All right, why don't we take our Bibles at this time and turn to Hebrews chapter three together. And we'll be considering the second portion of this chapter together this afternoon, Hebrews three. Some time ago, my wife and I were acquainted with a young man, this was maybe 15 to 20 years back at this point, who was extremely earnest in his faith. And if anyone seemed to be close to God, it was him. We lost touch with him over the years, and so we were quite surprised not all that long ago to learn that he had actually completely walked away from Jesus, and he no longer professes Christ anymore. I know a lot of people like that, sadly, and I'm guessing that you know several people like that as well. Some professing Christians don't remain faithful to the end, and maybe to throw something rather startling at you right here at the outset, you could be one of them. And this theme is frankly right at the heart of the book of Hebrews, and so the writer of the book of Hebrews just keeps saying again and again in so many different ways, stay true to Jesus, keep on believing, keep on running, firm to the end. This text that we're gonna look at today warns us by giving us a negative example of the Israelites in the wilderness. We saw last time in the book of Hebrews that Moses was incredibly faithful. But the people that he was leading were not. In fact, they're characterized by unfaithfulness. And so we have a heavy warning here. Don't repeat Israel's mistake. They came out of Egypt and they started so well. But they perished in the wilderness because of unbelief. That generation, the generation that came out of Egypt, though they had come out of Egypt, they never made it in to the promised land. The day of final rest has not yet come for us. We're still awaiting that day. And so God has a message for us, and it is that we need to take God's voice seriously today, here and now. Let's go ahead and jump into this text. Hebrews 3, we'll pick up at verse 7 and go through the end of the chapter. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, and then we have a quotation from Psalm 95 that was read in our scripture reading. 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. 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 or made an oath 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. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not those who sinned whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. As we work through this passage, I'm going to bring up five different demonstrations that you are listening to God's voice and taking it seriously. The first demonstration of that is to recognize the present threat that you face. What is it? Well, it's actually your heart. Verses 7 to 11, as I mentioned, are a quotation from Psalm 95, where the psalmist warns that God's people today, speaking to the people in his time, and now that's being brought to us today, But the psalmist warns that God's people today are at risk of the exact same kind of heart trouble that the Israelites had in the wilderness. And the Holy Spirit is speaking, if you look back at verses seven to eight, therefore, as the Holy Spirit speaks. In Psalm 95, and it's a reminder that all of scripture is the Holy Spirit, God speaking. 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. You need to recognize the present danger that you face. Namely, that you could harden your heart against God. Israel did that. They tested God over and over again in the desert. They refused to believe the promises of God in the wilderness and to trust him. And the height of that unbelief comes in Numbers 14. When the spies come back, you remember, they've gone and they've spied out the land for 40 days. And they come back to the people and they come back with a bad report that basically sounds something like this. Hey, guys, the land is awesome. The land is incredible. I mean, check out these massive grapes. The land is spectacular. But we can't go take it. There are giants in the land. We'll be like little grasshoppers. We'll be destroyed. Can't do it. And it's all unbelief because God had told them that he was going to bring them into that land. The people then grumbled and rebelled against God. They refused to believe his promises, and consequently, they spent the next 40 years wandering around in the wilderness until every single one of their bodies fell there. Their hearts were hardened against God, and they were unfaithful. And part of what they were saying, too, is, well, we want to go back to Egypt. I mean, this is a disaster. Their hearts were hard, back to Egypt they wanted to go. And that's kind of what's going on in the book of Hebrews. The writer is writing to the Hebrews saying, hey, don't go back to Judaism. And maybe you're sitting here thinking, man, my old life was a lot better before I ever came to Christ. Numbers 1411 records that the Lord said to Moses, how long will this people despise me, and how long will they, listen to these words, not believe in me in spite of all the signs that I have done among them. Doctors diagnose people with a medical condition today called cardiosclerosis, which is basically the hardening of the heart. Where the soft tissue on the walls of the heart thickens and it becomes