Hebrews 3:7-19

Warning Against Unbelief

 7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:

   “Today, if you hear his voice,

 8 do not harden your hearts

as you did in the rebellion,

   during the time of testing in the wilderness,

9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,

   though for forty years they saw what I did.

10 That is why I was angry with that generation;

   I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,

   and they have not known my ways.’

11 So I declared on oath in my anger,

   ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”[b]

 12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15 As has just been said:

   “Today, if you hear his voice,

   do not harden your hearts

   as you did in the rebellion.”[c]

 16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

Dig Deeper

If you know anything about social issues in the United States for the last half-century then you’re well aware that there has been a constant and heated debate over the issue of the United States allowing and making legal the killing of unborn children.  The debate has raged on now my entire life and doesn’t seem to be coming to an end anytime soon.  On one side of the issue are those that argue that killing an unborn child is acceptable because they deny the status of personhood to the unborn, saying that no one can be sure when life begins.  With that interesting leap in logic, they then claim the killing of the child is a matter of choice concerning a woman’s own body and no one else’s decision to interfere in.  On the other side of the debate are those that argue that life is sacred and the right to life cannot be denied an innocent person under the Constitution of the United States as well as any moral standard that makes any sense.  They would argue that the choice is to engage in the behavior of becoming pregnant or not.  Once one engages in that choice, they undertake the responsibility of serving as a host and provider for an unborn person who is as of yet unable to provide for themselves.  This position believes that the life that is taken is the life of another and does not fall under the category of the old slogan “my body, my choice.”

Just a few days ago, however, as an issue in this debate heated up again, a rather nationally famous politician was arguing for the continued ability of woman to kill unborn children if they so choose.  The shocking moment, at least to me, came when she wrote an article and declared that it is not fair for women to be forced to be responsible for their own actions by being disallowed to kill the unborn child.  It was disheartening to see such a monstrous argument being used seriously by an elected representative but it is endemic of a culture that increasingly believes that it is fundamentally unfair to hold someone responsible for their own actions.  It has become more and more acceptable these days to believe that one of the major roles of governmental authorities is to relieve people of the negative consequences of their actions rather than assuring that they face those consequences head on.

After reading this passage in Hebrews, it becomes quickly clear that the author of Hebrews would consider that argument nonsense.  In fact, by today’s standards, the points that he makes here might sound cruel, harsh, and unreasonable.  These were a persecuted people after all.  They were going through a great deal of pressure and some of them were beginning to crack.  Where’s the love and acceptance we might ask?  Where’s the tender compassion and understanding?  There is no question that the writer of Hebrews dearly loved his recipients and wanted them to do well.  But he also knew that everything is a choice.  The Christian community in Rome, if that was indeed who he was writing to, were victims of persecution but that did not mean that they were not responsible for their own actions and choices in response to those trials.  You will find no soft, bleeding-heart nonsense here.  You will find only a loving and honest warning.  God is a God who demands that people face the consequences of their actions.  That should give them great pause as they consider their ongoing faithfulness to Christ and the family of God.

Hebrews returns to the Old Testament (Psalm 95) to warn the disciples of the danger that they were in.  He is, in today’s medical terminology, giving them a stress test for their heart.  Operating under the assumption that the Holy Spirit directed and inspired the words of the Psalmist, Hebrews says that the problem displayed in Psalm 95 was that the Israelites of the Exodus generation had hardened their hearts towards God’s will.  In fact, Hebrews applies the warning of Psalm 95 to the contemporary circumstances, but that Psalm was originally written as a warning to the Jews of his day, pleading with them and warning them to avoid the mistakes of the Exodus generation.  In some ways, they faced the same stresses and challenges that those Israelites did and the Hebrews author wants to make sure that their hearts are strong and that they don’t suffer from the same disease.  Israel was warned that they had better hold tight to God’s will and not grumble and fight against his kingship or they would find themselves unable to enter into God’s rest (a topic that the writer will come back to and more fully explain in the next chapter of Hebrews).  The Christians in Rome were facing that same problem and the same choice, and were in danger of hardening their hearts, thus missing out on the rest that God had in store for them in the Messiah.  It was time for a heart check-up.

The method of that check-up was to remember that they were all in this together.  The writer believed that all of the fulfillment of the promises from God to his people, Israel, had been summed up in the Messiah and were attainable only in him.  In entering into Christ, the family of God, they had joined a new family that shared their lives together in every way; as families in those times did.  Thus, it was their responsibility to help one another.  It was up to all in the Christian community to make sure that their hearts were remaining healthy towards what God was really doing among and through the Messiah’s people.  This wasn’t to give them license to make assumptions about other people’s hearts and actions, as some Christians can be prone to do at times, but they were to support and strengthen one another, and not pull away from each other when things get difficult.  It is uncanny how many times a Christian begins to struggle with life and their faith and pulls away from the body because of their weak spiritual condition when in reality that is the worst thing that they can do.  The only way to stand up to the grind of living a life of sacrificing for others and against the deceitfulness of sin is to encourage one another constantly.  Sin is deceitful as we are constantly tempted to make small compromises in our heart, and after a time we wind up doing things that we never would have imagined.  One of the primary weapons that God has given us against that slow descent is the support of one another.  Banding together to help one another keep focused on our Messiah is vital.

Part of their problems, it seems, was pride.  It always is, isn’t it?  Perhaps they started to think that their choices were good and rational ones and that they weren’t truly in danger of leaving God and his people.  Perhaps those that were starting to buckle under the pressure or make those subtle choices to slowly pull away from God by pulling away from his people fooled themselves into thinking that they were okay; surely they would not fall.

But that is exactly what they were in danger of doing and a stern warning was needed.  The moment that we begin to think that we cannot fall is the moment that we begin to teeter and flirt with destruction.  They were falling asleep at the wheel and needed to wake themselves before something tragic happened.  This is the point of the series of rapid fire questions in verses 16-18.  Who heard and rebelled?  It wasn’t a bunch of people who knew nothing of God and couldn’t be blamed.  It was God’s own people who had seen the mighty works of his hands.  And when they rebelled, who was God’s righteous anger directed at?  It was God’s same people, the ones that he had called to himself.  And whom did God warn would not enter his rest for their disobedience?  It was the very people who had once been given the opportunity to be part of that rest. 

The point is that drifting away from the truth of God’s will is a dangerous thing.  They shouldn’t think that it couldn’t happen to them because they were somehow exempt from making the same mistakes that the Israelites had made so long ago.  This warning wasn’t for the next person, it was for “you”.  The problem for the people in the wilderness is that they forgot who God was and took their eyes off of what he had done and continued to do for them.  They began to view his provision as inadequate.  This is always a very real danger for God’s people. 

When it all comes down to it, belief is what matters.  We must continue to believe that the life of the Messiah is one worth holding to because it is the only way to life.  And of course we must remember that for our author and his audience, belief was not a state of mind but the actions that one took in response to what they held to be true.  This must remain true in our lives even when the road is hard and we grow weary.  When the burden seems too much, Jesus must be enough.  When the pain seems too sharp, Jesus must be enough.  When the road seems to steep, Jesus must be enough.  When we start to wonder whether there are easier paths, Jesus must be enough.

Devotional Thought

Is the Messiah and his family enough for you?  A good way to determine that is to look to who or what you are most loyal.  To whom or what do you turn when things are at their most difficult.  Is it Christ, his word, and his people or is it other things and other people?  The answer to that will go a long way in helping you to determine the answer to the question of whether or not Jesus, the Messiah, is enough.