A Rebellious Generation, Part 1 (Hebrews 3:7-11)

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A Rebellious Generation, Part 2 (Numbers 13-14; Psalm 95)

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And turn now, if you will, to the book of Hebrews, to chapter three. Hebrews chapter three, we're gonna read together verses seven through 11.

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Actually, let's read together verses seven through verse 15. Hebrews chapter three, verse seven. 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 40 years.

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Therefore, 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. Take care, brethren, 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.

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While it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart as when they provoked me.

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Let's pray together. Our Father, we pray that as we open your word and read it and study it and hear it preached, that we would hear your voice in the pages of scripture.

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Just as you spoke to your people in ages past, you speak to us today through the written word. For it is our confidence that when your word is rightly preached and understood, that your voice is truly heard.

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So grant today that we may hear that and that we may respond appropriately. We pray that you would sanctify us, your people, through your word and be glorified in our time, our meditation, and the inclinations of our hearts, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

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I do hope that the Old Testament is part of your daily systematic Bible reading, and not just a part of it, as in a verse here or a proverb there, but I mean a large part of your daily systematic

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Bible reading. First of all, if you don't have a daily systematic Bible reading, start there. And then make sure that as you are planning and purposing what's going to take place over the course of a year, that you divide up that Bible reading roughly how scripture is divided up, maybe two thirds of it in the

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Old Testament and a third of it in the New Testament. And that would be appropriate and sort of divided up how scripture is divided up for us.

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I don't think as Christians, we should ever be without God's word continually being taken in by us and understood and studied by us.

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And we certainly should not neglect the Old Testament. If you know me, then you know I've advocated in years past that everybody should have a daily systematic

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Bible reading, and that it should be our goal. And I know this might be ambitious for some people, but it should be our goal.

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And I would encourage you in this to read through the Bible once a year. Sounds daunting, it's not that daunting when you kind of break it down and just sort of discipline yourself to do it.

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I think it is the single greatest spiritual discipline I have ever adopted in my life is reading through the

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Bible once a year. Started in 1996 and haven't missed a year since 1996. And I would never go back and alter my plan or alter that commitment that I made.

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And I put that out there not as a sort of, I'm greater than you, but as an encouragement to you.

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Look, if I can do that, you can do that through the Bible once a year. I think that that is a reasonable goal that we should have.

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And in doing so, then we won't neglect the Old Testament. Now, I know that there are Christians who would have an objection to reading through the

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Old Testament. Some of them would say, look, I'm really, I'm a New Testament Christian. I know the Old Testament was for the

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Jews, I'm a New Testament Christian. So I focus on the New Testament. You know what New Testament Christians never said?

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New Testament Christians never said, I am a New Testament Christian. Because there were Christians before there was a

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New Testament. And so for the New Testament Christians, the only Bible they had was the Old Testament. And that was what they read, that was what they preached, that was what they memorized, that was what they bathed themselves in.

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In their minds, they never said, oh, Christ is risen from the dead, therefore I can jettison the Old Testament and I'm just gonna be a

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New Testament Christian. That is something that the Christians of the New Testament never would have ever thought or ever said, it would have never entered their mind to think in those terms, never would have.

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For them, the Old Testament was their bread and butter. It took between 10 and 40 years for the New Testament scriptures to be written.

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What do you think that they read during that time? The Daily Bread, Days of Praise, Highlights Magazine?

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No, they had the Old Testament. And that was what they used for their devotional, for their preaching and the teaching, the life of their church.

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And of course, as the New Testament was written, they would incorporate the readings of the apostles and appropriately so into their

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Bible reading and into their church life. Another objection is, I just really want to focus in my

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Bible reading on Jesus. I really wanna know Jesus. And once I know my New Testament and I really know

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Jesus, then I'll open it up and start reading more in the Old Testament. Well, if that's your desire, then

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I have some good news for you. Jesus said the Old Testament was all about him. So if you really want to know

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Jesus, you are going to need to know your Old Testament. You have to, because Jesus said in John chapter five, you read

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Moses and you think that in Moses, you have eternal life. Moses wrote about me. And if you listen to Moses, you would believe in me, but you don't listen to Moses and therefore you don't believe in me.

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After his resurrection with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, what did he do? He started in Moses and being in Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in the scriptures, the things concerning himself, a tour of the

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Old Testament. That was the basis of it. And so if you want to know Jesus, then you have to know your Old Testament.

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And Christians who say, I'm gonna know Jesus, but I don't have any time for the Old Testament, either display their ignorance or their insincerity.

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One of the two. The New Testament teaches us to value the Old Testament. We cannot neglect the

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Old Testament. The Old Testament is inspired scripture just as well as the New Testament is inspired scripture. Is all of it as interesting as the

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New Testament? No, the genealogies are not that interesting, but I read them every year. 11 chapters, first Chronicles, 11 chapters of genealogy.

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Is it as interesting as reading Romans or first Thessalonians or first Timothy or Hebrews? No, it's not necessarily, but it is inspired scripture.

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And listen, scripture doesn't lose its inspiration like the wax job on your car over a period of time. It doesn't begin to sort of fade out.

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It is inspired on the same level as the New Testament. And we neglect, we neglect the state and the health of our own soul when we neglect the

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Old Testament. The Old Testament was scripture for the apostles.

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They found value in it. I think it is arrogant for us to say, well, it was good enough for the apostles, but it's not good enough for me.

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Or yeah, they could find value in it, but I can't find any value in it. Yeah, it was good for them, good for the early church, but I've sort of graduated beyond the

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Old Testament in my own spiritual life. And I'm a New Testament Christian. That is just such an arrogant, such an arrogant perspective.

