The book of Psalms, our text this evening is Psalm 95. Psalm 95. And as we hear the word of God, I pray that God will give us eyes to see, ears to hear, him speak. This is his very word. O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, they are a people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways. Thus ends the reading of God's very word. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would come by your spirit this evening and indeed you would stir us up Lord, to be begging you for these two remedies that you record for us, the danger you would impress upon us of what we are in need of remedy for, and Lord God, you would cause us to delight afresh. in you, the living God. Lord, you are worthy to be praised and loved. Your gospel is sweet and powerful. Oh Lord, we are struck with how wicked and foolish sin always is. And yet, Lord, we find ourselves like a moth attracted to a flame way too often, find ourselves drifting away from you, the living God, our delight, our savior, toward all that is against you. And so, Lord, we are needy people. And we beg that you would come and that you would touch our hearts afresh this night with your amazing grace to revive us, to strengthen us, to restore us, to give us strength as we begin a brand new week to serve you. We make our prayer to you, the living God. In the name of Jesus, we pray, amen. Well, the first thing that I want to draw your attention to in this psalm is down in verse eight. God gives to us a warning in this psalm. And the first part of this psalm and then the last part of this psalm really are the answers or the antidotes to what we see God warning us about in verse 8. So what is that warning? Do not harden your hearts. And you might say, well, you know, I'm trusting in Jesus. Praise God. We want to continue to trust in Jesus. We pray that God would keep us from being those who forget the goodness of our God. As I mentioned this morning, I don't have to work at my heart growing cold and dull toward the living God. And when we stop and think about what is recorded for us in Scripture, we see that it's not just rank unbelievers who are in danger of this spiritual hardness. Yes, indeed, they do have a hard heart. And the antidote for them is God's amazing grace and His saving work in the Lord Jesus Christ. We see, for example, Pharaoh of Egypt in Moses' time. And if you'll just turn with me, I want you to stop and think. This man, he had seen miracle after miracle that God had performed. And what was his response to being confronted with the power and the reality and the truth of God Almighty? Well, turn with me to Exodus chapter 7. Exodus chapter 7. And here we have Moses coming and casting his staff down and it became a serpent and he picked it out up by the tail and it became a staff again. Well, Pharaoh's magicians by the power of darkness, they do the same thing. But notice what we see in verse 8. Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, prove yourselves by working a miracle, then you shall say to Aaron, take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. And Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a servant. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents, but Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Still, Pharaoh's heart was what? Hardened. And he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. And so here we see, this is shocking. This display of God's mighty power, of the truth of God demonstrating that he was the true and the living God. And you can go through the book of Exodus and see as God brought these plagues upon Egypt over and over. We read for example, On later in this same chapter, verse 22, But the magicians of Egypt did the same with their secret arts, and Pharaoh's heart was hardened. And he did not listen to them as the Lord had said chapter 8 verse 15 But when pharaoh saw that there was relief All these frogs piled up and the whole land is just covered with frogs. You couldn't go to bed without laying down on a frog. You couldn't open your oven without frogs jumping out. And the Lord delivered them, verse 15, but when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, what'd he do? He hardened his heart and he did not listen to them. Down in verse 19, then the magician said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. But Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Exodus chapter 8 verse 32, Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and he did not let the people go. Chapter 9 verse 7, Pharaoh sinned and behold there was not even one of the livestock of Israel dead. All the Egyptians' livestock was dead. What was Pharaoh's response? But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened. And so here we see what a devastating thing it is to have a hard heart, a heart of total unbelief. And we read how God turned Pharaoh over to this hardness. We won't look at all the examples, but I encourage you to read through this section of the book of Exodus and just underline the number of times that it talks about Pharaoh hardening his heart or the Lord hardening Pharaoh's heart. And God didn't make Pharaoh sin, but God as a judge turned Pharaoh over to what he wanted. Well, we have another example. We have Sihon in Deuteronomy chapter 2. And he's heard about all of these amazing miracles that God wrought, and how the Red Sea parted, and how God delivered his people, but how the sea covered and destroyed Pharaoh's army. What did Sihon do? Sihon, he was not willing to let the children of Israel pass through. He hardened his heart, and God hardened his heart, turning him over to what he wanted, and he was destroyed. The Lord warned his people In 1 Samuel 6, 6, why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When he had severely dealt with them, they did not allow the people to go, and they departed. At the end of the history of the kings, King Zedekiah, in chapter 36 of the book of 2 Chronicles, we went through this portion of scripture, but I want to just remind you what Zedekiah did. We read in verse 11, Zedekiah was 21 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who had made him swear by God. