Hebrews 3:16

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! The Lord then led the people through many dangers, and despite their grumbling He fed and watered them and their livestock until they arrived at the perimeter of Canaan. As we have seen, it was here that unbelief and rebellion really kicked in and a whole generation were banned from entering the Promised Land, these were they who “heard and rebelled.”

We have to ask ourselves, “Have we truly grasped the significance of our deliverance from slavery to sin? Has it properly dawned on us just how favoured we are and to what lengths Almighty God was prepared to go to deliver us from our helpless state? Do we properly recognise His miraculous intervention and the wonder of the new life of freedom that we now enjoy and the potential of the Land of Promise that lies before us? Do you? Do I?” If we do, how dare we grumble or complain about our lot? If God wipes His hands in anger and says, Sorry but “their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways. They will never enter my rest." Who can blame Him?  

One of the most profound lessons that we can learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews is that wherever it talks about Israel it is using them as a metaphor for the church. The letter was written to Jews, but it is a powerful indictment as well as an encouragement to all who claim to follow Jesus Christ. That is why the comparison with Moses is made earlier in this chapter, the author is being very astute, he has realised that the earthly people of God and the spiritual people are very similar and the same lessons that Israel learned in the wilderness must be learned by the true church of Yeshua who walk in the heavenly realms. 

 

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