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And we cannot fall into that trap. First Corinthians verse 10, chapter 10, verse six, which we read at the beginning of our worship service this morning, says these things, and referring to the

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Old Testament scriptures and the things concerning the children of Israel and the wilderness, Paul said, these things happened as examples for us so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.

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And what was Paul doing? He was pointing to an Old Testament example. He's saying, look, this is for you. Read this and understand and learn this lesson.

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There's a movement. I shouldn't say it's a movement. It's actually a controversy at the point right now surrounding

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Andy Stanley and some comments that he made in his church in Atlanta, Georgia. Andy Stanley is one of probably the 10 most influential pastors in all of America.

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He has a mega church in Atlanta, Georgia and several large campuses around the country, and not just in the

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United States, but also sort of satellites in even up in Canada that I know of. And Andy Stanley made headlines recently when in one of his sermons, he said, among other things, that as Christians, we need to unhitch our

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Christianity from the Old Testament. We need to unhitch. You know what that means? It means unhitch and let the

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Old Testament go. And his argument basically was, in the Old Testament, there are all of these things which are difficult to understand, difficult to explain, and difficult for us with our modern sensibilities to embrace.

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The killing of the Canaanites in the land of Israel and God commanding that. And all of those statements about homosexuality and the moral code.

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And he actually goes so far as to say, we need to disconnect all of the moral obligations of the church from anything that we find in the

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Old Testament. That is false teaching. And I can tell you where that is gonna go because this is not the first time that that's come up in the history of Christianity.

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There was an early church heresy named Marcion who taught a similar thing about the Old Testament. And I can tell you where it went.

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In Marcion's day, I can tell you where it's gonna go in our day. I'll tell you what the next step is. Within five years, if this catches on and people begin to do this and take this advice of his,

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I'll tell you where it's gonna go. Because the very next step is all of those moral requirements of the

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Old Testament where homosexuality is an abomination, those really aren't for us. We need to disconnect, unhitch, our

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New Testament moral code from the Old Testament, the difficult Old Testament moral code of the Old Testament.

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See, that's where that's gonna go. It does not bode well. That is false teaching. Unhitch our

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Christianity from the Old Testament. Aren't you glad the author of Hebrews didn't think that way? How much of Hebrews would you have if the author of Hebrews thought you needed to unhitch

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Christianity from the Old Testament? I let you guess, it's a really small number, really small amount of Hebrews you would have.

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You know what you'd have? Zero. You would have never written the book because Hebrews is an exposition of Old Testament texts.

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Continually, the author of Hebrews appeals to the Old Testament. The Old Testament examples, the Old Testament warnings, the

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Old Testament promises, the Old Testament Psalms. He appeals to the Old Testament understanding of who Christ is and of a high priest and what was done and what

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God expected is constantly appealing to the Old Testament. The polar opposite of what we should do is to unhitch our

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New Testament Christianity from the Old Testament. Does that mean that everything written in the Old Testament is necessarily for us to incorporate and implement today?

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No, not necessarily, but our Christianity is the fulfillment of that. So we need to read it and understand it and interpret it rightly, certainly not unhitch our modern

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Christian church from the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews in chapter three, verses seven through 11, you will notice he is quoting from the passage there.

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He's quoting from Psalm 95. Now Psalm 95 is an allusion to something else back in Hebrews chapter 13 and 14.

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So in the passage of Hebrews three, verses seven through 11, we have references to three other

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Old Testament passages, Psalm 95 and two chapters in numbers. So three entire chapters.

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What we're going to do today is we're going to leave Hebrews three for a little, well, I was gonna say a little bit, but it's not gonna be a little bit.

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It's gonna be almost the entire message. We're gonna leave Hebrews three and we're going to back up to Psalm 95.

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And actually we're gonna skip Psalm 95. So don't start turning there yet. We have to go back to what Psalm 95 was referring to, which was

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Numbers chapter 13 and 14. So turn in your Bibles back to the book of Numbers, chapter 13 and 14. Now, if you're one of those

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Christians who has detached your Old Testament from your New Testament Christianity, then numbers comes after Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus.

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So if you start at the beginning, start flipping to the right, you will eventually come to the book of Numbers chapter 13.

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And actually to get some context, we're gonna be jumping back to the end of chapter 10. So go back to Numbers chapter 10.

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Yeah, I know this just gets better and better, doesn't it? You keep laughing. The author of Hebrews could assume familiarity with his audience.

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He could assume their familiarity with this event. This event for the nation of Israel marked their history and marked them as a people, the way that George Washington's crossing of Valley Forge marks us, or Thomas Jefferson signing the

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Declaration of Independence marks us. It is a massive key historical event in the life and history of the nation of Israel that explains so much.

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They learned so many lessons. Every Jewish boy was as familiar with this as you are with the back of your hand.

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They understood it forwards and backwards. They got this passage. The author of Hebrews, because his audience was

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Jewish, he could assume that kind of familiarity. I cannot assume that kind of familiarity with my audience here.

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I can assume it with a lot of people here, but not this entire audience. So thus we need to jump back into that passage and kind of get an understanding of that.

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There's a second reason we're going back here rather than just moving forward in Hebrews chapter three. The second reason is because you remember in Hebrews chapter three, it's a warning passage.

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And what is it warning about? It's warning about the danger of falling away and unbelief, hard -heartedness, and rebellion.

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And it is the passage that people who believe you can lose your salvation often quote in order to prove that you can lose your salvation.

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You can once be saved and then be lost. And we talked about this last week. Well, if we're going to deal with that warning passage, then we need to back up and make sure that we understand the details of it.

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We can't just assume that we understand the background of it and kind of plow forward. We want to understand it the way that they would have understood it and get all of those details.

