This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day three together of our look at Hebrews chapter three. We're going to
look at verses seven to 11 today. In fact, let me begin by reading those verses,
Hebrews three, seven to 11.

So as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your
hearts as you did in the rebellion during the time of testing in the desert,
where your fathers tested and tried me for 40 years, saw what I did. That is why
I was angry with that generation. And I said, their hearts are always going
astray, and they've not known my ways.

So I declared an oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. " And you
see, as I read these verses, that this begins the second of five exhortation
encouragement warnings that we have throughout the book of Hebrews. This is a
warning about hardening our hearts against what God says.

And in this warning, we hear the greatest enemy of faithfulness and also the
greatest friend of faithfulness. The greatest enemy of faithfulness, he says
here, is a hardened heart. The truth all of us have to come to in our lives, we
have to come to this moment where we just say to ourselves, "I am stubborn.

I am stubborn. I'm not just saying this for me, so are you. You are stubborn.

We all struggle with stubbornness. I tried to come up with a nicer word, but the
truth is, I'm just stubborn sometimes. I don't trust God because I don't want to
admit I was wrong.

I don't trust God because I don't want to change. " And out of that stubbornness
can come a hardened heart. And out of a hardened heart can come unfaithfulness
in our lives.

And there's a great story about this in the Bible about a man named Naaman. You
might remember this story in the book of 2 Kings chapter 5. Naaman had leprosy.

He needed to be healed. He went to the prophet Elisha to be healed. He expected
the prophet to come out and heal him, but the prophet just sent his servant out.

The servant said, "Go and wash in the river, you'll be healed. " And Naaman was
not happy. He was a big, important guy.

So he expected the big, important prophet to come out and do some big, important
thing and he'd be healed. Just go wash in the river. He had a river where he
came from.

So he started to walk away in anger. In 2 Kings chapter 5 verse 13, Naaman's
servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do
some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then when he tells
you wash and be cleansed?

" And so Naaman listened to his credit. He went and washed and he was cleansed
of his leprosy. You see, we want to trust God, but in our stubborn hearts
sometimes we want to trust God in ways that appeal to our pride.

We want to trust God for big things, for complicated things, for impressive
things. And sometimes God says, "Would you just trust me with this small thing?
Would you trust me with this thing that no one else will see?

" And we get stubborn. Our stubborn hearts are our own worst enemy in that
moment. Sometimes we're passive aggressive with God.

You know what I mean? We say to God, "God, I did this much. Look at how much I
did for you.

So why would you ask me to do any more? Or why wouldn't you bless me more? " Of
course, we know that God has our best interests in mind.

We know that he has a future and an eternity in mind that's better than anything
we can imagine, but our stubborn hearts sometimes focus on ourselves. Our
stubborn hearts can get us caught up in cycles and patterns of sin. Our stubborn
hearts can get us caught up in unforgiveness for not just weeks and months, but
year after year after year after year.

And all the time we're getting further and further and further from God because
of our stubborn heart. I just have to admit, and we all have to admit, I've got
a stubborn heart at times. So what do I do about it?

The greatest enemy of faithfulness is a hardened heart, a stubborn heart. The
greatest friend of faithfulness is in a single word. It's in the word today.

The greatest friend of faithfulness is acting today on what you hear from God.
Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Today don't be stubborn,
just today.

Today do what God says. If you hear his voice, you act today. The main way that
we hear God's voice today is through the Bible, is through God's word.

We hear in the Bible, whenever we open up a scripture like today, we're talking
about the scripture. We hear what to do about it today. We hear what to believe.

We hear what not to believe. We hear what to do. We hear what not to do.

We hear what to hold on to. We hear what to let go of. And in all of that, our
stubborn hearts in that moment can decide, am I going to trust my father or am I
going to trust myself?

There's this picture I have in my mind, strangely enough, from an Indiana Jones
movie. Maybe you've watched those movies. If so, you'll remember this picture.

It's towards the end of the third movie, and there's this cup of the Holy Grail
that Indiana Jones has been trying to get the whole movie. It's falling into a
chasm, and he's hanging on for dear life on the edge of a cliff trying to reach
out for this cup. His father has one hand, but it's starting to slip out, but he
feels like he can reach the cup.

He feels like he can do it himself. He's reaching, and you can see he's going to
fall if he tries to do this himself. And up above him, this is my favorite part
of that movie.

His father says to him in this gentle voice, "Indiana, let it go. Let it go. "
And you've got to choose, which voice am I going to listen to?

The voice within me that says, "Keep reaching for it. I know I can do it," or
the voice of the father that says, "Let it go. " There's some things you need to
let go of in your life, some sins that have been committed against you, and
you're holding on to them.

They become a place of private pain that's very familiar to you, and it's hard.
It's hard for a stubborn heart to let that go. There are sins in our life.

They may not be the big sins, or they may be. They may have to do with lust.
They may have to do with abuse.

They may have to do with addictions, or it might be what we would sometimes call
the smaller sins, the sins of gossip, the sins of self-focus, the sins that
aren't quite so noticeable but are just as destructive. And God's been speaking
to you about it, but they've become a comfortable place in your life. When we
make a place comfortable, it's hard for us to let it go, and it may seem
comfortable to us, but God knows.

He loves us. He knows how destructive it is. Today, if you hear his voice, what
can you do about it today?

God's not going to make you perfect today. That's for heaven. But you certainly
can make a choice towards perfection, a choice towards growth today.

What can you do about it today? What can you start believing? What can you stop
believing?

Some lie about you, about this world. What can you start doing? What can you
stop doing today?

God's voice when he speaks to us, it's not a condemning voice. It's an inviting
voice. He invites us to trust him.

That condemning voice you're hearing right now, that's coming from Satan. That's
coming from yourself. That's coming from the world.

That's coming from somebody in your past, your mom or your dad or a friend or an
aunt or an uncle. God's voice is inviting you to trust him today. And verse 10
tells us that this trust always begins in the heart.

Their hearts were going astray. This is one of the key truths about faithfulness
to understand. Faithfulness over a lifetime is not built on your actions.

It flows from your heart. If you try to build faithfulness on your actions
alone, you're going to get more and more weary because it's built on you. It's
you stretching out to reach that cup.

But when you start to let it flow from your heart, then you're energized by the
grace of God, by the Spirit of God, by the power of God. And so faithfulness
begins each day and it begins throughout the day by presenting to God a willing
heart. "God, I don't want to have a stubborn heart.

I want to have a willing heart. Let's do that now. " And Lord, we pray that
simple prayer, "I don't want to have a stubborn heart.

I want to have a willing heart. So show me what to do today and then give me the
grace to trust you to do that today, to step in the direction of what you're
saying instead of staying where I am, instead of going the opposite direction.
Today, Lord, as I hear your voice, I don't want to harden my heart.

I want to trust you. In Jesus' name, I trust you right now. Amen.