hard. And the Holy Spirit is warning all of us today of a very present threat that we could have a kind of spiritual cardiosclerosis, a heart that is hardened and actually becomes calcified against God. You could harden your heart against God, and with that, you could experience God's judgment. If you look at verses nine to 11 in this quotation from Psalm 95, It says, on the day of testing in the wilderness where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years, therefore I was provoked with that generation, God said, and said, they always go astray in their hearts. They have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. God's anger burned hot against Israel. In Numbers 14, after the people grumbled and complained, they say, nope, we can't take the land, it's not possible. God then swore an oath that that generation would never go in to the promised land. Listen to what God said to them in Numbers 14, 32 to 34. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness 40 years, and shall suffer for your, and the key word here, your faithlessness. until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, 40 days, a year for each day, you shall bear the iniquity 40 years and you shall know my displeasure. And the warning here is that like Israel, today, right here and now, you could harden your heart against God and you too could experience his judgment. And you're being called to recognize that threat. You face it. Just to be clear, the sin being referred to here, it's not the Christians' everyday struggle and battle with sin where, and I think most of us do this, I think all of us do this if we're God's children, we fall, and then we get back up, and maybe we fall again, and we get back up, and we fall again, and we get back up, and we're trying to fight our sin and go forward. Proverbs 24.16 explains that though a righteous man falls seven times, he will get back up. That's normal. God's people fall. Righteous people fall. But you see them keep getting back up, and they keep marching forward. This text is referring to something else, more of a sustained hard-heartedness. But I think we do well to remember, well, that starts somewhere. Where does that begin? Perhaps just with a little bit of drift, as we saw in a previous chapter. of the sin is described later in verse 12 as falling away. That falling away idea is elsewhere translated as depart. And it's the kind of language that we maybe use at the airport, right? It's, well, prepare for departure. You're going to take off. And so the idea here is departing from or leaving God. That's the idea. And you might say to yourself here today, listen, I would never do that. And I would say, well, listen to the Holy Spirit's voice and think again. These words are written to brothers. We're familiar with the ship, the Titanic, that so many people called the unsinkable ship, the people that built it and the media. And as a result, that ship carried way too few lifeboats. It traveled at high rates of speed through iceberg-filled waters. And the overconfidence of both the builders and the crew probably ultimately contributed to the tragedy. that claimed over 1,500 lives when that ship struck an iceberg and it went down. The unsinkable ship. You and I are not unsinkable, and this passage is putting that right in our faces and saying, listen, you are not that. You are sinkable, so to speak. So take God's voice seriously and recognize the present danger that you face. If you're sitting here and you're saying, hey, I would never do that, you're actually not thinking Bible. You're not listening to God because it could be you. And again, these warning passages in Hebrews, they're not like these idle warnings that don't actually mean anything. They're real. Maybe you'd say, well, okay, if that's the case, well then how do I know if my heart is becoming hard and calcifying against God? And that's a great question that I think we all need to give some thought to. There are many evidences in scripture of a hard heart. But maybe two worth bringing up from Israel in the wilderness that stand out. One thing that we see with them is they keep talking about Egypt was awesome. And we want to go back to Egypt. And they keep looking back, back, back, back at their old life and there's this perpetual draw there and movement that direction in their hearts. And if you see that in yourself, that should be concerning where your mind and your heart and your focus is just back on the world and your old life. Another, I think, very strong indicator of a hard heart that we see in Israel is grumbling and complaining. And this one in particular really stands out. Where you see hard-heartedness in the wilderness, what you hear is grumbling and complaining. And at first glance, the grumbling is against the leaders, right? I mean, right away, they're coming at Moses, and Moses has blown it, and Moses did the wrong thing, and they're upset with him. Moses, maybe Aaron as well. But ultimately, in the passages again and again, you see, it goes from Moses, and then it's highlighted that these people's frustration and their grievances are against God. You read Exodus chapter 17 and Numbers 11 and Numbers 14 again and again, you see that pattern. Do you want to know