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So we gotta go back into that and make sure that we are rightly understanding this incident that he is alluding to in Hebrews chapter three.

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So we are in, where did we end up? Numbers chapter 10, I guess is where we're at. Numbers chapter 10.

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Let me set up the context for you a little bit so you understand the historical context of this. God had promised to Abraham when he called him out of idolatry and in Ur of the

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Chaldeans, he had promised to Abraham a land. Abraham never saw that land. He walked through it, but he never took possession of it himself.

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And neither did Abraham's son Isaac or Isaac's son Jacob or Jacob's 12 sons that were born to him.

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They all went into the land of Egypt. And in Egypt, they became a great nation over the course of about 400 years.

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So they have several centuries that take place between even God's promise to Abraham and the time that the children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham were called out of Egypt.

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So then while they were in Egypt and God used Egypt to preserve them from a famine, to bring them all together, to give them a land of plenty, they became a healthy and robust people until a

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Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph and that Pharaoh enslaved the children of Israel and used them as his own slave labor force.

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And then we start at the beginning of the book of Exodus. And remember that God called Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Exodus.

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And so Moses, after spending 40 years in the wilderness, tending sheep was called back to going back into the land of Egypt and say to Pharaoh, let my people go so that they may go out into the wilderness and sacrifice to me and worship me.

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And so Moses did that. He went to Pharaoh and he said, let my people go. Let's say it the Yahweh way. Let my people go so that they can come out into the wilderness and sacrifice to me and worship me.

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And Pharaoh said, no, I'm not gonna do that. And then Moses said, then prepare to meet my

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God. And what followed was 10 plagues on the nation of Egypt.

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And periodically through there, it would say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and then Pharaoh hardened his own heart in unbelief.

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And then Pharaoh would say, okay, I'll let him go. And then he would change his mind and not let them go. And the plagues continued. And each of those plagues, all 10 of the plagues on Egypt were all plagues that were allusions to Egyptian gods.

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The gods of rain, the gods of hail, the gods of the crop, the God of the firstborn, the God of the frogs and the

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God of the locusts and all these different pagan deities in the land of Egypt. And it is as if God had taken various ones of these pagan deities and said, okay,

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I'm gonna show you just how useless your God is. I'm gonna take something that he is the God of and I'm gonna use it to judge you.

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That's what he did. Eventually Pharaoh said, get out, leave. After all the firstborn had died.

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And we read that sometimes and we fail to make the connection of just how devastating all of those plagues would have been on the land of Egypt.

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Can you imagine that devastation? The entire crop with the locusts and the hail, all of our agriculture would have been wiped out for that entire year, that entire season, destroyed.

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And the cattle, destroyed. And no water in the land. And the amount of people that would have died from that.

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And then all the firstborn people. And then it says that God worked in the heart of the Egyptians so that as the Israelis left Egypt, they asked the

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Egyptians for articles of gold and silver. And the Egyptians said, sure. And they gave them to them. And Israel left

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Egypt and plundered all the wealth of Egypt. And then went out into the desert and Pharaoh pursued them.

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And his entire army was drowned in the Red Sea. So all of their agriculture, all of their economy, all of the firstborn, all of their wealth, and all of their military might of a superpower at the time, utterly and completely destroyed.

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And all the children of Israel had watched all of that happen. They saw what happens when someone disobeys

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Yahweh. They saw what happens when someone does not believe the word of Yahweh. They witnessed what happens when you disobey and your heart is hardened, like Pharaoh's heart was hardened and they observed all of this.

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And they saw the mighty power, the outstretched hand, the miracles, the signs, the wonders. They heard the word of God.

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They witnessed all of that. They got to see what happens when someone says no to Yahweh and disobeys him, that their heart is hardened and that he will harden their hearts and that he will judge them for their unfaithfulness and their disobedience.

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These people were eyewitnesses to all of that. Okay, that's the background. Now, chapter 10, verse 33, actually verse 29.

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We are to, now after the Exodus and the children come through and the Egypt has been drowned, we are gonna fast forward two years and two months.

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Then Moses said to Hobab, the son of Rul, the Midianite, Moses' father -in -law, we're setting out to the place of which the

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Lord said, I will give it to you. What is he referring to? The promised land, what

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God said to Abraham. Moses said, it's time to leave. God promised to Abraham a land.

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We're going to go take possession of it. That's where we're headed. I will give it to you. Come with us and we will do for you a good for you good for the

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Lord has promised good concerning Israel. Notice Moses' confidence. God has said, I will do this.

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God's gonna do this. He's brought us through all of this. Moses has witnessed it. He's been a front row spectator for all of these signs and wonders.

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God has promised this. The time is now. He has commanded us to go. And in that two years and two months, since they came out of land of Egypt, they had met with God at Mount Sinai.

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They had seen the flashes of lightning and the smoke. They had been provided water out of a rock. They had been provided manna from heaven.

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Their shoes and their clothes have not worn out. They have spent those two years and two months creating all of the temple tabernacle material and the furniture and the tabernacle itself.

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And they have installed and instituted the priesthood. They are a ready people, ready to walk in and take possession of the good promise that God has given to them.

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And to do so in obedience to his command and to enjoy as a result of that, all of the goodness that would come to them for simply obeying what

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God has said. So verse 31 or verse 30 of chapter 10. But he said to him,

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I will not come, but rather go to my own land and my relatives. Then he said, please do not leave us. And as much as you know where we should camp in the wilderness and you will be as eyes for us.

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And so it will be for you. You go with us that whatever good the Lord does for us, we will do for you. Thus, they set out from the

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Mount of the Lord three days journey with the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord journeying in front of them for the three days to seek out a resting place for them.

