But, we know one thing. It’s something to make us think, because you see we are in the same dilemma in Christendom today. We know, that’s like we kind of enjoy getting into some different denominations once in a while. Because you see, twenty or thirty years ago, we would probably have thought that none of those had the truth. But they do! We're finding that almost in any group you’ve got a certain number of people who have a true salvation. They love the Lord, and they love this Book. In other groups that you probably think, oh, they are all Christians, they’ve got no love for the Book nor for each other. So you see, we can’t judge. There is no way we can determine how many of that group are saved. We don’t know. Only God knows our heart and whether we're wholly His, that is with our wholeheart trusting in His faith.
We think this whole experience at Kadesh is a sobering experience because they were all lost, because they refused to go in because of unbelief? Was their trusting become Faith by way of its being exercised, coming through the Red Sea all become vain? We don’t think so. But we can’t do anything but speculate. We would never say that they were all lost or that they were all saved or that half of them were. We would like to think some of them were. Because even in Israel’s history when the nation, for the most part, was going down the tube and they were succumbing to idolatry. Did they all? We don’t think so. Even when Elijah said, "You know Lord, I am the only one left." But what did God say? "No Elijah, we have seven thousand left." Even though the vast majority of Israel followed in the words of Baal, yet seven thousand remained true to Yehovah or in English Jehovah. (point of interest the Hebrew alphabet did not have the letter “J”. That is why we use the letter "Y".)
And so, all up through Israel’s history, we're sure there were always a percentage of people who were aghast at what their leadership was doing. They were aghast at the gross immorality of the majority of people who were following pagan gods and goddesses. Then you know what we have to think? We are in the same boat today. We are getting more and more where the majority is now rejecting everything Biblical. We are seeing it, as it’s a culture war in America today, we know it is. And here we are as believers, getting smaller and smaller percentage-wise, and one day God’s going to judge this nation like He has every other nation that turns against Him, so what’s our only hope? Our only hope is that the Lord will return before that day comes. Because it’s coming. We were just rereading the Church Age portion at the end of the book of "Enoch" about his vision of these later days as the LORD the Spirit had revealed it to him. Ya! know its spot on, no wonder Jesus quoted from this book throughout His earthly ministry to Israel.
Even though we have a percentage as Abraham had when he bargained with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. What did Abraham say? "Now, Lord if there’s ten in Sodom, would you spare it?" Yeah. But He didn’t have ten and so God destroyed it. So here’s the sobering thought: if these Israelites who came out of Egypt by faith through the experience of the Red Sea with water piled up on both sides and yet were able to come up here to Kadesh with nothing any harder to believe that we can see, than to walk into the Promised Land. Go in and take the land of Canaan. They couldn’t do it because of unbelief. And they wept. They cried all night and then, horror of horrors, what did they ask to do. Send us back to Egypt. Send us back to the slave yards. Oh, that is almost beyond human comprehension. But here again God had shown this all to Enoch as he has written of it before the flood.
So, here is the constant lesson in these two chapters of Hebrews. Don’t forget what can happen to people when their hearts are hardened by unbelief, and when they can no longer trust the Word of God. And see, we have said it, we think America can be, to a certain degree, a parallel of the Nation of Israel. We have been singularly blessed as a nation. No other nation on earth has enjoyed the Spiritual and material blessings that we have in America. But does that mean that God will never, never change blessing us? We don’t think so. We think the day is coming when God is going to have to come up and judge America for the responsibilities that we have walked under foot. They are the rules and the penalty for disobedience of this Grace Gospel and the New Covenant of Grace given to us to adhere to. Why? Because we're guilty of walking on the Blood of that Covenant and making a mockery of Him and it. We stand in the same condition as Israel, in denial of the Lord the Spirit and His Covenant.
And you know we're always rehearsing our Founding Fathers. My when they got at loggerheads, and they had some big problems to overcome, and don’t think they didn’t. Number one was, how can the small states maintain a representation, like Massachusetts and Vermont and so forth, against the big states like Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia. And, boy, it was a tough one to crack. But, we've said it over and over, and we read it in a secular magazines, not in any religious magazine, but in a secular magazines. What did those men do when they got to the place that they just couldn’t make any more headway? They dismissed and went into prayer rooms. They got down on their knees, everyone of them and they prayed, that the God of Heaven would give them wisdom. That’s our heritage. That’s where we’ve come from.
And then today, they ridicule the concept that our President would even think to pray in the morning. We hope people realize that’s what they are doing. They are ridiculing him for it. When our Attorney General, John Ashcroft, tried to have a Bible Study, they ridicule him for it. Well, that’s exactly the way it got in Israel. Just go back and read some of the prophecies of Jeremiah and so forth. But now, our question is, were they all that steeped in unbelief? We don’t think so, but the minority of the believers had to suffer the results of the majority in their unbelief. And so, this is the constant reminder now then, as we look at it again in verse 17.
Hebrews 3:17a
"But with whom was He grieved those forty years?…"
While they were dying off in the wilderness, one commentary puts it, that they moved from place to place and the bones were just about covering the ground of where they left, as they were dying by the hundreds for forty years. See?
Hebrews 3:17b-18
"…was it not with them who had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swore He that they should not enter into His rest, but to him that believed not?"
It just repeats unbelief and repeats it and repeats it! The biggest tragedy for Israel, as well as for the human race in general, is unbelief. God says it and He expects us to believe it. And as we've said in an earlier part of this outline, He’s proven himself with fulfilled prophecy. No other book on earth can tell things a hundred years in advance, let alone 3 or 500. But this Book does. And it is being fulfilled to the jot and tittle and it will be fulfilled to the complete jot and tittle. And so here is why we can believe it. It has proven itself. Let’s see what Peter even calls it. In II Peter, chapter 1.
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