Turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter three. As we continue our consecutive exposition of this portion of God's word this morning, I'd like to begin by reading, and I'm going to read the entire chapter, chapter three. Our focus is gonna be on a much smaller portion than that this morning, but let's begin by reading the chapter. So Hebrews 3, starting with verse 1. Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. and we are his house. If indeed we hold fast our confession and our boasting is in our hope. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their heart. They have not known my ways. As I sworn my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. 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 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. Now each week, as I begin to study, I try to discern what would be an appropriate amount of text for the message. So last week we got through verse six here in chapter three, and so early in the week, when I looked at the text, I thought we might be able to get through the end of the chapter, which would have been through verse 19. Verses 7 through 11 are from Psalm 95. And then the rest of the chapter is really the writer of Hebrews expositing those verses. He interprets them and then he uses them as a warning for his readers. But I soon realized that there was a lot more there than I wanted to bite off in a week. There would be things that we'd have to skip over that I think are important for us. And so then I thought, maybe verses seven through 11, maybe those might be a more manageable piece. And I do think that those are probably an appropriate number of verses for a sermon. But I started to key on this one phrase, as the Holy Spirit says. There are some important things that some of the commentators bring out about this phrase that I want us to consider. At first, I thought we'd just spend some time at the beginning of the message covering this, but the more I studied it, the things that it leads to, the more this part of the sermon grew, until I realized that I was either going to have to pare it back significantly or just focus on this this morning. So I decided that we'd slow down a little bit and just consider this one phrase, as the Holy Spirit says. There are three things, three principles or truths that I'd like to draw from this phrase. Three things that flow out of this phrase and how the writer uses it and how it relates to the things that he's said before. And the first thing that I want us to see is the Trinity. The three-person Godhead rounded out and affirmed here in this phrase. evident when we consider this in light of everything that we've studied so far. We see God as he reveals himself as one God in three persons. If you've been with us at all during this study, or if you've even just read Hebrews, you know that one of the most obvious features in the book is the focus on the Son, the second person of the Godhead. From the beginning of the book, the emphasis is on the Son and on His superiority. In the opening verses, the Son is declared the heir of all things, through whom the world was created. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. And it doesn't let up. The emphasis continues to be on the superiority of the son, on the accomplishment of the son, on the continued work of the son, the glory of the son. We saw in recent weeks that even when he became fully man, he remained and he still remains. fully God. So the second person of the Godhead is evident in the book. And when you say that there is a second person of the Godhead, it implies that there's also a first person, the Father. But we don't need to merely take it as an inference. When it says in chapter one, verse five, for to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you? Or again, I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. The father is right there. Clearly, God the Father. And I think what's important to recognize is that throughout the book so far, and really throughout the entire book, they are portrayed as two persons. Both the same God, but two distinct persons within the Godhead. Not just different roles or different titles, but different persons. In Hebrews 3 verse 2, referring to Jesus the Son, it says that He was faithful to Him who appointed Him. We see the Father and the Son relating to each other. The Father appointing the Son, and the Son being faithful to the Father. And that's just one example. They're treated this way consistently throughout the book. So the first two persons of the Godhead are abundantly clear in Hebrews. The Father and the Son are both clearly portrayed as God, the same God, the one true God, but also as distinct persons. But here we also have the Holy Spirit. The first mention of the Holy Spirit was actually back in chapter 2, verse 4. There it says that the Holy Spirit distributed gifts according to His will. Now, we didn't talk about it when we studied this verse back a while ago, so I'm going to point it out now. If you back up to verse 3, still here in chapter 2, we see that the Lord is mentioned, the Son, the second person of the Trinity. The Lord first declared this great salvation. And then in verse 4, we see the Father mentioned. The writer refers to Him as God here, but he's referring to the First Person of the Trinity, the Father, and he's clearly distinguishing Him from the Lord. So the Lord, the Son, declared this great salvation while God the Father bore witness to it. And when we studied this, we saw several examples of how the Father did this during the Son's earthly ministry. And then we see this third person, who is portrayed here as distinct from the first two, and here has a different role. The Son declared, the Father bore witness, and the Holy Spirit distributed gifts. You'll also notice that the Holy Spirit is referred to as His. He distributed these gifts according to His will. He's a person. And the fact that He has a will also shows that He is a person. So then we come to chapter 3, verse 7, and the writer introduces a section of the Old Testament from Psalm 95 as something that the Holy Spirit says. But wait a minute. Remember what it said back in the first verse of Hebrews, back in chapter one? It said, long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. And by God, he means the Father. We know it means the Father because he continues in verse two and says, But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. So it has to be God the Father. So in this verse, chapter one, verse one, the writer attributes the Old