Warning Flag
Well, all this snow this past week has had me thinking about summertime and the beach, and I want to let it be known that the beaches in North Carolina are better than the beaches in Texas.
I grew up about an hour and a half from the coast in North Carolina and my family would vacation at the beach every year, and so I do admit that my opinion is a little bias, but I’ve been to the beach in Texas once, and it was a terrible experience.
It was few years ago, Melissa and I took our older kids on a trip to visit family friends in Austin, and we decided to drive down to the beach one day, and it was a little overcast and windy, but the kids really wanted to swim, and it just so happened that the beach was not crowded at all.
So we get out there, and they ran into the water and they’re splashing around, having a great time, and then after a little while they came running back out of the water and they said they were stinging and itching all over. They were screaming “Get it off! Get it off!” We didn’t see anything right way, but as we looked them over we found these little, almost translucent bugs everywhere. And then we looked around and noticed, about every 30 yards or so, there were purple flags out. And we said, “Hmm. Wonder what these purple flags mean?”
Well we looked it up … the purple flags mean “dangerous marine life has been spotted.”
We walk over to the water and looked and there were more jellyfish than I’d ever seen before in my life. And we found out later that those the little bugs were actually jellyfish larvae … also known as “sea lice” — and look, I’ve gone to the beach in North Carolina my entire life and never heard of this! I go to the beach in Texas once and my kids get sea lice.
But here’s the thing: as much I wanna blame it on Texas or the Gulf of Mexico or whatever, the whole thing was really my fault — because the purple flags were out. The warning was right in front of me, but I ignored it.
And typically, as a general rule, when we ignore warnings, bad things happen. The warnings are there for a reason. That is certainly the case in Hebrews Chapter 3.
In verses 7–11, after we read the quotation from Psalm 95, what we see here in verses 12–19 is a very clear warning, and my objective in this sermon is to make sure we don’t ignore it.
We’re going to look at it in two parts. Two questions:
What Is the Basis of the Warning?
What Is the Heart of the Warning?
Father, by the power of your Spirit, please open the eyes of our hearts to behold wonderful things in your word. Accomplish your will in us, for your glory. In Jesus’s name, amen.
1) What Is the Basis of the Warning?
Now before we really dig in here, I think it’d be good to step back and get a view of the passage overall. And I want to encourage you to get your Bible open and look at the words with me.
And if you don’t have a hardcopy Bible we would love to give you one! We have them over here and back there on tables, and they are yours to take. If possible, I want everybody to see what’s going on here.
With your Bible open, look at verse 7. You can see that verse 7 down to verse 11 is that quotation. Pastor Joe helped us out last week by explaining that this quotation is from Psalm 95, and Psalm 95 is referring to an event that happened early in Israel’s history in the Book of Numbers.
And the short summary of that story is that Israel failed to trust Yahweh, even after everything they had seen him do. They did not trust his word, they rebelled against him, and as judgment on them, God said he would kill them all. And he did. The only exception was Joshua and Caleb because they had faith. Every other person above the age of 20 who grumbled against God, God put them to death in the wilderness over the course of forty years. That’s the story. It is a cautionary tale of unbelief and judgment.
So Psalm 95 looked back on that story to give us a lesson from it; and now the writer of Hebrews looks back on Psalm 95 to repeat that lesson. And that lesson is a warning.
After the writer quotes Psalm 95, in verse 12 we see the warning. He says:
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart…”
Now, the way the passage is organized, the writer gives the warning first in verses 12–13 and then he gives the rationale for the warning in verses 14–19, but this morning I want to explain the passage by switching that order around. We’re gonna start with the rationale, or the basis of the warning (these bottom verses), and then we’re going to come back to the top and look closer at the warning itself.
Why Warnings Exist
When it comes to the basis of the warning it has to do with the possibility of danger. That’s the case for any kind warning. Warnings exist because there is some danger we want to avoid, like jellyfish, and avoiding that danger is usually for our good.
This means that warnings are really expressions of kindness. We don’t typically think that way about warnings. My guess is that for a lot of us the word “warning” itself sounds negative and uncomfortable and we don’t like it — we’d rather keep it all positive. But warnings are important, and we need them because we live in a world of real danger. And real, spiritual danger is the issue here in Hebrews. It’s the danger of apostasy.