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Now notice the word rest. They were going to a resting place. God had promised them a land where they could rest. They've been out in the wilderness two years and two months.

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We're going to the place where God has said, here you can rest. Now, in those three days journey and between them starting off here and reaching the land, the border to the land of Israel.

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And they were willing to take possession of that. The children of Israel were complaining. They were a grumbling people. And you see them complain about their adversity in 11 verse one.

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Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the Lord. Things are tough, things are hard.

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They begin to grumble and complain. You see them complain about the manna in chapter 11 verse six but now our appetite is gone.

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There's nothing at all to look at except this manna. Even the food that God graciously provided for them, they're complaining about that.

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And then in chapter 12 verse two and verse one, we see that Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because the

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Cushite woman whom he had married and they said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well?

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And the Lord heard it and God judged them for that. So there is rebellion and there is bickering and there is complaining.

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And then we come to chapter 13. And here's where we're going to get an overview chapter 13 and 14, 13 verse one.

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Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, send out for yourselves men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which

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I am going to give to the sons of Israel. You shall send a man from each of their father's tribes, every one a leader among them.

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So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.

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Verses four through 16 kind of list those men and the tribes that they came from and the family line that they came from.

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There were 12 men, one for each of the tribes. They were leaders of their families, leaders of the tribes to go into the promised land and spy it out, search it out.

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And why did God do that? Did God not know it was in the land? Was he anxiously waiting for 40 days back with Moses and the people?

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I can't wait to hear what the land is like, what they bring back. I wonder if there are grapes there. I wonder if the people are strong or mighty.

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Why did God send them in at all? He could have just said, okay, it's here. It's time now we're going to go in.

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We're going to go in blind. You're just going to have to trust me. We're going to go in blind. It's going to cross the Jordan River and we will burn whatever bridges we encounter when we get to those bridges.

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He could have said that, but he didn't. The Lord said, send men in to go in and to spy it out and come back and give a report.

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God did not need to find out what was in the land. He knew. Why did he send them in? This is a test.

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That's what this is. If I give them this information, having promised them all of these good things, will they trust me when they find out what they're up against?

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They've complained about all of the adversity up to this point. When they see the potential adversity ahead of them, will they decide to go in or will they bail and want to leave?

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Are they willing to trust me in the face of that unknown and that difficulty? That's the issue. Now, God knew what the answer was going to be.

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Again, it's not as if he is wondering what are they going to do once they find out. He knows what they're going to do once they find out. What is

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God about to do? He is about to expose to everybody else the true condition of the hearts of everyone in the nation of Israel.

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That's what he was doing. All this was about. We have a bunch of pagan unbelievers who do not trust

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God, who are walking in rebellion and unbelief, hard -hearted men and women, who since the day that they crossed the

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Red Sea have been complaining about every little thing the whole way through. They have tested

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God. They have tried him. They have bickered about his provision. They have complained about everything that God has given to them.

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Now, it brings them all the way up to the promised land and here's the test. He is going to reveal to them and to everyone the condition of the hearts of these people.

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He's going to put it on full display. That's what this is all about. Put all of that on full display so they can judge their hard -heartedness and their unbelief.

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Verse 21. So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob and Lebo Hamath. Now, these are not places in Philadelphia or Illinois, so I don't know how to pronounce these names.

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So if you have a different pronunciation in your mind, it's probably as wrong as the one that's in my mind that you're about to hear.

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Verse 22. When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron where Ahimon, Shishai, and Talmai, the descendants of Enoch were.

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Now, Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. Then they came to the Valley of Eshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes and they carried it on a pole between the two men with some of the pomegranates and the...

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I know it's not pomegranates, it's pomegranates and the figs. That place was called the

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Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there. When they returned from spying out the land at the end of 40 days, they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Perun at Kadesh.

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And they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Look, we have one single cluster of grapes and this thing is so big that we put it on a pole to carry it between two people.

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This is what's on the other side of the Jordan River. Verse 27. Thus they told him and said, we went into the land where you sent us and it certainly does flow with milk and honey.

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And this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large.

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And moreover, we saw the descendants of Enoch there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the

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Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the

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Jordan. Verse 30. Then Caleb quieted the people. That's interesting detail. Caleb had to quiet the people.

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Why do you think he had to quiet the people? Because when they heard that report ending in verse 29, there must've been an uproar.

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Some sort of discussion amongst the people. This is not good. So even though Moses doesn't say, they were complaining and talking and murmuring amongst themselves.

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Caleb had to quiet the people because this was not a good report. This was not what the people wanted to hear. Verse 30.

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Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, we should by all means go up and take possession of it for we will surely overcome it.

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But the men who had gone up with him said, we're not able to go up against the people. They're too strong for us.

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So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land, which they had spied out saying, the land through which we have gone in spying it out is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.

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The Jews are not a big people. You ever notice this? I noticed this when I was in Israel almost two years ago.

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I am a giant among Jews and I mean giant. I might as well be called Goliath. Walking amongst the

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Jewish people, I bought a jacket in a one store in downtown Jerusalem and I tried on a military jacket and it was too small for me, it was only extra large.

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So I said, you have an extra, extra large. And he said, we don't have anybody in the military that's an extra, extra large. He said, we don't have anybody in the military that it is big as you.

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And then he said to me in this Jewish accent, I don't know if you have noticed, but Americans are way bigger than us Jewish people.

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And that was true. And I looked down at him and said, yeah, you're probably right, that is true. So anybody to a

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Jew would seem like a giant. And there are probably these massive physical specimens in the land of Israel.

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Verse 30, there also we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anakaz are part of the Nephilim and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight and so we were in their sight.

