Today, though, Hebrews chapter 3 in verse 7
is where we'll pick it up.
Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit saith today, if
you will hear his voice, harden not your
hearts, as in the provocation in the day
of the temptation in the wilderness, when your
fathers tempted me, proved me, saw my works
forty years.
Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and
said, They do always err in their heart,
they have not known my ways.
So I swore in my wrath, they will
not enter into my rest.
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any
of you an evil heart of unbelief, departing
from the living God.
But exhort one another daily, while it is
called today, lest any of you be hardened
through the deceitfulness of sin.
For we are made partakers of Christ, and
we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast
unto the end.
While it is said today, if you will
hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as
in the provocation.
For some, when they had heard, did provoke,
albeit not all that came out of Egypt
by Moses But with whom was he grieved
forty years?
Was it not with them that had sinned,
whose carcasses fell in the wilderness?
To whom swear he that they should not
enter into his rest, but them that believe
not?
So we see that they could not enter
in because of unbelief.
Father, we thank you now for your word,
and we ask that as we look to
it, that you would minister to us, Lord,
that there wouldn't be any of us with
this evil heart of unbelief.
Lord, that our life wouldn't just be as
a carcass just spread all over, dying in
the wilderness.
Rather, Lord, we would find that rest, that
entering into that place, Lord, of being a
wonderful partaker of Christ, and all of your
power and your love and your work, your
ministry, Lord.
We thank you for your word, and we
ask that you would show us and teach
us, instruct us, Lord.
Perhaps if today we find our heart and
our life in the wilderness, how do we
find that rest?
Teach us.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, the book of Hebrews, one of the
things that I love about the way it's
kind of structured is it has kind of
some wonderful teaching, wonderful doctrinal aspects, fundamental ways
in which it just lays out the identity
of God in many of his attributes, of
his power, of his genius, of his glory,
of his majesty.
Some of the verses, you just get into
them, and that you just almost have to
just stand back and almost in awe of
who the Lord is himself.
Hebrews does this, I think, as wonderfully as
probably almost any book in all the Bible.
But it is also a book that it
goes back and forth between those types of
pictures, revelations of God on how that he
is the fulfillment of all of these wonderful
pictures given to us in the Old Testament,
how he completes them, he fulfills them, and
we are to take that in and to
study it, to consider it and contemplate it
as we ought to be doing.
But then it has these little spaces to
where now it stops and it exhorts us
to enter into it.
It doesn't just simply say, now, isn't that
a nice picture?
Isn't that a wonderful story?
Isn't that a great revelation?
What do you think about it?
But then it turns around and it talks
to us about our responsibility to actually act
upon it, to do something about it.
God just didn't come to just want to
just draw a wonderful picture and show all
this great power and glory and majesty to
a weak, pathetic, anemic human being such as
you and me, and then just say, you
know, well, now we'll go on to something
else and leave me as I am.
No, rather than that, he shows me these
things that then it may move something within
my heart that I'll be drawn into it.
For here is the writer of Hebrews tells
us here in verse 14, he says, For
we are made partakers of Christ.
The whole purpose of the book of Hebrews
is not just simply to tell me who
Christ is, to tell me what Jesus has
done, the work that he has accomplished, to
reveal his glory and his magnificence and the
grandeur of his being.
But then after that revelation of who he
is, now it has many wonderful exhortations to
say, now this is for you to enter
into, to be a partaker of.
And what it means that that word partaker,
it means a participant, a sharer, an associate,
a full partner.
Here the Bible tells us after it shows
us Jesus Christ in his greatness, in his
strength and his power, if he now he
turns, he says, by the way, are you
aware you're a full partner of this?
You are to be a partaker of this.
You are are a fellow.
You're an associate.
You're a sharer.
You are to be a participant in who
he is.
And the wonderful thing there is having believed
in Christ, the moment I come to him
positionally, I am that.
From God's perspective, it's just like perhaps the
moment that you, you know, had a child.
That child became your heir.
You know, maybe they didn't know their name
yet.
It took them a couple of years to
figure that out maybe.
They didn't know who you were.
Took time.
They didn't know how to walk or talk
and they didn't know anything particularly.
But with time, they didn't really have any
more when they were five years old or
ten years old or twenty or thirty or
forty than they did the moment they were
born.
They were your heir then.
