Daily Meditations

Hebrews 3:17 Who is God angry with? The argument that we can never lose our salvation seems to be under close scrutiny here in these verses. There is no question that the Lord God saved a vast number of Hebrew slaves from the tyranny of Egypt and that He led them through the Red Sea into the wilderness. The entire company, all its families, tribes and people assembled at Mount Sinai where they clearly saw God’s presence and received the Law in all its detail. Those same people then came within spitting distance of the Promised Land, but they never entered in! The reasons are multiple; from the human point of view, they rebelled (v16), they sinned (v17) and they disobeyed the Lord (v18). From God’s point of view, they prompted divine anger (v17) and caused Him to swear that these people would never enter His rest. A whole generation died before access was granted to Canaan and only Caleb and Joshua survived the 40 years of wilderness wandering. The majority of these people died as free ...

Hebrews 3:16 Wh has heard and rebelled? Let’s just review the background to this verse. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt ,and they cried out to the Lord for deliverance. Their dilemma seemed to be impossible to resolve, there was no way that the Egyptians were going to allow this expanding meal ticket to leave their land! God sent Moses to negotiate with Pharaoh, and the negotiating tools were 10 plagues, some of which did not affect the area of Goshen where the Hebrew slaves dwelt. After a catastrophic night when the firstborn of the Egyptians were slayed, the slaves hustled their way out of Egypt towards the Red Sea. Now they faced another dilemma, with the clouds of dust from the Egyptian chariots on the horizon, the people found themselves trapped on the shore of the Sea until the Lord miraculously heaped up the waters for a night and allowed the fleeing Israelites to pass through. The waters returned as soon as the Egyptian army attempted to follow, and they were drowned! T...

Hebrews 3:15 Do not harden your hearts  This statement must be important; it is a word for word repeat of what has already been clearly set out in verses 7-8. The same words are also used in Psalm 95:7-8 which were obviously fresh in the Hebrews writer’s mind. In Psalm 95 the warning is not related to Israel’s refusal to believe that God would make it possible to claim the Promised Land, rather it refers to separate rebellions whilst the people were on their wilderness journey. Two places are mentioned; Meribah and Massah where they grumbled and complained because there was no water, and Moses was commanded to strike a rock. Meribah means rebellion or quarrelling and Massah means testing. (Exodus 17:7) There appears to be a separate incident at another Meribah, 40 years later, which is described in Numbers 20. On this occasion, after a wonderful experience of the Lord’s glory, Moses was instructed to speak to the rock, however, in frustration and anger he disobeyed and struck it ag...

Hebrews 3:14 Our original conviction Jesus Christ is so gracious and generous in His willingness to share Himself with all those who accept him and believe in Him. He is open and available to all of us, He makes Himself fully accessible no matter who we are; every true follower has immediate and complete access to His wisdom, His comfort and His power. One of the exciting things about travelling is to meet other believers and to instinctively form a bond with them, it is as if we had known them all our lives! We share the same hopes, similar experiences and we love the same Lord and even though they are strangers, these people quickly become our friends. No other religions can make these claims! Now we need to ask ourselves some important questions: - What was our original conviction? What drove us to faith? What changed, the day we surrendered to Christ? What did we see about ourselves that led us to believe that Jesus Christ was the only solution and the one who could save us? Think ...

Hebrews 3:13 Today! There will come a date in history, when the Lord God will judge this world and all who have ever lived in it. There are grounds to believe that all true followers of Messiah will face His judgement in the sense that we will be made accountable for our lives and at that time various rewards will be handed out. The catastrophic Judgement Day that the whole unbelieving world will have to face is described in Revelation 20 where it is referred to as “the great white throne.” On that day the dead will be judged and those whose names are not found in the Book of Life will be thrown into the lake of fire. That terminal moment in Scripture is often referred to as “the Day “or “Judgement Day” or the “Day of the Lord.” The period of time leading up to this is called collectively, “the last days”.  It follows that when the expression “Today” is used it is not speaking of the end times but the present day, the day when we all still have the opportunity to hear God’s voice a...

