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 forty 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 swore in 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 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.
Hebrews 3:7-19 ESV
Almost no generation has been as privileged to behold the gifts and glories of God as the exodus generation. Of course, their life in slavery was oppressive and brutal, and it was all they had known for around four hundred years. God certainly did redeem and deliver them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
Safely in the land of Goshen, they watched as the LORD brought ruin to the land of Egypt through the ten plagues, and each was specifically designed to utterly humiliate one or more of Egypt’s so-called gods. When they left Egypt, they did so loaded down with the gold and jewelry of the Egyptians, which was freely given in desperation to simply have the Israelites get out. God Himself led their way into the wilderness with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. When He brought them to shores of the sea and had Pharaoh and his chariots chasing after them, the LORD parted the sea so that they walked across on dry land. Safe on the other side, they watched as Pharaoh led his army into the sea after them and as God brought the waters back into place, decimating the greatest military unit of their day in seconds. He then led them through the wilderness like a shepherd, making bitter waters sweet, giving them daily bread to eat, and bringing water out of a rock to drink. If that was not enough, He brought them to Mount Sinai, descending upon the mountain in glory and speaking for the whole nation to hear.
Yet for all the grace that was showered upon that generation, only two men over the age of twenty would enter the land that God had promised to their father Abraham, while all the rest of them died one by one in the wilderness. In our present text, the author of Hebrews uses that unbelieving generation as a warning for Christians today.
TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE // VERSES 7-11, 15-19
The first word of verse 7, therefore, ought to cause us our eyes to glance briefly back at the previous verse to ensure that we understand the context for what is about to be said. After making the point that Jesus is worth of more glory than Moses, verse 6 ended by saying, “And we are [God’s] house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” 3:7-4:13 is essentially one grand warning to do just that: to hold fast our confidence and hope until the end. However, the author has rooted that warning in a particular Old Testament text, namely, Psalm 95.
That particular text is introduced with these brief yet pregnant words: as the Holy Spirit says… Although the human author of Psalm 95 is anonymous, the author of Hebrews unreservedly declares the Holy Spirit to be the actual psalmist. Of course, 2 Peter 1:21 makes that point explicit as well, saying, “For no prophesy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The supreme and final author of Scripture is the Holy Spirit, which is why we call the Scriptures God’s Word.
We should also note the present tense of the word says. It might be easy enough to subconsciously read those words as saying, “as the Holy Spirit said,” yet that is not what we find here. The following words from Psalm 95 are not simply what the Holy Spirit said long ago; they are what He is still saying today.
The second half of the psalm is quoted, being the last line of verse 7 through the end in verse 11. This selection was well chosen. As R. Kent Hughes notes,
Every Jew knew this passage by heart because its opening line served as a call to worship every Sabbath evening in the synagogue: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7, 8; quoting Psalm 95:7, 8). These solemn words were intoned week after week, year after year as a call to carefully listen to the voice of God. Hebrew ears perked up at their sound.[1]
Indeed, the first half of the psalm is exactly what we would expect of a call of worship to begin the gathering of God’s people:
Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the LORD is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Yet that joyous beginning shifts into a fearful warning for the second half of the psalm:
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
I think it quite likely that the psalmist composed the psalm in that manner in order to mirror the exodus generation that verses 7-11 use as a warning. Recall that after watching Pharaoh and his army engulfed in the sea, the people of Israel sang a song of praise rather like the one here in Psalm 95:1-7. However, as the psalmist notes, that generation quickly went astray. Two instances are particularly referenced.
The first is found in Exodus 17, which we studied earlier this year, and is tied to the locations cited in verse 8. Because the author of Hebrews almost always cites from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), verse 8 reads a bit differently in Hebrews from how it reads in our English Psalms. Yet the content is the same because Meribah means rebellion, and Massah means testing. Those names were given because in that place, when the Israelites were without water in the wilderness, they put Yahweh to the test. Or, as we said, they placed Him on trial. They made themselves God’s judges.