And so also with the Christian, the moment
that you and I come into a believing
faith in Christ, we are a partaker of
this positionally.
It is all ours.
But the whole process of the Christian life
of growth, of maturity is how do I
now become a partaker of it, entering into
sharing in it, experiencing it, making my experience,
my activity or my position, my experience and
my activity of life.
That's what God wants.
And I hope it's something that every one
of us want as well.
And here he wants to tell us as
he exhorts us to into this experience and
knowing that I am a partaker.
Now he wants to tell us here in
these verses, not only that he wants to
see it happen, but he also tells us,
I believe, simply and wonderfully how.
One thing to want to tell me I'm
an heir, but then how?
To tell me I've got all of his
riches in heaven and glory are mine.
How?
Fill me in on this.
And how do I enter into this?
Well, here he tells us in verse seven,
he says, Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit saith
unto us today, if you will hear his
voice, hard not your hearts as in the
provocation in the day of the temptation, the
wilderness, he said, when your father's tempted me,
prove me here.
He looks and he says, the first thing
that he says, if you want to be
a partaker is that you are to hear
today, as the Holy Spirit would say today,
hear his voice and as he would speak
to us.
And the wonderful thing he also says down
in verse 15, while it is said today,
if you will hear his voice, hard not
your hearts.
And in verse 16, it says, For some,
when they heard, they provoked, they heard, but
they didn't really listen in a sense.
And God wants us, I believe, to hear,
number one, to hear the spirit, the key
to ever being a partaker of Christ, to
ever, ever entering into anything at all, the
most fundamental, the most basic attribute of a
Christian who has entered into rest, to a
Christian who is a partaker of Christ, a
Christian who is experiencing his strength and his
glory and his being, the very first and
simplest and most fundamental of all of the
qualities is that there's somebody there that their
heart is open to hear the spirit of
God, that they want to hear him.
They want to have that communion, that fellowship
with the spirit of God.
Simply speaking, the Bible reveals to us the
Holy Spirit essentially today for you and me.
He is the one with whom we have
to do, you might say.
No man comes to Christ, the Bible says,
lest the spirit draws him.
You're a Christian today.
You're a Christian because the Holy Spirit drew
you to Christ.
Wasn't that preacher or this person or that
or somebody else?
It was the spirit of God maybe using
that book, using that radio or TV program,
using, you know, that church service you were
at or that service you were hearing.
He may have been using that, but it
was the Holy Spirit calling you, drawing you
to Christ.
The Bible says no man can say that
Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.
Now that's just audibly making, you know, the
verbiage of it.
Nobody can know the Lordship of Christ, experience
the Lordship of Christ, but by the work
of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one, essentially, Jesus
said, all that the Father has is mine,
all mine is thine, and the Holy Spirit,
he will take of mine and show it
and give it to you.
The Holy Spirit, essentially, he is the one
through whom I offer my humanity to God's
deity and the one through whom God offers
his deity to my humanity.
If I'm to become the partaker of Christ,
I've got to be somebody that I'm a
partaker or a hearer of the Holy Spirit
to open up, not just simply, well, I
heard him once when I came to Christ,
I heard him calling.
You know, he not only calls, another way
you might know, if you want to know
if you ever hear the Holy Spirit, do
you ever feel like you've sinned?
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit, Jesus
said about the Holy Spirit, when he comes,
he will convict the world of sin, righteousness,
and judgment.
The Holy Spirit, he comes along that if
you have any realization within, you know what
is wrong, you know what is right, and
you know the consequences of it, that's what
Jesus said.
Holy Spirit, when he comes, he will convict
the world of sin, of righteousness, and of
judgment.
The Holy Spirit, he will come and he'll
tell your heart, this is wrong, this is
how it's made right, and this is the
consequences, the judgment that'll happen.
The judgment will be, you know, wonderful in
Christ eternally if you come to him, that
your judgment, if you don't turn to him
and respond to him, will be terrible.
But the wonderful thing is, is that if
you ever even have a conviction, there's the
Holy Spirit speaking to you, and the Bible
says hear him, hear what he says, but
don't provoke him.
When he says something, say no, I don't
want to do it, I don't want to
listen, I don't want to go your way.
But the wonderful thing is when somebody just
determines within their heart, Lord, I want to
learn how do I hear, and how do
I respond without provoking God.
