Why is it so hard for us to trust God when things aren’t going well? Hebrews 3:7-11 contains a quote from Psalm 95, which is in turn a meditation on the way the people of Israel rebelled against God in Exodus 17, not long after they had been released from slavery in Egypt.
Yes, the people had seen the plagues God had sent on the Egyptians. They had seen how God had spared them the worst of those plagues, protecting not only their livestock, but their firstborn children. They had passed through the Red Sea with its waters serving as a protecting wall on both sides of them, and had watched Pharaoh’s pursuing army drown in its returning waves (Exodus 14). And they had eaten the “manna,” the mysterious bread God had showered upon them from Heaven (Exodus 16).
But no matter how many times God protected them and provided for them, each new crisis sapped their faith instead of strengthening it. Not even a week after their miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea, the people complained against Moses about having to drink bitter water (Exodus 15:23). And in Exodus chapter 17, they went so far as to accuse Moses of trying to kill them with thirst in the desert (Exodus 17:3). In fact, they were really questioning whether God was with them (Exodus 17:7).
And the people who first read the Letter to the Hebrews were in danger of the same sort of faithlessness. In the face of persecution, they were being tempted to return to faith in the Law of Moses, to deny that Jesus is the Messiah so that they would be accepted back into the synagogues and thus protected from the requirement to participate in the public worship of the Roman state.
But don’t we all too often do the same kind of thing? Instead of holding on to our faith in the God Who has given Christ for us, the God Who has saved us not only from our sins, but from so many of life’s problems and perils, don’t we sometimes fall into depression or despair in the face of illness or injury or grief? When we find ourselves in over our heads, don’t we tend to question not only God’s power but His willingness to help us?
No, whether we are thirsty in the desert, fearful of government persecution or hurting from the stings of life in this sinful world, we all have the same choice to make. We can “hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope” (Hebrews 3:6) clinging to faith in the Christ Who has saved us and who promises to come again to make all things new. Or we can harden our hearts in rebellion against Him.
Which will we choose today?
Hebrews 3:1-19 (NASB)
Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.
2 He was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house.
3 For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.
4 For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.
5 Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later;
6 but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.
7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
9 Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, And saw My works for forty years.
10 “Therefore I was angry with this generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; And they did not know My ways’;
11 As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.'”
12 Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God.
13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end;
15 while it is said, “Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.”
16 For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses?
17 And with whom was He angry 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 should not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient?
19 And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
