If you’ve been here recently for this journey through the book of Hebrews, do you remember the day the ocean swallowed me whole and ate my sunglasses? It was my birthday, BTW. 🙁 More importantly, do you remember the first warning issued?

Pay the most careful attention to {the Gospel} so that you do not drift away. (See that post.)

Today, we find the second warning:

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. Hebrews 3:12

The writer of Hebrews takes us back to the desert in chapter 3–quoting Psalm 95, which summarizes Israel’s history with Moses as their leader.

So, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for 40 years they saw what I did.

They saw what He did. With their own eyes, Israel witnessed God’s wonders on their behalf, time after time. Yet they continued to turn away from Him in rebellion and unbelief.

They even wanted to return to Egypt at times. To me, that seems hard to believe. In Egypt, they were enslaved and mistreated. They were repeatedly prevented from leaving–until God intervened supernaturally–parting the Red Sea and miraculously making a way when they had run out of possibilities.

Evenso, they decided it would be better to return to Egypt. They had witnessed God’s wonders, and still they doubted His plan, His way, and His timing.

But are we any different?

When we hear God’s voice, through His Word, we are free to obey God or to turn away. We always have a choice. The Holy Spirit continues to speak through this Psalm, with the exhortation to hear God’s voice and obey, an exhortation directed at New Testament believers and applicable to us today.

We need to be careful, that we don’t have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away in doubt.

Do not harden your heart as you did in the rebellion.

When we harden our hearts–or rather let our hearts be hardened–we don’t listen for God’s voice anymore. We don’t seek God, and His voice (His Word) makes no impression on a hardened heart.

The result for Israel, was God’s wrath for continued unbelief. That generation never entered the land, the rest of God.

That’s why I was angry with that generation; I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” (Hebrews 3)

They were perpetual wanderers. Indebted because of His grace, yet prone to wander. They willingly ignored God. They didn’t take notice of His ways, of who He really was. Who He is.

We must be on guard, brothers and sisters. See to it that none of us has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

May we be careful, and honest, and prayerful, about our wandering hearts.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, 
Seal it for thy courts above. 

{Excerpt from “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing”, Robert Robinson}

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