This takes the neglect one step further. This is a warning against doubt, because at the base of their neglect is going to be a waning of faith. Comprehending this revolves around the word hear in verse 7. This is a very widely used word in the New Testament, as well as the Septuagint Old Testament. It is applied in seven different ways throughout the Bible that begins with a simple awareness of hearing a sound. It is even applied in the sense of obey.
This can actually rightfully be translated: Today if you will obey My voice. Is that not what is implied sometimes when you say to your children, Did you hear me? You are really asking, Why didn't you obey me? Did you hear me? It also is applied in the sense of giving some degree of attention to. For example: Today, if you will give attention to My voice. That is a low level usage of the word, but it could be used in that way.
The most common usage is synonymous with the English word understand. That is how it is applied here in Hebrews 3:7. Today, if you will understand My voice. The author is aiming for understanding as his goal for those to whom he is writing. Now why? Because he did not want them to doubt. In order to have the faith, understanding of the word is necessary. A lack of faith leads to a lax, neglectful, careless lifestyle, which was what their problem was. They were growing evermore careless in the way that they were living. By the time we get to chapter 10, we are going to see that faith is the main focus of the author's writing, but here we will see this buildup toward chapter 11 is just beginning.
Here they were, in short, being accused of not really thinking things through. This has to do with giving weight to what you hear, which of course then has to do with the value that we put upon it. If we do not understand how valuable it is, then we can't really give it the weight in our lives that it needs to have. He is then telling them, Do you understand? Today, I want you to understand. He is urging them to really think things through, and especially maybe at this time at this stage in the letter, to think through the direction that they are headed, because it can only end in the Lake of Fire.
He is aiming right at this point that the neglect that they had was being caused by a misunderstanding. So this warning dovetails perfectly with the first warning that was directly tied to their greatly undervaluing the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is asking then, How can one have faith in something he has little understanding of, or pays little attention to?
Let us go to Romans 10:14 where Paul nails this. Listen to these questions.
It is important that the New Testament describes Jesus as faithful. He is called a merciful and faithful High Priest. He fulfills that role, finally and ultimately, in the service of God to make expiation for the sins of the people, as Hebrews 2:17 tells us. Jesus Christ is faithful in Moses' role. He surpasses and fulfills the faithfulness and loyalty of Moses in building and ruling the house of God - the household of God, the church of God.
The children of Israel continually tested God's faithfulness and loyalty, and always God was faithful to His covenant; and He was loyal to those who were loyal to Him. But they suffered from a human trait that comes out of rebellion, and that human trait is unbelief. Unbelief is faithlessness, and part of faith is loyalty. Therefore, disloyalty equates to unbelief.
Regarding Hebrews 3:6, the servant owns nothing, is heir to nothing, has no authority and no right to control anything; and he is himself wholly at the will of another. A son, however, is the heir of all, has a prospective right to all, and is looked up to by all with respect. The idea here is not merely that Christ is a Son. It is that, as a Son, He is placed over the whole arrangement of the household and is One to whom all is entrusted - as if it were His own.
We are part of God the Father and Jesus Christ's Family. That is where we belong. We belong to the Family over which Christ is placed, under God the Father. Jesus Christ is the consummation of God's determined loyalty to His gracious covenant-relationship with His people. Christ is faithful and loyal to the Father, and the Father to Him. We have the wonderful opportunity to be part of this faithful and loyal Family. The training grounds for it is here and now - in our own households, and in the household of God.
Loyalty means enduring commitment to a person over a long period of time - often with the implication of the commitment persisting in the face of obstacles. We certainly see the obstacles in members of God's church - in sickness, from principalities, from others, and from our own human nature. Loyalty means enduring commitment to a person over a long period of time - often with the implication of the commitment persisting in the face of obstacles that threaten the lasting commitment.
Let me ask you this question, and let it ring in your ears as I let it ring in mind: How loyal are you? (How loyal am I?)
Jesus Christ is the epitome of loyalty and faithfulness. It is important that the New Testament describes Jesus as faithful. He is called a merciful high priest and He fulfills the role finally and ultimately in the service of God to make expiation for the sins of the people, as Hebrews 2: 17 tells us. Jesus Christ is faithful in Moses role. He surpasses and fulfills the faithfulness and loyalty of Moses in building and ruling the Household of God and the Church of God. Here in Hebrews 3:1-13 we will read.
We are in danger of being depersonalized, of having our hearts hardened - that is what depersonalization is.
Unbelief is faithlessness, and part of faith is loyalty therefore disloyalty equates to unbelief, to faithlessness. Of course it is loyalty to God and Jesus Christ first, and then to our brethren, as long we are following God and doing what He says in His inspired holy written word.