The Threat of Apostasy
That’s something that we talked about several weeks ago when we started in the Book of Hebrews. Remember that one of the problems that these early Christians were facing — one of the main things that occasioned this letter — was the threat of apostasy. It’s that people have and do fall away from the faith. There are important nuances and details with that and we talked about those in that first sermon, but at least on the surface, people walk away from Jesus. People abandon Jesus. And that is a problem, that’s dangerous, because if you forsake faith in Jesus, you will not be saved by Jesus.
We see that basic point repeated here at least three times:
First, it’s in verse 6. It’s what leads into the quote from Psalm 95. Hebrews 3, look at verse 6:
“…And we are his house [God’s house], if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
Second, we see the same point in verse 14. Look at verse 14:
“For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
Verse 14 repeats verse 6. The same conditional conjunction is used. It’s the word “if”, and the same word for “hold” or “hold fast” is used.
Verse 6: “if indeed we hold fast our confidence”
Verse 14: “if indeed we hold our original confidence”
Same idea. And now we can see that being God’s house in verse 6 and sharing in Christ in verse 14 are also the same idea. They’re both ways to describe our salvation. It means we are God’s people, we are truly Christians, we are united to Jesus and co-heirs of his benefits. That is us if we keep on believing. The message is that we are saved by Jesus if we keep clinging to Jesus by faith.
But the danger, apparently, is that it’s possible that we might stop clinging to Jesus. It’s possible that some might forsake Jesus. And to make this point, this is where Psalm 95 comes in. Psalm 95 was already quoted in verses 7–11, but then in verse 15 the writer of Hebrews quotes it again.
After he repeats the conditional point in verse 14 — that we’re saved by Jesus if we keep clinging to Jesus — verse 15 goes, “As it is said …” and then we’re back to Psalm 95.
The writer is saying, basically, Hey, we’re saved by Jesus if we keep clinging to Jesus, just like we’ve learned from Psalm 95. …
The ‘Questions’ of Verses 16–18
And what exactly have we learned from Psalm 95? We’ve learned, at the very least, that you can be so close to the salvation of God and yet not be saved because you do not believe.
That’s the point that the writer of Hebrews drives home in a string of questions in verses 16–18. There are five questions in a row with three conclusions.
Have y’all ever played the game called Questions? You try to carry on a conversation with someone only by using questions. It’s a great road trip game. For example, if Pastor Kenny and I were on a road trip together, I’d ask him: “Kenny, is Sunday your favorite day of the week?” And Kenny would say, “Is the Pope Catholic?” It’d just be questions back and forth. That’s kind of what’s going on here. There are five questions but two of the questions are rhetorical questions that answer previous questions. Look at verse 16.
Question 1 — verse 16a
Speaking of Psalm 95,
“For who were those who heard and yet rebelled?”
That is, who were the ones in this story of Israel who heard the word of God and rebelled against him?
Rhetorical Question 1 — verse 16b
“Was is not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?”
See that’s an affirmation.
The two questions together in verse 16 are saying: Those who heard the word of God and rebelled against him were all those who Moses led out of Egypt and saw what God did.
Question 2 — verse 17a
“And with whom was he [God] provoked for forty years?”
That is, who were the ones in this story with whom God was angry and punished for forty years in the wilderness?
Rhetorical Question 2 — verse 17b
“Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?”
See again, that’s an affirmation.
Both questions in verse 17 are saying: Those with whom God was angry were those who did not trust God and therefore they died in the wilderness.
Rhetorical Question 3 — verse 18
“And to whom did he [God] swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?”
This is a rhetorical question affirming that those who do not believe (the unbelieving, the disobedient) do not enter God’s rest. They don’t inherit God’s promised salvation.
Altogether, through these questions, the writer of Hebrews is saying:
Hey, keep clinging to Jesus, because we know the story of Numbers, we get the lesson distilled for us in Psalm 95 — it’s that those who don’t believe are not saved, even if they’re so close to God’s salvation that they see it for themselves. If they don’t believe, then they don’t enter God’s rest.
That’s the summary point of verse 19. Look at verse 19:
“So we see [through Psalm 95] that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”
And entering God’s rest here in verse 19 is analogous to being God’s house (verse 6) and sharing in Christ (verse 14). They’re all describing God’s salvation. The logic of the passage is saying that those who do not believe do not enter God’s rest, do not share in Christ, are not God’s house. If you do not believe in Jesus, you will not be saved by Jesus; and unbelief is a danger. That’s verses 14–19. That is the basis of the warning.