Hebrews 3:12 See to it, brothers and sisters The author of this epistle to the Hebrews suddenly changes his focus, he has used Israel as an example and a lesson as to what can go wrong in our relationship with the Lord God and now, he changes the point of his argument and puts the onus on us -  the church, early believers and in 21 st  Century, in other words, you and me. We are the brothers and sisters that need to take these lessons on board. If we have sinful, unbelieving hearts then we too risk losing our claim to the Promised Land, we too may waste our lives wandering in the wilderness instead of finding fulfilment in the promises of God.  I have struggled for many years to understand the context of what now follows. Does Hebrews teach us that we can lose our salvation? Does it claim that there are many who have been delivered from slavery to sin, but who actually never make it to the eternal rest that God has prepared? Listen carefully to the description given ...

Hebrews 3:11 They will never enter my rest! None of us are capable of putting ourselves in God’s shoes! But many of us have been, or are, parents. We know what it is like to have the very best hopes and ambitions for our children, we can see their potential and encourage them to take steps to fulfil it, but rarely does it go exactly as we planned! There is rebellion implanted in the hearts of all human beings, even our kids, and we are all born with an inclination to ignore advice and to do things our way.  God did so much for those ancient Israelites, He used miracles to deliver them from Egypt, He parted the Red Sea and calmly drowned the Egyptian soldiers who were in pursuit. He fed and watered them on their journey and led them to Mount Sinai where, for the first time in human history, He revealed His heart and the means by which those people could honour and obey Him. He was not a merciless tyrant, who insisted on unquestioning subservience, He was a compassionate Father who w...

Hebrews 3:10 Their hearts are always going astray The unbelief of the Israelites and their insolence in questioning God’s ways led to Him being exceedingly angry with them. He accuses their  “Hearts of always going astray .” What does this mean? Are there lesson here for us? Firstly, our hearts go astray when we adamantly refuse to listen to God’s voice. They also go astray when we realise He has spoken but we question His judgement! Our hearts also go astray when we look at situations and problems and evaluate them with human wisdom rather than through the eyes of God. There must be countless occasions in all our lives when the Lord has issued instructions for us to proceed with his plans, but we see the obstacles, we look at our own in abilities, we measure the risks and fail to trust Him to carry us through. What an indictment of our faith it is when we spend years “in the wilderness in disobedience” and someone else has to come along and pick up the reigns and carry out the tas...

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 ...

Hebrews 3:3 The Builder of the House Moses was never the builder of Israel. Abraham laid the cornerstone and it could be argued that Job provided the foundations. By the time of Moses, the walls had been put in place, but the building process was still under way. Moses did not design this house, nor did he complete its construction, he was just part of the fabric. I guess we might argue that at his time it was a temporary structure, and Moses oversaw its’ transportation to a more suitable and permanent site. Israel was a “mobile home” under Moses.  Not so with Yeshua, He was not just the cornerstone but the capstone as well, He is the final stone that holds the entire structure together. He is the foundation of our faith, He is the protective walls that surround us, He is the roof that covers our heads, and He is the future hope of the full potential and glory of the building. It is not a temporary building either, it will remain forever, but its influence embraces the whole world....

Hebrews 3:2 Faithful, like Moses. The Jews have a habit of exalting the names of their greatest ancestors. And why not? The patriarchs are the first names in the Hall of Fame, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are regularly referred to in one breath, even to this day. David was, of course, the greatest of the kings so his name is honoured and respected. And then there is Moses, the “Prince of Egypt”, who successfully led the Children of Israel out of slavery to the boundaries of the Promised Land. What a tiresome, complaining lot those Hebrews were and what a leader Moses turned out to be! It is not his status that will be discussed in the next few verses but His mission. God gave Moses a very difficult job to undertake, to safely lead a large community of people (possibly 2 million) from a pagan country, through the wilderness, to the edge of the land that had been promised to their ancestors, centuries earlier.  Having employed many staff members over the years, I would say that there ...