if you have a hard heart? Then maybe what you should ask, well, what is your mouth saying? Because the mouth is the dipstick to the heart. Are you doing a lot of grumbling and complaining? That is almost a guaranteed sure sign that your heart is hardening. Is your heart starting to calcify and become hard? Something I think that that's quite amazing is that you could simply ask God, God, would you soften my heart? I feel that I can tell it's happening. Will you soften it today? He's a patient, loving God. And he's willing to do that. So why not go to God and just humbly say, God, I feel it. I can tell. I mean, it's like it's real help. And he will. And listen to God's voice, read and listen to his word. Today, if you hear his voice, we read. We're always being called to listen to the voice of God, go to the voice of God, hear it, take it in. Because it will soften your heart. In fact, the Gospel in particular softens. As the Old Testament pointed forward to the New Covenant promises in the Gospel, it spoke about hearts of stone being made into hearts of flesh. It's the Gospel, the New Covenant that does that. And so maybe you sit here today and your heart's actually never been made soft. It's always been hard. And the softening of the heart starts with a relationship with God where he gives you a new heart. Your sinful, wicked heart, you need a whole new one. And that happens as you recognize your sinful hard-heartedness and you recognize that Jesus is God and that he died for you on the cross and that he rose again to pay for your sins and give you new life. And you look in faith to Jesus and say, Jesus, save me. Give me a new heart. I trust in your death and resurrection. And as God's people, we keep going back to that. We keep going back to the gospel. And the more time we spend with it, it softens our hearts. If this threat is as real and present of a danger as God says it is, then are there, I mean, we could talk broadly of the gospel. Are there any specific preventative measures that you and I can take to counter potential heartedness? And the answer is yes, 100%, absolutely. And the writer of Hebrews is gonna give us a few of those. And so we come to a second demonstration now that you're taking God's voice seriously. Number two, guard your heart against unbelief. Look at verse 12. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. Take God's voice seriously and guard your heart against unbelief. Verse 12 reminds us that an unbelieving heart could be in any single one of us. It could be in all of us. which is why we must take care or see to it that that's not the case. And notice how the hard heart is described. It's described as evil. That's a strong word, an unbelieving evil. To test God and not to trust him, to harden your heart, that is an evil thing. And so you and I must guard against such a heart because an unbelieving heart could be in any of us and an unbelieving heart could could lead you to fall away from the living God to totally abandon him. And not just depart from anyone, but we read here from the living God. Israel totally despised and rejected God and they wanted to go back to Egypt. And for us as New Testament Christians, to abandon Jesus, the God of the living, the living God, the one who's literally risen from the grave. To abandon him and to go back to Judaism or anything else is to fall away from the living God and a hard heart will take you there. We have things in life that we take great precautions with. For example, I think lightning would be one of those things. You see it with sports in particular, maybe on the golf course. It's like, yeah, maybe you don't want to be swinging a club up into the air being like, strike me. It's like we're not playing golf in the lightning, or soccer games, or something like that. Lightning is spotted, and the game's called. We're done. Yep, not happening right now. Swimming, pools, that sort of thing. Lightning, nope, we don't do that. We just don't mess around with lightning. We're guarding from danger at the very first sign of it. And we see it in the medical world as well. When my wife and I were in university just a week or two before Christmas break, the school temporarily shut down the entire campus of several thousand students because a few cases of whooping cough or pertussis had been identified. My wife was actually one of them. I didn't even know what Pertussis was, but it was awesome because the whole school got shut down like a week early for Christmas break. And essentially what's going on in that moment is, yeah, this is some, we don't play around with this. We're done. Okay, we're taking great precautions to make sure that this doesn't become bigger or worse. We're not playing games. And that's what this verse is talking about. It's saying, you take care, brothers. You see to it that this isn't you, and the slightest little sight of it, you deal with it. The slightest hint of unbelief or a hard heart needs dealt with. And this coming week, you might find this happens to you. And you find yourself doubting the goodness of God to you. Why? Well, because you just got terrible news and things aren't going right or whatever the case may be. And maybe you catch that in your heart. What if you could stop there