Hebrews 3:7-19 is the 2nd warning the author gives to those Jewish Christians who were leaving faith in Christ Jesus to return to Judaism. 3:7b Today, if you will hear His voice,
⁸ Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,
As on the day of Massah in the wilderness,
⁹ “When your fathers put Me to the test,
They tested Me, though they had seen My work.
¹⁰ For forty years I was disgusted with that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
¹¹ Therefore I swore in My anger,
They certainly shall not enter My rest.”

The incident at Massah and Meribah is from Exodus 17 as Israel was on the way to Mt. Sinai after being freed from slavery in Egypt. They came to Rephidim and complained about having no water and tested God. Moses struck the rock and provided water. Exodus 17:⁷ Then he named the place Massah (from the Hebrew word meaning “to test”) and Meribah (from the Hebrew word meaning “quarreling or contention”) because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us, or not?” Deuteronomy 6:16; 9:22 and Psalm 95:8-9 refer to that incident. The Israelites did not have the faith that God would provide, so complaining and testing God are symptoms of a lack of faith and an evil heart of unbelief, refusing to submit to God’s protection and guidance.

Hebrews 3:12-19 goes to encourage the Jewish Christians to not have an evil, unbelieving heart like that of the Israelites in the wilderness. David used Massah and Meribah as a warning to the Israelites living in his day. The phrase ““Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me” becomes applicable to the “today” of David’s time, and also to the “today” of the Hebrew author’s time. It becomes the today of our time also. The warning applies to all of God’s people of all times: 3:¹² Take care, brothers and sisters, that there will not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. ¹³ But encourage one another every day, as long as it is still called “today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

That’s the message for me and you today. Sin will try to deceive you today. Materialism, riches, worries, and pleasures will try to distract you from your faith in God. Bad things might happen today that will cause you to complain instead of trusting God. You might begin to quarrel and argue with others about why God allows bad things to happen. Israel’s lack of faith persisted and that generation was not allowed to enter God’s “rest”, i.e. Canaan, the Promised Land. The Hebrew writer was warning his readers that they might miss entering their “rest” due to lack of faith and obedience. Their “rest” would be the final gift of immortality that God would give faithful believers in the first century generation at 70 AD. The 40 years of Israel being tested in the wilderness is a parallel to the 40 years from 30-70 AD that the 1st century church was being tested. Those who endured to the end (70 AD) would receive immortality (1 Corinthians 15) and those who fell from grace would be judged in the great destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD where one million Jews were killed by the Romans.  

The warning is clear to the readers of the Hebrews letter: 3:¹² Take care, brothers and sisters, that there will not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. ¹³ But encourage one another every day, as long as it is still called “today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” We need to encourage one another “today” and “every day”. There are many believers who face trials, temptations, tests, difficulties, tragedies, etc. who need to be encouraged by other believers. The strongest of us in our faith need encouragement at times. We need a lot of believers like Barnabas, whose name meant “son of encouragment”. He encouraged the new Christians at the new Gentile church in Antioch. He encouraged the Christians in Jerusalem to accept Paul into fellowship. He encouraged John Mark after John Mark deserted Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. Later Paul accepted John Mark favorably, probably due to Barnabas’ encouragement of John Mark.

We all get wrapped up in daily troubles and problems. We worry about things instead of trusting God. Make it a priority “today” to look around you and find someone who needs encouragement, and then go encourage them. It will get your mind off your own problems. Be a Barnabas today!

By the way, Psalm 95 is a great psalm. Here are the verses in Psalm 95 leading up to the ones that the Hebrew author quoted in Hebrews 3.

95:1 Come, let’s sing for joy to the Lord,
Let’s shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.
² Let’s come before His presence with a song of thanksgiving,
Let’s shout joyfully to Him in songs with instruments.
³ For the Lord is a great God
And a great King above all gods,
⁴ In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
The peaks of the mountains are also His.
⁵ The sea is His, for it was He who made it,
And His hands formed the dry land.

⁶ Come, let’s worship and bow down,
Let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.
⁷ For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.”

These verses tell us that singing with joy and thanksgiving to the Lord and reverent worship are important in building up our faith so that we don’t fall due to unbelief like the Israelites did. You are probably familiar with the song “Come let us worship and bow down”. I encourage you to stop right now and listen to this song and then take a moment to worship and bow down.