to kill each other or be thrown to the wild animals.

Do we get a sense of the dire warning written in verses twelve and thirteen for our benefit?  “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.”

Within two months, two of our young men will stand up with their young ladies who have agreed to share their lives with them and exchange those life-changing vows agreed to by generations of Christians.  In our time, very few of those around us take those vows very seriously.  We do pray that our young people will do better and spend a generation in love, harmony and calling to the demands of the Covenant of Companionship.

In a like manner, most of us here have taken vows of membership in Christ’s Church, and if you were asked at the very beginning of your journey in Christ’s Church  who would have doubted they could spend a generation in worship, fellowship and love for Christ?  And yet, this spring, even our own session has had to review the membership list and to seek out those who are missing in action to determine if they have simply changed fellowship  which is understandable and happening all the time as the Lord leads His people from place to place.

Unfortunately, we are not finding this to always be the case  and we would like to ask our missing brethren: what has happened to your love for Christ?  Sadly, we have found addresses, emails and phone numbers that have been changed and even the task of finding some is proving difficult?  Have they simply wandered away into the wilderness or is something worse going on?

We thank you one and all who are here to gather around the Lord’s Table this day!  We hope that this is the meal that you will not miss on purpose  but that in remembrance of your vows of membership: you will cherish the bread and the fruit of the vine placed before you upon the very command and example of our Lord Jesus Christ.

May your summons to the supper today be one that return to until He comes, or He takes you to be with Himself?  The Jews who (do not even know their own Christ) do take the Exodus meal seriously and they will lift a cup and prayerfully commend the future to become reality before the next meal only a year away.  Much more seriously  so may we commend ourselves to Christ and earnestly pray “Come quickly Lord Jesus, come quickly.”  And I would add to that the admonishment to be found in our text for today:  see that you are still gathering around the Lord’s Table when He appears.  Amen.