Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.
Remember what it says:
“TODAY WHEN YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DON’T HARDEN YOUR HEARTS as Israel did when they rebelled.”
And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard his voice?
Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt?
And who made God angry for forty years?
Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness?
And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that they would never enter his rest?
Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed him?
So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.
Hebrews 3:12-19
In this passage the writer of Hebrews reaches the point of his application to the Hebrew Christians in the time frame in which he was writing and the reason he was writing the letter. He has used the challenge of what the Israelites of old had done in the wilderness to apply to the Hebrew Christians of his day. At this point he was picking on the beginning of his sentence in Hebrews 3:7 to apply it to those reading his letter. [Διό] is an inferential conjunction meaning “therefore” or “as a result” of what he wrote in Hebrews 3:7-11. All of what he had to say in the paragraph preceding this one is now used as the background to extend his challenge to the Jewish Christians of his day.
“Watch out for one another [Βλέπετε] ‘brothers and sisters‘ [μήποτε] lest / so that none of you fall away from the living God because of an unbelieving heart.”
Hebrews 3:12
“Exhort / warn one another every day so that you won’t harden your heart [sklēruno] as a result of the deceitfulness of sin.” 13
Hebrews 3:13
Trust in Christ to save you, firmly holding on to your faith [your partnership in Christ] to the end and not giving up.
Hebrews 3:14
Do you see there are three verses all saying the same thing but with different words?
Notice the one another aspect in each verse! We are in this together, we are part of a body, brothers and sisters, all part of the body of Christ. We ought to care what happens to our fellow believers at our elbow. I have drawn your attention to this in an early Gem where I jumped ahead to Hebrews 10:24-25. In each of the above three verses – Hebrews 3:12-14 we are told the same thing.
- Watch out for one another!
- Warn one another!
- Hold firmly to your {collective} partnership in Christ!
Do you see the analogy with the Israelites of old? They allowed their community to be separated by division, testing, dissension, grumbling and squabbling. Rather look out for one another. I highlighted what this writer highlighted when he said we fall when we allow sin or acts of disobedience to come into the camp. But we also fall when we individually neglect our focus on God and allow ourselves to drift away from Him (Gem 2045). We can do that by:-
- allowing ourselves to develop unbelieving hearts,
- allowing our hearts to harden as a result of sin which we allow to creep in
- letting go of our hold on Christ,
- giving up and not holding on to the end.
Any one of those actions can see us lose our grip on the truth.
I picked out one Greek word in verse 13 to highlight and explain. It is the verb used for hardening your heart. How on earth do we harden our heart? I hear you say, “I wouldn’t even know how to go about it Ian?” “What does it even mean?” Just ask a heart patient. God tells us to guard our heart above all else.
Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.
Proverbs 4:23
Take it from one who knows, having experienced two heart attacks and now two light transitory strokes. Your heart is your life source, but so too is God. Both are your life source in more ways than you can imagine. No one sets out to slip away from Christ having once known Him intimately. It sneaks up on you, just like drifting. Do you see a word in verse 13 which should signal something to you? It’s the Greek word [σκληρύνω] sklērunō. Do you recognise an English word which comes from that Greek word? It’s sclerosis, which is classified as the hardening or thickening of a cell wall or tissue which leads to a blockage of normal natural function and ultimately leads to death – physical or spiritual. That is the word that is used in this verse. It comes about as the result of gradual processes. It is not something which happens to you quickly. It requires a build-up of years. Sclerosis can happen in the heart, in the arteries, in the blood vessels and in the liver. All blood related conditions. Remember again the adage: life is in the blood.
Biblically speaking:-
- We can harden our hearts toward God, His Spirit, His word, His commandments, His principles.
- We can harden our minds to God, His Spirit, His word, His commandments, His principles.
- We can stiffen our necks to God, His Spirit, His word, His commandments, His principles.
- We can block our ears to God, His Spirit, His word, His commandments, His principles.
- We can stiffen our spirit to God, His Spirit, His word, His commandments, His principles.
- We can harden ourselves to God, His Spirit, His word, His commandments, His principles.
Each time we do it on the inside it is hard to see the result on the outside until it becomes cumulative. We don’t see the infinitesimal change which happens each time we do it, multiple times a day, scores of times a week, hundreds of times a month or thousands of times a year. But all have an effect, until finally we are blocked, hardened and stiffened by our own actions. Am I making sense to you? I certainly hope so.
It’s the little things that trip us up. It’s in minutiae of life where these things happen. It’s my love of salt on radishes and celery. It’s my love of butter on crumpets or corn cobs. The cream on the strawberries or that time I took off the cream from the full cream milk from three silver topped bottles as a boy to have all at once on my cornflakes. Are you getting the idea? Similar life processes can have the same influence on us spiritually. Two Gem readers have asked me a similar question: “How could the Jews rebel against God after all the miracles over 40 years Ian?”
Easy, the answer is found in the little things we do in the process of life. The attitudes of mind, the offences taken when none were meant, the comparisons made, the conclusions drawn all on little evidence. ‘What the pastor said offended me.’ ‘It was not fair of God to not give me what I have been praying for but then doing what He did for my friend.’ As a result of the offence we took in the moment and the hardening of our attitude because of what that person said to us in church. That’s it, I am not going back to that church. That’s it, I am not praying anymore. That’s it, that just proves that God is not interested in me; so I am now not interested in Him. Really, that is all it takes for you to give up on God. I would rethink that one if I were you.
I think you have got the idea by now that you can never prefigure God. His ways are not your ways and His thoughts are not your thoughts. Just stop and think about what I have told you concerning the Israelites’ rebellion during their wilderness wanderings. God always had in mind that Rephidim would be the place of peaceful rest, but it turned to disaster because of the mindset of the wanderers. Yet God allowed the water from the rock at Rephidim to follow them like a river on their the way. God always had in mind to show those wanderers His glory through Moses and later to endow them with that same glory in Paran but they missed it. Why? Because their perspective became skewed by their own grumblings and murmurings when they complained to God and blamed Him for the unfairness or the lack. It was all because of the difference between their perspective and God’s. They were just not aware of exactly what He was doing and why. Be careful you don’t fall into the same trap. Don’t let it happen to you!
Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace.
Ian
Always remember that God lavishes unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love Him and obey His commands.
Exodus 20:6
Don’t blame God for what you brought on yourself; have the courage to ask Him for His input and follow His advice.
Ian
Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.
Joyce Meyer
Don’t blame God for creating the lion; instead, thank Him for not giving it wings.
African Proverb
True.