HeBrews: A Better Blend
Welcome to our Monday Bible study entitled HeBrews: A Better Blend. We began in January taking a leisurely walk through the book of Hebrews in an effort to understand this book that is all about BETTER things. This journey will challenge us as we compare the provisions of faith for the Israelites of antiquity to all that Jesus offers to those of us on this side of the cross. If you have missed some of our study, it is not too late to catch up. Go to my website (if you are reading this in email format). Then go to the right side of the screen, scroll down a bit until you find something that says ‘Categories’. Click on that and then choose ‘Hebrews’. You will be taken to a list of all the posts from our series.
Now, let’s get started on Hebrews chapter 3. In this chapter we will talk about a topic that most of us don’t think about too often: the topic of unbelief or hardness of heart. Why don’t we think about it? Well, I suppose it is because we don’t think it will happen to us, but it can. Before we get to our discussion of unbelief, however, I want us to spend this week simply meditating and reflecting on the third chapter of Hebrews.
That is your assignment for the week. Pour yourself a cup of strong coffee (or tea), read Hebrews 3 a couple of times, ponder it and then come back here and tell me what it speaks to your heart. I’m going to provide it to you right here in the NIV translation, but I encourage you to read it in your own Bible so you can mark passages that really speak to you.
1 Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be said in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9 where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ “ 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily,as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” 16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed ? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
Next Monday we will begin talking about what we learn. Have a blessed week.
MEDITATION MOMENT: What words or phrases grabbed your attention in these nineteen verses?
