"(as the Holy Ghost says, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)" Hebrews 3:7-11
THE Revised Version does not use brackets for this quotation, but the Authorised seems to clarify the spiritual argument by passing from the "Wherefore" of verse 7 and connecting it up with the "Take heed" of verse 12. In other words, the quotation from Psalm 95 is slipped in as a parenthesis inserted into the flow of the exhortation which then reads: "Wherefore ... take heed, brethren".
THIS undoubtedly is what the writer intended. It flows naturally from the divine condition of "holding fast" in verse 6, reminding us that even we who have been so favoured of God can have within us "an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God".
THE psalmist reminds us that this was precisely what happened in the case of those blood-bought believers of the first generation. They erred in their hearts and they were a source of grief to God. Are we not also exhorted to beware of grieving the Holy Spirit? The writer to the Hebrew believers urged them to be sure that in their day -- today -- they should be careful not to let anything bring hardness into their own hearts and disappointment to the heart of God. For us the same word, 'today', is most relevant. We must take heed.
THIS is no merely human exhortation, for the writer points out that the Holy Spirit Himself inspired these words. If we needed a reminder of the fact that the Scriptures are "God breathed", we have it here: "As the Holy Ghost says". And when He speaks, He keeps things in the present. He said it in the psalmist's day, He said it in the apostolic era, He is still saying it now. He wants us to remember the past but to do so in the urgency of the present.
IN this short chapter the word "today" appears three times over. It is today that matters. Eternal values and issues may hang on our response to God today. The living God is speaking to us today. It is His voice to which all we brethren must give heed.
IN the Old Testament, the setting is of the whole people, "that generation", but this New Testament appeal is much more individual. It is not to the whole Church, not even to a local church, but to the individual Christian; for the danger is that "anyone of you" may come short of God's full purpose. That incredibly marvellous purpose is that we should be "members of His household" (v.6) and partners with Christ (v.14). The Lord give us receptive and obedient hearts to His voice!
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