But when you, the Holy Spirit, speaks to
me, then I begin to do and I
begin to respond.
Paul says, be not drunk on wine where
it's in excess, but be filled with the
Spirit.
I'm not only simply even to hear the
Spirit, God wants me to aggressively, longingly desire
that my life would be filled with the
Holy Spirit.
Luke 4-1 tells us, and Jesus being
filled with the Holy Spirit was led by
the Spirit in the wilderness where he was
tempted to the devil for 40 days.
But here we have Jesus filled with the
Holy Spirit and then led by the Spirit.
How we ought to be, Lord, I want
to hear, I want to be filled, I
want to be led by your Holy Spirit.
Paul writes in Galatians 5-16, he says,
this I say, then walk in the Spirit,
and you will not fulfill the lust of
the flesh.
Here Paul looks there and he says, you
know, all the wonderful things about to hear,
to be filled, you know, to be led
by the Spirit, to want to find myself
walking in the Spirit.
He says, if you walk in the Spirit,
just with that dimension of your life, Lord,
I want as I go home, as I
walk out of here today, as I go
to work tomorrow, I want to go in
there, you know, filled, led, hearing, responding to
the Holy Spirit, just walking in a sense
of your presence and of your life.
In Galatians 5, Paul says, live in the
Spirit.
He says, if we live in the Spirit,
let us also walk in the Spirit.
If I have, if God has given me
a spiritual life, if He's given me a
life in the Spirit, Paul says, doesn't it
make sense that we ought to want to
walk in it?
To know that I'm a spiritual being, to
know that God has given me, and I've
been born of His Holy Spirit.
How we ought to be ones that long
to walk, to be filled, to have, you
know, that strength and that power.
And then Paul in Romans 8-13, he
says, if you live after the flesh, you
shall die, but if you through the Spirit
mortify the deeds of the body, you live.
Here Paul says, the ability to overcome our
own carnal nature, our own weaknesses of our
own flesh, our own trials, our own temptations,
it is going to be by the power
of the Holy Spirit that we'll mortify the
deeds of the flesh, that we will discover
this wonderful spiritual life.
And Jesus said, you'll receive power, after which
the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
The wonderful thing is that when we look
in the Bible and we realize, the very
first thing, if I want to know how
to be a partaker of Christ, then Jesus
says, you know, be filled with my Spirit,
live in my Spirit, walk in my Spirit,
hear my Spirit, respond to my Spirit.
May I ask you today, are you hearing
Him?
Is there that sense within you or in
your life that says, Lord, I want to
hear and I want to live and I
want to walk.
I want to know your power.
I want to enter into being a full
partaker of Christ.
I want to have a full partnership.
I want to be a full associate in
every way I possibly can.
John 10, Jesus said, a thief comes but
for to rob and to steal and to
kill and destroy.
I've come that you might have life.
You might have it more abundantly.
Here the Lord, He looks at us and
He says, I want to give you a
Spirit hearing life, a Spirit filled life, a
Spirit led life, a Spirit empowered life, a
Spirit, you know, empowered marriage, a Spirit empowered
home, a Spirit empowered career, something there where
there's a man or a woman and who
they are day by day.
The power of God is literally going with
them.
The thought of realizing that God is looking
at you and me today and He says,
not only I have this life and this
power available to you.
Here in this text, He is exhorting us
to say, by the way, don't go to
work without it.
Is it the American Express card or one
of them says, don't go somewhere without it.
I don't know what it is now, you
know, but home, don't go home, don't go
home.
Oh, don't leave home without it.
Thank you very much.
That's the one that somebody will get a
song about probably right there.
But anyway, don't leave home.
I just put my wife on a plane
this morning.
She left home.
She'll have a great few days.
But we don't have one.
So anyway, poor thing.
She has her ways.
But anyway, but on how do we, in
a sense of don't leave home without, you
know, the spirit, we ought to have that
within us to think, Lord, don't don't send
me home.
Don't send me into my marriage.
Don't send me to my family.
Don't send me into my job without somebody
there that I don't send me there without
the resources of your love, of your power,
of your strength, of your genius, that I
might be a full partaker.
I mean, what a wonderful not only offer,
but to realize here the Lord exhorts us.
He says, by the way, you must have
this.
It just isn't some sort of an extra
added plus for those that really want to
be strong Christians.
