Hebrews 3:7-19--A Rest for the People of God

​Hebrews 3:7-19 English Standard Version (ESV)
Listen:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Heb.3.7-Heb.3.19
A Rest for the People of God
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
    on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers put me to the test
    and saw my works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
    they have not known my ways.’
11 As I swore in my wrath,
    ‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

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Recall that our theme so far as been an argument for that which was "lesser" to that which was "greater," "superior," and "more excellent."  In this text we will see that the Sabbath rest of the seventh day of creation and the Sabbath rest observed by God's people in response to the 4th commandment to "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy" is a "lesser" rest than the "more excellent" eternal rest that will await God's people as we enter God's presence at the end of our lives and exist in His perfect peace and rest.

Today is the day of salvation.  If the Spirit quickens your heart to be able to hear and understand the truth of the gospel, it is so that you may immediately receive it because as we spoke of earlier, no man knows how many days or hours he has left.  Do not be like those who were led out of Egypt through the Exodus out of slavery across the Red Sea and provided for daily by God with manna and quail and led by the very presence of God only to rebel and say that they wished that God had killed them or that they could go back to their lives of slavery and made false gods to worship and did and said many other things to make God finally say that particular generation of people would never enter the rest of settling in the Promised Land (which symbolized heaven for them), but their children would have to inherit that blessing if their children followed God and did not turn away and rebel as their fathers and mothers had.  God was still gracious and refused to simply kill off His people, but He refused to give rest to those chose not to be His people.  In a very real way this is a picture of eternity where God gives us every opportunity and evidence and cares for our every need and we have a choice whether to live in submission to Him or rebel against Him.  Why should any King let seditious and rebellious citizens experience the blessings he has prepared for his loyal subjects?

We know that those who are faithful to the end are those who were chosen by God and are genuine because man alone cannot be faithful to the end and will fall away when times get hard if his belief is not real (think of the seed that fell on rocky soil in the Parable of the Soil...it looked alive and well until the sun came and it had no root and dried up and therefore had no fruit).  Do not harden your hearts in rebellion and let the seed fall on the hard path where the seed can never take root or on the rocky soil where it cannot put down deep roots or in the area full of weeds that choke out any growth because of the cares of this world and a love for the things of this world that are opposed to the things of God.  (see Matthew 13)

Do not be those who are counted as disobedient and never experience the Passover and Exodus from slavery because you fail to believe in the work of the blood of Jesus, and do not be like those who believed enough in a Jesus that could lead them out of Egypt but could not provide for them daily in the wilderness of life so that their lives were not changed and they did not become the new creations that God had called them to be and were never transformed and were not ready to enter the presence of God and experience His perfect peace and rest.  Do not let this blessing pass you by because you failed to act when given the opportunity.  At some point in Egypt Pharaoh's hardened his heart and then it reached a tipping point where God seemed to say, "I see the choice you've made, and you're going to have to live with it" and God continued to harden Pharaoh's heart even more so that he wouldn't believe and so that God's work might be seen and God's name would be glorified.  God wants everyone to come to salvation and has provided a way for everyone...even for the Egyptians that believed and participated in the Passover and left in the Exodus with the Israelites, but God has shown us that true faith leads to fruit and a new life.  To go back to our example God wants us to change from a caterpillar into a butterfly because He has places that He wants us to fly to and wants us to enjoy the sweet nectar and soar on the winds that may take us on a cross-continental migration to a new and distant land (like heaven) but we never can make that trip if we stay a caterpillar or refuse to live like a butterfly and try to still live like a caterpillar after our supposed conversion.  God doesn't just call us live in obedience to be a rule monger, but this conversion and obedience in all areas of our lives prepares us for living in His presence where everything will live in a state of absolute submission to our Lord and King as all those who rebelled against the King and the kingdom have been cast out into "utter darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth" (see Matthew 13:42--link to Matthew 13 appears earlier in the blog) away from this peace and rest that God wants for His people.