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They looked down on us, we were small in their sight and then we realized how small we really are. Now when a bunch of small people or short people are all together, they all feel tall, right?

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Unless they need to reach something on the top shelf, but you get a bunch of short people around and they don't really feel small or notice their smallness until someone steps in who's six feet, three inches tall and bigger than them and then suddenly they realize, wow, we really are small.

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When they stepped into the land of Israel, they were surrounded by people who were all taller than them for two years and two months, all they had seen was themselves.

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And that was normal. And suddenly they realized we're not normal, we're small. That must be normal, these people are enormous.

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We can't possibly go in and spy out this land or take this land. Verse 14, or chapter 14, then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried and the people wept that night.

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And what are they weeping over? Well, you're about to find out. Verse two, all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation said to them, would that we had died in the land of Egypt, oh, would that we had died in this wilderness.

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Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder.

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Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? So they said to one another, let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.

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They wanted to go back to slavery rather than walking into the land that God had promised them. And what they were not understanding was that if God says,

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I will give this to you, he will give it to you, he will give it to you. There's no possibility that this cannot happen.

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Well, you and I today, we look forward to a time when we believe that God is going to give to us the kingdom.

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That someday all the nations of the world will belong to our Messiah and he will hand it all to us and say, you get to share in this inheritance.

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This is my inheritance, the nations and the stars, it is all mine and you get to have it, now it is yours.

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We've been granted something far greater than what the children of Israel were promised. And they walked away from it because they did not believe that ultimately

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God really would keep his word and give to them the good thing that he had promised.

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Verse five, then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in the presence of all the assembly of the congregation of his sons of Israel.

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Joshua, the son of Nun and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes.

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Now, if we had read the part at the beginning of chapter 13 where it lists the men, we would have seen Joshua and Caleb listed there.

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Now, both of them come back in. Remember Caleb said, as Caleb says in verse 30 of chapter 13, he quieted the people and said, we should by all means go up and take possession of the land.

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We will surely overcome it. He knew that if God is for us, nobody can be against us. As tall, as mighty, as fortified as they are, it's nothing.

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Our God can overcome that. So we will take it, we must surely. He will give it, he will fulfill his word. Joshua was there with Caleb making the same case.

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We find out in chapter 14, verse six, Joshua, the son of Nun is there and Caleb, they spied out the land, they tore their clothes.

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They spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel saying, the land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land.

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If the Lord is pleased with us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us. A land which flows with milk and honey.

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Only do not rebel against the Lord. Do not fear the people of the land. They will be our prey.

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Their protection has been removed from them and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. But all the congregation said to stone them with stones.

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Then the glory of the Lord appeared in the town of meeting to all the sons of Israel. Now they're about ready to stone with stones the only two men other than Moses, possibly

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Aaron, the only two men in all of the land of Israel with faith. That's the crisis point.

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Is the only two men who believe that God is able to do this amongst the other 10. If this was a righteous nation with righteous people who knew their

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God and obeyed his ways, they would have grabbed those 10 men, those rebellious hardhearted men and drug them outside the camp and stoned them with stones.

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It's Joshua and Caleb who say, look, God is for us. We can do this. This is easy peasy.

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We can wrap this up in a week or a month if God is for us. This is no big deal. And they want to stone them with stones until God says time out.

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And appears to them in a cloud before the tent of meeting, verse 11. Then the

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Lord said to Moses, now I want you to pay attention to something. I want you to pay attention to how these people are described in this passage all the way through this.

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Notice the way that these rebels are described, not only by God, but also by the rest of the passage around what

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God says. The Lord said to Moses, how long will this people spurn me? How long will they not believe in me?

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Despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst, I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them and I will make into you, you into a nation greater and mightier than they.

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So the Lord said to Moses, start from scratch. Now this is intended to get Moses to intercede for the people so that God might demonstrate that he is a promise keeping

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God by not doing this for Moses and instead remembering his promises for the nation of Israel. Verse 13, but Moses said to the

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Lord, then the Egyptians will hear of it for by your strength you brought up this people from their midst and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land.

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They have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people for you, O Lord, are seen eye to eye while your cloud stands over them and you go before them in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.

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Now, if you slay this people as one man, when then the nations who have heard of your fame will say, because the

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Lord could not bring this people into the land which he promised them by oath, therefore he slaughtered them in the wilderness.

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Now Moses is concerned, not that God would make of him a great people, but that God would not keep his word to Abraham, Isaac and to Jacob and to this generation of people, so land to Israelites themselves, that if he destroyed all of them, that God's name would be blasphemed among the

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Gentiles because the Gentiles, the pagan nations around would see that and say, see God was unable to give them the land.

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Moses doesn't want people saying that about God. So he's concerned for the glory, for the fame, for the name of God, and he wants

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God to keep his promises. Verse 17, now I pray, let the power of the

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Lord be great, just as you have declared, the Lord is slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will be by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children of the third and fourth generations.

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Pardon, I pray the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your loving kindness, just as you also have forgiven this people from Egypt, even until now.

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In other words, God, you have forgiven these people of all of their grumbling and all of their complaining, and we know that you are a forgiving and generous and gracious God, forgive them for this as well.

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Don't wipe them out, forgive them for this. We know that you are not going to wipe away their iniquity, you will deal with their iniquity, forgive this people, do good to them.

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So the Lord said, I have pardoned them according to your word, but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the

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Lord. Surely all the men who have seen my glory and my signs, which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put me to the test these 10 times, and have not listened to my voice.

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There's some discussion as to what those 10 times refers to. Is he recalling back from the time in Egypt when they were under the yoke, that they complained against the

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Lord and all of the various times that he has tested him after coming out and complaining about not having water, and then complaining about not having meat, and then complaining about having manna, and then complaining about not having water again.

