Hebrews 3
CHAPTER 3
The supremacy of Christ over Moses
Therefore holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus, 2 who was faithful to Him that appointed him, as also was Moses in all his house. 3 For he has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, in that he that built the house has more honour than the house. 4 Every house is built by someone; but He that built all things is God. 5 And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were afterward to be spoken. 6 But Christ, as a Son over his own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope, remaining firm to the end.
Learn the lesson from Israel in the wilderness
7 Therefore, even as the Holy Spirit said: Today, if you shall hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, like the time of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. 10 Therefore I was displeased with this generation, and said: They do always err in their heart. They did not know My ways. 11 As I swore in My anger: They shall not enter into My rest.
12 Brothers, take care, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, causing you to depart from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day by day, so long as it is called today, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast to our original confidence, remaining firm to the end.
15 It is said: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. 16 For who, having heard, still rebelled? Was it not all those who followed Moses out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was He displeased for forty years? Was it not with those that sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom swore He that they should not enter into His rest, but to those that were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter in because of their unbelief.
Commentary
3:6 It’s therefore not true that ‘once saved, always saved’. We must endure to the end to be saved (v. 14; Mt. 10:22).
3:8 Hard heartedness is a spiritual disease we must avoid. Numbness of conscience, of feeling to and for others, indifference to God, existing rather than living life as God intended... this must be replaced by a softness of heart, a sensitive conscience, a gentleness.
3:13 Sin deceives; hence 2:14 personifies sin as a ‘devil’, a slanderer or false accuser. We deceive ourselves that we can sin; the Bible continually focuses us upon our internal thought processes, for to change them is the essence of Christianity.
3:17 Our baptism is like leaving Egypt, crossing the Red Sea and entering the wilderness journey with Israel (1 Cor. 10:1). All that happened to them there, especially their failures, becomes a warning to us.