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. And so there we see what does it look like to have this ultimate hardened It is to refuse the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Psalm 95 is a warning from Almighty God to not harden your heart against the living God. Now, as we're going to see, Psalm 95 gives us two remedies. And before we look at them, lest you go, well, whoo! I'm glad I don't have a hard heart. Well, let's go over to the New Testament. Now, we can see examples of this same hard heart that we saw in Pharaoh. You could think about King Herod when all the little baby boys had been born around the time when Messiah was born. What did this brutal king do? You talk about a hard heart. He ordered his soldiers to go out and slaughter all the little born babies two years old and under throughout that whole region. That's a hard heart. You think about Herod. He knows that John the Baptist is an innocent man, but he doesn't want to hear him publicly chastise him anymore. And when the birthday party took place, he wickedly says, well, whatever you ask, I'll give to you. And this brutal woman who has a hard heart, says, I want the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And that's what Herod does. Think about Pilate, who declares three times publicly, I find no fault in this man. But his heart is hard toward the living God. And he condemns what he has declared an innocent man to die. What harm! On and on we could go, and we see expressions of this hardness all over in our land today. We prayed that God would deliver us from the destruction of the unborn. Such hardness, such callousness. Just this past week, the wicked comedian Bill Maher, he spoke and said that because little babies cost money, men ought to be all in support of abortion. That's what you call a hard heart. And there is only one cure for such hardness, and it is the amazing grace of God. Well, lest we think, boy, I praise you, Lord, I don't have a heart like that. Let's look at some examples. First of all, in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6. Mark chapter 6. And here we have the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus has fed 5,000 men, okay, with five loaves and two fishes. That is an incredible miracle. And what do we read Jesus comes walking on the water after this? Look at verse 45 of Mark 6. Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea. And he was alone on the land, and he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. and about the fourth watch of the night, that's from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., and they've been rowing all night. They are exhausted. It's between 3 a.m. and about the fourth watch of the night. What happens? He came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded. For they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were," what? Uh-oh. Here are disciples. And they don't have a heart of just brutal rejection of the gospel. But these men have a hard heart. We could go over to Mark chapter 8. Turn with me over to Mark chapter 8. And we'll start reading in verse 14. Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the 5,000 loaves for the 5,000? I mean the five loaves for the 5,000. How many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, 12. And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. And he said to them, do you not yet understand? And so here are two examples where Jesus refers to his disciples as struggling with a hard heart. Now it's not a hard heart in the ultimate sense, like we saw Pharaoh, or we see King Zedekiah, or we see Herod, but nonetheless, it's the same, same seeds of unbelief, the same seeds. They are beginning to take root. They haven't taken root yet, but they are beginning. Hardness of heart, it's a very real danger. Over in the Gospel of John, we have other examples. We could go on and on looking at other examples, but that will be sufficient. I trust that you go, okay. I don't want a hard heart. Even though I'm a believer, it's possible to have a heart that is dull toward God. A heart that no longer is beating and throbbing for Jesus, but a heart that's beginning to just kind of, it's like the fire's going out. Well, Psalm 95 gives us two glorious antidotes, two glorious remedies. And God has provided these remedies, and these remedies only work by the grace of God. Now, one of the dear men in our congregation is a medical doctor, and I've heard him say, look, I can treat you, but only God can heal you. Now what does he mean? Well, he can prescribe medicine. You can take the medicine. But God is the one who blesses that medicine to take hold and work. And I want you to keep that in mind as we look at these two remedies. Because just because you may see and understand the remedy, doesn't mean that you just have an automatic pass and you don't have to worry about a hard heart. But it is as we use these remedies and God blesses these remedies to our hearts, He delivers us from having a hard, cold heart. And so let's look at Psalm 95. The first of these remedies is to worship Almighty God. There it is. Look at verse 1 and following. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. And so when we worship God in our own hearts, our own quiet time, reading the scriptures, and we just say, Lord, you are a great God. When, as families, we read the Bible, when we sing together, when you are in the shower and you are singing praise to the Lord, that is the remedy that God tells us to be using. It will be a tool in the hand of Almighty God to keep our hearts from going cold and dull and the fire of faith begin to just grow dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. God is worthy to be praised. Now there are some things that you don't want to catch, okay? When somebody in your family comes down with some sickness, you're like, look, you just stay over there. And I don't want to catch that. Or in our church family, you know, we do the best we can to protect one another. And if we know we're sick, you know, I don't come and breathe on you and shake hands and pass it along. But there are some things that we do want to spread. And it is this love for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is contagious! It's a contagion! It spreads! And so, here we see this call to praise God. Verse 3, For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are His also, the sea is His. For he made it, and his hands formed the dry land." And so here's this first call to worship God. And God gives to us a whole Bible full of amazing truths about who our God is. And so we will never run out of things to thank God for. We will never run out of wonders to think about and tell God how good He is and how great He is. And a hard heart pretends and begins to deny reality. And the ultimate reality is God Himself. and a hard heart, the remedy, the first cure that God reveals to us is this call for us as individuals, as families, and as God's people to worship the living God, to praise God, to tell God how great He is. Why do we do that? Well, it's because God is worthy to be praised, but God knows how much we need fellowship with Him and to delight in Him and to have our hearts revived in His presence. And this is the remedy that God gives for a hard heart. Look at the second call to praise. In verses 6 and following, Notice that we have this call to consider who God is. He's the creator of the heavens and the earth. He's our maker. He's the Redeemer. He's the one who's above all else in this fallen, messed up world. We look to Him to rescue us. We look to Him in His Son to set things right. And how does Jesus minister to us? He does so as a prophet, a priest, and a king. And here we see in verse 6, God reminding us He's the King. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. Up in verse 3, for the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods. The Lord is the one who is revealing his self to us. That's what a prophet did, spoke the word of God. Look at verse 7, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. And so here are these calls to worship God. Well, that's the first of these remedies. Now I want you to look at the last half of this psalm, and God gives to us the second remedy. And this is not exhaustive. There are many other things that we see in scripture, but this psalm focuses on these two remedies to guard us, to deliver us from a hard heart. Look at the last part of verse 7. Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said, They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." Back in the book of Exodus, chapter 17, we have the historical event that is referred to here. And you can turn with me to Exodus 17. Verse 1, all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Zion by stages according to the commandment of the Lord and camped at Rephidim. But there was no water for the people to drink. Now, you remember where they were? A desert. And it's bad if you find yourself anywhere without water. But it's especially bad if you are in a desert and you don't have water. And here we have estimated from the book of Numbers that gives us the number of the men. And you can extrapolate from that. Most likely there were around at least million Israelites that we're talking about. That's a lot of people. Can you imagine how much water it would take to give everybody in the nation of Israel just one drink of water? let alone all through the day to cook with, to water their animals, to take a bath once in a while. I mean, we're talking an unbelievable amount of water. and they're going to die. And so verse 2, therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said give us water to drink. Now these are the people who had seen God deliver them from being slaves. He had destroyed Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea. And instead of saying, Moses, cry to the Lord to help us, to provide for us, they quarrel. They say, you old sorry good-for-nothing Moses, we are sick of you. Here's this hard heart of unbelief, of refusing to trust in the God who had rescued them, who had redeemed them. Moses said to them, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? So Moses cried to the Lord, what shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of that place Massah, which means testing in Hebrew, and Meribah, which means quarreling, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, is the Lord among us or not? And 1 Corinthians chapter 10 tells us that the rock was Christ. That because God was willing to take upon Himself the guilt of God's people and receive what they deserved, He would give them blessing and forgiveness. Now how is this a remedy? Well, God is reminding us not only to worship Him, but to read God's Word and to take to heart the examples of unbelief and what it costs that God has recorded throughout the Bible. Turn over to me and we'll close this evening by looking at Hebrews chapter 3. Hebrews chapter 3. And God has given to us now a commentary on these very verses. in the New Testament. In verse 7, 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 40 years, and therefore I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their heart. They have not known my ways. As I sworn my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." Now notice the application. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart. That's a description of having a hard heart. Leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another. comfort one another, encourage one another. Those are the English words that translate this Greek word that we have here. Exhort, encourage one another. And it is two Greek words stuck together. Parakaleo. parallel, you're familiar with parallel, two things that run side by side. And kaleo is the Greek word to speak. And so it is to speak the same word. When we encourage someone, we're speaking God's word, the word God speaks. And we're to be speaking the truth, the gospel. to the people around us. And this is the application, this is the antidote that God has given to us, not only to gather to worship, not only worshiping as a family, not only our own hearts reading the Bible and singing praise to God, but taking to heart the examples that God has recorded for us in His Word of what unbelief is and produces. And God says, in light of that, what should we do? We ought to be encouraging one another. We ought to be saying, oh, Henry, you don't want to go down that road. Come on with me. We're going to love the Lord Jesus. We're going to trust in Him. We're going to pray together. We're going to see how the promises of God come to fruition. You just trust and obey. I know it's a hard time right now, but don't give up. That's what we're to be saying to one another as husbands and wives, as parents and children, as brothers and sisters, as children to our parents. We can trust the Lord. What a glorious antidote this is that God has given to us. And we are remembering who God is and His mighty works in the past. And we're stepping forward and saying, Lord, I want you to use me to be an encouragement to the people around me. I want you to use me to be an encouragement to my church family. I want you to use me to be an encouragement to that stranger that I bumped into at the hospital or the grocery store or the gas pump. Lord, help me to trust in you and use me to exhort the people around me. Look at verse 13, but encourage one another every day as long as it is still called today, lest any one of you be what? Hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. See, sin's tricky. Sin puts itself forth as here's the easy road, here's the good road. But the antidote that God has given to us as His people is to worship Him. And so we dare not neglect reading the Bible. Now, how you doing reading through the Scriptures? We've got our reading scheduled back there. And if you've gotten behind, don't despair. You can just pick it up right where you are. Tonight, get one of those schedules and I pray God will stir us up to hunger for His Word. You want to have a hard heart and perish? You say, well no. Well then, read the Word of God. Read the Word of God as your family. You heads of homes, God says it is your responsibility to be leading your family to know God, to worship God, not just on Sunday, yes, but all through the week. The Lord calls upon us to not neglect our gathering together to worship Almighty God. Does it make any difference? You want to get a hard heart? That's a good way to do it. Casting Crowns, which is a wonderful Christian group, wrote a song years ago called The Slow Fade. The Slow Fade. And I'm telling you, it is a chilling, song that describes how just neglecting the tools, the means of grace, just little by little by little, your heart gets harder and harder and harder, and it's the slow fade, where you just little by little turn away from the living God. Oh, may the Lord stir us up. May we be those who give ourselves to worship. And if you sense that your husband or your wife or a child is struggling, just go up to them and say, look, I love you and I'm praying for you. A brother or a sister. If you are struggling, Ask somebody, pray for me. I'm having a hard time. I don't want my heart to grow hard. Pray for me. But God says, worship and then remembering what God has done in the past. And God says, take that and encourage one another lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And so Psalm 95 is a wonderful psalm. It calls us to worship. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. And then the Lord says, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart, as when the children of Israel did, when they said, we don't have any water to drink. And the Lord graciously provided for them. God says, learn from these examples that God has recorded for us, lest our hearts be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Today, if you hear his voice, today, And Hebrews goes on, we won't take the time to look at it, but he says, these children of Israel had the same gospel preached to them as we have, but it didn't profit them. Why? Because they didn't hear it by faith. Oh, may the Lord deliver us from a hard heart. God is full of mercy. Jesus, He's the only one who can deliver us and keep us. Let's pray. Father, we are struck with how easy it is for our hearts to grow cold. Lord, my heart's like an old coal furnace. There needs to be fresh coal shoveled in. The clinkers that would build up, the clinkers of sin need to be broken off and shoveled out. And Lord, that's a constant need. And Lord God, we beg that you would stir us up to want to worship you and that we would worship you and read the scriptures even when we don't feel like it. And Lord, what a horrible thing, but that's reality. There are times, Lord, when we get up and we don't feel like gathering with your people to worship. Lord, what a horrible thing. But Lord, that's the evidence of a hard heart. And the antidote that you give is to worship, to sing, to hear your word proclaimed. Lord, for us to read it, for us to hear it in our families, for us to sing your praise. Lord, bless the head of homes to be stirred up to lead their families. Lest, Lord, our hearts grow hard. We don't want to be like the disciples, having hard and dull hearts, who saw the wonders of the Son of God walking on this earth and doing miracles, and yet their hearts were growing hard. Oh Lord God, please come by your Spirit and bless us. And not only to worship, but Lord, to learn from the examples that you have recorded for us in scripture and to take them to heart in our own hearts and then to be tools in your hand to be speaking. encouraging one another. Oh, Lord, how I thank you for your people. Oh, Lord, bless us, Lord, to even grow more, to be an encouragement one to another. Bless now as we sing and as we conclude our worship. In Jesus we pray. Amen.