Salvation Lost

Hebrews 3:12–19

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. (Heb. 3:16–19)

The writer of the Book of Hebrews was a pastor. His concern in writing this grand exposition was a pastoral one, and we see this most clearly in passages like the one we consider in this chapter. Here he expresses concern that, as he says in verse 13, “none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” His purpose is not merely to set forth doctrine, valuable though that is, but to apply his teaching and to bring it to bear with force upon his precious readers so they will persevere in faith through hard times. The thought of losing even one of this flock through unbelief is enough to motivate his strong exhortations.

This emphasis accounts for the repetition of the writer’s chief theme in Hebrews 3: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Heb. 3:15; cf. 3:7–8). The rebellion he speaks of is that recorded in Exodus 17 and Numbers 14, when the Israelites refused to trust the Lord during their desert trials, after Moses had led them out from slavery in Egypt.

After their deliverance from Egypt and passage through the Red Sea, God directed the Israelites on difficult journeys in the desert that were intended to test their faith in him. Those trials are analogous to this present life, when Christians will undergo hardships and temptations that similarly reveal the quality of our faith. The Israelites, wearied by hunger and danger and fatigue, failed to trust in God’s Word as given through Moses. Drawing from that example, the writer of Hebrews warns his readers not to fail, especially when we have the risen and exalted Jesus Christ as our leader through this world.

Rebellion against God

The writer of Hebrews continues this argument, teaching us three lessons from that generation of Israelites. The first is that a good beginning does not ensure a good ending. We see this in verse 16: “Who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?” These people had seen the great miracles in Egypt, and especially the parting of the Red Sea. Yet when they experienced hardship, they turned away!

Even the most impressive of beginnings does not ensure perseverance in faith. Here we see how little we can rely upon emotional experiences that we had at the inception of our Christian life. Many people rely on a particularly emotional event in the past—a time when they prayed a certain prayer, or a revival when they walked down to the altar. But none of us will ever have an experience as vivid as that which this generation of Israelites had, yet their good beginning still could not take the place of daily trusting in the Lord in a long walk of faith.

Some will object that this conflicts with the Bible’s teaching of eternal security. The Bible tells us that all who genuinely trust in Christ can be confident in his complete sufficiency as our Savior. Jesus said of his own, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). But we need to remember that Judas was in his company at that time, and because he lacked faith, the promise was not for him. If we want assurance of our salvation, then our faith must persevere under trial. If we want to “make [our] calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10), then we must bear the fruit that salvation requires.

The Israelites in the exodus were safe so long as they walked with God in faith. The same will be true for us; as we trust in Jesus, we can be sure of our salvation. But this warns us against any complacency in our faith. James Boice sums up the Bible’s teaching on perseverance:

Some people talk as though it is not necessary for a Christian to persevere in this hope, on the grounds that since God perseveres with us, our perseverance is unnecessary. We are saved, and will be saved, regardless of what we do. This is not taught in the Bible. It is true that God perseveres. It is true that once he has begun a good work in us he will keep on performing it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6). But simply because he perseveres, we too will persevere.

How terrible it is to read that all of those Moses led out of Egypt rebelled against the Lord. We do know of at least two exceptions, Joshua and Caleb, yet this sweeping statement could be made. Even after so great a beginning as the exodus, the entire body who experienced it went on to rebel against the Lord. How greatly this stark fact argues against any complacency on our part.

Second, we learn here how dreadful it is to become hard-hearted toward God. Warning us soberly of unbelief, the writer of Hebrews says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Heb. 3:15).

The meaning of the terminology is obvious. A hardened heart is the opposite of a tender heart, one that is easily penetrated by the Word of God, is easily impressed by its teaching, is moved by God’s love, and is touched and won over by God’s great redemptive works. It is a dreadful thing to be hardened in heart toward God, for then his Word sits upon the heart without penetrating, until before long it is plucked away, never to be grasped, never to be loved and believed. This is how Jesus described it in his parable of the four soils (Matt. 13:4, 19). Perhaps the most frightening example in the Bible is that of Pharaoh. Despite the most forceful demonstrations of God’s power and the clearest expressions of God’s will, Pharaoh would not yield but stubbornly resisted to the point of his own destruction. How terrible that these Israelites, the very people who saw Pharaoh’s example and escaped from his oppressive rule, followed his example! They, too, were hard in heart after all that God had done; they complained against him in every difficulty and accused God of meaning them harm despite his many great demonstrations of love.

