Hebrews 3:7 ¶ Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. 10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. 11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) 12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. 13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; 15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. 16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. 17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? 19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
Here is Paul’s source verses from Psalms for
verses 7 through 11.
Psalm 95:7 ¶
For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep
of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation,
and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and
saw my work. 10 Forty years long was I
grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their
heart, and they have not known my ways: 11
Unto whom I sware in my wrath that
they should not enter into my rest.
The disobedient and unbelieving Jews would
not enter in God’s rest, the Promised Land. Paul is warning these Jews who
profess to be followers of Christ that they may fall short of salvation and
eternal life by an unbelief that lays beneath the surface making all of their
professions of faith a lie.
I have known people who professed faith in
Christ at a young age but the desires of youth and the pull of ancient pagan
philosophies like atheistic evolution and the gnostic communist cult attracted them by justifying their baser
lusts proved that profession a lie. Accepting Christ does not involve a magic
chant but a commitment. Paul is giving a stern warning here and it applies to
us, as well. Do we push our small children into making a “decision for Christ”
when they have no root within themselves? Do we nurture and grow their faith as
they grow? What about the drug addict who just wants to be free of his
addiction but doesn’t even consider the basis of the Christian faith in who
Christ is and what He did? Then, when temptation rears its ugly head sin draws
them back into their iniquity and one day they even admit they never actually
believed.
In verse 14 we have the word confidence
which should be linked to our faith.
Hebrews 11:1 ¶ Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen.
And those who hold this faith to the end are
saved but not those who claimed faith and then rejected it. Let me give you an
example. This is from a famous science celebrity.
A
noted evolutionary biologist, Edward
O. Wilson, wrote a book entitled Consilience
in which he writes in chapter one about the joy he felt when he found and
believed in the theory of evolution and the unity of all sciences with that
atheistic determinism as their foundation, well unquestionable fact more than
theory to him with the following as part of his journey to atheism;
On
a far more modest scale, I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste the
unification metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of
fundamentalist religion. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, laid backward
under the water on the sturdy arm of a pastor, been born again. I knew the
healing power of redemption. Faith, hope, and charity were in my bones, and
with millions of others I knew that my savior Jesus Christ would grant me
eternal life. More pious than the average teenager, I read the Bible cover to
cover, twice. But now at college, steroid-driven into moods of adolescent
rebellion, I chose to doubt.
Was this young person ever saved? As I said,
the prayer of faith is not a magic chant. If there is no true belief behind it
what is it? As I noted before if a child professes Christ to please their
parents or pastor and goes off on a lifelong denial of Christ and then dies
will they be in Heaven? Examine yourselves.
Paul then recounts his comments earlier in
the chapter and makes parallels between the Wilderness journey of the Hebrews
and the Jewish Christian of his day. We would do well to consider this. We had
a lot of people who attended churches in the 1800s who never became a member.
We have a lot of people who sit in the pews today fooled by easy-believism and
no, I’m not talking about proving you are a Christian by your impeccable moral
virtue. I’m not talking about your struggles, your failures, or your doctrinal
errors meaning you are not really a Christian, or even how many times you
attend church. I’m talking about what do you believe? What is the nature, the
very foundation of your faith.
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