Hebrews 3:1-11 New Living Translation
Jesus Is Greater Than Moses
3 And so, dear brothers and sisters who belong to God and[a] are partners with those called to heaven, think carefully about this Jesus whom we declare to be God’s messenger[b] and High Priest. 2 For he was faithful to God, who appointed him, just as Moses served faithfully when he was entrusted with God’s entire[c] house.
3 But Jesus deserves far more glory than Moses, just as a person who builds a house deserves more praise than the house itself. 4 For every house has a builder, but the one who built everything is God.
5 Moses was certainly faithful in God’s house as a servant. His work was an illustration of the truths God would reveal later. 6 But Christ, as the Son, is in charge of God’s entire house. And we are God’s house, if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ.[d]
7 That is why the Holy Spirit says,
“Today when you hear his voice,
8 don’t harden your hearts
as Israel did when they rebelled,
when they tested me in the wilderness.
9 There your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
even though they saw my miracles for forty years.
10 So I was angry with them, and I said,
‘Their hearts always turn away from me.
They refuse to do what I tell them.’
11 So in my anger I took an oath:
‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”[e]
Word of God for the Children of God
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
When we study the Book of Hebrews, we must be reminded that it is written with three groups in mind.
Parts of it are directed right at those new Christians.
Parts of it are directed at those non-Christians who aren’t really accepting anything and parts of it – this part, for example – are directed toward those non-Christians who have an intellectual understanding, who know the gospel, and who are hanging right on the knife edge of decision.
And this passage that we come to now is one of those critical passages by which the Holy Spirit wants to give a great big supernatural shove to anybody hanging on the edge of faith in Jesus Christ, hasn’t yet committed themselves to faith.
Hebrews 3:7-9 Do not harden your hearts
My heart aches over the lack of belief in God that has become rampant in our younger generations, and the falling away of those believing in a false gospel.
Sadly, all it takes to keep some from believing is to hear another laugh at those who believe in what the scorners don’t.
It isn’t particularly hard to find the statistics to show this waning belief, even from within our most evangelical Christian churches.
Hebrews 3:7-11, the author warns his readers to not harden their hearts, using the example of the Israelites in the wilderness who rejected God at the edge of the promised land, proceeded to harden their hearts at the waters of Meribah.
It’s a slippery slope and there is no warning that one is only one step ahead.
More than I care to tell, I’ve been on the edge in my weaker moments as well.
How hoakey to think some “god” would come to earth to die for our sins as if that would really change things.
Intellectuals have the greatest problems with disbelief because they resolve to fully understand and prove anything to believe it.
Intelligence, or our lack of use of it is one of many traits of the human mind.
Proverbs 2:1-6New American Standard Bible
The Pursuit of Wisdom Brings Security
2 My son, if you will receive my words
And treasure my commandments within you,
2 Make your ear attentive to wisdom;
Incline your heart to understanding.
3 For if you cry out for insight,
And [a]raise your voice for understanding;
4 If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
5 Then you will understand the fear of the Lord,
And discover the knowledge of God.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
From His mouth come knowledge and understanding.
Notice that word “if” the author uses in the first verse?
“If” carries a connotation of skepticism, of not likely and worse … never.
Willingness to acquire wisdom requires a depth of spirit, an ability to recognize one’s own shortcomings in understanding, and the willingness to admit that its possible there is an intelligence beyond what man is capable of understanding.
Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Hardness of heart – lack of faith – however you say it, God does not see it as a frivolous or trivial matter.
What is the lesson learned in Hebrews 3?
Being negative or complaining or stubborn does not glorify God and it is not what we were put on earth to do: Glorify God, Serving God and our neighbors.
In Hebrews 3:7-19, the author invites us to hear an urgent warning .
He reminds us how the human heart is bent toward evil.
Like the Israelites who longed to go back to Egypt (Exodus 16:3,17:3), our sinful hearts can delude us into believing we’re more secure apart from God who is nowhere to be found as we pray for assistance than we are walking with Him.
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13 NIV)
This verse is precious to me, a very powerful promise by God Himself.
He can be found.
But there is a prerequisite: one must sincerely want to find him.
As long as our hearts are hardened by our will to believe only what we can get our finite minds around, our wills to hold the reins of our lives with assistance only from our iron clad determination and not from the will of the One who created us, we are immune from discovering the Almighty All-Powerful God.
To be honest, I pride myself in my intelligence and wisdom and stubbornness.
I’ve seen my ‘scores’ as well as the results of certain accomplishments of mine.
But my relationship with my hardcore stubbornness pales in importance to the depth of my faith, trust, strength of my abiding in my relationship with Jesus.
I am continually humbled, impressed with the joy and freedom that comes through knowing God and dwelling in his Word.
How my heart aches for those whose hearts refuse to “taste and see that the Lord is Good.” (Psalm 34:8)
In other concluding words for the author of Hebrews, the wilderness generation is an historical example of those spiritual realities we face today in the church.
Just as most in the wilderness generation started out well but didn’t cross the finish line, so too there are those in the church who appear to start out well with us, who we break bread with, who can speak Christian lingo like we do, but who eventually faithfully walk away from Christ, from his church, and never finish.
As unbelief grits the hearts and minds of those in the wilderness generation, so too unbelief can grip the hearts and minds of those in the church today.
Just as that unbelief or severe consequences for the wilderness generation, so too perpetual unbelief in the church also bears consequences even more severe than simply temporal death in a wilderness, It bears eternal consequences too.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Praying …
Praise to the Lord and Warning against Unbelief.
95 Come, let’s sing for joy to the Lord,
Let’s shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.
2 Let’s come before His presence with a song of thanksgiving,
Let’s shout joyfully to Him in songs with instruments.
3 For the Lord is a great God
And a great King above all gods,
4 In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
The peaks of the mountains are also His.
5 [a]The sea is His, for it was He who made it,
And His hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let’s worship and bow down,
Let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For He is our God,
And we are the people of His [b]pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, [c]if you will hear His voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts as at [d]Meribah,
As on the day of [e]Massah in the wilderness,
9 “When your fathers put Me to the test,
They tested Me, though they had seen My work.
10 For forty years I was disgusted with that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
11 Therefore I swore in My anger,
They certainly shall not enter My rest.”
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 