Don’t harden your hearts the way they did in the bitter uprising at Meribah

For 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.”

Brothers and sisters, pay close attention so you won’t develop an evil and unbelieving heart that causes you to abandon the living God.

Encourage 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.

Look at the lines from the psalm again: Today, if you listen to His voice, Don’t harden your hearts the way they did in the bitter uprising at Meribah.

Once again, God has fixed a day; and that day is “today,” as David said so much later when he wrote in the psalm quoted earlier: Today, if you listen to His voice, Don’t harden your hearts.

The word of God, you see, is alive and moving; sharper than a double-edged sword; piercing the divide between soul and spirit, joints and marrow; able to judge the thoughts and will of the heart.

It is impossible to restore the changed heart of the one who has fallen from faith—who has already been enlightened, has tasted the gift of new life from God, has shared in the power of the Holy Spirit, and has known the goodness of God’s revelation and the powers of the coming age. If such a person falls away, it’s as though that one were crucifying the Son of God all over again and holding Him up to ridicule.

But when those days are over,” the Eternal One says, “I will make this kind of covenant with the people of Israel: I will put My laws on their minds and write them upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people.

Even that first covenant had rules and regulations about how to worship and how to set up an earthly sanctuary for God.

That first tent symbolizes the present time, when gifts and sacrifices can be offered; but it can’t change the heart and conscience of the worshiper.

“But when those days are over,” says the Eternal One, “I will make this kind of covenant with the people of Israel: I will put My laws in their hearts and write them upon their minds,” then He adds,

let us draw near with true hearts full of faith, with hearts rinsed clean of any evil conscience, and with bodies cleansed with pure water.

Consider the life of the One who endured such personal attacks and hostility from sinners so that you will not grow weary or lose heart.

Indeed, you seem to have forgotten the proverb directed to you as children: My child, do not ignore the instruction that comes from the Lord, or lose heart when He steps in to correct you;

You have not come to the place that can be touched (as Israel did at Mount Sinai)—to a mountain crowned with blazing fire, darkness, gloom, and a windstorm—

Do not be carried away by diverse and strange ways of believing or worshiping. It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about what you can eat (which do no good even for those who observe them).