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There are various times that Moses could be referring to, or he might be referring to 10 times that they had rebelled, even in the midst of just this trial itself.

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They had gone back and forth. Moses might be saying, look, these people have rebelled and they have complained even about this one issue, 10 separate occasions that they deserve my wrath.

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But God is a good God. 10 times, where am I at?

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23, thank you. Test me these 10 times and have not listened to my voice.

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They shall no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned me see it.

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But my servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered and his descendants shall take possession of it.

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Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys. Turn tomorrow and set out in the wilderness by way of the

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Red Sea. God told them to turn back, get out of there. You're not going in. So he gave them instruction, tomorrow you are to turn back.

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He said, Caleb is to go in. And another one we find out later to go in is Joshua. He was also allowed to enter into land.

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In fact, he took over from Moses and led the children of Israel into the land 40 years later. The Lord spoke to Moses in verse 26 and Aaron saying, how long shall

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I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against me? I've heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they're making against me.

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So say to them, as I live, says the Lord, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you. Your corpses will fall in the wilderness.

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Remember what they said? Oh, that we had died in the wilderness rather than going into the land and dying. That's right.

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Yeah, you said it. Checkmate, you're gonna die in the wilderness. Just exactly what you said. Your corpses will fall in the wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from 20 years old and upward who have grumbled against me.

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Anybody 20 years old and older other than Caleb and Joshua died in the wilderness in that next 40 years.

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Only the children were allowed to enter into the land. Verse 30, surely you shall not come into the land in which you shall not, sorry, surely you shall not come into the land in which

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I swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. Your children, however, whom you said would become prey,

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I will bring them in and they will know the land which you have rejected. But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness.

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Your sons shall be shepherds for 40 years in the wilderness and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until your corpses lie in the wilderness.

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According to the number of days which you spied out the land, 40 days, for every day you shall bear your guilt a year, even 40 years, and you will know my opposition.

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I, the Lord has spoken, surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against me.

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In this wilderness, they shall be destroyed and there they will die. Verse 36, as for the men who

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Moses sent to spy out the land and who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing out a bad report concerning the land, even those men who brought out the very bad report of the land died by a plague before the

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Lord. But Joshua, the son of Nun, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, remained alive out of those men who went to spy out the land.

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So what should the nation have done? They should have stoned those 10 men. Instead, they wanted to stone

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Joshua and Caleb and God reversed that, took Joshua and Caleb into the land and destroyed the 10 men, which is how it should have been in the beginning.

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Now, what I want you to know, and here's the lesson that we're going to learn, and this is the question of reflection, were these people believers?

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Were they Jews? They were Jews. Were they believing Jews? Is there anything in all of the passage that I've just read to you that would suggest to you that these were

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God -fearing, faithful, Yahweh -worshiping, Yahweh -loving, believing

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Jews? Anything in that passage? What does, how does God describe them?

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They're an evil congregation. They are unfaithful. They are hard -hearted. They are rebellious.

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They have spoken against me. They have gathered together against me and complained against me.

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At every opportunity in this passage, these people are described, it is being against Yahweh, enemies of God, rebels against him, and unfaithful, hard -hearted unbelievers.

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That is how this generation is described, all except for Joshua and Caleb. Now, to just fast forward a little bit to Hebrews 3, which we're not getting there yet, just give me a second, to fast forward a little bit to Hebrews 3, you're going to see in future weeks how the author of Hebrews describes this generation of people.

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At no point anywhere would anybody or should anybody assume that these people who walked away from God were genuine, saved, faithful,

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God -honoring Jews. They were not. They were unfaithful and wicked and rebellious.

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These are not believing Jews who just had a bad day. Right, like you wake up one day and you just think, man,

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I just, I'm really discouraged, I'm depressed, and my heart is dark, and I just am questioning, I'm wrestling with the

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Lord in my mind, and I have a crisis of faith over something, and God able to do this, and I'm really dour and discouraged today.

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That's how a Christian has a bad day. Does this sound like a bunch of believing Jews who had a bad day? Or does this sound like a bunch of believing

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Jews who since the time that they left Egypt have demonstrated over and over again their hard -hearted unbelief and rebellion?

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It's unbelief and rebellion. Therefore, would it be faithful and right appropriation of Scripture to take a passage that describes a bunch of unbelievers in rebellion against God, and them walking away from God and disobeying

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God, and saying, therefore, that shows that Christians can do the same thing and lose their salvation? How do you make those two things match?

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You can't make those two things match. That which serves as a warning to us, the very thing that serves as a cautionary tale for us, is pagan unbelievers who are amongst and with genuine

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Christians, or not genuine Christians, but genuine believing faithful Jews like Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Caleb.

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They were with them amongst in the covenant. They had seen God's blessings. They had seen his power. They had watched him manifest his grace to them and provide for them, and yet they remained hard -hearted and in unbelief, and they were judged.

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They perished in the wilderness. That is the cautionary tale. Not believing Jews who had a bad day, and so they died, but unbelievers who expressed their unbelief and God judged them.

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That's the episode in Numbers chapter 13 and 14. Now this is, let me point out one more thing.

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Difficulties do not, difficulties do not cause us to become unbelievers and to grumble and complain against the

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Lord. Difficulties reveal unbelief. They don't cause it. Afflictions, persecution, trials, temptations, they don't change believers into unbelievers.

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They reveal who are believers and who are unbelievers. And so the people in the wilderness were revealed.

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Their unbelief was revealed when they faced that affliction and that difficulty. Now, the lesson of Numbers 13 and 14, this historical incident, is referenced in Psalm chapter 95.