That ought to really want to be right
on, that ought to want to be dynamic.
He says this is just fundamental for every
child of God that wants to be a
partaker of Christ at all.
So it begins here with hearing, but then
it goes on.
And then he tells us in verse 80,
he says, Harden not your heart, he says,
in the provocation of the day, the temptation
of the wilderness, your father's tempted me, proved
me, saw my works for 40 years.
And you know, wherefore I was grieved at
that generation.
Here is something that is the Lord looks
now.
Secondly, he says, not only do I want
you to hear the spirit, but secondly, he
says, I want to tell you, you've got
to consciously be somebody that you are determined
not only to hear the spirit, but to
harden not your heart.
Harden not your heart.
Here it is something that God looks at
the children of Israel.
And of course, you know that if somebody
wants to be, you know, hopefully a partaker
of Christ, I want to be a share.
I want to be a full associate, a
full partner with him in his glory.
Then God, you know, he says, hear my
voice.
And then secondly, you will be tempted.
You will have times where you will be
tried and you will be tempted to provoke
God or to harden your heart.
There will be those times that will become
upon your life, just like they did for
the children of Israel, where there they got
out and on one hand, so thrilled with
God, they even when they left Egypt and
they got out there and Moses took him
out and said, this is how we're going
to live.
And he laid him out.
Initially, they all the entire congregation of Israel
says this.
We will say in this.
We will do.
We will follow him.
They all responded wholeheartedly.
We are going to say and we are
going to do whatever it is God wants.
And of course, I suppose that's in the
heart of every Christian.
We ought to long for that.
We all know those times.
But yet what happens?
Why is it that we don't do those
things?
Why didn't the children of Israel?
That's our illustration here that the Bible gives
to us.
And here you see the children of Israel.
They spent some 40 years out there in
the wilderness watching God.
And there is they watched him.
Here the Lord says he's where I was
grieved at that generation.
Here is he looked at him, you know,
and he says, your father's.
He says there for 40 years, they tempted
me, proved me, and they saw my works
for 40 years.
God said, what an amazing thing to think
of somebody for 40 years, knowing full well
that unbelievable power of God had seen it
like nobody else.
Probably before or since almost for 40 years,
they saw his work.
They saw his plagues as they were brought,
you know, upon Egypt.
They all saw it.
They all realized what was, you know, something
there, an unbelievable power was being unleashed upon
the planet.
They saw there is the river turned to
blood.
They saw as Moses went before the Red
Sea and stretched out his rod and it
opened.
They saw when they walked through on dry
ground through the midst of a river.
They saw the river as it was closed
upon Pharaoh and his army.
They saw there is the manna.
It came out of heaven day by day
to meet their needs.
They saw the pillar of fire that warmed
them by night.
They saw the cloud that covered them from
the noonday heat and led them through the
wilderness.
They saw the water that came out of
the rock.
They saw the quail that came out of
the sky.
They saw their enemies destroyed.
They were somebody that their testimony could, you
know, was one there that as God utterly
destroyed their enemies.
They saw a power unknown to man.
They saw there is the children of Israel
and by, you know, they destroyed Shihon, the
king of the Amorites, and Og, the king
of Bashan.
Later on, when the children of Israel finally
did go into the land and the spies
ran into Rahab in Jericho, perhaps you remember
the story, there's some spies came in, now
finally when the children of Israel under Joshua,
they're in the land, they're entering into it.
And they've sent some spies to go to,
you know, check out how to, you know,
they wanted to go and approach Jericho to
take that battle.
And there they found, you know, as they
found this woman Rahab in town and she
hid the spies.
But there when she is talking to these
spies that have come in, they're now going
to take the land.
Listen to this, the harlot woman in Jericho,
this is what she has to say.
She's been living there her whole life.
She said here unto the men, the spies,
I know that the Lord has given you
the land and that your terror is fallen
upon us and that all the inhabitants of
the land, they faint because of you.
For we have heard how the God dried
up the water of the Red Sea for
you when you came out of Egypt and
what you did under the two kings of
the Amorites that were on the other side
of Jordan, Shihon and Og, whom he utterly
destroyed.
And as soon as we had heard these
things, our hearts did melt, neither did there
remain any more courage in any man because
of you.
For the Lord, your God, he is God
in heaven above and in earth beneath.
Here the children of Israel, they spent 40
years afraid to go into the promised land.
