Thank you, Brother Dave. Good singing. Hebrews 3. Hebrews 3. We're going to move around a little bit. And I left you with a little bit of a cliffhanger last week. I don't normally do that. I think it'd be cool to do it, and I imagine doing it, and then my little plan falls through and I get wrapped up into the text or into the message or the lesson or what have you. But Hebrews 3 is where I'd like to begin this morning. and we will find our way back over into Deuteronomy 34 and Joshua 1. I realize I have not found that place just yet. Now, we're going to read several verses here, so read along with me, because I want you to pick out this word. It won't be difficult for you to pick it out. You're going to see it a lot, but I want it to appear I want it to resonate in your mind when you hear it, and it's the word rest. It's the word rest, okay? We're gonna begin in chapter 3. We're actually gonna read on into chapter 4, all right? And we'll begin with verse number 15. While it is said today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation. We see that phrase, as in the provocation. It's drawing our minds somewhere. It's teaching us a lesson. We're getting the truth by some other figure or example. So there's the precedent. That's what this passage is going to build itself on now. For, for some, when they had heard did provoke, howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swear he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believe not? So we see they could not enter in because of unbelief. Let us, therefore..." Now, you watch what just happened. What the writer here is doing, what the Holy Spirit by the writer is doing is teaching us a lesson about entering into rest. And we can go back into chapter 2 or back further into chapter 3 and understand how this whole process is building. And that's why it's vital that we understand what's going on around the passage of Scripture. That's why something like what we do with Search the Scriptures is so valuable, because we want to pull the truth out of the one verse, but never is the chain separate from its links. You can't take one out and maintain it. So I want to make sure I regard the context so that the truth in the one link can help me, can fortify me, can make sure that I'm not only accurate, but that I'm consistent, not only with the text, but with truth and what God wants me to learn from it. So as he begins to proceed here, he has given the illustration, the provocation. We may have wondered what the provocation is. The Hebrews might not have wondered. It may have been something very common to them, which is why he didn't need to specify until after he had said it, as in the day of provocation. when they had heard did provoke. Okay, so we're finding out what the provocation was. And they're going back to the time of the 40 years wandering in the wilderness. That was begun at Kadesh Barnea in Numbers 13 and 14 in our Bible, which tells us of the 12 Hebrew spies. Ten of them faithful spies, bad. Two of them good, faithful spies. Okay, that's Joshua and Caleb. Now, let us therefore, chapter 4, verse 1, There's the truth. There's the illustration. Now here's the application. "'Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, "'any of you should seem to come short of it. "'For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them. But the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, as I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest. Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. You watch what's happening. If you get lost in the language, you're gonna get confused very quickly. You're gonna start asking questions that really aren't answered here, and they're not best to ask them right here. I recall your minds again to the idea of a biblical library. Now, where we're reading from in the biblical library is an epistle. It's a letter written. When I begin to understand the word of God, I know that the epistles are chiefly written for doctrine. They explain salvation. They explain the truths of the doctrines on which we have built our faith, or I should say on which the faith is built. And we come to know the faith by the way the doctrine is built for us. We don't bring it to the scriptures. The scriptures bring it to us. But though I'm in an epistle that is giving me doctrine, I am not separated from the application it brings to my life. So as it begins to apply itself to me in this matter of entering into rest, there's something God has for me. There's a promise here for me, and he's telling the Hebrew people, don't fall short of it. Now, in doing this, and my intent is not to cover the book of Hebrews in this, but to understand a principle that's taking place so that when we're studying Joshua 1 and 2, we can see all the truth that's available to us there. We can begin to get familiar with everything God has for us because it may be tempting to read Joshua 1 and 2 simply as a history book. And it is a history book. But here a history book is being pulled over from the Old Testament and brought into the relevance of the New Testament by applying those principles to a very modern context. For them, it was modern in that time. But that truth spans all the way to you and me. All right, what are you trying to do here, Pastor Aaron? Let's continue on. Let's continue