We see, then, why such a heart is called evil or sinful in verse 12, for it turns away from the living God. In verse 17 those who would not believe are described as “those who sinned,” and in verse 18 we are told that they disobeyed. This shows that sin is disobedience; it is failure to listen to and obey God’s Word. In the accounts of this generation in Exodus and Numbers, we read of one sin after another. And yet the great sin the writer of Hebrews focuses on is the sin of unbelief.

There is an important insight here, namely, that unbelief is at the root of all sin. Specific sins are like rotten fruit hanging on a bad tree. But this is not the real problem; it is not the disease, but just the symptom. If we are greedy or hateful or selfish or dishonest, that is just evidence of dead and rotten things deeper inside. Bad fruit grows on a bad tree, just as sin grows from our sinful, corrupt nature. But deeper still, there is a root system to every tree; that is most important of all. Unbelief is the root system that feeds the whole rotten tree of sin.

By contrast, it is believing God that causes us to obey him. Noah is a good example. He believed when God foretold the flood, and it was because of his belief that Noah went ahead and built the ark. On the other hand, because the Israelites had never come to know God and had not believed his promises, they rebelled against him and sinned in the desert. The issue of faith versus unbelief is at the core of every spiritual issue.

Notice that lack of evidence is not the cause of unbelief. These Israelites had all the evidence anyone could ever want, but because their hearts were hard the evidence did not produce faith. Likewise, people today do not reject Jesus Christ on philosophical grounds but on moral grounds. They reject God’s Word because they have a greater love for sin, and their love for sin requires hardness to God’s Word. The philosophy comes later; it is only the fruit of hardness to God’s Word and love for sin. This is what we find with this generation of Israelites: a hardening of heart that the writer earnestly desires us to avoid.

Third, the writer of Hebrews forces us to face the reality of God’s wrath against sin. In verse 17 we learn that God was “provoked” with those who sinned in disbelief. In verse 18 we read that because of their attitude God swore that they would never enter his rest. In both instances, we see God’s wrath against sin.

Many people today consider wrath to be an inappropriate response for God to make toward sin. God should be more like us, they think: he shouldn’t take sin so seriously. But, unlike us, God is perfectly holy and therefore his wrath burns against sin.

When we speak of God’s wrath, we do not mean God throws a temper tantrum in anger; rather, God’s wrath is his deliberate response in judgment toward sin and sinners. As J. I. Packer explains, “This is righteous anger—the right reaction of moral perfection in the Creator towards moral perversity in the creature. So far from the manifestation of God’s wrath in punishing sin being morally doubtful, the thing that would be morally doubtful would be for Him not to show His wrath in this way.”

Because of their unbelief and subsequent sin, this entire generation of Israelites, the very people God had redeemed out of Pharaoh’s grasp, died in the wilderness. “And with whom was he provoked for forty years?” the writer of Hebrews asks. “Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?” It is God’s own nature that requires this kind of response to sin. Leon Morris observes, “The Bible is clear that God is not impassive or indifferent in the face of human sin. He is a ‘consuming fire’ (12:29), and his inevitable reaction to sin is wrath.… God does care, and he did not allow the sinning Israelites to enter the rest.”

We often hear that God punishes the sin but not the sinner, but look at the contrary evidence here. It was not unbelief that died and left its bones upon the desert sands; it was the unbelievers themselves. So also will God cast unbelieving sinners into the fires of hell—not merely their sin but the unrepentant sinners themselves.

God’s wrath was deliberate, not erratic; persistent, not fleeting. One commentator begins with the number of adult males we are told departed from Egypt, which was 603,550 (Num. 1:46), then adds in a likely number of adult women, and calculates that on average 90 Israelite adults died every day for forty years, until the entire generation was gone. Daily they were reminded of what we so often forget, that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).

This raises an obvious question: “Does this mean that all these Israelites suffered God’s eternal wrath, that they not only died in the desert but also all went to hell?” On the one hand, the death of these unbelieving Israelites is certainly meant to point to God’s wrath in the greater judgment that will send men and women into hell forever. On the other hand, it is not stated in the Bible that these Israelites were condemned to eternal damnation. Their problem was unbelief, and unbelief is what causes salvation to be lost—the opportunity to enter into God’s rest is forfeited by lack of faith. Any individuals who did not repent and trust themselves to God during those forty years must certainly have died without salvation. However, we may hope that many of them repented, believed, and thus have been forgiven. After all, during the long sojourn years of their punishment, the Israelites had God in their midst, they had the ministry of Moses and Aaron, and they had the sacrifices of the tabernacle through which God’s grace was daily offered to them. Nevertheless, their lost opportunity to enter the Promised Land furnishes a dramatic warning against the perils of unbelief.