Afraid to go conquer it.
Afraid that for 40 years they saw God's
power, they experienced it, and even the world,
Jericho, they looked and they saw this and
they knew the children of Israel were coming
to their land.
They knew that they were destined to have
it.
They knew that God had promised it to
them and they knew they didn't stand a
chance themselves against God, even though the children
of Israel looked at them.
And it's terrible because when the children of
Israel sent in earlier on at the beginning
of the 40 years, when they were out
there, they were afraid to go in, even
though God said it's a land flowing with
milk and honey, I'll give you houses you
didn't build, cities you didn't build, olive years
you didn't plant, wheat fields you didn't plow,
houses you didn't build, wells you didn't dig,
I'll give it all to you, I'll destroy
everybody around you.
And he says, I am going to bring
you into a land where the enemies are
great here and mightier than you are, to
destroy them.
Here God told the children of Israel, you
go on into this land, yes they're greater
and yes they're mightier, well they sent in
the spies.
First set of spies, 40 years earlier, when
the spies came back 40 years earlier, it
says in Numbers 13, but the men that
went up, they said we are not able
to go against these people for they are
stronger than we.
And they brought up an evil report unto
the land that they had searched, about the
land that they had searched unto the children
of Israel, saying the land through which we
have gone to search.
It is a land that eats up its
inhabitants thereof, and all the people that we
saw, they are men of great stature.
And there we saw the giants, the son
of Anak, of which some are giants, and
we in our own sight we were as
grasshoppers, as we stood in their sight.
And all the congregation lifted up their voices,
and they cried, and the people wept that
night.
And all the children of Israel, they murmured
against Moses and against Aaron, and the whole
congregation said unto them, would to God that
we had died in Egypt, that we had
died in this wilderness, and wherefore hath the
Lord brought us unto this land to fall
by the sword, that our wives and our
children should be a prey, were it not
better for us that we should just return
to Egypt?
And they said to one another, let us
make a captain, and let us return to
Egypt.
Here they are out there, and they hear,
go on into this land, they look over
Jordan, they send some spies in.
The spies come back and say they are
huge, there are giants in the land, oh
it is a land flowing with milk and
honey, they come back with grapes, they come
back with all this is so rich and
so wonderful, but there is one problem.
We can't take it, they are bigger than
we are, they are huge, they will destroy
us, we have no ability.
And here the next thing you know they
provoke God, their God, he told them before
they even saw it, before they even sent
their spies, by the way I am sending
you unto a land that they are greater
and mightier than thou art, to give thee
their land for an inheritance as it is
this day.
God says, yes, you have no ability yourself
to conquer it, but that is the secret
of hearing my voice, I will give it
to you, trust me.
Now you go, and they said no, but
yet for forty years, manna every day, pillar
of fire by night, cloud by day, quail
out of the sky, enemies destroyed, and here
all that they did was they provoked God
as God continuously showed a power that was
unbelievable, a power that you would think next
to those enemies they would say, hey wait
a minute, one day they would put it
together and say, look at all of this
power that sustains us every day, that miraculously
preserves and cares, will it not be sufficient
for when we get into the land to
take care of the enemies, and they never
correlated the two, and they lived in unbelief,
they found themselves staying out of the land,
and they provoked God, here was something that
they pushed him and pushed him and pushed
him, and God says I have shown you
my power, my presence, my works, like no
one has ever seen for forty years, and
you still won't believe me.
But let me ask you, is this not
true with you and me?
Is this not our struggle exactly the same
as well?
Which one of us here as a Christian
has not seen the saving power of Christ
on the cross, the river that he has
opened for us into eternity to be in
heaven with God forever and ever through his
suffering on the cross, dying for me, what
power, rising from the dead, sending his Holy
Spirit into me, bearing witness with my spirit
that I am a child of God and
of his child and heir, heir of God
and joint heir with Christ?
If you're a Christian, you know this, because
the Holy Spirit tells you.
You've seen his power.
How many battles has he fought for you
and enemies has he already destroyed in your
life to bring you as far as you
are, to sustain you?
How many times is there not the pillar
of fire by night, the cloud by day?
His presence, his blessing, his provision that you
and I know only too well comes from
his power.
We see it as well as they ever
saw it themselves.
And yet, amazingly, I can be as a
Christian today, I can live in the wilderness
side of life.