on and follow this word, rest. Then we're going to go back to Deuteronomy and Joshua and let the Word of God speak to us this morning from those places. Let's go to verse number 4. For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise. Wow, did you see what we just did there? We just launched all the way back to the beginning, to the creation. And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place, again, if they shall enter into my rest, seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief, again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, Today, after so long a time, as it is said, Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. For if Jesus, or we could say that's the Greek pronunciation of the word, Joshua, had given them rest, then he afterward would not have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." Now, wow, we ought to take the time. We ought to take the time to go through and unwind this for ourselves and see all that he has layered in here because Each one of these branches off of this root, off of this tree that he's growing before us spans centuries, all the way back to the beginning of time, all the way to the time of occupation in Canaan, into the kingdom age of David in his time as the messianic throne itself was being set up. All of these things are taking place in this passage, and we need to understand those things, but in understanding all of them, we don't want to lose the key principle, and he brings it to us right there in verse number 9. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Now, he's applying the truth. We're getting it now. Whatever questions we may have about the rest of this, we're now understanding what the rest is. Let us labor, therefore. Now, that seems an odd word. Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. He has built this. He has crafted this case for the people of God entering into the rest. The rest. Now, the rest is a cessation. It is an ending of one thing. The precedent is initially set whenever God Himself said on the seventh day He would rest. from his labor. That that he had taken on, that that he had brought about, came to a completion. Sometimes the ending is seen as just an abrupt interruption. We understand from this, it's not an abrupt interruption. It's not losing the signal on the television show before you get to see the ending. It's not what this is. The cessation is a completion. It's the reward of completion. Something has ended. Something else has begun. The first time the word rest, as it's found in its Old Testament term, which is nuach, when you see that the first time, it's actually the ark coming to rest on Mount Ararat. The ark found a place of rest. Something was ended, something else was beginning. Something had been completed. Now, last week we delved into the idea that what God did when He took Israel from Egypt, He took out of there something that did not go in, so to speak. When they went in, they went in as a tribe, which had been formed from a family. This was a people group. It really wasn't even a people yet per se. It really still was that family, and it had not lost that identity. But when God said to Jacob, fear not. Go to Egypt. There I'm going to form thee into a great nation. What God brought out, what He birthed from out of Egypt through the spotless blood of those lambs, or the blood of those spotless lambs, I should say. What He birthed out of there was a nation. He brought that out. And our two words were out of, or our two sets of words, and our second two words were what? Unto, or into. They're not two separate things, but we need to understand the distinction between something that comes out of and what goes into, and it's going to be very, very pertinent to what we see today. And as you read through Joshua 1 and 2 every day, you ought to pick up on the things that echo these themes. Now, here's the last thing I'll say. We'll go back to Deuteronomy and to Joshua. What we've done in reading Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 here is we have dealt with a portion of biblical interpretation we would call types. Now there's a huge, broad span of biblical interpretation that includes the types. It's parables, it's metaphors, it's allegories, it's hyperbole, it's apostrophe. It's all of these wonderful words that really don't matter to us necessarily. But the things that they tell us, the things that they teach us, those matter imminently to us. Now you're maybe thinking right now, Pastor Aaron, I appreciate this, but I'm doing well just to get my devotions done every day, okay? So I don't know. I mean, I'm with this Joshua 1 and 2, this search of scriptures, and I'm working hard at it, so why are you delving into all this? Because here's why. Every single person in this auditorium and every person listening on a live stream to this lesson is a scriptural interpreter. if, at any point, you're taking the time to open the Word of God and read it to, in any manner, draw truth from it. And really, that's over-qualifying it. When you open the Word of God and read it, you are taking unto yourself the role of interpreter. Now, we call that hermeneutics, and that sounds nice and fancy. That's all it means is interpretation. If every one of us is an interpreter, okay, if every one of us is an interpreter, then