MUTINY BEFORE THE BOUNTY 

HEBREWS 3:7-14

by Dr. Michael Halsey

We come to a text this morning that has bedeviled many a believer, causing him to doubt his salvation and kill any assurance. What’s causing the problem is eisegesis, a failure to take into account the OT, a failure to think logically, and song leaders who make us sing hymns that embed the confusion in our minds with catchy tunes and lyrics.

We’ve arrived at the second warning in the book, one stronger than the first where the author launches into an extended quote from the O. T. in Ps. 95:7b-11. His comparison of Jesus and Moses has led him to compare the followers of Moses to the followers of Jesus today.

THE BACK STORY: MUTINY BEFORE THE BOUNTY

Israel has now come to the Land God promised their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All their lives, all they’ve known is slavery. But they’ve see God bring the power of the plagues on their masters and bring Pharaoh to his knees.

They’ve seen God split a sea and drown the Egyptians while they themselves ran to safety. God has given them food and water all the way and now the 780 mile trip (Atlanta to Philadelphia) is over! It would be difficult for us to imagine the excitement of hearing, “There it is!”
No one living had ever been to the land; no one had ever seen it.

God tells Moses to send 12 spies into the land to find out:

• If the people are strong or weak, few or many.
• If the land is good or bad.
• What cities they live in, in tents or in strong holds
• If the land is wooded, fat or lean
• The produce of the land and bring samples

This is not to find out IF they can take it, but to find out HOW to take the land. The land is important because a they need a platform to be a missionary nation and for God to bless the world through them.

They spent 40 days reconnoitering the land and return with this report:

Numbers 13:27-33

²⁷ And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us; and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.
²⁸ Howbeit the people that dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.
²⁹ Amalek dwelleth in the land of the South: and the Hittite, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, dwell in the hill-country; and the Canaanite dwelleth by the sea, and along by the side of the Jordan.
³⁰ And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.
³¹ But the men that went up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.
³² And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had spied out unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.
³³ And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. -
American Standard Version (ASV)

But the men that went up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.

When word of this report got to the people, they spent the entire night in their tents, sullen, crushed, and weeping. The next day, they were ready to go back the 780 miles and put on their chains. All it took to sway 2,000,000 was 10 as they made sure their report shot through the national network. It doesn’t take many people in a group to sway the others away from doing God’s will. The words of 10 men turn the tide against doing God’s will on the part of 2,000,000.

It became so serious that the next day they decide to mutiny, kill Moses and Aaron, choose a new leader to lead them back to slavery. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces in front of the onslaught. Joshua and Caleb speak up at this point: Caleb and Joshua dissented, along with Moses and Aaron saying,

Numbers 13:30, 14:7-9

30 Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. . . 7 The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceeding good land.
8 If Jehovah delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it unto us; a land which flows with milk and honey.
9 Only rebel not against Jehovah, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defense is removed from over them, and Jehovah is with us: fear them not. - American Standard Version (ASV)

Vergil, the Roman poet, said, “Fury finds its weapons.” If someone is angry at you, he will find weapons to use against you, true or false. Lies, slander, whatever; fury finds its weapons. The mutinous Israelites, in a fury against Moses and Aaron, decide to kill them and head for Egypt.

At this point, the Shekinah glory of the Lord appears and declares that the nation, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, will never enter the land because of this rebellion against God. They will be in the wilderness 40 years, one year for each day the spies were in the land. Only those under 20 years of age will enter with Joshua and Caleb.

Ps. 95:7b-11 is the divine commentary on the event:

⁷ To-day, oh that ye would hear his voice!
⁸ Harden not your heart, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness;
⁹ When your fathers tempted me, Proved me, and saw my work.
¹⁰ Forty years long was I grieved with that generation, And said, It is a people that do err in their heart, And they have not known my ways:
¹¹ Wherefore I sware in my wrath, That they should not enter into my rest. -
American Standard Version (ASV)

The author of Hebrews wants his readers to learn from the history of Israel and not commit the same sin as the Exodus generation did. In vss 12-18, he issues the warning that they too, if they have an “evil and unbelieving heart” will “fall away from the living God” and would fail to enter into “rest” because of their disobedience.

CAN YOU LOSE YOUR SALVATION?

There are those who read this warning and it scares them into believing that a believer can lose his salvation, and then that scares them all the more. Is that what this very serious warning is all about?  Let’s look at this in detail.

First off, those who say that this is showing the believer that he can lose his salvation are ASSUMING that Canaan and that “rest” represent heaven. That is an assumption and we need to see if it holds up by asking a series of questions:

• How was Israel to enter Canaan and achieve “rest?” By being obedient to God and by fighting against the cities inhabited by the Canaanites. By being courageous, obedient and strong. Yet, heaven is the believer’s by grace, not byworks of courage, obedience, and being strong.  Enjoyment of rest in the land had to be earned by conquest which could only come by obedience to the will of God—Ex. 23:30; Deut. 2:31; 11:11-24; 16:20; Josh. 1: 6-7; 11:23; 14:8-9; 19:8-9
• If Canaan represents heaven, then who is not there? Moses, Aaron, Miriam and 2,000,000 Jews of the Exodus generation. Moses didn’t get in, nor Aaron, nor Miriam. That too shows the “rest,” “Canaan” cannot be a type of heaven.
• If Canaan and rest mean heaven, then only two out of 2 million of the Exodus generation made it. That doesn’t make sense.