for a moment and go, OK, this is not OK. The way that I'm processing this, what's going on in my heart, this needs checked. And so I'm going to pause right now. I'm going to go to God's word. I'm going to go to the gospel. I'm going to listen to God's voice, and I'm going to reorient. And I'm going to choose by faith to believe the promises of God. Maybe this coming week, you're trying to do the right thing in your parenting or in your marriage, and you are not seeing the results that you want to see, or at least not at the pace that you want to see those results. And you're tempted to doubt God, and you're tempted to quit on His plan, or you know God says, well, okay, in your marriage, you should do this, or in your parenting, you should do that, and you know what you should do, but it just doesn't seem like the thing that's gonna work. You'd rather just do it your way. And you're tempted to doubt God and quit on His plan. Again, you've gotta stop and check your heart and slow down and go, okay, whatever's swirling around in here right now in my heart, this is not Bible. This is hard-heartedness, and God calls this evil. And again, I'm gonna go to His word, I'm gonna go to the gospel, I'm gonna listen to His voice, and I'm gonna believe. Guarding your heart against unbelief is one preventative measure. There's another, and it's actually our third demonstration that you're taking God's voice seriously. Number three, encourage one another every day. And this is so simple, it's so practical, and yet so important. Look at verse 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 are to exhort and encourage one another to keep believing. And how often are we to do that? Well, according to this, first God says, well, you should do that every day. And for how long should we continue doing it every day? Well, until it's no longer called today. What does that mean? Well, that time reference is basically until this current era of time is over. In other words, basically until Christ returns, this is what we do. Verse 13, this rattles my mind here to just pause on this for a moment. It's a command. And I don't think it's a command of scripture that we really think of as a command. It's like, oh yeah, that's like a positive thing we should do. It's a command. God commands us to give and receive daily exhortation and encouragement from each other. Every day, he commands it. And so a really big question for you, okay, how are you doing with that command? Are you obeying that command? That is a big command. Are you every single day of your life encouraging the people of this church to keep believing? And are you receiving that from others? Our church members have each covenanted together that I will hold myself accountable to my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I will graciously exercise watchfulness towards them. Taking God's voice seriously means that we're gonna strive to obey this command. Kind of feels like a tall order. But we should be sitting here saying, yeah, that's right, and I'm gonna strive to do that. To obey God's command and exhort and encourage one another daily. If you wanna guard against what happened to Israel, how do you do that? Well, prioritize giving and receiving daily exhortation and encouragement from your church family. God is calling us to spiritually intertwine our lives in such a way where we are almost constantly communicating with each other God's truth and encouragement and exhortation. Daily, every day. I don't know about you, but as I think about my own life, I know that is not going to happen by accident. The life and health of our church, it's more than a Sunday thing. It's more than a Sunday worship gathering. It's actually more than showing up one time or two times or three times in a week to sit and face forward and hear someone preach or teach. And receive instruction. The word here is beyond just a preaching, teaching event, and it's beyond a couple services a week. It's talking about something very interpersonal, and it's talking about something daily. Some of you may like to run. I'm guessing that that's not the vast majority of us, but some of you may really, really enjoy that. And maybe you've run by yourself. Maybe you've run in larger groups. Maybe you've run with one other person. Maybe you do really well running by yourself. But there's a unique dynamic that comes into play when you start running with a friend. Because all of a sudden, maybe you're running side by side each other, you're setting each other's pace together. Maybe when you get tired, you encourage each other to keep going. It's helpful. You can encourage one another to keep on going, to keep pressing forward, let's keep going, let's keep moving in this direction, let's run together. And that's the idea here in scripture. We're gonna run our Christian life together. Take God's voice seriously and encourage one another daily. To those sitting here today, you're really a weary believer. Maybe you are so worn out, you're so tired, you are so beat down, you're barely hanging on. This idea of daily encouragement might look like just texting someone and saying, hey, will you pray for me? Because I'm not doing so good, and here's why. And I am really struggling. I'm not doing