we ought every one of us to be a proper interpreter. We ought to know how to interpret scripture. And it's vital that we know how to interpret scripture because here's where it's going to matter. Unless we know how to interpret scripture, we will not properly know how to apply it. And it's easy to make the jump over interpretation into application. We've talked about this before. You hear this terminology. It's not good terminology, though sometimes it comes from a good intent. We hear something said like this. This is what the passage means to me. We may understand the sentiment behind that, but you're already in dangerous territory, because it really is irrelevant what it means to you. Now, what you might intend to say and what your true intention may be, this is how it applies to me. But when you use the terminology, this is what it means to me, we then take Scripture and we open it up to anyone's interpretation. I can interpret it however I would like because this is what it means to me. Brother Phil can interpret it however he likes. This is what it simply means to him. And so in a room of 75 or 100 people, we can get 75 or 100 interpretations. And what we will get is at least, if we get 75 interpretations, we're at minimum going to get 74 incorrect ones. Because there's only one proper interpretation. There's only one. Now, there perhaps is a myriad of applications. There may be a number of ways that it impacts my life, and by application, I mean one of two things. Either the way it affects the decisions I make, or simply the way it shapes my understanding of God. And while I say that's true, they're interrelated. They're really not separate. Because if I'm going to make proper decisions, it's based on a proper understanding of who God is. So at all points, in all facets, as I'm going through the Word of God, I want to make sure that I'm regarding everything I can to make sure I'm interpreting properly. You say, wow, how in the world are we going to do that, Pastor Aaron? Okay, I'm going to say this one, and then I'm going to go on from it, okay? Because it sounds right now like, wow, this is reserved. It sounds like old Catholic doctrine, only the priests. They're the only ones that can do it. It sounds like Jehovah's Witness doctrine right here. Only the higher-ups, only the authorities, only they can interpret. They'll give to us the interpretation. We know verses like there is no private interpretation. Scripture's not of private interpretation. It's open to you. But I want you to look in 1 Corinthians 2. In 1 Corinthians 2, I want to encourage your heart right now this morning. that what the Lord God has done in Hebrews chapter 3 in drawing our hearts to an Old Testament passage to teach us a New Testament truth. He set a precedent that set a number of times that those things are also for our edification. Paul says it very clearly in the book of Romans. Those things stand as examples for us. They stand as examples for us to learn. Now look in 1 Corinthians 2, verse number 9. As it is written, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Wow, wouldn't it be great to know those things? I mean, the things that God hath prepared. You remember that we just read a verse about the preparation? prepared at rest, a promise, all of these things that God has prepared lest we fall short because of unbelief. We may be finding one right here. Let's find out. But, verse 10, but God hath revealed. God has revealed. revealed something. What has he revealed? Well, we just read in verse number nine, I hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for him that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us. Wow, is Paul claiming some sort of superiority? Is this some kind of a priestly or papal superiority where he says, those of us that are apostles, we know these things, we've seen these things, but you haven't seen these things. No, he hasn't made that kind of exclusion. He says, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man. He didn't say other men besides me, other eyes besides mine, other ears besides mine. But he said, God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit. How? Why? For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Be encouraged this morning. You say, how in the world am I ever going to learn to plumb the depths of Scripture? How can I take and see it not just as the words on the page, but the living truth that comes alive to me? And sometimes I have to be patient. Often I have to be patient because I feel like, man, it's like I can't understand this completely. And God says, thank you for waiting and being patient. Here's why. Because all of us begin on the equal footing of being taught of the Spirit of God. What Mark Sears or John Reynolds or Richard Harper or name it, a John Phillips, a Matthew Henry that you might read, one of these incredible minds, one of these people that you've regarded for so long as someone, it seems like they possess some faculty that you do not. Be encouraged that they start at the same footing that you do when you approach a passage of Scripture, that we are all taught by the author himself. No, my physical eyes don't grasp it. My physical ears will never comprehend it. My physical mind cannot enter into this. Why? Because these are the matters of flesh. And I like to try