These verses are the reason that when we start at the top in verse 12 there’s a big warning flag flying in our face. And I mean it’s right here. You can’t miss it. We started with the basis of the warning in verses 14–19, now let’s look at the heart of the warning in verse 12.
2) The Heart of the Warning
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.”
The heart of the warning is a warning about your heart. That’s what we find here.
The warning is that first command there, “take care.” It’s actually the verb “to see,” which is the same Greek word used in verse 19. Everyone look down at verse 19 again. See that word “see” in verse 19 — “So we see…” That’s the same word that starts this passage in verse 12.
This passage is bookended with the same word because the writer wants us to read this as one unit. The reason verse 12 is translated “take care” is because it’s an imperative, it’s a command, so he’s saying not simply, “See, brothers…” but he’s saying “watch out, brothers!” When this verb is in the imperative form it always has that kind of force. It means: Watch out! Look at! Take care! It’s a warning.
And a warning about what? “Watch out, brothers, lest there be. …”
Now the writer of Hebrews is going to give us the ‘purpose’ for watching out. There’s a negative reality to beware. This is the thing we should avoid. It’s in that phrase “lest there be.” Another way to say it is: Watch out, brothers, so that none of you have an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
Now it’s important that he mentions the heart. First, that’s a call back to the Psalm 95 quote. Look back up to verse 10.
The problem of unbelief in the Old Testament story was that the Israelites “went astray in their hearts.” That’s what Psalm 95 says, quoted in verse in 10.
The “going astray in the heart” in verse 10 is the same idea as “an evil, unbelieving heart” in verse 12 — and that results in falling away from the living God.
So by this one verse alone, we can see that the heart is a big deal. What leads people to “fall away” — which is the word apostasize, it means to abandon — what leads people to abandon God is an unbelieving heart. By this fact alone, right here, we could argue that the battle for the heart is the battle for eternal life and death. Verse 12 says as much. But then we also have the full testimony of Scripture. What else does the Bible say about the heart?
What About the Heart?
The Bible teaches us that the heart is the control center of who we are. It’s the source from which we interact with the world. Jesus taught us this. He said,
“out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34)
He said,
“from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.” (Mark 7:21–23)
The point is that every sin — including especially the sin of unbelief talked about in Hebrews 3 — comes from the heart.
The late J. I. Packer writes,
The human heart is the controlling source of all that we do in expression of what we are: all our thoughts, desires, discernments and decisions, our plans and purposes, our affections, attitudes and ambitions, all the wisdom and all the folly that mark our lives, come out of, and are fueled, serviced, and driven by, our hearts, for better or for worse. (8)
What Packer says here lines up with what Solomon tells us in Proverbs 4:23,
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
In the late 1600s, there was a Puritan named John Flavel who wrote a little book based on that one verse in Proverbs. Because the Bible tells us the heart is super important and pretty much determines everything that matters, and because it’s our hearts that God sees and cares most about, Flavel says,
“The keeping and right managing of the heart in every condition, is the one great business of a Christian’s life.”
The writer of Hebrews would say the same thing. The warning in this passage is focused on the heart. Watch out that your heart not become an evil, unbelieving heart.
The Connection Between 12 and 13
In what way exactly do we do that? How do we “watch out” or “take care”?
Well, I think verse 13 gets there. Verse 13 gives us a second command with the same purpose we see in verse 12.
Verse 13,
“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
And when he says that word “hardened” he’s implying the heart. Now listen to a paraphrase of the commands in both verses.
Verse 12 says: Watch out so that your heart not become an evil, unbelieving heart.
Verse 13 says: But exhort one another so that none of your hearts may be hardened.
We can hear the similarity, but now what’s the relationship between these two verses?
They’re connected by the conjunction “but” in verse 13, and most of the time we’d expect “but” to mark a contrast, like “Don’t do this, but do this.” That’s not the way it functions here though!
Verse 13 is not telling us something entirely different from verse 12. It’s actually a restatement of verse 12, except verse 13 is explaining or developing verse 12 a little more.