A Remedy for Unbelief

Surely, Israel’s example alone is enough to alarm us with regard to the matter of unbelief. It is with this in mind that, with perhaps a new earnestness and sense of urgency, we turn to the remedy for unbelief contained in this passage. This remedy comes in the form of two exhortations, one that relates to ourselves and one that relates to others. First, the writer warns, “Take care, brothers,” a command that is rightly taken as “Watch out” (Heb. 3:12). To this he adds, “Exhort one another every day” (Heb. 3:13).

This is an excellent instruction for us today. We are to exert a watchful guard over our own hearts and come alongside others in the church to exhort them to do likewise. John Calvin explains why this is so needful:

As by nature we are prone to fall into evil, we have need of various helps to help us in the fear of God. Unless our faith is repeatedly encouraged, it lies dormant; unless it is warmed, it grows cold; unless it is aroused, it gets numb. [The writer of Hebrews] therefore wishes them to stimulate one another by mutual encouragement, so that Satan will not steal into their hearts and by his falsehoods lead them away from God.

The Greek word for “exhort” is parakaleō. The prefix para means “to come alongside,” and the verb kaleō means “to call out.” The picture, then, is that we are to come alongside one another daily, exhorting one another in the practice of Christian faith.

Christianity is not an individual but a team endeavor. So if we do not know the nature of our fellow believers’ struggles, and if we do not share ours with them, then we will never be able to follow through with this command. The result, in that case, will be that people among us will fall prey to sin. Therefore we are commanded to be watchful for just these things in the body of Christ, thereby ensuring that none of us falls away because of sin’s deceitfulness. As long as it is “today”—that is, this present age of testing, with opportunities and dangers like the ones the Israelites faced—we must watch out and exhort one another daily in the things of the faith.

Specifically, we must watch for the “deceitfulness” of sin. The Bible attaches this label to a number of things. It speaks often of false teachers who would lead us astray by their deceit. Paul warns against them, saying, “For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve” (Rom. 16:18). Colossians 2:8 says the same thing about worldly philosophies, and Proverbs 12:5 tells us that “the counsels of the wicked are deceitful.” Certainly, then, we must exert a watchful care against enticing but misleading teachings that deceive the mind.

But it gets worse, for the Bible goes on to say that our very hearts are deceitful. Jeremiah 17:9 is the most famous verse to this effect: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” In Ephesians 4:22, Paul tells us that our very human nature, apart from God’s saving work, is “corrupt through deceitful desires.” That gets quite a bit closer to home—I cannot even trust my heart, the Bible says. My desires are not trustworthy. And the wise man comes to realize that this is so—that the things we long for are often foolish and vain, if not outright idolatrous—and therefore he seeks the scrutiny and exhortation of brothers and sisters in the Lord.

More threatening still is the presence of a personal deceiver loose in the world. The Bible tells us that the devil is a great deceiver who beguiles men and women into folly and unbelief, as he beguiled Eve in the garden. He even masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). And then there is sin itself, which has as one of its main qualities that it is deceitful. We must not toy with sin, or we will be drawn in and ensnared.

Consider the case of a man who is tempted to leave his wife and children for another woman. The sin seems so alluring; she is so much more wonderful than the plain old wife he has grown tired of. And she admires him so; she plays to his ego where his wife only nags him. She would be better for him despite the broken taboos; he will be better off and happier with the adulteress. People will understand; they will get over it; his children will ultimately be glad for him.

It is all, however, a great deceit. It will not be more wonderful, for the problem with his marriage is his own heart, and he will soon get tired of his new lover as well. She admires him now but will think less of him when he loses his job, his reputation, his money, and his self-respect. His children will not get over it, but will bear scars and brokenness all the days of their lives. Sin says it will be better and he will be happy, but it is a deceit. He is stepping forward into misery and ruin, bringing disgrace upon himself and, if he is a Christian, scandal upon the church and even the name of Jesus Christ.

