Today! Series

On October 8, 1871, D.L. Moody was preaching to the largest crowd he had ever faced. He preached a sermon entitled, “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called the Christ?” From Matthew 27:22. He finished with these words: “I wish you would take this text home with you and turn it over in your minds during the week, and next Sabbath we will come to Calvary and the Cross, and we will decide what to do with Jesus of Nazareth.” That was the night of the Great Chicago Fire and by morning much of the city lay in ashes. Many who were there that night perished. Moody said: “I have never since dared to give an audience a week to think of their salvation. I have never seen that congregation since… But I want to tell you of one lesson that I learned that night which I have never forgotten, and that is, when I preach - I press Christ upon the people then and there and try to bring them to a decision that day.”

Tomorrow is not promised! What we have is Today! —“Today if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” This letter to the Hebrews was written to first century Jewish/Hebrew Christians who were likely living in Judea, that is southern Israel, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where a large scale persecution of Christians, the first persecution of Christians, had broken out with the martyrdom of Deacon Stephen in about 37 A.D. And the persecution had never let up. It’s now about 30 years later and the writer of the book has the concern that, and probably some evidence for, the prospect that some of these new followers of Christ were falling away or thinking about falling away from Christ because of the never-ending hardships they were enduring due to the long-term persecution they had experienced. They were very specifically thinking about returning to Judaism, merely observing the Old Testament Law and the Temple sacrifices and feasts as their persecutors, unsaved Jews were doing. The writer warns them NO, they cannot go back! In the first two chapters, we are taught that Jesus is greater. He’s greater than the prophets that came before Him. He’s greater than the angels. He’s even greater than Moses! Our confidence is this—that Jesus, and Jesus alone, saves. That there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, as Acts 4:12 tells us, and that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no man comes to the Father except through Him, as Jesus Himself put it in John 14:6. So be warned! Don’t fall away from Jesus. Moses is not a sufficient substitute. He does so by quoting Psalm 95, written the King David, in about 1000 B.C., 450 years after the events of the wilderness wandering of the Jews which it refers to. Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, (Notice the clear belief on the part of the writer that the real author of Psalm 95 is not just David, but God the Holy Spirit speaking through him) —“Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness... as I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” Today we must consider Their Rebellion; Today we must consider His Rest; Today we must consider Our Response…

Their Rebellion (tell of the provocation)

ILLUS: Moses. After all the powerful acts of God leading them out of the slavery in Egypt, the Jews were then led to the Promised Land through a wilderness where there was often no food or water by a Pillar of Cloud by Day and a Pillar of Fire by night. Manna fell from heaven each night to feed these two million people in the wilderness. Though God had clearly shown His power and His ability to provide and deliver, the Jews grumbled and complained against Moses and against God, doubting that God was actually bringing them into the Promised Land. Moses appoints 12 spies to explore the land and bring back a report. Only two of them, Joshua and Caleb, claimed that with God’s help they could take the land. The people decided to go with the recommendation of the 10, rather than the two. And when God told them to go up and take the land, they rebelled against God’s command, and in unbelief, despite all that God had shown them, refused to go. It was at that point, that God had had it. He swore in His wrath that they would never enter His rest. That rest, in the Old Testament, was the Promised Land. The goal in the Old Testament had never been eternal life for the Jews, it had been the inheritance of the Promised Land. The result was that all of those Jews who had been delivered from Egypt who were 20 years and older were then refused entrance to the Promised Land, and they spent the next 39 years wandering in the wilderness until all of them died.