Brother Gary Sunday Morning 8/18/13
Heb 3:7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if
ye will hear his voice,
Heb 3:8 Harden not your hearts, as in the
provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
Heb 3:9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and
saw my works forty years.
We are blessed! God
is mindful of every one of us. Today if
you will hear his voice… The word
wherefore appears again in this scripture.
It refers to what has been written previously. In the first Chapter of Hebrews it tells us
that He is speaking to us through His son, Jesus Christ. Jesus and the Word are synonymous.
God is speaking to us by His Son and by His Word and God
also ordained that there be angels that are ministering spirits. Everyone in this audience has had some time
to acquaint themselves with God. We
trust that each of you has.
The angels are designed of God to minister to everyone that
should be an heir of salvation. God
desires that every soul not only get saved but get saved and sanctified and
have all these blessings that God ordained for us. He left us not only the blueprint but
ordained that there be ministers to minister to us and help us to make our
calling and election sure.
In chapter two: since God is speaking to us through His Son
and His Word, it is mine and it is your responsibility to give the more earnest
heed to the things we have heard lest at any time we should let them slip.
We have all experienced allowing something to slip from our
hands. Through living sometimes the
precautions that we have made slip away from us and we find ourselves back
where we were before and in the position where we had made the first
precaution.
The second chapter:
how shall we escape if we neglect this great salvation? As God deals with us today, He deals with all
of us. God has already been speaking to
the children through life to know and serve God. We want to give the more earnest heed that we
not in any way endanger our salvation.
Chapter one: God ordained that we know about God and his son;
chapter two: don’t let anything slip away.
Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling… Everyone goes through seasons of life of
feeling rejected or feeling the lack of self confidence or self worth. We each receive a heavenly calling through
the journey of life. These that were
saved had been a partaker of that heavenly calling.
When God speaks to us it needs to be of utmost
priority. The heavenly calling is the
very best path that you will ever be asked to travel.
There are many roads and opportunities. To be a partaker of the heavenly calling
makes you a privileged individual. May
we walk humbly with our God and realize how blessed we are.
In chapter 3 verse 7 we see again the word,
‘wherefore’.
Heb 3:7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if
ye will hear his voice,
I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will speak to
me and to every one of us here this day.
Paul turns to a warning because he had a heavy burden as he wrote this
to the Hebrews. He knew that there had
been 600,000 footmen that God delivered from Egyptian bondage.
Historians calculate that it was 2.5 million people that
escaped Egyptian bondage. They didn’t
get very far on their journey until when difficulty arose they didn’t yield to God.
Every one of us needs to be educated and educated
again. Difficulty is a part of life and
God uses it to help you and me get to where He wants us to be.
If our life is a life of ease we become spoiled and self-centered. We become intolerant of any challenges of
life.
Paul wrote under inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God: ‘Today.’
It was the design of God to in a short period of time take
the children of Israel through the wilderness into Canaan. But not long after their deliverance they
began to murmur and complain. There are
definite results that happen if we allow our self to hesitate in allowing our
self to obey rapidly.
Harden: harden not
your heart. I’ve never seen my
heart. Those of you that work in the
medical community look at hearts through technology and maybe literally. I’ve never seen my heart but I have seen my
hands.
You look upon a baby’s hands and they come into this world
without a callous. This word ‘harden’
comes from the thought of callous. In my
life and in your life we have had experiences that we realized, “This is trying
to make me calloused.”
In our world, it is unfortunate but true: people’s language
is very offensive. My wife told me the
other night that she was glad that I didn’t get after that guy for the language
that he was using because it could have cost us our life.
Never allow your life and your heart to become calloused so
that sin is accepted, whether it be music, the printed page, or immodesty. But especially never harden your heart towards
the voice of God.
I have some brief descriptions of the things that were
working to cause the Children of Israel to become so calloused that they
reached a place where they wanted to go back to Egypt.
It is so sad. Canaan
was just a little distance past where they were. In this audience there may be a time when you
feel, “What is wrong that everyone is not raising their hand with
victory.” Other times you become heavily
burdened. The Word has taught us to not
fault find but lift up the hands that hang down.
There are some heavy things on some hearts this
morning. There are others that all they
see is the rainbow and suppose that probably today they will find the bucket of
gold.
Before they began their journey the children of Israel had
already had a lot of miracles. From the
youngest to the oldest, you have had miracle upon miracle upon miracle in your
life. Don’t meet me at the door and tell
me how rough life is this morning.
We are so blessed to have a mind. People that think they are about ready for
the rest-home haven’t been there yet.
You say, “You don’t know how rough I have it.” My thought is that our lives have been filled
with miracles.
Over by Sister Dorothy’s there was a bedroom and there was a
wood cook stove that my daddy heated water on because they were about to
deliver a baby. There were a lot of
things that could happen... How many
brushes with death have we had? One
hunting season, Sister Alice was in someone’s sights. God has been good!
There is a real strong spirit that comes to cause people to
murmur and complain. The Children of
Israel on their journey were unhappy because they didn’t have bread and God
gave them bread from heaven, manna.
Not long after there was a lack of water. Let me help you this morning. If you have a need, that need is designed to
help you get to God. It is not designed
because God is mad at you. Today when
you hear His voice… God gave them first
bread then water.
