Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁷ So as the Holy Spirit says, `Today, when you hear me speak, do not make your hearts hard.

⁸ That is what happened when the people tested me in the desert and I became angry.

⁹ There your fathers tested me and tried me. And they saw what I did for forty years.

¹⁰ So I was very angry with the people of that time. I said, "Their minds are always dark. They have not known my ways."

¹¹ I said when I was angry, "They will never go into my resting place." '

¹² My brothers, take care that not one of you has a heart that does not believe. Such a heart will take you away from the living God.

¹³ But talk to each other every day while `Today' lasts, so that wrong ways will not fool any one of you and your hearts become hard.

¹⁴ We have our part with Christ if we go on to the end and believe in him as we did at first.

¹⁵ God is still saying now, `Today, when you hear me speak, do not make your hearts hard. That is what happened when the people turned against me.'

¹⁶ Who were the people who heard him and yet made him very angry? It was all the people whom Moses led out of the country of Egypt.

¹⁷ With whom was God angry for forty years? He was angry with the people who had done wrong. And they died in the desert.

¹⁸ Who were the people God said would never go into his resting place? They were the people who would not listen to him.

¹⁹ So then, we see that they could not go in because they did not believe him.

4 We still have God's promise that people will go into his resting place. So let us take care that not one of you will be kept out.

² The good news has been told to us just as it was told to the people in the desert. But the message which they heard did not do them any good. Even though they heard it, they did not believe it.

³ But we who believe, will go into that resting place of God. It is as God said, `When I was angry, I said, "They will never go into my resting place." ' He said this even though his work had been finished ever since he had made the world.

⁴ Here is what he said, somewhere in the holy writings, about the seventh day: `And God rested on the seventh day after doing all his work.'

⁵ And now here he says again, `They will never go into my resting place.'

⁶ So that means some people will go in. But the people who first heard the good news about it did not go in. They did not believe it.

⁷ So he chose another day called `Today.' He spoke through David many years later, who said, `Today, when you hear his voice, do not make your hearts hard.'

⁸ If Joshua had led those people to rest, God would not have talked later about another day.

⁹ So there is still a rest for God's people, like a Sabbath day.

¹⁰ The person who goes into God's resting place will rest after doing his work, just as God rested after doing his work.

¹¹ So let us do our best to go into that resting place. Those people died in the wilderness because they did not believe. So let us take care that the same thing does not happen to one of us.