Sermon: Hebrews 3:12-19, October 10, 2021

A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on October 10, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Hebrews 3:12-19. You may play the audio of the sermon here.

A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text this morning is from the Epistle to the Hebrews, the third chapter:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” 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.

Thus far the text.

My dear friends in Christ,

The idea that we can fall from the grace of God is something that many people today try to debate about. But the author here is clear: it’s possible. It’s a difficult thing to hear because we must all always be on our guard. It's very easy to do this. It is so easy for David. It was as simple as seeing something that led him astray, leading him to fall out of grace and lead him into the clutches of hell. Just seeing Bathsheba bathing on that roof was enough for sin to well up inside him, enough for him to commit adultery, enough to commit murder and to try to cover it all up before the eyes of God and before the nation of Israel. It’s easy for those 2 million Israelites who walked out of Egypt. They had been led by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire by night, walking through the parted red sea, having manna provided and quail provided in the wilderness, having water come for them out of a rock that walked around with them. And yet still they fell from grace, hardening their hearts, turning away from the God who had done great miracles around them.

Even in our Gospel lesson, we find this man who comes up to Jesus and asks, What must I do to be saved? And Jesus says, Do the law. And he says, I've done the law. And Jesus loved this man who, by the way, we think actually is the author, Mark, writing himself in to show how such a man can be saved without giving himself acclaim. And Jesus says to him, after he loves him, Go and sell all your possessions, give it all to the poor and then come and follow me and you will have eternal life. And the young man went away sad, because that meant a lot of things would be changing for him. It was easy for him to harden his heart in that very moment and to look more to his possessions than the one true God who stood before him.

For us, it’s easy. We haven’t seen the miracles. We haven’t seen the incarnated Jesus. When was the last time any of us saw a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire that would lead us through the water? When were any of us provided for, mystically by God, where food just appeared on our table in the middle of the night? So, how much, how much easier must it be for us to harden our hearts and to fall from the faith than for those who witnessed the great acts of God? Apparently it is not any easier, nor is it more difficult for us to do this. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews knows this. And he says, be on guard.

This is written not that long after Jesus ascended into heaven, and the author here knows from the very beginning of the Church, even for the people who saw and heard Jesus or saw and heard the people that Jesus taught, that it is going to be easy for people to turn away from God, to turn their hearts towards sin, for them to fall out of grace and then into the clutches of hell, just like David. And so the author admonishes us to keep watch over one another, exhort one another day by day. How are we doing with that?

Sometimes I think about our congregation, what it is that we are supposed to do. We have been joined together in this place to exhort one another toward good works, to exhort one another to stay out of sin, to exhort one another that we might look to the gospel of Jesus Christ and find the free forgiveness given from the cross. That's our duty. How have we been doing with that? This has been especially difficult, I think, in the time of the pandemic, where we really couldn’t join together, and we’ve gotten in a rut of s...