Sin advertises pleasure but delivers pain. The problem is that our hearts are so willing to be deceived. Combine this with the reality that sin is deceitful in its very nature, and you see why we have so great a need of godly fellowship, of exhortation, and of warning at the very first stages of temptation. We need help being watchful over the spiritually dangerous circumstances that we face—jobs or family ties or relationships or specific temptations that by their very nature are hostile to Christian faith. Therefore, we must exhort one another, lest some of us should fall prey to sin’s deception, even to the hardening of our hearts against God.

We must realize that sin is not merely something we do. Sin is a power, an enemy army, like a pack of wolves surrounding the flock and darting in to pick off likely targets. Therefore, as Simon Kistemaker writes, “Believers have a corporate and an individual responsibility to care for the spiritual well-being of their fellow men. They must consider this responsibility a holy obligation and exhibit utter faithfulness.”

From deception grows hardness of heart—such was the fate of the Israelites who came under God’s wrath. Christian fellowship, including prayer, Bible study, and meaningful friendship, is a great bulwark against sin’s deception; in such company the arguments of sin lose their force, and we are strengthened in faith and obedience. Our goal is to persevere to the end and enter into God’s rest, and our strategy is mutual watchfulness. What a worthy cause that is! It is worth inconvenience. It is worth giving up some leisure time. It is worth real sacrifice and will repay the dividends of eternal life.

In his great allegory of the Christian life, The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan shows his understanding of the importance of godly fellowship. At one point in the journey to the Celestial City, Bunyan’s hero—a man named Christian—finds companionship with a fellow believer named Hopeful. Bunyan writes, “They entered a brotherly covenant and agreed to be companions.” What a wonderful statement! It is reminiscent of the description of the godly men of King Asa’s generation, as told in 2 Chronicles 15:12, “They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul.”

In such fashion Christian and Hopeful journeyed together, and their companionship was very profitable. Soon they came across another traveler, a man named By-ends from the town of Fair-speech. Pooling their discernment, Christian and Hopeful realized that this was a man to avoid. Next, they encountered a group led by Mr. Hold-the-world, who tried to tempt them into seeking dishonest gain, and together they reproved him. Next came Demas who called to them to depart from the way, promising a place filled with riches of the world. This time, Hopeful was deceived and wanted to go take a look. But Christian warned him, “I have heard of this place.… The treasure is a snare to those that seek it.” He exhorted Hopeful, “Let us not go a step closer. Let us keep on our way,” and the two companions went forward safely on the pilgrimage. Later, they came to Doubting Castle, where they were thrown into a terrible dungeon. Here it was Christian who faltered, falling prey to the Giant Despair’s temptation to kill himself as the only escape. This time it was Hopeful who kept his faith, recalling God’s commandments. With his help, Christian found the key, called Promise, that opened the door to let them escape Doubting Castle. This is the kind of help we are to give one another, each of us in our weakness and doubt being helped by the strength and faith of our brother, each helping the other in turn so that together we may endure.

Confidence to Endure

We saw earlier that a good beginning is not enough, that we must persevere through hardship to the end, holding fast and trusting Jesus Christ for our salvation. The author says this again in his summary in verse 14: “For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” It is perseverance that tests and proves and demonstrates the fact that we are truly joined to Jesus Christ.

Note, however, what it is we are to hold until the end: “our original confidence” (Heb. 3:14). Of what are we to be confident? Not our own works or strength, but the power for salvation that is in Jesus Christ. It is our “original” confidence, namely, the very message of the gospel that saved us in the first place. This is what we need to persevere to the end. The gospel is not merely a message we need to hear only once, at the beginning of the Christian life. The gospel that makes us Christians—the good news of our crucified and risen Lord—also keeps us in the faith. So let us diligently and obediently proclaim the gospel to one another, that none of us might be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

“Take care, brothers,” says our author, “lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” What does this involve? I think one of our great hymns, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” puts it well:

Before the Father’s throne

we pour our ardent prayers;

our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,

our comforts and our cares.

We share our mutual woes,

our mutual burdens bear,

and often for each other flows

the sympathizing tear.

Those are not merely words for us to sing, but words to live together in the church. And so may we all be found faithful to the end, that this great salvation should not be lost by us, and that in due time we may all enter into God’s rest.^[1]

^[1] Phillips, R. D. (2006). Hebrews. (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.) (pp. 104–114). Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing.