Hebrews 3:1-19

Hebrews 3:1. Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;

Think of him, think how great he is, think what attention he deserves from all who believe in him.

Hebrews 3:2. Who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God. And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a son over his own house;

See the superiority of Christ to Moses; Moses is honoured by being called the servant of God, but Jesus is the Son of God, and as Son, Master over his own house.

Hebrews 3:6. Whose house are we,

Christ built the house; he laid us together like stones upon the great foundation, Moses is but a caretaker in the house.

Hebrews 3:6. If we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope from unto the end.

Final perseverance is an absolute necessity of a child of God. We do not prove ourselves to be a part of the house if we move about like loose stones.

Hebrews 3:7. Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.

Do not provoke your God by your quibbling, or your murmuring, or your idolatry; act not as those unbelievers did who died in the wilderness.

Hebrews 3:11. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.

There was that «evil heart» in the Israelites, is there not a danger that it may be in you also who are partakers of the like nature?

Hebrews 3:13. But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

If sin came to you openly proclaiming itself as sin, you would fight against it; but it is very cunning and deceitful and it gradually petrifies the heart and especially the heart of those who think that they will never provoke God by their sin. Pride has already begun to work in them; and where pride can work, every other sin finds elbow-room. God save us from the deceitfulness of sin!

Hebrews 3:14. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end.

You are to hold fast, to hold on, and to hold out to the end; and the grace you need in order to do this is waiting for you if you will but look for it and daily live under the power of it.

Hebrews 3:15. While it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.

All but two that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness; only Joshua and Caleb were faithful among the faithless found.

Hebrews 3:17. But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?

See how the apostle speaks of them; he does not say that their bodies were buried, but that their carcases fell, in the wilderness. Unbelief degrades us into beasts whose carcases fall beneath the poleaxe of judgment. Oh, that we might all be rid of unbelief, that degrading, desecrating, defiling,

destroying thing!

Hebrews 3:18. And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

It was not the sons of Anak that kept them out, it was not the waste howling wilderness; it was nothing but their own unbelief.

This exposition consisted of readings from Hebrews 2:3.