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So we're on our way back into the New Testament to Hebrews, but we're gonna stop quickly in Psalm 95. So turn there, if you will.

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The bad news here is we're covering a lot of material and this is a long message. The good news is you're getting far more than you paid for.

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Psalm 95. Now, beginning in verse seven is where Hebrews chapter three, the end of verse seven is where Hebrews chapter three picks up its quotation.

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So you see beginning at the end of verse seven, "'Today as you would hear his voice to harden your hearts "'as a marabouts in the day of mass in the wilderness.'"

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And that all the way through the end of the Psalm is what's quoted in Hebrews chapter three. But just the beginning of the Psalm that I want you to notice, the

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Psalmist who is not named here in the prelude to the Psalm, but he is named later on in Hebrews chapter four, verse seven.

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The author of Hebrews tells us it is David who wrote this. So these are the words of David. This is David's Psalm. He writes, "'So come, let us sing for joy to the

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Lord. "'Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. "'Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving.

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"'Let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms. "'For the Lord is a great God "'and a great king above all gods. "'In whose hand are the depths of the earth, "'the peaks of the mountains are his also.

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"'The sea is his for it was he who made it "'and his hands formed the dry land. "'Come, let us worship and bow down.

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"'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.'"

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And that is at the beginning of that Psalm, the first half of that Psalm is a call to worship. He is asking them to worship

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God because of his majesty, because of his greatness and because of his provision. And there's a number of phrases in the beginning of this

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Psalm that allude back to what we just covered in numbers 13 and 14. And I want you to notice it. He is called in verse one, the rock of our salvation.

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And you think back to the wilderness wanderings and you think of the rock of salvation, your mind ought to go back to, or might be going back to when

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Moses came out of the land of Israel and the people complained they didn't have water and God said, go strike the rock. And Moses struck the rock and the water flowed out of the rock, remember?

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That provided that idea of a rock was substantial to the nation of Israel and their understanding of God and his provision.

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And later on, God did the same thing, told Moses to speak to the rock. Moses didn't speak to the rock, he struck the rock. Moses sinned against God in that, but God still provided out of that rock.

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He saved the nation of Israel from perishing in the land by water that he provided out of a rock.

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All right, so he is the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, shall joyfully then with the Psalms. The Lord is a great

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God, a king above all gods. Notice all the false gods. Remember what the plagues in Egypt had proven?

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That God was a greater God than their God of the flies and their God of the locusts and their God of the frogs and their God of the fire and their

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God of the night and their God of the day. God is a king above all those gods. The Exodus from the land of Egypt showed that Yahweh is above all.

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He's alluding there to that lesson. Verse four, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are his, the sea is his, for he who made it in his hands formed the dry land.

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The sea, the mountains, and the dry land. What would that remind you of? Coming through the sea on dry land to Mount Sinai, where God met with his people on the mountain.

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All of this language is intentional and subtle allusions to that wilderness wandering and to that Exodus.

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And that is why he begins in verse seven, or in the middle of verse seven, today, if you would hear his voice. He has already alluded to all the wilderness wanderings.

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God is a God above all the gods, the gods of Egypt. He's the rock of salvation that provides for his people in the wilderness. We are his people by covenant, so he does not destroy us.

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And he provided for us in the desert. We are the sheep of his pasture. He will lead us, provide for us.

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He has protected us. He is worthy to be worshiped. So do not be like the people who saw the rock of their salvation, saw the dry land in the middle of the sea, walked through the sea to the mountain, which

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God made, all of these allusions to the crossing of the Red Sea and the Exodus from Egypt and to the wanderings in the wilderness.

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Do not be like those people who saw all of those things and turned from the Lord. Instead, worship him, come before him with thanksgiving, bow the knee and recognize he is majestic.

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He is great. He has provided for us. He is our salvation. That is the appropriate response. And the children of Israel should have responded that way.

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Having come out of all of that and seen all of that, God said, go into the land. They should have bowed down and say, Yahweh, you are king. You're greater than all the gods.

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Doesn't matter what's in front of us. We will do it. We will obey. And we will trust you for the outcome. That's what they should have done.

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Worshiped and obeyed, come before him with thanksgiving, sung his praises and marched through the Jordan River right into the land of promise and taking their possession.

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That's what they should have done. But instead they hardened their hearts. And so there is the warning as David makes application from that incident in verse seven or verse eight.

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Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah and in the day of Massa in the wilderness. Those are the references to the place where God poured water out of the rock.

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That is in the book of Exodus. Those two places are named that. Those are nicknames given to those two locations because of what have happened there.

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Verse nine, when your fathers tested me, they tried me, though had seen my work for 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, they are a people who err in their heart and they do not know my ways.

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Therefore, I swore in my anger, truly, they shall not enter into my rest. Now, what is the application that David makes from that incident in Psalm 95?

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His application is, you need to learn a lesson from this incident, what happened centuries prior, that when

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God has demonstrated his goodness and you enjoy his provision and all of the fruit of his grace, that you not turn away from him in rebellion and demonstrate a hard heart.

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Instead, learn the lesson and come before him and worship him with thanksgiving. Now, the author draws the lesson,

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David draws the lesson out of that incident. Now Hebrews chapter three quotes David, who is quoting

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Moses. So now we go to Hebrews chapter three. So that's an introduction, one more hour and we'll be out of here.

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So Hebrews uses this incident of the warning passage in Psalm 95 for a modern lesson. And we're gonna be looking at the beginning of verse seven.

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Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, and then you'll notice he quotes Psalm 95 verse seven through Psalm 95 verse 11 in Hebrews chapter three, verse seven through Hebrews chapter three, verse 11.

