Hebrews 3:7-14

The Voice

For the first-century Jewish-Christian audience, Moses is the rescuer of Hebrew slaves out of bondage in Egypt—the receiver of God’s law and the covenant. They remember how he shepherded the children of Israel safely through the desert for 40 years and led them to the brink of the promised land. He was indeed a remarkable man. Yet what Jesus has accomplished for everyone—not just the Jews—is on a totally different level. Moses was indeed faithful to God and accomplished a great deal as God’s servant. Jesus, too, is faithful to God, but He has accomplished what Moses could not because He is God’s very own Son.

⁷Listen now, to the voice of the Holy Spirit through what the psalmist wrote:

Today, if you listen to His voice,
⁸Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
    in the bitter uprising at Meribah
⁹Where your ancestors tested Me
    though they had seen My marvelous power.
¹⁰For the 40 years they traveled on
    to the land that I had promised them,
That generation broke My heart.
Grieving and angry, I said, “Their hearts are unfaithful;
    they don’t know what I want from them.”
¹¹That is why I swore in anger
    they would never enter salvation’s rest.^[a]

¹²Brothers and sisters, pay close attention so you won’t develop an evil and unbelieving heart that causes you to abandon the living God. ¹³Encourage each other every day—for as long as we can still say “today”—so none of you let the deceitfulness of sin harden your hearts. ¹⁴For we have become partners with the Anointed One—if we can just hold on to our confidence until the end.

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