The Children of Israel were so distracted that they decided,
“Moses is gone. God is gone. Let’s just build a calf. Moses came off the mountain and didn’t like
what he heard. May God help us that we
set a pattern in our life that we not allow our heart to become calloused.
God answers prayer.
Don’t give up. You may be going
through a very difficult season in your life.
If you will not let God be God and allow your difficulty to overwhelm
you, life will be difficult.
Can you get before God and surrender the difficulty to Him
and say, “Instead of my trying to figure things out and my heart become
calloused, I will let you be in control today and the land of Canaan flowing
with milk and honey is ahead.” I’m not
just talking about heaven. There are
many good things in store for those that will hear His voice.
They were dissatisfied with God had provided. God sent quail. They began thinking about how good it was
back in Egypt. Sin has mistreated people
that are out there: Oppression,
depression, homelessness. Many people
today have no one that cares.
Egypt is not a comely place.
Oppression: Because the Children
of Israel were prospering, Egypt decided that they wanted more production with
less help to them. Management has always
thought that. When they say, “I want to
cut the crew and I want you to get more done.”
Tell them, “I read about you.”
The Children of Israel said, “At least we had some garlic.” They were headed to a land where the grapes
were bigger than the garlic. They began
to let their heart become calloused. A
calloused heart affects the mind.
“At least we had onions and fish. At least we knew what we had. We had to go to work and we had people
lording it over us.”
We were a slave to sin.
Remember. We were a slave to
being used and abused.
They became so calloused that they failed to believe that God
would do all that He promised. God
wanted them in Canaan. He didn’t want them
wandering.
God spoke to Moses and Aaron and told them to prepare for
Canaan. They sent the spies. There were ten of them that came back that got
so fearful while they were there that all they could see was the fenced city
and the giants. Their minds were filled
with de-imagination and they said, “We were in our sight as grasshoppers.”
Caleb and Joshua came back and talked about the grapes that
were lush, a land that was overflowing with milk and honey. “Yes there are obstacles and giants but with
God we are able, let us go at once.”
When God speaks to you, may you be challenged with this
thought, “Let us go at once.”
Heb 3:7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if
ye will hear his voice,
Heb 3:12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of
you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
The affect the ten spies had on the Children of Israel: Their evil report and unbelief brought deep
discouragement.
We will all battle discouragement we better battle and
win. This discouragement settled down
and caused them to have no fight in them against it. God doesn’t want you discouraged.
God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear but of power, of love,
and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
They doubted that God would supply their needs, “Moses brought
us here to die in the wilderness.”
God has a good and an excellent plan, remember.
They were willing to disregard Moses and say, Let us make
our own captain and return to Egypt.
Heb 3:13 But exhort one another daily, while it is
called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
People pick up the cliché’s of the world, “Everything is
good.” You are living contrary to the
scripture: ‘Exhort one another daily.’
This world, people, and the enemy will make you calloused soon.
After you become calloused the deceitfulness of sin, that
which is wrong, won’t look so bad. Sin
needs to always be exceedingly sinful.
Today it is fine to need to come to the house of God and be
built up in your most holy faith. It is
fine in any service or on any given day to call your brother and say, “I am
praying for you.”
I have felt your prayers for me, thank you, I desperately
need them.
It is fine that we say, “For whatever reason I find myself
in need of prayer.” There is no issue
with me calling for prayer. There should
be no issue with anyone in the congregation calling for prayer.
Lest any be calloused.
When it comes to sin keep it exceedingly sinful. If we allow our heart to become calloused
then it won’t be long until we are saying, “Dear God, how come?” And there will
be a little irritation in our life that we blame on God.
Sometimes it is the choices of others and sometimes it is
our own choices that bring the difficulty.
If we make choices that bring difficulty then there is only one thing to
do and that is to say, “I am the one.”
During one sickness my hearing was impaired. Dr Smith told me that I needed a specialist
and he knew the best. He got me an
appointment with him. I walked into this
place and it looked to be a place of specialists. Many people came in to test me and they all
said, “You need a specialist.” I was
thinking, “I need to hear.”
Then the specialist came in and said, “Let me see what is
going on here.” He looked deep into my
ear and my eardrum and he said, “There is a deposit left by infection that has
made a callous over your eardrum and that is why you cannot hear.” He said, “If you will allow me to, I will
take this sharp instrument and will take that off and you will be able to hear.”
If your heart has become calloused, you need a specialist
and his name is Jesus. If there are so
many voices that you cannot hear, you need a specialist. The whole issue is this, “today when you hear
His voice, harden not your heart.” If
you have the attitude “I won’t go to the altar” then you put a callous over
your heart.
I’ve been going to the altar for many years. It is alright with me if God tells me to go
to the altar the day before I die. I
would go to the altar in the presence of my enemies. What if they whatever, I’d obey God.
There is something that we don’t want to do and that is
callous our heart when God speaks to us.
This morning, I know that God gave me this message and if it
was just for me then you pray that I get it all. If there was a part of this message that was
for you, whatever you need to do to nail it down, get it nailed down.
Today when you hear his voice, harden not your heart.
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