The second instance is alluded to through the oath that God makes in verses 10-11 and is found in Numbers 14. In that passage, we read of the twelve Israelite spies returning from Canaan to report their findings to the whole nation. Only Joshua and Caleb urged Israel to go into the land trusting that God would give its inhabitants into their hand. The other ten spies led the people astray, exhorting Israel to return to the land of Egypt. This kindled the LORD’s anger, and He threatened to cut off the people of Israel entirely and form new nation from Moses. However, Moses interceded for the people once again. But even though God did not ultimately disown Israel, He did judge the exodus generation by cursing them to wander in the wilderness for forty years (one year for each of the forty days that the spies were in Canaan) until everyone over the age of twenty died. Their children would be the ones to enter into the land that God promised to Abraham and his offspring.
LEST THERE BE IN ANY OF YOU AN EVIL, UNBELIEVING HEART // VERSES 12-14
With those words of warning ringing freshly in our ears, the writer goes on in verses 12-14 to apply his own word of exhortation:
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.
Again, the author calls his readers brothers, fellow members of God’s household of faith, and the principal command here is take care, which is the opposite of drifting away (2:1) or being neglectful (2:3). Indeed, taking care is quite similar to being considerate, for being careful requires consideration, focus, and attention. Indeed, the author keeps returning to these types of commands for good reason. A few weeks ago, I read the words of Screwtape about the safest road to hell being the gradual one. To emphasize the reality of that danger, hear Spurgeon make the same warning only from another angle:
Take heed lest sin hardens you before you are aware of it. True religion is not a thing that can be acquired by carelessness or neglect. One may go to hell heedlessly, but one cannot so go to heaven. Many stumble into the bottomless pit with their eyes shut, but no one ever yet entered into heaven by a leap in the dark.[2]
The danger against which we must take care is an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God and becoming hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Both of these phrases describe the same reality. A heart hardened by the deceitfulness of sin is the same as an evil, unbelieving heart. The deceitfulness of sin hardens the heart into rejecting God and His Word.
Culturally, we have seen the reality of this on a very broad scale. Although the study of apologetics is a worthwhile endeavor, the vast majority of people do not believe in Christ because they have not yet been convinced of the Bible’s reliability or by arguments for the existence of God. No, most people who claim not to believe in God are, in reality, rejecting Him because they do not want to forfeit control over their own life.
But, of course, the writer of Hebrews is not speaking to the pagans; he is writing to us, to his brothers in Christ. As long as we still have breath in our lungs, we are still in danger of having an evil, unbelieving heart that is hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Indeed, “if we hear the words of Hebrews and think, “This falling away could never happen to me,” we are hearing them wrongly. To hear them rightly is to say, “I will continue to trust in Jesus so that this falling away does not happen to me.”[3] And as we noted in our studies of Exodus, the unbelieving and hardened hearts of that generation began with their bitter and complaining spirits. They started out grumbling but became grumbles in the end. There is no sin too small to warrant rooting out, for there is no such thing as a sin too small to be damning.
Indeed, that is the point of verse 14: for we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As Jesus Himself said in Mark 13:13: “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” Like the exodus generation, many begin the Christian life well, only to fall away during their passage through the wilderness of this life. Indeed, apostacy from the faith is the surest evidence of never having had true faith at the beginning. As 1 John 2:19 says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” The Pilgrim’s Progress is also full of warnings and potent examples of ways that followers of Christ fail to reach the Celestial City. Pliable, Obstinate, Worldly-Wiseman, Simple, Sloth, Presumption, Formalist, Hypocrisy, Timorous, Mistrust, Talkative, and Ignorance are only some of the ones who fall away from the living God, and Bunyan intended for their very names to be an exhortation to us against the sins that led them astray.
Indeed, just as Bunyan did through that book, we are commanded to exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today.” How do we do that? In Hebrews 10:24-25, the writer will specially urge us to encourage one another whenever we “meet together.” Thus, each Lord’s Day gathering, we ought to be exhorting and encouraging one another to continue onward in the faith, to stay firmly rooted in Christ.