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And that is a quotation of the last half of that Psalm. So here's what's going on. The author of Hebrews is quoting David and he is saying to the people of his audience, you have seen the goodness in the hand of God.

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You have seen his provision, you have witnessed his signs, you know of his mighty power. In the face of that, do not be like those who saw the same thing and turned away.

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Instead, David encourages us to worship God and to embrace who he is and what he has done and what he has given testimony to.

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If you can sit amongst a congregation of people like this and you see men and women around you who have been saved and redeemed out of all kinds of horrible backgrounds and seen their sins forgiven and their marriages reconciled and healed and God has done so much grace in their lives and you can witness all of that and you can witness the good power of God in his word and see his signs amongst us and you can turn around and say,

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I'm not gonna believe that, I'm going to reject that, that's not for me. You are just like the wilderness generation and quite frankly, you deserve not only that judgment but all the other judgment.

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How will you escape if you neglect so great a salvation? You cannot. For every single person here has seen far more than the children of Israel have seen.

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We have far more light, far more revelation and so the warning is to us, do not turn like them and rebel against God, worship him, obey him and for the author of Hebrews, that means to embrace

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Jesus Christ because of what he has done on the cross in his atonement and his resurrection to come to him.

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That is belief. In terms of the book of Hebrews, belief is embracing what he has said about Jesus Christ in this book and everything he's going to say about Christ later on in the book.

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You walk away from that, you're more foolish, you're more wicked, you're more evil, you're more deserving of judgment than every single one of those

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Jews who turned from God in the wilderness, more so because you turn from more light, you turn away from more grace and so you're more culpable.

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Notice what he says in verse seven, therefore just as the Holy Spirit says and notice that it is present tense and this says something to us about inspiration and I'm just gonna,

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I guess I'm gonna pause here before we get into the quotation but we're gonna end with this. This says something to us about the inspiration of scripture.

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He's quoting David and he attributes the words of David to whom? The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit says and then he quotes

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David. This tells us something about a biblical doctrine of inspiration. You can take something that David wrote under inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, is it the words of David? Yes, is it the words of the Holy Spirit? Yes, so he could have said David said or he could have said the

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Holy Spirit said, it is both equally true because David was the instrument of inspiration and the author of Hebrews recognizes that, that David wrote those words but it is the

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Holy Spirit who says and it is present tense, it is present tense that he is saying here the Holy Spirit says this today and I want you to notice this says something to us about the relevance and the life of scripture, the timelessness of scripture that the author here could say the

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Holy Spirit not just said or said spoke to them back then but he quotes scripture and says, this is the

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Holy Spirit speaking yet today. This is what the Holy Spirit says today and he quotes scripture and the same thing is true.

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You and I can read scripture and when we read scripture, we are hearing the voice of God. You have to know that.

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This is not just a record of times and ways that God has spoken in times past. This is the voice of God.

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So when we read this, we can say the Holy Spirit is saying this to me right now. If you follow me on Facebook, you've seen some of these

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Facebook posts and you've seen newsletter articles and if you're kind of following what I'm reading, then you know that I'm reading a whole bunch of garbage right now.

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I mean, garbage, theological sewage, books that talk about how we can learn to hear the voice of God today and consistently across the board,

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I will tell you how they view scripture. Here's what they will say. The Bible is a record of how

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God spoke in the past and if we know the Bible and we see how

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God spoke in the past, then we can learn how to listen for God's voice in the present. That's what they say, almost without exception.

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That is a far too inferior view of scripture because the

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Bible is not a record of how God spoke in the past. It is God speaking in the past and it is

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God speaking today. It is still his word and he still speaks today.

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I don't read scripture to find out how God spoke to others in the past so that I can then learn how to listen to him to speak to me in the present.

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I read scripture because God speaks to me in the present through the pages of scripture. The Holy Spirit says this today.

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What did the author of Hebrews want us to understand? He wanted us to understand from the pages of scripture that the lesson that was learned by the nation of Israel in Numbers 13 and 14 is the same lesson that David applied in his day.

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It is the same lesson that the author of Hebrews applied in his day and it is the same lesson that we need to learn today. So just as the

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Holy Spirit said to the people in the nation of Israel and through David and to the audience of the book of Hebrews, do not harden your hearts, do not turn away from him.

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That is the lesson. Do not walk away in unbelief for you will perish. That is the lesson that you and I are to learn today.

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The Holy Spirit says this today. If you're here today, you've never trusted Jesus Christ, you continue to live in rebellion and hard -hearted unbelief, do not harden your hearts for you will perish.

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That is the promise of scripture. You will certainly perish. You will not escape. You're more culpable.

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He said that then and he is saying that now. The lesson that they learned is the lesson we need to learn.

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What they heard, we need to hear. The Spirit said to them, he says to us today as well. Let us heed that warning.

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And we didn't get very far into verse seven, but we did cover three chapters of scripture.

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And so now that we have that background for we have gained from this morning, we have gained Jewish ears so that now we can read the book of Hebrews, knowing what they know, remembering what they remember, hearing what they hear, and now we can go into the rest of this warning passage and see what the

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Spirit of God says to us today. We'll do that next week. Let's pray. Father, your word is living and powerful and sharper than any two -edged sword.

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We thank you that you use it to cut to the deepest parts of our hearts and our minds. You use it to expose in us our unbelief, our lack of faith, our rebellion.

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And we having heard what scripture says, we heard what the Holy Spirit says in David's day and says in our day, and we are reminded again that your word is living and ever true.

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Sometimes when we read this book, we realize that this book is also reading us. We pray that you would press down into our hearts, the hearts of everyone here and who hears these words, this reminder and this warning that we may learn this lesson and not walk away in rebellion against you, such a gracious God and a loving