to utilize flesh to somehow crack the code, to somehow take this and simplify it, to somehow take it and see if I can twist the wrench or adjust this gauge or push this in a certain way so that I can get my mind around this. And we get frustrated sometimes when what we have to do is say, you know what? The author of this book is not just seated next to me. He's dwelling within me. So when I read Joshua 1 and 2, and it looks like I'm just getting a history book, is there something else here? Is something else calling to me? Maybe. Maybe not. But if I go over to Hebrews 3 and I see the word of God teaching me something else from there, then I know there's a mind. to be plumbed. There's depths to be explored. There's something to go into. So as I go back over to Joshua chapter 1, and I really am not taking the scenic route to get there. When I come to Joshua chapter 1 and I read the words now, after the death of Moses, the Lord's minister. After I read that God's servant has passed and Joshua is now taking the helm, can I pause for a moment? Can I consider that there's something else to be learned here? Now, if I answer the terms in literal facts, if I say, why not Moses? Well, I can come up with very literal answers. And some of you may know these answers. We can go back immediately and find out that he smoked the rock, which represented Christ. Second time he was told to speak to the rock. He smote the rock so we have disobedience. We can answer that question very simply Disobedience, but when we come to first Corinthians chapter 10 all of a sudden it's not a harsh Wrathful God that has somehow come down on Moses in some error in some unreasonable way To not let him enter into the promised land. We begin to realize what that rock represented not just to us but to them and Moses acted in flesh on that rock. He took his anger for people and he lashed out at something that in God's mind was a constant abiding presence for them of Christ. It was that spiritual rock. And when Moses lashes out in anger, he smites it God said, that's not what I told you to do. Now think back through Moses' life. Do we ever find Moses lashing out in anger and smiting something? We do, don't we? We find him in Egypt. A righteous cause. Not trying to do wrong, trying to do right, but trying to do right in the power of the flesh. Do you see Moses, and this is where we're careful, because as soon as I suggest to you that we can understand Moses as representing the flesh for us, we may be tempted to run throughout Moses' life and make him mean the flesh everywhere, and we don't do that. You see our typical or our figurative examples, our illustrations, they don't govern the text, but they are allowed to come out of the text to us. So when I see Moses as in flesh lashing out and then spending 40 years in silence in the desert until God Catches his ear when God gets his heart remakes him and sends him back and makes of him a Deliverer in the proper way by the power of God. I'm beginning to learn a lesson about flesh This now begins to help me learn about Hebrews chapter 3 about the difference in flesh and faith So that when I come to Joshua chapter 1, I now see that if Moses, if that flesh has passed on, if he has died on Mount Nebo, he should not have died on Mount Nebo, should he? He should have been leading the people into the land. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. He died on Mount Nebo. Deuteronomy 34 says, according to the word of the Lord. God had in mind a death for that man. And if I might say it this way, he had in mind a death for that fleshly generation. You see, it's not just Moses who's not entering into. There are thousands of men who are not entering into. Now why did they not enter in? What was the reason for them not entering in? We just read it in Hebrews 3, because of what? Unbelief. Unbelief. We go back to Numbers chapter 13 and 14. The spies go in, Joshua and Caleb among them. They scope out the land, they come back, they say it's true. Everything God said is true. The one thing he didn't tell us is that there's giants in walls. We're small in the sight of the giants and we're weak in the sight of the walls. There's nothing we can do. We may have to come up with another plan. God's brought us out evidently in some sadistic plan either to kill us or to play some terrible game with us. And two of them say, no, no, no, no, no. We're well able to overcome it. Let's go in at once and possess. That was God's intent was for us to possess. Ten of them are saying we can't. Two of them saying we already have because God's already given. There is a voice that is strangely silent in those circumstances. And it did not hit me until I was reading through this and regarding again this idea that Moses was unable, according to the word of the Lord, was not allowed to go into the land. Joshua and Caleb faithfully claiming God's promise. But you know who else was not? Moses. And I don't know the answer to this. And I've never even heard it discussed. Where was Moses' voice in this? Oh, it's there. But why wasn't he next to Joshua and Caleb fighting to claim the promises of God when a people were turning their backs? You see, over and over, we see Moses identified with the faithless generation. We see Joshua now as a new man entering in. And as we look back over that 40 