I can be somebody that I don't really
hear his voice, and then when the trial
comes, I harden my heart.
When God brings me to Jordan River and
he says, go on into the land, go
on the other side, and we look over
on Jordan and our enemies or our giants
is our unloving marriage.
The enemy, the battle we have on the
other side of Jordan, it's our family, it's
our children.
It's maybe our health.
We look over there, our career, our job,
our finances.
And we look over there and God says,
trust me, I will meet your needs, I
will fill you, I'll care for you.
Don't harden your heart.
You know, I'm just staying right here.
I sent some spies over into that marriage
once and she's, she's a child of Annick,
I tell you.
She's, she's got giant genes, you know, or
something in her DNA.
I'm no, I can't handle it.
I don't have the resources to know how
to love.
I can't handle these children.
Powerless.
And aren't we all?
You know, all of these things.
When we look there and realize my career
or, you know, my, whatever it may be,
my health, my finances, and God looks over
there and he says, trust me, rejoice in
me, rest in me, and don't harden your
heart.
Don't say, no, it can't be so for
me.
That you can work within my heart and
work within my life.
You see, it's through these very trials, these
very temptations.
The children of Israel, when they were away
from the borders of Canaan, when they were
away from Jordan, on one hand, they could
love God and rejoice.
They just stayed in the wilderness.
They could say, oh, he's great, he's wonderful,
I love him.
But then when the real trials came, they
backed off and said, not me.
I can't do that.
I can't go there.
But we don't realize so often it's those
very trials and these very temptations that came
into their life that stopped them from being
a partaker.
God wanted them to be a partaker of
his power, but you've got to, but their
God, in order for them to really enjoy
his power and experience his power, he had
to give them a trial that required his
power.
And they were afraid.
They hardened their hearts.
What if it didn't come?
That's what happened.
Friday morning, morning and evening, it's a wonderful
devotional by Charles Spurgeon.
The one for just this last Friday morning
was out of Job 10.2, where Job,
speaking to God, he says, show me wherefore
thou contendest with me.
Here, Job, he finds himself there.
God, why am I seemingly contending with you?
What's this contest going on somehow or another?
I realize in all of these trials and
all these struggles that are going on out
there in the battles of life, it's really
you and me that's contending, isn't it, God?
And Job there, he looked at all of
this.
He says, this out here, it's just like,
this is just some silly little game there
that you put me through, some trial, some
testing to contend with who you are.
What's it all about?
Great question, isn't it?
Spurgeon's comment on this, the devotional, he says,
perhaps, O tried soul, the Lord is doing
this to develop thy graces.
There are some of thy graces which would
never be discovered if it were not for
thy trials.
Dost thou not know that thy faith never
looks so grand in summer weather as it
does in winter?
Love is too often like a glow worm,
showing little in the light except it be
in the midst of surrounding darkness.
Hope itself is like a star, not to
be seen in the sunshine of prosperity but
only to be discovered in the night of
adversity.
Afflictions are often the black foils in which
God doth send His jewels of His children's
graces to make them shine the better.
It was a little while ago that thou
wast on thy knees and was saying, Lord,
I fear I have no faith.
Let me know that I have faith.
Was not this really perhaps unconsciously praying for
trials?
How can thou know that thou hast faith
until faith is exercised?
Depend upon it.
God often sends us trials that our graces
may be discovered and that we may be
certified of their existence.
You see, here, you know, God with the
children of Israel, He wanted them to be
a full partaker of Christ and He says,
Here, I'm going to give you, you know,
enemies, battles that are bigger than you, that
you require Me.
And yes, you will contend with Me.
You will find yourself there on your knees
crying out, God, I can't go into the
land without you.
You will have to hold Me and carry
Me and strengthen Me every step of the
way.
And God says, Yes.
That's how your faith will be discovered.
That's how you'll enter in.
Trials make the promise sweet.
Trials give new life to prayer.
Trials bring Me to His feet, lay Me
low and keep Me there.
You see, if I'm finding that I'm somebody,
if I really want to be a partaker
of Christ, well, I need to hear His
voice, harden up my heart.
And then the next thing, He goes on.
Now He wants me to literally head off
into His ways.
For here the Lord, He tells them in
verse 10, He says, Wherefore, I said, I
was grieved with that generation.
