WWUTT 1817 Do Not Harden Your Heart (Hebrews 3:7-11)

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The Israelites saw the miraculous signs of God in the wilderness, and yet so many of them did not believe.

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We must be careful that we do not fall into unbelief, when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in the book of Hebrews. We're in chapter 3. If you want to open up your

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Bible and join with me there. Picking up where I left off yesterday, I'm going to start reading in verse 7, and keep going to the end of the chapter.

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Even though we'll only cover a portion of this today, let's look at this all in context, starting with the portion of Psalm 95 that gets quoted here.

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This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible, the word of the Lord in the book of Hebrews. Therefore, just as the

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Holy Spirit says, Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by testing me, and saw my works for forty years.

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Therefore, I was again angry with this generation, and said they always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways.

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As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living

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God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said,

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Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me.

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For who provoked him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt, led by Moses?

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And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness?

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And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?

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So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.

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Remember that in this section, an argument has been made that Jesus is greater than Moses or he is the greater

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Moses. Moses was made a steward over the things of God. Jesus is the son who has been made the head over the house of God.

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He is even the very builder of this house. As we had read yesterday, verses one through six, let me recap once again, verses five and six.

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Now, Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later.

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But Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope.

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We are the house that Jesus is head over the church.

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He is the head of the church, again, as mentioned in Ephesians chapter five. So to give support for this argument, the preacher here then goes into Psalm 95 and then gives an exposition of Psalm 95 in the latter third of chapter three.

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So what we're reading today, verses seven to eleven, this is the portion of Psalm 95 that gets quoted here.

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Let me read to you the part that doesn't get quoted, just so we have all of Psalm 95 in our heads as we then continue on to examine the portion that does get referenced here in Hebrews three.

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So here's Psalm 95, starting in verse one, O come, let us sing for joy to Yahweh.

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Let us make a loud shout to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving.

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Let us make a loud shout to him with songs of praise for Yahweh is a great

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God and a great king above all gods in whose hand are the depths of the earth.

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The peaks of the mountains are his also. The sea is his for it was he who made it and his hands formed the dry land.

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Come let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before Yahweh, our maker, for he is our

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God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

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Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as it Meribah.

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And then the rest of that is what gets quoted here in Hebrews three. So that's verses one through seven.

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And then it's the latter portion of verse seven that gets picked up in Hebrews three, seven, and then goes through verse 11 of the psalm as it goes through verse 11 here in in Hebrews three.

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That's just providential that that happened that way, because the writer of Hebrews did not include chapter and verse markers.

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That happened over a thousand years later. Anyway, what did you hear in that psalm as I was reading it?

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It was it was a very praising psalm, right? As you know, the psalms are broken up into five books.

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We have the Psalter split into five books. Psalm 95 falls into book four and each one of the books of the psalms follows a particular theme like book one is about God's care, book two,

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God's kingdom, book three, his promises, book four, which is where Psalm 95 is.

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That's about God's faithfulness. So we start off Psalm 95 very praising.

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Let us sing for joy to Yahweh. Let us make a loud shout to the rock of our salvation, because God has been good to us.

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He has been faithful to us. The comparison here in Psalm 95 is though the people were faithless against him.

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He was faithful to the promise that he gave to Abraham that he would give

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Abraham's descendants the promised land. And so Abraham's descendants did receive the promised land, but not the generation that came out of Egypt because they were faithless, because they disobeyed, because they sinned and grumbled against God.

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They would perish in the wilderness and they would not be allowed to enter his rest.

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It would be the younger generation that would do so because God is still faithful to his promises, but he will by no means clear the guilty.

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As the Lord said of himself in the book of Exodus, when he passed in front of Moses, he is a gracious God, but he will by no means clear the guilty.

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So you have this warning here in Psalm 95. Let us worship and bow down.

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Let us kneel before Yahweh, our maker, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

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That portion is not quoted in Hebrews 3, but then it's the next part that does get quoted.

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Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massa in the wilderness.

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Even though verses 6 and the first half of 7 do not get quoted in Hebrews 3, that still very much applies because who are his people?

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Who are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand? It's the church. It's those who are the followers of Christ.

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They for whom Christ died, whose atonement has covered over their sins.

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We are the people of his pasture. And that's, of course, who is being addressed here in Hebrews.

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This is not being spoken to unbelievers. These are those who have professed to have left the ways of the world or left their own self -righteousness, believing that they could keep the law and therefore be righteous.

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Those who have turned to Jesus Christ and have become saved by faith in Jesus.

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Is their faith genuine? Well, time and trial are certainly going to reveal that.

