Hebrews 3:16

The warning opens with “Wherefore”, in Greek dió, a word that draws a conclusion from what has just been said. Hebrews 1 set Christ above the angels, and Hebrews 3:1–6 set him above Moses, who was faithful as a servant in God’s house while Christ is faithful as the Son over it. We are that house, the writer says, if we hold fast our confidence to the end. Since the Son is so much greater than the servant, those who hear him have all the more reason to listen. So the letter turns here from teaching to warning, and the warning runs on to Hebrews 4:13.

The words of the warning come from Psalm 95:7–11, and the writer introduces them with “as the Holy Ghost saith.” The word hágios means sacred or set apart and pneûma means breath or spirit, and together they name the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The psalm is his speech, and he “saith” it in the present. An old song of Israel is therefore God’s living word to the first readers of this letter and to us, and it carries his full authority.

“To day” is sḗmeron, the plain word for today, or now. Its weight here comes from the passage. God is speaking in the present, so the present is the time to answer him, and the wilderness generation shows what becomes of people who let that time pass. The writer comes back to the word in verse 13, in verse 15 and again at Hebrews 4:7.

To “hear” (akoúō) covers listening, understanding and obeying, and the “voice” (phōnḗ) is God’s own. Hearing in this sense is the opposite of hardening. Moses had called to the people, “Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it” (Deuteronomy 6:3), and James writes, “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Jesus says that his sheep hear his voice and follow him (John 10:27), and he grieved over people whose hearts had grown dull and who had shut their eyes and ears to him (Matthew 13:15). The little word “if” leaves the answer with the hearer: God is speaking, and each of us must choose to receive what he says.

The voice we hear today is above all the voice of the Son. God spoke in times past by the prophets, and in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), so to hear Jesus in the gospel is to hear God himself.

The rest is God’s own rest, which he shares with his people. The word is katápausis, from a verb meaning to cause to cease, and it means an end of labour, trouble and wandering, and so a state of peace and security. God calls it “my rest”, with moû, “of me”. For the wilderness generation it was the land of Canaan, the home promised to them after slavery and the desert.

Hebrews shows that Canaan was a picture of something greater. The promise of entering God’s rest still stands, a rest remains for the people of God, and whoever enters it ceases from his own works as God did from his (Hebrews 4:1–11). This rest is ours now, as peace with God for those who stop striving to earn their standing and trust the finished work of Christ, and it is still ahead of us as the everlasting rest of his presence. Jesus offers it in his own words when he calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him, and promises them rest for their souls (Matthew 11:28–30). The fathers lost the picture through unbelief, and the warning is given so that we should hold on to the reality.

“Take heed” is blépō, to look or see, used here as a command to watch out, and its present tense asks for a watch that is kept up. The writer calls his readers “brethren”, members of one family who share one faith, and he brings the danger close with “in any of you”.

The danger is “an evil heart of unbelief”. Unbelief, apistía, is faithlessness or distrust: a refusal to rely on God, to rest on his promises and to do what he says. It lives in the heart, the same kardía that the psalm says can harden and stray, which is why Proverbs tells us to keep the heart with all diligence, since the issues of life flow out of it (Proverbs 4:23). The writer calls such a heart “evil”, a word for what does active harm, because distrust of God works steadily against a person’s whole life with him. James describes a kindred state in the man who wavers, who is double minded and unstable in all his ways (James 1:6–8).

Unbelief shows itself “in departing from the living God.” To depart is to withdraw from someone you once stood with, the turning away that is called apostasy. The one deserted is “the living God”, who acts, speaks and gives life, in contrast to the lifeless idols of the nations. For these readers, going back from Christ would have meant walking away from the source of life itself.

That departure is usually gradual. It can begin with less desire for prayer, a neglected Bible and a drift away from other believers. A growing cynicism follows, with decisions made by the world’s wisdom alone, until a person lives as though God were absent.

The remedy for a hardening heart is given to the whole church. To exhort is parakaléō, built from words meaning to call near, and it covers urging, encouraging, comforting and, where needed, admonishing. “One another” translates heautoû, a reflexive pronoun that is also used for mutual action, so every believer both gives this help and receives it. “Daily” is made of three Greek words, katá, hékastos and hēméra, each day as it comes. A heart hardens by degrees, and so the help is to be as regular as the danger.

Paul asks the same of the churches. He is confident that the Romans are able to admonish one another (Romans 15:14), he tells the Thessalonians to comfort and edify one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and he tells the Galatians to restore a brother overtaken in a fault and to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:1–2). In practice this means being present in each other’s lives: listening, praying, opening Scripture together, and saying a hard thing in love when it is needed, on ordinary days as well as when the church gathers. We have help in doing it, for Jesus promised the Holy Ghost as the Comforter (John 14:26), a name from the same family of words as parakaléō.

“While it is called To day” brings back the psalm’s word, sḗmeron. The time for this mutual care is the present, while God’s call is still sounding.

“For we are made partakers of Christ.” A partaker, métochos, is a sharer or partner. Through faith we are joined to Christ and share in his life, his sufferings, his glory and his inheritance, which is why Paul can speak of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) and call us joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). This union is God’s gift.

The verse then says how that sharing is shown to be real: “if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end.” Confidence is hypóstasis, substance or assurance, the word Hebrews uses when it says that faith is “the substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). “The beginning of our confidence” is the settled trust in Christ with which the Christian life started. It is to be kept bébaios, firm and sure, “unto the end”, which means for the whole of life, until we die or Christ returns. John asks for the same thing when he tells believers to let what they heard from the beginning abide in them (1 John 2:24). The Christian life is a long road, and the faith that began it is the faith that finishes it.

This holding fast rests on Christ’s hold of us. He is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), he ever lives to make intercession for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), and God, who began a good work in us, will carry it on to the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6). Jesus pictures it as a branch abiding in the vine and bearing fruit (John 15:4–5). Our steadfastness is his faithfulness at work in us.

Verse 15 quotes the opening of the psalm again, under the words “While it is said”. The call is still being said, so the offer is still open. The writer keeps returning to Psalm 95 because its warning stays in force for every generation that hears it.

He then goes back over the wilderness story to fix its lesson. “For” (gár) gives the reason for the warning. “Some” (tìs), “when they had heard” (akoúō again), “did provoke”. The verb is parapikraínō, formed from pará, alongside, and pikraínō, to embitter, and it means to exasperate. It answers to the “provocation” of verses 8 and 15. Those who provoked God had heard him, so their rebellion was the rejection of a word they knew. “Howbeit” (allá) “not all”: Caleb and Joshua believed, and God brought them into the land (Numbers 14:30). Judgment fell on a generation, and faith was still possible and still honoured within it. The people had come out of Egypt “by Moses” (diá, through), the leader God sent to Pharaoh (Exodus 3:10), on the night of the Passover (Exodus 12). Having been rescued, they still fell short, and so a great beginning and great privileges are no substitute for continuing faith.

Two questions follow, each with its answer. With whom was God grieved (prosochthízō, as in verse 10) for forty years? With “them that had sinned”. The verb hamartánō means to miss the mark, and their sin was grumbling, idolatry and, at the root, refusing to trust him. Their “carcases fell in the wilderness”, where kōlon is properly a limb and so a dead body. It is a grim word, and it shows how final the loss was. To whom did God swear (omnýō) to shut them out of his rest (katápausis)? To “them that believed not”. The verb is apeithéō, to disbelieve wilfully, to refuse to be persuaded, and so to disobey. Unbelief and disobedience are two sides of one thing here: Israel distrusted God’s promise to give them the land, and so they disobeyed his command to go in.

Verse 19 draws the conclusion with “So we see”. “They could not enter in”: dýnamai is to be able, and eisérchomai is to go in. God had the power and the will to bring them in, and every obstacle in the land was within his reach. The inability was theirs, and its cause is given in one word, apistía, unbelief. Distrust shut the door that God had opened. The next chapter carries the lesson straight to us, since the same promise is still open and the word we hear must be met with faith (Hebrews 4).

The warning comes from a writer who has already shown us Christ, and it sends us to him. Where Israel failed in the wilderness, Jesus stood. He was tempted in the wilderness and did not sin (Matthew 4:1–11), and he obeyed his Father all the way to the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). Moses was a faithful servant who led the people to the border of the land. Jesus is the Son over the house and the true Joshua, who brings his people into the rest that Canaan pictured.

He does so by his sacrifice. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), his one offering has perfected for ever those who are sanctified (Hebrews 10:10–14), and by his blood a new and living way is open into the holiest (Hebrews 10:19–22). Our old self was crucified with him, so that sin’s hold on us is broken (Romans 6:6–7).

He also answers the problem of the hard heart. In the new covenant God writes his law in the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34, quoted at Hebrews 8:10) and gives a new heart and his own Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27), so that we can hear his voice and answer it. He keeps those he saves, promising that none shall pluck his sheep out of his hand (John 10:28). Our high priest was tempted as we are and is touched with the feeling of our weakness, and so we may come boldly to the throne of grace for mercy and help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14–16). The whole warning of Hebrews 3–4 is given to keep us close to him.

This passage gives us a God who is still speaking. The Holy Ghost says “To day” to everyone who reads the psalm, and as long as that word is heard, the way into his rest is open. The warning itself is a mercy from the God who wants us inside.

It also shows us who God is. He is patient, bearing with a stubborn people for forty years. He is holy, grieved by distrust and true to his oath. He is the living God, who takes our response to him seriously because he has bound himself to his people.

The passage tells us the truth about ourselves as well. People who have seen great works of God and belong to his people still have hearts that need watching, and the hardening the psalm describes comes slowly, through small refusals and the lies sin tells. God has provided for that weakness. He has given us one another, so that a word of encouragement spoken today may be the means by which a brother or sister holds on. Above all he has given us his Son, in whom we already share, and whose faithfulness carries ours to the end.