Daily Meditations

Hebrews 3:9 Testing God and regretting it The author here continues to muse over the foolishness of his Jewish ancestors as they rebelled against the Lord God. You may remember that the Israelites made good progress on their journey through the wilderness from Egypt and captivity. It was a trek for sure and there were a lot of people, plus their sojourn at Mount Sinai would have taken up some time, but not enough to stop them from arriving at the borders of Canaan within a few months! Upon their arrival, Moses sent 12 spies to search out the land and, as we know, ten of the spies came back fearful of the inhabitants and convinced that the Israel forces were not strong enough to tackle the fortified cities and powerful men who dwelt in them. Only Joshua and Caleb believed that victory was achievable. There followed a night of arguments and grumbling involving the whole community, in fact they became so indignant and angry at being what they thought was hoodwinked, that they threatened t...

Hebrews 3:7-8 continued Today, if you hear His voice “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”  We need to spend a little more time considering the implications of this statement. To hear the voice of God is a great honour and privilege. God speaks in many ways, primarily through His Word the Bible, but also through preachers, teachers and godly men and women. He may speak through circumstances or through dreams and visions, sometimes it is just a simple conviction that drives our attitudes and actions. God speaks through creation, so clearly that Paul argues, in Romans 1, that if men cannot hear Him, they are “without excuse!” When we think about it, the voice of God is everywhere and those who are willing to humbly listen by faith will hear Him. We cannot know Him unless He first speaks, just as creation could not happen until God spoke into the darkness and chaos of the primordial void.  As we have seen, the message here involves Israel who were honoured to...

Hebrews 3:7-8 Do not harden your hearts These verses, and those that follow up to verse 11, are direct quotations from Psalm 95:7-11. The warnings here are not just an appeal for persistence and dedication on the journey but also a caution against disobedience and unbelief. Notice that the Holy Spirit is described as the “speaker” here. This is not the only time that the Scriptures attribute the Word of God to the Spirit of God, Peter says clearly in his second letter , “For prophecy never had its origins in the human will,  but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”  2 Peter 1:21. Paull writes to Timothy and reminds him that all Scripture is “ God-breathed ”. It follows that we must take the quotations from Psalm 95 very seriously, something the Israelites failed to do! While they were being tested by God in the wilderness, they were guilty of hardening their hearts against Him, especially when He brought them to the bounda...

Hebrews 3:6     We are His house  We  mused, in the previous verse, over the difference between being a faithful servant  in  God’s house to being a faithful Son  over  God’s house. Verse 4 reminded us that we are the house that Jesus has built, the House of God. The next part of the current verse suggests that there are conditions attached to being a member of the House. Some may read this to say that if we don’t hold firmly to our confidence and hope in the position in which we have been placed, then we might lose our place!  There is another way to view this, the church has been a place of respite, over the years, for many who do not truly believe. It is easy to make statements of intent but there is not a willingness to soldier on. Failure to persevere, as both Moses and Jesus did, suggests that the initial claims to belong are not genuine. People make all the right noises but there is no commitment and no intention to persist in the jour...

Hebrews 3:5 A faithful servant Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ two siblings and his closest confidantes, grew jealous of their brother’s relationship with the Lord God and began to talk against him because he married a Cushite woman, she was Zipporah from Midian. The Lord berated them for their jealousy and told them frankly, “ When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.”  Read Numbers 12:19.  Notice that Moses was a servant in God’s house. This is in comparison with Yeshua who is the Son, over God’s house! No one can question the faithfulness of Moses, he was obedient to the Lord in just about every detail, apart from the time he struck a rock rather than speak to it! (And he died regretting it!) Moses remained true to the task that God called him to, despite...

Hebrews 3:4 The builder of the house This verse starts with a very obvious statement ; “Every house is built by someone.”  Nowadays, modern houses are built by teams of people, the architects and designers are first in line, the foundations are laid by one team, the brickwork by another, the roof demands a separate skill set as do the windows and doors, and of course the interiors decorators follow on. All of this falls under the auspices of the company that manages the whole affair. T The church is not dissimilar, Paul reminds us that Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers (Ephesians 4:11) are all part of the construction process of the church, but there is One Name that is over all, it is Jesus Christ, or as this verse puts it, God! “ God is the builder of everything”  and the most sacred structure on the earth is His Church in which every true believer is a stone or brick and has its place and its role to play. Notice that it is not the name of Jesus that is ...