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And so the warning given here to the Hebrews in this particular sermon, this warning just is applicable to us now.

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Be careful that you do not be found in unbelief.

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That you do not give in to sin to the degree that it's going to be revealed that you are never really a believer in the first place.

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It was just convenient for you for a time to believe in God. But that faith turned out to not be genuine.

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And then you're going to be just like those who fell in the wilderness, those whom God punished because they did not remain faithful, though he was good to them.

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So we're reminded at the start of Psalm 95 of God's goodness, how good he is to us.

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Let us make a loud shout to the rock of our salvation. If you neglect all that God has done for you, then you will be cut off from God's rest.

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You will not enter into God's rest. And we know his rest is

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Christ. True rest. The Lord of the Sabbath is

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Jesus Christ. We rest from our works. We rest from anxieties.

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We rest from our uncertainties. We rest in Christ. Let's consider the portion of Psalm 95, as it's quoted here in Hebrews 3.

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So notice at verse 7, it says, therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, there's no author that is attributed to Psalm 95, like it doesn't say a psalm of David or of the sons of Korah or something like that.

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It's kind of an anonymous psalm. We don't know who actually wrote Psalm 95. But ultimately, we know that the whole

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Bible is the word of the Holy Spirit, right? So here, the Holy Spirit is attributed authorship of Psalm 95.

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Just as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.

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Now, again, this is being spoken to believers. This is a sermon that went out to Christians, particularly

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Hebrew Christians, that were in the churches that had been planted in the Roman Empire at that time.

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But you could also say this to an unbeliever, someone to whom you had just given the gospel.

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Like you revealed to them their sin, according to what is said in the law, you've helped them to see that they've lied, cheated, stolen, taken the

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Lord's name in vain. They're murderers at heart, adulterers at heart, blasphemers at heart. What do they deserve?

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They deserve the judgment of God. And if you've opened their eyes to that reality, and they're starting to recognize, yes,

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I'm a sinner in need of a Savior, then you share with them the gospel. You tell them the answer to your sin problem, the answer to death.

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The only way to be forgiven your sins and be sure that you have fellowship with God and everlasting life with him is to turn from your sin to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Put your faith and trust in him. He who died on a cross, who rose again from the grave so that all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

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You could have just shared that with an unbeliever and then say to that unbeliever, don't harden your heart.

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As those who provoke God in the wilderness in the day of trial, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.

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So if you've heard that voice of conviction in your heart, don't harden your heart against it. Listen to it, turn from your sin, and follow

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Jesus. When Jesus gave the parable of the soils or the parable of the sower, whether you're reading that in Matthew or Mark or wherever in the gospels, anyway, in Matthew 13 where we have there the first appearance of this particular parable,

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Jesus says that the seed is the message of the kingdom. A sower goes out to his field to sow, and he casts the seed, and some of that seed falls on the path.

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That's the first place the seed falls. There's also the rocks, the thorns, and the seed falls in good soil. But the seed that falls along the path, it says that birds came and ate up the seed.

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And this represents the one who hears the message of the kingdom, but the enemy snatches it away before it has a chance to take root.

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And so this would be that kind of a warning. If you were to share the gospel with an unbeliever, and you were to say to them, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart, it would be as though to appeal to them, don't be like the path, like the seed that falls on the path and lets the enemy come and snatches the word of the kingdom away from you that you have just heard.

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Turn from your sin and believe. Now how much more impassioned is this appeal to believers who have already heard the goodness of the gospel, the goodness of God that has been demonstrated for us in the gospel.

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And it said, don't harden your heart, as when they provoked me in the wilderness, in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by testing me.

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Now that one, that's definitely to believers. And it doesn't matter whether you are Jew or Gentile, those who went before us as followers of God, even in the wilderness, even rescued out of slavery in Egypt and given the promised land, those who were followers of God in the beginning are our fathers too.

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Just like we had read in Galatians, in Galatians three, that if we are in Christ, then Abraham is our father.

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We are the offspring of Abraham. So this is spoken to Hebrews, that's definitely the context, but we can still in a spiritual sense understand how this is being spoken to us as well.

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They are our fathers also, they who were called out of slavery in Egypt, but then perished in the wilderness.

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There were those who are our genuine spiritual fathers, the younger generation who truly believed and feared

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God and inherited the promised land. But this is talking about those who did not listen to God, did not believe his word.

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They did not trust in him. They grumbled against him in the wilderness. There, your fathers tried me by testing me and saw my works for 40 years.

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Remember that what is being quoted here is from the Septuagint, which is the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament. So Luke as the writer or Paul is the preacher, wherever you consider that to be here in Hebrews three.