Yet the command to exhort one another every day would imply that we ought to be around one another beyond our corporate gatherings. For the original audience that was likely already the case, for all the Christians of that church would have lived within walking distance of one another. Today, the invention of the automobile has made 70-mile one-way daytrips possible, but it has also caused our towns to be spread out. Thus, I do not think it is possible today to be as interconnected with one another as the first century Christians were. In fact, we have other gatherings such as community groups and men and women ministries to help bridge that gap and give further points of connection throughout the week. Beyond those gathering, let us be intentional about lunch times, early morning Bible discussions over coffee, etc. Of course, let me also remind those of us who are married and have children that we certainly have no excuse for not exhorting one another every day since you belong to the same household.
Regarding how exactly we are to exhort one another, the author of Hebrews is giving us a pattern with this very letter, which he calls in 13:22 “a word of exhortation.” So, as we continue moving through this sermon-letter, pay close attention to how he carefully entwines tender encouragement and sharp warning, for that is how we ought to exhort one another. But most importantly pay attention to how he repeatedly turns out gaze upon Christ. As we have said and shall continue to say, the ultimate exhortation of Hebrews is consider Jesus, meditate on Him, let your thoughts dwell upon Him. Whenever we see a brother or sister in sin, we ought to exhort them all the more to turn to Christ. A. W. Pink gives this sobering observation:
Oftentimes the failure of a Christian is to be charged against his brethren as much as to his own faithlessness. How often when we perceive a saint giving way to hardness of heart we go about mentioning it to others, instead of faithfully and tenderly exhorting the offending one![4]
UNABLE TO ENTER BECAUSE OF UNBELIEF // VERSES 15-19
In verses 15-19, the author of Hebrews returns to Psalm 95 to give some explanation of its warning by first repeating the initial warning against hardening our hearts, then moving through series of rhetorical questions which ultimately culminate in verse 19 as the big point.
The writer closes this penetrating section of the text with six questions given in three pairs. The first question of each pair asks the question; the second question answers it. The questions are definitely phrased to raise soul-searching tensions among his hearers in the struggling church.
First set, verse 16: Question: “Who were those who heard and yet rebelled?” Answering question: “Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?” Point: Everyone who died in the desert had begun in the glorious exodus and its great expectations.
Second set, verse 17: Question: “And with whom was he provoked for forty years?” Answering question: “Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?” Point: The men who angered God for forty years were those who did not believe he could provide for them, though they had left Egypt with great hope. This is a warning that high hopes will not suffice— there must be belief.
Third set, verse 18: Question: “And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest…?” Answering question: Was it not “to those who were disobedient?” Point: Here unbelief leads to action, as it always does.[5]
Thus, with all of this in mind, he summarizes in verse 19, saying, So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Paul makes the lesson that we are meant to get from the exodus generation’s unbelief explicit in 1 Corinthians 10:1-14:
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
The exodus generation is an example for us to learn from, that we might do differently than they did. They experienced greater grace than almost any other generation. They saw God’s mighty work of salvation. They tasted the bread of heaven. They drank from the rock that was cleft for them. Yet all but Caleb and Joshua perished.
But I say that they experienced greater grace than almost any other generation for good reason. We who live in these last days have experienced far greater grace than even that generation of Israelites. Because we have the Scriptures at our fingertips, ready to be read, read to us, or even sung to us, we have a much superior revelation of God than they had. As awesome as it might have been to hear the voice of God thunder the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, they could not endure anymore from Him. We open the pages of our Bible and hear much more than just the Ten Commandments, and we are able to endure reading these words. We have the complete plan of God’s redemption set before us, showing us Jesus who is our Redeemer and Lord, a grace which even the angels of heaven long to understand.
Thus, because we have read the Scripture today, we have heard God’s voice. Therefore, let us not harden our hearts and drift away as the exodus generation did. Indeed, the question from 2:3 still ought to loom over us: if God’s wrath burned against the exodus generation, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation in Christ? See the Table before us as a visible and tangible exhortation against being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. None of us are guaranteed another day to repent of sin and confess Christ. Today we have heard His voice, and today we must respond.
[1] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, 100.
[2] Spurgeon Study Bible, 1644.
[3] Tabletalk Magazine, April 2020, 55.
[4] Cited in Robert Paul Martin, Hebrews, 196.
[5] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, .
B. C. Newton 