Testament, which is what he's referring to here, to the Father. The Father is the one who spoke by the prophets, who then wrote down the Old Testament scripture. But now look at chapter 2, starting in verse 11. And he's referring to Jesus here, to the Son. He says, that is why he, the Son, is not ashamed to call them brothers. And then the writer quotes three Old Testament passages, two from Psalms and one from Isaiah. And he attributes all of them to the Son. So in chapter 1, it was the Father who spoke the Old Testament. In chapter 2, it was the Son who said these things. And here in chapter 3 now, the Spirit says them. It's not as if they each wrote a part of it. It's accurate to attribute the whole of Scripture, and this applies to both Testaments, to each of them, and to all three of them, because that is what is revealed in Scripture. Now, the point I want to make is that there are two truths about the Godhead that we see portrayed in Hebrews. One is that there are three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the second is that they are all one God. That is the essential doctrine of the Trinity. God in three persons, blessed Trinity. So that's the first thing that I wanted to bring out of this phrase. That this, along with everything that's come before it, is part of how God reveals himself in his triune nature to us. The second thing that I want to bring out, and we've already touched on this a bit, has to do with the inspiration of Scripture. The truth that I want to bring out is that the words of Scripture are the very words of God. Now, this certainly isn't the only place in the Bible that it claims this about itself. This is the clear teaching of Scripture throughout Scripture. Hebrews alone says it over and over. We've already pointed out a few examples of that, including this one, but virtually every passage that's quoted, and that's a lot of passages, Virtually everyone is attributed directly to God. Jesus referred to the Old Testament as the Word of God. Mark 7 verse 13 is one example of that. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for effectively making void the Word of God by their tradition. Paul in 2 Timothy 3.16 wrote that all Scripture is breathed out by God. You know, sometimes we translate that, all Scripture is inspired by God. And that's not wrong, as long as we understand what we mean by inspired. Inspired does not mean that God gave the prophets or the apostles who wrote scripture an impression, a general idea of what they should reveal, and then he let them, as fallible men, fill in the details. God breathed out scripture. God is the source. Now that doesn't mean that the mechanism was always the same for how He inspired it. In some cases, with the Old Testament prophets, the Word of the Lord came to them and they wrote down what came. For the Apostle Paul in the New Testament He apparently wrote his epistles based on what the Lord had taught him in the wilderness years before. And the Holy Spirit supernaturally guided him and ensured that the words that were written were the exact words that he, the Holy Spirit, intended. Luke, when he wrote his gospel, he researched it. He conducted interviews. He approached it much like an historian would do. And he wrote down a very orderly account. And again, the Holy Spirit ensured that his words, the Spirit's words, were what were written. All Scripture is breathed out by God. Peter comments on this in 2 Peter 1, verses 20 and 21. Peter wrote, knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. When Peter writes prophecy of Scripture, he's not limiting this discussion to those parts of Scripture that are overtly prophetic in the sense of forward-looking, prophesying about the future. In fact, the context is about the testimony of the apostles about the Lord Jesus in His first coming. When Peter writes prophecy, he speaks, he means the speaking or the writing of truth. when he says that no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. He means, in context, Scripture, the Bible, was not written according to what the men who wrote down the words wanted to say. Instead, they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit moved them in whatever way was necessary to produce exactly what the Holy Spirit intended. The words of Scripture are the very words of God. These are not merely Moses' best attempt to recreate the law that God had given him. This isn't just Paul's own effort to explain the truths that God had earlier revealed to him. This isn't Luke's admirable, but still very human, attempt to reconstruct the events of Jesus' life, and then later on, the acts of the apostles. These are the very words of God. Yesterday afternoon, I watched the news coverage of the attempted assassination of our former president, as I'm sure many of you did as well. And among many other reactions that I had to what was shown, I was struck by how unreliable human testimony is, particularly when it comes to the details. The former president's speech was on camera, and we have very clear footage of when President Trump was shot. You hear the shots, and then President Trump's hand goes to his ear, then he drops to the ground, and then the Secret Service dive on top of him, in that order. And it's very clear when you watch it. And yet one eyewitness who says she was in the front row, immediately in front of President Trump when all this happened, insists that the Secret Service pushed Trump to the ground. And she was adamant on that point. She repeated it several times. They pushed him to the ground. And she seemed credible. If I hadn't seen the footage with my own eyes a dozen times, I would have found her testimony completely compelling. Now, my point is not to criticize her, but simply that human testimony is not reliable. You mix up details. You get things wrong. But the Word of God is not human testimony. The words of Scripture are the very words of God. They are reliable. They are trustworthy. They are perfect. Now, God used the personalities, the vocabularies, the style of the many chose as they wrote scripture. John is very literary. Mark, or Paul, is very reasoned. Mark is very much to the point. But it's God's word. So what are the implications of this? What does it mean to us that the words of Scripture are the very words of God? Well, there are many implications. I'm going to suggest three for us this morning. The first is that God's Word is trustworthy in every way. Or, to state it negatively, there are no errors in Scripture. We call this the doctrine of inerrancy. It means that the Bible does not affirm