I said, Did they always err in the
heart?
They have not known My ways.
Here, they have not known My pathways.
They have not known the ways of God.
One of the things that happens is somebody
is going to be a partaker of Christ.
One of the, God has this way.
First of all, He says, Hear My, hear
My Spirit.
Harden not your heart.
And He says, Now head off in My
ways.
To understand this, in Psalm 137, it says,
He made known His ways unto Moses and
His acts unto the children of Israel.
One of the things about the children of
Israel is they all knew the acts of
God.
You could ask any one of the children
of Israel, a couple of million of them,
about the acts of God, what it was.
They could all tell you about the plagues.
Oh yeah, they were something.
They could tell you about the Red Sea.
You wouldn't believe what it was.
You open it, we'd walk through, dry.
Here it's all held back in a heap.
Looking at this, just held the water, held
against us.
We walked through as in a tunnel, through
the Red Sea.
Unbelievable manna every day.
Pillar of fire at night.
Cloud by day.
Quail to feed us.
Destroyed armies.
God did this and God did this.
Their testimony could be unbelievable of the acts
of God.
But if you would have turned to any
one of them and say, Now, why did
He do it?
What are His ways?
What was He up to?
What was He thinking?
What were His processes within this?
Why?
Who is He?
What is He trying to accomplish in your
life through all of these things?
They would have sat there and said, Got
me.
But boy, it was something.
It was something.
I'm going to write a book on it,
I am.
I was there.
I was an eyewitness.
They knew the acts of God.
Moses knew His ways.
And here God told the children of Israel
the sad thing about you.
He says, They always err in their heart.
They have not known My ways.
They did not become a real partaker of
My heart and My life, My passion, My
being, who I am, a sharer, a full
partaker of who it is, the opportunity to
discover why I love them, why I'm caring,
why I'm so caring and empowering, what I'm
up to within it.
I think that one of the most wonderful
things about being a child of God is
not just the inheritance to land.
It isn't just going on the other side
of Jordan and all of a sudden God's
blessing you and He's doing wonderful things.
And there's houses you didn't build and wells
you didn't dig and vineyards you didn't plant
and blessings all around.
And to look there and say, Is this
wild or what?
But more than all of that is that
through life somebody becomes a partaker of the
ways of God.
They find themselves as they sit on the
front porch and maybe they see the blessings
of God and then they know and they
rest in all that He is and all
that He has done and how wonderful He
is to them.
More than all of that they say, You
know, the greater riches of it all is
I know His ways.
I know His heart.
I know what I seem to mean to
Him.
I've discovered something about His presence and of
His life and a dynamic about Him.
I never would have known had I not
been frightened at Jordan and tried to wonder
about the other side if I hadn't contended
with Him.
If I hadn't had these trials, if I
hadn't had these struggles, if I hadn't had
these heartbreaking times, if I didn't have that
loveless marriage, if I didn't have this crisis
in the home, if I didn't know these
things, I never would have known His ways.
And here as the writer of Hebrews, he
said, Would you want to be a partaker
of Christ?
A full sharer in His glory and His
might and His majesty and His goodness?
Somebody that is really drawn into all that
it is.
Hear His voice.
Harden not your hearts in your trials, in
your struggle that you're in now.
Don't harden it.
Find yourself, Okay, Lord, you want to go
across.
You want to go over?
I'm scared to death.
God says, Fine.
I'm not.
I'll be with you always until the end
of the age.
Let's go.
Stand still and see the salvation of the
Lord.
And then lastly, He then wants us to
not only hear the voice of the Spirit,
to harden not our heart and head on
into His ways, but He wants us to
heal others.
He says in verse 13, He says, But
exhort one another daily, while it is called
a day, lest there be in any of
you an evil heart of unbelief, departing from
the Lord.
Hear Paul, or the writer of Hebrews.
He now looks at somebody there that has
understood any of these things, that has entered
in.
Somebody at all there that is a partaker
of Christ.
He now turns to that person.
He says, Listen here.
You've got a job.
I want you with your life to be
somebody that you exhort one another daily, while
it is called a day.
While you've got the day now.
While you've got the time now.
While you've got the opportunity now.
Encourage.
That's what the word exhort means.
We think of exhort like somebody sticking their
finger in your face.
You better, you better, you, you, you, you.
You know, or one of those.