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What's being referenced here is Psalm 95, according to how it appears in the Greek Septuagint, which is why in the

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Old Testament, if you were to flip back to Psalm 95 in your legacy Bible or NASB or even the

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ESV, you're going to notice that Psalm 95 in your Old Testament looks slightly different than Psalm 95 as it's quoted in Hebrews three.

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Well, that's because in Hebrews it's being, it's being quoted from the Greek Septuagint, not from the

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Hebrew. The Old Testament as you have it in English is translated directly from Hebrew since that was the original language.

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So the oldest manuscripts that we have of the Old Testament, that's what your Old Testament has been translated from.

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Therefore, there's going to be some variations. The wording is slightly different in your Old Testament Psalm 95 as compared to the reference here of Psalm 95 in Hebrews three.

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So on this particular verse in Psalm 95, it says, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah as in the day of Massa in the wilderness, when your fathers tried me, they tested me though they had seen my work.

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That puts things in a slightly different order. Here it says, your fathers tried me by testing me and saw my works for 40 years.

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But again, in Psalm 95, it says they tested me though they had seen my work.

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So it makes it sound like in the, in the Septuagint, it makes it sound like the works happened after they were cursed to wander in the desert for 40 years.

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Whereas in Psalm 95, it's that they saw the works and then they disobeyed

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God. Either one would apply. Either one is true because even when they were cursed to wander for 40 years, they still saw the miraculous works of God and they still disobeyed.

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On the other side of that, there were those who saw the works before God cursed them to wander in the wilderness.

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And even though they saw the miraculous signs, though they saw the plagues in Egypt and the Red Sea part and the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and all these other miraculous things

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God did for them, even giving them manna, giving them water from a rock in the middle of a wilderness, despite all of these things, they still grumbled and complained against God.

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So it doesn't matter on which side you put the people you put them before God cursed them or after God cursed them, they still grumbled against God and they still did not believe though they had seen his mighty works.

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That's a hard heart folks. That is a hard heart when they, they cannot even recognize the goodness of God that has been shown to them.

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Therefore, this is the word of the Lord in verse 10, I was angry with this generation and said, they always go astray in their heart and they did not know my ways.

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As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

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So this generation that grumbled against God was not allowed to enter the promised land, enter the land of rest.

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They perished in the wilderness. Now what would be the application of this text that we've read today?

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Verses seven through 11, well, the application is really in the next part, verses 12 to 19. We're going to be looking at that in greater detail tomorrow, but for the sake of application today, let me skip ahead and I'll read to you verses 12 and 13.

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See to it brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living

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God, but encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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What a wonderful gift we have to be able to possess the word of God in our own language bound in probably some nice leather.

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Some of you may have some nice leather Bibles. You have several Bibles in your home.

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We have what is described in second Peter one as the prophetic word more fully confirmed.

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Oh, what the disciples in the book of Acts would have given to have what we have today.

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You think that you need to see miraculous signs and wonders to believe? Even the Israelites saw that and didn't believe.

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And there were people here during this time that saw miraculous signs and did not believe. We have all 66 books, the word of God more fully confirmed, which we would do well to pay attention to as to a light shining in a dark place.

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That's, that's what Peter goes on to say there in, in second Peter chapter one, we must listen to these words.

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We must build one another up according to these words. Notice that the statement there in verse 13 was encourage one another day after day.

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You're not meant to do this walk of faith alone. We need each other so that we will not be led astray by the temptations of sin.

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This world is becoming more and more depraved. It is falling into deeper and deeper sins all the time.

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And if you do not watch yourself, you can be dragged away with the perversions of this culture.

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It can happen to anybody if you are not careful. So see to it that there not be any one of you who has an evil and unbelieving heart, but encourage one another so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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Heavenly father, I pray for my listeners. I pray that they are part of, that they are, they're members of good churches.

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They've got good brothers and sisters in the Lord around them to protect them from the devil's ways, the world's ways, or even the temptations of their own flesh.

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I pray there's good, solid preaching in these churches, bold, brave pastors that are standing in the pulpit and they are warning against the evils of this generation and proclaiming the word of God that we may know what the path of righteousness looks like according to what you have said in your word.

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Keep us from evil and keep us near to you. Let us treasure the word of God that has been given to us and not just hear it, but do what it says.

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We ask all this in Jesus' name, Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Gabriel Hughes. Pastor Gabe is the author of 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says, examining some of our most common

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Christmas beliefs and traditions and bringing them back to the truth of Scripture. You can find this and other books at our website, www .utt