years, can we learn something of the flesh that was not allowed to enter into the land of promise? And you say, is that heaven? Oh, no, no, there's wars in Canaan. Let's don't run ahead of our typologies and our figures. But what was in the wilderness was murmuring. What was in the wilderness was wandering. What's in Canaan is victory. and God was not taking murmuring into victory. God was not taking wanderers, faithless, into victory. We go back through and we look at them and we say, can we now learn lessons that apply beyond simply the history that we read? Can we see those people and go, how might I understand what it is to live in the flesh, in that wilderness immaturity? Maybe I can watch the people of Israel and say, look, they lived without direction. The promise of God was very clear and very evident. This is where it was. But they wandered for 40 years. Do you know anybody that wanders in their Christian life? Do you wander in your Christian life? Another thing that typified them was certainly the fear that drove them away from Canaan originally. Why? Because they didn't want to be near giants. They didn't want to be near walls. They wanted the promises of God without the victories of God. And the victories of God come in the battles that God fights. They would rather regard their own safety and disregard God's promise. Do you know anybody like that? Is that you? Maybe you live in the flesh. Maybe you live short of the rest that God provides. Do you live content with the elements of bondage? Do you find yourself longing for the elements of the old life? Remember, the out of is such an important part of all of this. The into is what we're trying to allow God to get us through. But God's brought us out of the leeks and the garlic and the bondage. He's brought us out of that, and yet, when we get hungry, when we get a little thirsty, we presume God has played a joke on us. We presume God has been faithless to us. And we say, we want what was ours before. We don't want what God has for us. Do we live content with the old elements of bondage? Do you know somebody like that? Is that you? Then it may be that you live in flesh, not in the Spirit. Now, we come over to Joshua 1, and we see these words again. Now, after the death of Moses, Do you see how the death of Moses was vital to the people of God entering in? Do you see how that last vestige of the old world and of the old life had to be extinguished? And by the way, this is crucial. When you go back to Deuteronomy 34, you find the funeral of Moses. You know how many people were at the funeral of Moses? None. It was not attended. Doesn't it seem like a man to the magnitude of Moses should have had a memorial service of which the likes we haven't seen? Shouldn't there have been words spoken? And the people mourned, but they weren't there. They didn't get to attend the service. There was only one attendant at the service, and that was God himself. As a matter of fact, it was the hand of God himself who extinguished the life of Moses. And it's vital that we understand, only God can do away with that old man. Only the Lord is going to extinguish that old flesh. We can try with all we have to kill the flesh, but again, you can try in the power of the flesh to kill the flesh, and you already see the contradiction. At some point, you've got to surrender to the Lord's. You've got to surrender to His hand. And brothers and sisters, stop trying to hold funeral services for the flesh. Stop thinking sentimentally back over the days of the flesh. the days that we think of as good old days somehow. We somehow make of them something they never were. And they die strong. Moses says his strength wasn't abated, his eye wasn't dimmed. He was ready for action, but it was that fleshly action that God put away forever. Let's don't memorialize our old flesh in a way it does not merit. Leave it on Mount Nebo. and be willing to cross Jordan into victory. Sounds great, but there's giants. There's walls. There's no victory where there's no giants and walls. There's no victory there. There's no promise where there's no giants and no walls. There's no fertile plains. There's no prepared crops. There's no ready fruit where there's no giants and walls. And most importantly, The presence of Almighty God is in the promised land. You say, is He not with us in the wilderness? In the wilderness, He was before them. In Canaan, He said, I'll be with you, whithersoever thou goest. Lord, help us to see the victory of Canaan only comes at the death of the flesh. We must yield to the Spirit. And God, these are deep things. These are things that plumb into Scripture and challenge us, Lord, to regard accurately those things that we read, but to read confrontationally. To know that what's written is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. May we not read it blithely and lazily and carelessly. May we read it with our ear to the Spirit of God, with our eye open to what heaven would show us every single time we open its pages. Lord, this book feeds us. This book builds us. And it is by this book that the flesh will be left behind in Moab. and the Spirit will lead us on into victory. Thank you for the great and precious promises of Almighty God. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, 12-13 minutes. We'll start the morning service. so