well. I'm struggling to be godly. I can't even think straight. Whatever the case may be, will you pray for me? And maybe to the casual churchgoer, you're tempted to assume that Sunday worship attendance will suffice. If you show up here once a week on Sunday for a worship service, you're good. What would it look like for you to take even just one step this week towards deeper spiritual relationships and friendships in the body and then carry that on through throughout your life? Maybe to the person, you know, if I could call you the discourager, the antithesis to what this verse is talking about, maybe you've been a negative voice in someone else's ear. and you've been the opposite of what this text calls for, and you've been talking to other people negatively about your church and those within it. That's actually what we see again and again in the wilderness with the Israelites. We see that in one passage in particular, I think it's Numbers 11, where the complaining starts in one group and you literally watch it spread. And next thing you know, it's everyone. If you find yourself in that situation, what should you do? Well, you should repent of that, lay that down, God forgive me, and literally do the exact opposite. I'm here with these people to encourage them in their walk with the Lord and to keep on running with this body. to the person who really only sees value in church gatherings and opportunities that are focused on teaching. I would say in Scripture, we must have those. They're so important and we should place a premium on them. But can I encourage you to look at this text and think again at your mindset that might say it's only important if we come, we sit forward and facing forward and we hear someone preach and we receive instruction. This passage calls us to something even beyond that, where we're together and we speak into each other's lives and we do that daily. Every time we gather and all throughout the week is a chance for you to do that. Spiritually, you need to know and be known by other people in your church, and we all do, and we need to share our struggles. That is a hard thing. I don't want to share my struggles with really anyone. There's something not very natural about that. But in scripture, God says, do it. You're part of a family. It's hard, but it's healthy. We need to learn to go below the surface in each other's lives. We're not a club with a bunch of similar hobbies and interests. We're brothers on a race together. And we could quickly fill our time and conversation with all of our hobbies and shared interests. And that's a wonderful thing. But we need to go further. Maybe you would really benefit from a prayer partner. I know several people in this room have a prayer partner in our church family. Maybe that would be a rich blessing to you. If you're interested in that, we would love to help you with that. Just come tap me on the shoulder or someone else. We'd love to connect you with another brother or sister to pray with. Also, can I encourage you, do your best to show up whenever you can for whatever is going on. Also, most of us have cell phones. Use your phone. You may not be able to pick it up every day and have a 20-minute phone call where you're exhorting one another and encouraging somebody else. But maybe on your lunch break, you could pick up your phone, and you could send a text to that other man in your church and say, hey, man, I'm praying for you today. How are you doing? I'm praying for this. I'm praying for that. Maybe you can pick up your phone and make a phone call. Grab a coffee. How's your Bible reading going? How's your time in the Word going? How are you doing with temptation? How's it going in this realm or that? Hey, we've missed you, haven't seen you for a week or two. Where have you been, is everything okay? Are you healthy, did something happen? Where you at spiritually? Also want to encourage all of us, you're gonna see people in church life from time to time, you're gonna, I'm not sure so and so's doing very well. Or, I know they're not. Or, they might be doing fine, I just, I don't know. Can I encourage you, when you see that, to go do something about it? Our elders are frequently trying to do that ourselves, and people we notice that maybe we're concerned that aren't doing so well at a particular moment, or we don't know, and so we're trying to go check on them and see. But this is not a task that is primarily for the elders of a church. This is something that God calls all of us to, and it's right here in this text. We're looking at the verse, right? But exhort one another every day. We all do this. And so don't sit there and go, oh, I see this brother, I see this, I don't know if they're doing very well. Well, I hope our elders go talk to that person. Wrong way to think. You go talk to them. You go encourage them. You go minister to them. This command is for all of us, and it needs to be part of the culture and fabric of our church. I hope this is not the case for many people here, but maybe you don't actually want that. Maybe you want to just be able to show up at a worship service like this, you walk through the door, you come sit down, you're kind of a part of the worship service, it ends, you leave pretty much