The word exhort, it's actually the word where
we get the comforter from.
The Holy Spirit who comforts.
The word comfort at all, it could be
comfort one another just as easy as exhort
one another.
It means to encourage one another, to build
up one another.
And here there is something there.
It simply looks there.
As somebody says, If you have learned to
hear His voice, to harden out your heart,
to head into His ways, now I want
you to turn and heal others.
There's no such thing as a Christian.
I'll tell you, every one of us knows
what it is to stand at Jordan's shores
and to look at the other side of
what trial or what struggle or what burden
or what heartache or what hopeless thing there
is or what enemy over there.
Which one of us doesn't fully understand that?
And what is needed so often there is
that somebody that has found a way to
the other side, somebody that has found the
strength and the presence and the power and
knows He's there and knows that He will
bless and know that He can lead you
through anything.
He says, Now you come over and you
help those that stand on the shore with
their home and their life and their walk.
Today if you'll hear His voice, harden out
your heart, that you now come and exhort
one another daily.
Well, it is called today.
So soon this life will have passed.
And our opportunity to look to people and
to encourage them and to build them up.
Won't need them in heaven.
Won't need encouragers in heaven.
You all need encouragement.
We'll be on the other side fully, every
one of us.
There won't be anybody that's timid or fearful.
But how many of us would maybe look
at it back and say, I wish I
had been there for you when you needed
me.
I wish I had taken the time to
pray for you and encourage you.
I saw you there standing on the banks
of Jordan from the wilderness side and you
were overcome with fear.
You looked at your home and you thought
you couldn't get it.
You got to a place where you were
hopeless with this and that and you were
giving up.
I should have come, prayed for you, talked
to you, encouraged you.
This is what the body of Christ is
all about.
And this is what partakers of Christ are
all about.
That when we find ourselves in life, we
realize God looks and He says, you may
be a partaker of me.
There's no life like this, is there?
And nothing so wonderful.
I look at this sadly so often I
see people that live in the wilderness.
They can have a lot.
They can do a lot.
You know, they can experience a lot.
But I also know there is nothing in
all the world like entering into His rest.
Like some of where we have ceased from
our own labors, we'll look at this next
week in chapter four.
But where we begin to discover what it
is to rest in Him, to know His
power, to know His sufficiency, to be able
to look at any enemy, any battle, straight
in the eye.
So give it your best shot.
And then we'll let the Lord give His
best shot.
See what He does.
Oh, today, today, if you will hear His
voice, harden not your heart.
Today perhaps some of you, there's a battle,
there's a struggle, there's a heartache.
It stands before you as big as a
giant and you're like a grasshopper before it.
Just, you know, a giant.
You know what a picture they had.
They said, we're like grasshoppers before giants.
Not a fair battle.
It's to come up and just step on
it.
And the Lord says, you got that right.
You are like a grasshopper.
But I'm not.
That's why one day you'll love me so
much.
Because I gave you the land.
I gave you my power.
Day by day you learned to need me.
You knew what it was when the trials
came.
Instead of hardening your heart again and again
and again and again, one day you said,
soften my heart.
Isn't there a chorus, soften my heart?
So let's pray.
Lord, how we thank You for Your love
for us.
And Lord, I just pray today just as
a body, as the fellowship of partakers in
Jesus Christ, Lord, as we come today, Lord,
as partakers, we want to not just hear
how to be a partaker, but Lord, help
us know how to heed You and not
harden our heart.
Perhaps some of us right now, there's a
battle in our life.
There's a struggle.
And Lord, we just look and we are
just like the children of Israel.
We're just like the spies who said, You
don't understand.
I have seen it.
And Lord, You look at us and say,
Have you seen me?
The only difference between Joshua and Caleb who
had the good report and the ten who
had the evil report was Joshua and Caleb
said, Yes, all of that is true.
But one thing they didn't see that we
did.
We saw the Lord.
And He is able to deliver us.
Lord, may we be ones that we see
You because we are determined to be partakers.
Lord, help, I just pray right now for
the heart that just may be crying out,
the one that just needs, Lord, Your Spirit
to come and to whisper and to comfort,
to encourage, to say, I will give it
to You.
Trust me.
I died on the cross.
You've seen my works for many years.
Don't harden your heart.
I want You to learn my ways even
through this trial.
Teach us these things, Father.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.