In particular, verse 13 develops the command to “Take care” and the danger of an unbelieving heart.
I want you to see this. Start with the danger.
The Hardened Heart
An evil, unbelieving heart in verse 12 is called a heart hardened by the deceitfulness of sin in verse 13. And I’m interested in those descriptions. Is an unbelieving heart and a hardened heart describing the same condition? Or might one come before the other?
Well this text here isn’t conclusive on this question, but it raises the question! And if we look closer at this word “harden” we see this verb show up a couple more times in the New Testament.
Romans 9:18,
“So then he [God] has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”
Acts 19:9, speaking of Paul’s ministry,
“But when some [the people Paul was preaching to] became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him …”
Both verses have the same verb translated “harden” and “became stubborn.” And they’re both connected to unbelief, and that connection, theologically, is that this hardening is the process by which the heart becomes and stays unbelieving. That’s how Luke uses it in Acts 19. The stubborn or hardened heart is the heart that continues in unbelief. An unbelieving heart starts and stays unbelieving by the heart being hardened.
Which means, if you want to avoid an unbelieving heart (verse 12) then avoid a hardened heart (verse 13). The heart that is hardened is the heart incapable of faith.
This is obvious in the promise of the New Covenant. Remember that the people of Israel were faithless. They could not trust God. So in order for them to believe — in order for any of us to have faith in God — God must give us new hearts! And that is the promise of the New Covenant that Moses foretold in Deuteronomy 30, and it’s what the prophets declared, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36 — our only hope of trusting in Jesus is if God changes us here, in the heart.
But now here’s a question: if it’s God who must give us new hearts, how does it work that we’re supposed to watch out for our hearts? Does this mean that God gives us new hearts but then it’s all up to us to take care of them? How’s this work?
I think the second command in verse 13 helps us.
Exhort One Another
It’s the command to “exhort one another” everyday. That develops the command to “watch out.” It’s the positive side of the warning. We should watch out that we don’t have an unbelieving heart — and how? In what way do we watch out for our hearts? We do it by exhorting one another.
And that word “exhort” is important. The original word has a range of meaning; it’s used a few different ways in the New Testament, but the meaning here in Hebrews 3 is to encourage.
It means to encourage or to give comfort or to give consoling help — and it is always in reference to the saving work of God.
That’s what biblical encouragement is. This is not generic expressions of kindness. “Hey, nice shoes! Hey, great job on that thing!” Those are all fine and good to say to each other — and we should; we should be kind to one another — but the command in verse 13 to exhort or to encourage means to speak words of comfort and help to another about God.
Remember this encouragement is the antidote to a hardened heart.
What keeps the heart from being hardened? What keeps us from unbelief? It’s remembering the truth of what God has done. It’s remembering who he is. And this remembering happens through our telling one another.
This is amazing!
God is the one who, by his grace, gives us new hearts, and we’re each commanded to watch out for our hearts, and that watchfulness we’re commanded to is an action that God intends to happen through the means of us encouraging one another in his salvation.
The creation of our new hearts is the work of God, and the keeping of our new hearts is the work of God through the means of the church’s life together.
Do we have any idea about the profound obligations we have to one another?
The way that God has designed to keep my heart and sustain my faith is through you. The way that God has designed to sustain your faith is through the people sitting around you.
And it’s not complicated. We simply encourage one another. Tell your brother, tell your sister, that God loves them.
I want so badly for us to be a church marked by encouragement. I want it just to be how we live together, how we interact with with one another.
We remind one another of who God is and what he’s done.
We remind one another that God is in control and that God is good.
We assure one another that God loves us, and that he’s for us, and that he knows what you need before you even ask it, and if he takes care of the birds of the air he’s gonna take care of you.
In fact, God only always wields his sovereign power for your eternal good.
I wanna tell you that. We are commanded to tell one another that. Because that is the way God keeps us.
So we come to Hebrews 3 and see the warning flags. The danger applies to everyone. And so does the command to encourage. This is for all of us.
And that’s what brings us to the Table.
The Table
The Lord’s Table is the big reminder every week of what God has done. The bread and the cup remind us of the death of Jesus for us, and we remember him together. We eat and we drink at this Table together, as we’re doing that, we’re believing and encouraging one another in our great salvation.
So for all who are here who believe in Jesus, this Table is for us.