Our hymns are leading us astray as song leaders make us sing:

1. On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, 
 and cast a wishful eye 
 to Canaan's fair and happy land, 
 where my possessions lie. 
Refrain:
 I am bound for the promised land, 
 I am bound for the promised land; 
 oh, who will come and go with me? 
 I am bound for the promised land. 

2. O'er all those wide extended plains 
 shines one eternal day; 
 there God the Son forever reigns, 
 and scatters night away. 
 (Refrain) 

3. No chilling winds or poisonous breath 
 can reach that healthful shore; 
 sickness and sorrow, pain and death, 
 are felt and feared no more. 
 (Refrain) 

4. When I shall reach that happy place, 
 I'll be forever blest, 
 for I shall see my Father's face, 
 and in his bosom rest. 
 (Refrain) 

SO WHAT’S HE TALKING ABOUT?

What was “rest” to the Jew? Rest = victory in the conquest in Canaan, and then, gaining an inheritance, property and possessions in the land.  Rest = finishing their God-given task to take possession of the land by being strong and courageous in battle. They had to earn their rest. Moses lost his inheritance in the land as did Aaron, Miriam, and Achan, along with 2 million others.

The Exodus generation was a redeemed people; they’d demonstrated their faith by putting the blood on their doorposts. Heb. 11:29-30; I Cor. 10:4-5; Ex. 19:18; 12: 27-28.  Their rest was their reward for faithfulness.

And that’s the key to understanding this warning. Crossing over Jordan and fighting for the land isn’t a type of heaven, but crossing over the Jordan represents discipleship for us—obedience to God, whole-hearted obedience and faithfulness brings the believer reward in heaven; that’s the rest.

A Jew could be in the land without an inheritance of property, just as a believer will be in heaven, but, because of defection from the faith has no reward ( I Cor. 3). For example, a believer might quit the faith because of a professor in college to convinced him that the Bible wasn’t true, or a cult member came to his door and led him out of the Bible and into error. That person will still be in heaven, but he will have lost his inheritance. The author of Hebrews is telling his readers that if they go back into Judaism, they’ll forfeit their inheritance, but not heaven.

THE ISSUE IS  . . .

The issue isn’t your salvation in this warning, the issue is your inheritance in heaven, your rewards. Are you, believer, all in? Joshua put it in just that way to the generation that went into the land, “Are you all in?” They were going to face other gods and he wanted to know, “Are you all in?” He knew they were going to face:

• The gods of their fathers and mothers. (Joshua 24:14) Abraham came from Ur and Ur was an idol worshipping city. They and their parents and grandparents and great grandparents came from Egypt. Were they going to worship those gods? Earlier their parents had made a golden calf to take back to Egypt. What about your parents? Did your father worship his work? Was his temple his office? Was his idol that of success and showing off that success? Did he spend 60 hours a week in the temple? Was status his god? Did your mother worship shopping, entertainment, children?
• The gods of the culture. (Joshua 24:15) These gods never stop coming at us. They never surrender. They are part of the “spirit of the age.” They are the gods of the pop culture. Think like the spirit of the age, live like the spirit of the age. The spirit of the age calls out to us from People Magazine, Time Magazine, it beacons from every magazine at the check out counter, with a celebrity’s picture on the cover.

I was once in the home of a famous author and after we’d talked a bit, he said he wanted to show me where he mailed his books from, books people had ordered. I thought this was a very strange thing to do, as I don’t know why anybody would be interested in seeing where someone mailed packages from.

We didn’t have to go far, because he mailed them right there from the house. He took me over to another part of the house and showed me the scale on which he weighed the books to be sent out and that was about it. It was all rather boring, mundane, humdrum. A postage scale?  He wanted to show me a postage scale?

It was only later that I suspected that he really didn’t want me to see that at all. The place where he mailed his books was in the garage and what did I have to walk past to see the postage scale? There it was, his bright and shiny BMW! (What he didn’t know was that it was lost on me. I don’t care about cars, cars don’t impress me, as long as it runs, that’s all that matters to me.) I think he wanted me to see the toy of his success. He earned it; that’s OK, but it’s the attitude toward it that’s important.

Listen to Tom Brady, someone the world says is at the top of the ladder, who’s achieved it all:

On “60 Minutes.” Brady asked  Steve Kroft, the interviewer, “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what [it’s all about].’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, ‘It’s got to be more than this.’ I mean this isn’t...this can’t be all it’s cracked up to be.”

When Kroft asked him what the answer might possibly be, Brady replied, “What’s the answer? I wish I knew...I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for
This team; but at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I’m trying to find.”

He’s honest. He’s answered the question, “What have these gods done for me?”

“Not enough.”

Come, come with us. Cross the Jordan and be all in. There’s a reward, an inheritance waiting for those believers who do. It’s over there, across the Jordan that you’ll find fulfillment, purpose, and a passion for your life. This God won’t fail you.