right away, good day. Maybe you just want to be able to come hear sermons and go, and you really don't want anyone kind of asking you questions or poking at your life or probing here or there or anywhere at all. That should concern you. If you're a professing Christian and you don't want that or you don't want counsel, you don't want advice, you don't want input, you don't want correction, that is horrifying. And if you are not intentionally opening up your life to daily exhortation and encouragement, the fact of the matter is you might already be drifting. And God in his kindness has put people in your life to bless you in that way and help you. Why is it so important that we encourage and exhort one another daily? because we're all susceptible to sin. Fourth demonstration that we're listening to God's voice is that you understand the danger of sin's deceitfulness. Look at verse 13 again. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you, he's speaking to brothers in verse 12, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. The purpose of exhorting one another daily is that so none of us get hardened like that. by our sin and its deceitfulness. Sin deceives, it lies to you. Sin does all kinds of false advertising. It's been said that sin makes you stupid. It's kind of blunt, but honestly, it's probably true. Our sin blinds us, it keeps us from seeing straight, it gives us false readings on reality. God just tells us again and again, your sin is so dangerous. Sin deceives and sin hardens that none of you would be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin hardened the hearts of the Israelites and sin will harden your heart. In fact, right there where you're sitting, if you, I mean, just look at who's right in front of you. Sin will harden that person's heart. You look across the aisle at the person next to you, sin will harden that person's heart. There is not a single person in this room that sin will not harden their heart. So we all need to take God's voice seriously and understand the danger of sin's deceitfulness. If you're a person right now who's just majorly tempted by sin's deceitfulness, what lie is sin whispering to you right now? Well, that this doesn't matter, that doesn't matter, that obedience, well, that's way too costly. You need to call it what it is and look at that and go, that is a lie. And then with that, after identifying that as a lie, say, okay, well, who can I go to and talk to about this? I need encouragement. I need help from my brother or my sister in Christ. I also want to encourage you to respond immediately to God's word, spirit, and his conviction. Don't sit on it. I know one of the things I find in my life is I can sin, and the spirit can kind of convict me of that, and I'm even kind of in my mind acknowledging that it's wrong, But I delay repentance maybe for a few hours or 10 minutes or maybe much longer. And I think that's easy for all of us to do. But as soon as the Holy Spirit convicts you and he speaks, you go, oh, man, that was sin right then and there. OK, God, I acknowledge that I'm going to repent and turn. God just prescribed us, I would say, three pills that will prevent spiritual cardiosclerosis. What are they? Well, one was, well, guard your heart against unbelief. The second, encourage one another every day. And the third, understand the danger of sin's deceitfulness. Those pills, that prescription, will do you no good unless you take it to the pharmacy, get that prescription filled, and then start taking it. It's been estimated that approximately 20 to 30% of prescriptions are never filled. And I thought about that. I'm like, really? And I'm like, yeah, I think I've done that. And people with chronic illnesses, only about 50% of patients take their medication as prescribed. So question for you, who are you going to be? God said, hey, you need this. If you're going to be healthy, you need this pill, this one, and this one. And you need to take them. Are you going to be the one who listens to the voice of the Holy Spirit and you say, I'm going to take that? I'm gonna guard my heart and I'm gonna work to daily encourage and exhort my brothers and sisters and receive that back from them and be on guard and cautious about the deceitfulness of sin? Or will you be among those who don't listen? Yeah, I'm probably good, I think I'm doing fairly well. On we go. And you don't get your meds filled, you don't take them as prescribed. God's saying this is no small matter. This is a serious warning. God is for you 100% and he wants you to hold firm and he wants you to cling to Jesus all the way to the end. He wants you to run and finish the race. So that becomes our fifth demonstration that you're taking God's voice seriously. Hold your confidence firm to the end. Verse 14, for we have come to share in Christ, basically we are Christians, if indeed we hold our confidence firm to the end. It's not just how you start, it's how you end. We are Christians if, and key clarification here, not because, we are not Christians because, we are Christians if we hold our confidence firm to the end. Now look then with me at verses 15 to 19 again. As it is said, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, for who are those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned and whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. The writer of Hebrews just asked three questions there in the final few verses, and the questions go to show you can have a glorious beginning and a terrible end, a disastrous end. It is not how you start, it's how you end. You could have a glorious beginning. Look back at verse 16 again. Who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Who are we talking about? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? All those who left Egypt led by Moses? Think what those people had seen and experienced. I mean, I would have loved to have been in the crowd when all that happened. They had seen God's heart in Pharaoh's heart. They had seen God decimate Egypt and all of Egypt's so-called gods by plague. I mean, they had watched this, 10 plagues, one after another. They had seen God plunder the Egyptians. As they leave Egypt, Egypt is giving them basically their entire economy as they leave the land. Take it all, take everything we own, all of our wealth, all of our money, all of our, you take it, just please go. They had seen God's pillar of cloud and fire. They had experienced his presence and his work and so many things. They had crossed the Red Sea on dry ground by foot and then turned around and watched Pharaoh's army march into the sea and be crushed and drowned by the waves. What a glorious beginning. And the writer of Hebrews asked then, who were those who heard the voice of God and yet rebelled? Those very same people. I don't mean any offense here, but how you start really doesn't mean a whole lot. The Israelites had a spectacular spiritual experience, they began well. But they didn't finish the race, they never entered God's rest. And maybe you too, you've had some spectacular spiritual experience of God working in your life. Maybe you've made a profession that you are one of God's kids. You know, maybe that prayer that you prayed, frankly, has left you overconfident. You know, back then, at that time, I prayed, I asked Jesus to save me, I'm good, and I'm a Christian. Maybe you're overconfident in the profession you made, and maybe what you should do is go right here today, right now. Is your heart soft in believing? Are your ears open to the Spirit's voice? Are you standing firm? When the Israelites refused to enter the promised land, God made statements like this in Numbers 14. Verse 11, how long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me? He's talking about the people that left Egypt. in spite of all the signs that I have done among them. And verses 21 to 23, but truly as I live and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness and yet have put me to the test 10 times and have not obeyed my voice shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. Verses 16 and 19 show that the same people who left Egypt rebelled, they were all disobedient. Same people, their bodies fell in the wilderness. God swore, you will not enter my promised land. You will not enter my rest. You can have a glorious beginning and a disastrous end. Verse 19 summarizes it, so we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Unable to enter, what's that tied to? Unbelief. Those who were unfaithful to Jesus couldn't enter his rest, and the same is true today. If you are not one who believes in Jesus and keeps believing, you don't enter God's rest. Unbelief and God's eternal rest are incompatible, and so the writer of Hebrews, he's writing all this for God's people. He's writing to his brothers and saying, keep believing, keep living for Jesus, keep your eyes on him, keep running the race. Among the Israelites, there were two men, two spies, who kept believing. Their names were Caleb and Joshua. And unlike the others, they entered God's rest. All their companions died in the wilderness. Know what God said of Caleb in Numbers 14, 24. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring him to the land in which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. Take God's voice seriously. Hold on to your original confidence, firm to the end. Don't repeat Israel's mistake. I want you, as we conclude, to just, in your mind, go with me forward several years. 10, 20, 40, 50 years. I mean, imagine that we all kind of somehow age at the same, we all get old at like the exact same time. Just imagine. And we've gathered for worship just like we've done today. And here we all sit, and every single one of us is now gray or bald, way more wrinkles. And our Bibles are, they're well-worn, like they're starting to fall apart. Maybe your phone, you know, you looked at your Bible so long, and your phone's just falling apart, I don't know. And we're still here, and we're trusting Jesus together. We're holding firm in our faith until we enter God's eternal rest. Maybe that's 50 years from now. The writer of Hebrews is saying that's the goal. Okay, you run and you hold firm all the way to the end until you enter God's rest. And he's calling upon us actually to help each other to run that race by the grace of God. None of us run alone. So take God's voice seriously. And if you ignore the Spirit's voice today, you may not hear it tomorrow. So he's saying listen, listen. Keep believing.