anything that is not true. It doesn't deny anything that is true. Some have tried to water down this doctrine by suggesting that the main ideas in scripture are accurate. The broad doctrines are accurate. The primary point that scripture is making in any given passage, that is trustworthy. For instance, some people have found that some numbers, such as the numbers of men in an army or the number of people killed in a battle, are unlikely. They say, but it doesn't matter, because how many men were fighting or how many men were killed really isn't the point. The point, they say, is that God delivered a victory, or at other times, God punished Israel's disobedience with a defeat. The details, they say, don't matter. But the thing is, God doesn't make mistakes. He doesn't mess up the details, even if we think they're insignificant details. God doesn't say 30,000 men if there were only 5,000. He doesn't lie. He doesn't misspeak. He doesn't miscount. If these are the very words of God, and they are, then they are trustworthy in every way. Now, I'm not particularly interested in squabbling over how many men were in a particular battle, but the absolute inerrancy of God's word is a hill to die on. And the reason it's so important is first, because it's true. Second, because it lessens God's worth to say anything else. And third, because when you start to go down that path, where does it end? What can you trust if anything is untrustworthy? So that's number one. God's Word is trustworthy in every way, even in ways that we might think don't matter. Number two, the second implication, is that God's Word is to be believed and obeyed. And this refers to the authority of God's Word. To disbelieve God's Word is to disbelieve God. It's no different than if you had been alive during Jesus' time on earth and if you heard him speak and you said, nah, I don't believe that. To disobey God's word is to disobey God. That's no different than if you were standing before Him and He gave you a direct command. He told you what He wanted you to do and you said, no, I won't do that. These are God's words and they carry the full weight and authority of God. They are to be believed and obeyed. The third implication that I want to bring out this morning for the truth that the words of Scripture are the very words of God, is that God's Word is our authority in all matters of belief and practice. And this refers to the sufficiency of Scripture. God has given us what we need to know. Now, others might suggest that we need to balance the authority of Scripture against some ruling council, or the church itself, or against our own consciences, or against some other source of wisdom or knowledge. But the truth is that nothing else can compare to the perfect and authoritative Word of God. And God has revealed to us, through his word, all that is necessary for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, for obeying him perfectly, and all else that he requires of us. We must not add anything to it, and we dare not take anything away from it. So when we have a question, this is where we look and we search diligently for what God would have us do as he has revealed it to us in his word. How can a man be saved? How does God desire for us to worship Him? How should we live our lives in this fallen world? He has given us all that He has determined that we need, and it is sufficient for us. deals with the living character of scripture. Notice that the writer did not say, as the Holy Spirit said. This is not in the past tense. This is not something that the Holy Spirit of God did once upon a time and then left to move on to something else. And not just these words from Psalm 95, but all the words of Scripture. Every time these words are read, in public or in private, every time that you recall them, every time you study them or meditate on them, the Holy Spirit speaks. The Holy Spirit continues to speak through the Word of God. Hebrews 4 verse 12 says, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Now, I'm not going to dive too deeply into how it divides and discerns and what that all means. We'll get to that soon enough when we come to chapter four. But I will say this. The Word of God is not living and active on its own. It's perfect. We've seen that. It's perfect in every way. It's truth. It's trustworthy. It has authority. Its words are the very words of God. but it is not the fourth person of the Godhead. It does not take on a life of its own. The Word of God is living and active because the Spirit of God is living and active. It says in Isaiah 55 verse 11, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty. Or as many of you have memorized it, it shall not return void. But see how it continues? It says, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I send it. God is directing this. He purposes His Word every time it goes out. There is a thing for which He sends it, and He, by His Holy Spirit, is the one who brings it to pass. For the Word of God to have its effect on you, for it to pierce your soul and to penetrate your heart, the Holy Spirit must Be active. In 1 Corinthians 2, 14, Paul says, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. For all of its truth and perfection and authority, the Bible is not accessible to you, without the Holy Spirit at work. Now that doesn't mean you can't understand the simple meaning of it. In fact, there are many who have a significant understanding of the theology revealed in Scripture who are still lost in their sin. but you cannot discern it in a way that moves you to see yourself as you truly are, and to recognize God for who he is, and to understand your deep need for him, except by the activity of the Holy Spirit. So does the Holy Spirit speak today? Absolutely he does. He speaks through the Word of God. And not just as a quiet whisper from the past. He is active, working in you, applying His truth, opening your eyes, convicting your spirit, cleansing your heart as you immerse yourself in His Word. Justin Peters famously said, if you want to hear God speak, read your Bible. If you want to hear him speak audibly, read your Bible out loud. You don't hear the Holy Spirit by sitting in an empty room, clearing your head, and listening. You hear Him in the way that He has chosen to speak to you, and that is through His Word. And He will speak to you. The God of the universe, the great I Am, will speak to you when you open His Word and submit yourself to Him. So commit yourself to it by immersing yourself in the living, active Word of God and hear what He has to say to you.