Hebrews 3:1 Fix your thoughts on Jesus! What a journey this epistle has taken us on already! Surely by now, we have established that Jesus Christ is greater than, and exalted over, any angelic beings. Not only that, but we have begun to understand the extent of His manhood and the unique way in which He, and only He, has dealt with the problem of our mortality. The one final and unconquerable obstacle to our ascent to the heavens is death; this final nail in our coffins was destroyed at the cross and Jesus is now the Victor and unsurpassed Saviour of all mankind. The only battle that really matters in the history of humanity is the battle with death, and Yeshua is the only One who has conquered and made a way through this seemingly impossible barrier. How foolish men are, to ignore Him and belittle and blaspheme Him! Who else can save us from the inevitable? No wonder the author of this extraordinary epistle now asks us to  “fix our thoughts on Jesus.” If you, like me, consider you...

Hebrews 2:18 The one who understands temptation Much has been written about the temptations of Jesus, particularly those He encountered in the wilderness when the Satan confronted Him, head on! Let’s face it, our Lord was a man, born to a human mother, living in a world of corrupted human beings and being affected by the same lusts and lures that we all have to endure every day of our lives. Later in this remarkable epistle the writer takes the matter a step further; –  “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet He did not sin.” Hebrews 4:15. To teach that Jesus was somehow insulated from temptation is not true, He grappled with the same problems that we all have to deal with, day after day. However, He had no inclination to satisfy His fleshly desires, and He was so inspired by His Father’s will that He was able to do something that none of us can; He rejected, even rebuk...

Hebrews 2:17 The faithful High Priest Jesus the Christ came to us from heaven, from His Father’s domain, a place inhabited by possibly millions of angelic beings. He came from a different realm, a spiritual dwelling place where God the Father is exalted by beings who do His bidding. God’s agenda was not to save the heavenly realms but to do something extraordinary for the citizens of earth, to liberate men and women, to break the stranglehold of sin over mankind, to cancel the power of death.  It was clear that to achieve this, someone had to come to the earth to carry out the mission of redemption, Jeus was the One who was both qualified and who was willing and able  to carry out the mission. He came to us in the role of a priest, a position that was already familiar to God’s chosen ones, the Jews. They had appointed High Priests for centuries and understood the purpose and function of these men. A High Priest was the head of the sacred order of men who served the Lord o...

Hebrews 2:16 The descendants of Abraham The writer here is still contemplating the theme of chapter 1 of his letter, that Jesus Christ is superior to all the angels, that He has been proved to be the Son of God and that He reigns supreme over all created beings. The death that Jesus died, the shame that He suffered the awful events on the cruel cross at Calvary, were all undertaken for mankind. It was as a substitute for the death of men and women that He came to die, it was humanity that He came to save, not angelic beings. The generic term used here is “Abraham’s descendants” which may have a broader implication than many people realise. Firstly, Abraham’s descendants refers, of course, to the nation of Israel.  “ The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you,...

Hebrews 2:15 No more fear of death! The Apostle Paul deals with the subject of death, and the fear that it holds for all created human beings, in a dramatic passage in 1 Corinthians 15: 53-57. Here, he explains that we are all perishable beings, that we are clothed with mortality and will never have the means of cheating the inevitability of death. However, in verse 53, he explains that because of Jesus, our mortality has been clothed with immortality and that which is destined to perish is now imperishable. Thus, death has been conquered, the victory of Christ Jesus over death has been made available to all people, and those who believe and accept the salvation of Christ are no longer threatened by the inevitability of the grave. All fear and anxiety about our ultimate destiny as human beings has been removed!  Death has an odour about it, it is the final and ultimate end of all human life however good or bad we may have been, we all must face this appointment with the grave. But,...