The servant owns nothing, is heir to nothing, has no authority and no right to control anything and is Himself holy at the will of another. A son, however, is the heir of all, has a perspective right to all and is looked up to by all with respect - that is if he is a good son, or righteous son.
The idea is not merely that Christ is a son; it is that as a son, He is placed over the whole arrangements of the household and is one to whom all is entrusted as if it were His own. We are part of God the Father and Jesus Christ's family. It is where we belong. We belong to the family over which Christ has been placed as the Firstborn Son.
Jesus Christ is the consummation of God's determined loyalty to His gracious covenant relationship with His people, and Christ is faithful and loyal to the Father and the Father to Him, and we have the wonderful opportunity to be part of this faithful and loyal family. The training ground for it is here and now, in our own households, and in the household of God.
We, of course, cannot literally hear the sound of His voice, but we can hear what He says and does in quite a number of ways.
A beautiful example that I think that we can all relate to is one that David used in Psalm 19 where he said that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. He goes on to say that each day and each night utters speech and knowledge of God, and its sound is heard throughout the world. This is a poetic way of saying that the creation voices the knowledge of God to us.
We sing the hymn, God Speaks to Us and, by His great power we're led. We hear His voice speaking to us in the written word, in the preaching of His truth by His ministers, in the events of His providence, and sometimes in our own conscience.
In each of these aspects, when His truth is involved, His word is personally speaking to us. And He expects His children to hear - to listen with understanding - and to apply it today, RIGHT NOW, in the present! Don't put it off until tomorrow! That's the kind of attitude that He wants in His children.
Now here in Hebrews 3, this context is written in much the same sense of Psalm 19 of the creation. And even as the creation continuously witnesses for God each day across the face of the whole earth, Christ's voice speaks to His church throughout the ages wherever they happen to be. He does not want His children to put off repentance until tomorrow! How do we even know that we will be around tomorrow? We will act with alacrity if we appreciate the power. And I don't mean cringing terror, but in reverence, in appreciation of the fact that God intended us to use it - His word, His voice - to enhance and give life.
But there is still yet something else missing! Let's reread verses 12 and 13 in Hebrews 3:
The author of Hebrews here (Paul, in my estimation) does a masterful job in summarizing the wilderness experience of the children of Israel - all those who came out of Egypt. He has nothing positive to say about them. Not one word. His description of them - the whole generation - is about rebellion, testing and provoking God, going astray, doing evil, being unbelieving, having hard hearts, being deceitful, sinful, disobedient.
In what is essentially an epitaph on an entire generation of Israelites, Paul concludes that they were denied entrance into the Promised Land because they never believed God and that led to their disobedience. They simply did not take His Word as anything of value. So they did not believe it, did not put any stock into it, and did their own thing.
What we see, the end of it all was, as it says here in the New King James, their corpses fell in the wilderness. This is a particularly effective and picturesque illustration, that their corpses fell in the wilderness.
The King James makes it a little bit more macabre. It says it is their carcasses [that] fell in the wilderness. The Phillips version reads that they left their bones in the desert.
The Amplified Bible reads, whose dead bodies were scattered in the wilderness. The Good News Bible (we are getting a little bit more into paraphrases here) reads, who fell down dead in the desert. And, finally, the Message says that they ended up corpses in the wilderness.
The result of all their sin and their rebellion and their provoking God is that they left their rotting carcasses from one end of the wilderness to the other. Every single one of them died. Paul says, Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? All! Every. Single. One.
When we lose our Berean self-reflexiveness (thinking about our thinking) we tend to lose our teachability and we lose our pliability. Perhaps the most important aspect of self-reflexiveness is our willingness to be shaped and molded by Almighty God, and not become stiff-necked as our forebears did in the wilderness.
On May 26th of this year, Bill Onisick gave a sermonette titled Using Gray Matter to Solve Gray Matters, acknowledging that when we are newly called babes in Christ, we naturally prefer simple black and white choices, but as we mature, we are required and mandated by Almighty God to make decisions in gray matters, far more numerous than the simple black and white decisions we had to make when we were first called.
For example, it is easy to understand that we should keep the weekly and the annual Sabbaths holy. But how to keep the Sabbath holy is up to our own discretion and we will have to experiment - possibly making mistakes and false steps in the process. It is by God's design that we use these numerous, gray, uncharted areas to build spiritual maturity by applying the principles in God's Word, using common sense and emergent God-given discernment prompted by God's Holy Spirit.
Spiritual maturity develops within us only if we have regularly and faithfully exercised discernment concerning these multiple gray areas using the God ordained human reason which I am sorry to say that some evangelical fundamentalists have denigrated.
