3
“Be Very Careful, Brothers and Sisters”
1 That is why, holy brothers and sisters, with regard to whom it is a summons from heaven in which you share as companions, you must carefully consider the apostle and high priest whom we profess, namely, Jesus,
2 who is fully trustworthy in the priestly work that God has assigned to him, just as Moses, too, was himself “trustworthy in his work in God’s house.”+
3 Jesus has been deemed worthy of even greater honor, you see, than Moses, just as the builder of a house himself receives greater honor than the house he builds.
4 Every house, you see, has a builder. The one who built all things, however, is God.
5 And whereas Moses, on the one hand, was “trustworthy in his work in God’s entire house”+ as a servant, to bear solemn witness to the things that God would speak in the future,
6 the Messiah, on the other, is trustworthy as the Son in charge of God’s house—whose house we ourselves are, if we faithfully retain our courage and our confidence in that for which we hope.
7 That is why, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if ᵖyou hear his voice,
8 don’t harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion,
as they did during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors put me to the test and tried me,
and so felt my punishments
10 for forty years.
That is why I became angry with this generation and said,
‘They are not loyal to me,
and they have refused to follow my ways.’
11 So I swore a solemn oath in my wrath:
‘Only if I am not God will they enter my rest.’ ”+
12 Be very careful, brothers and sisters, lest any of you become so full of evil and unbelief that you forsake the living God.
13 Instead, continue to strengthen and encourage one another each day, so long as “Today” is what it is still called, so that none of you may be hardened as a result of sin’s deceitful tricks.
14 Companions of the Messiah, you see, are what we still are and will surely remain if indeed, in regard to the conviction we had at first, we retain it steadfastly to the very finish.
15 As it says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
don’t be dull and stubborn as they were in the rebellion.”+
16 Who was it, after all, who, after having “heard,” then “rebelled”? It was all who came out of Egypt under Moses’ leadership, was it not?
17 And with whom did God “become angry for forty years?” It was with those who sinned, was it not, who as a result were struck dead in the wilderness?
18 And to whom did God “swear a solemn oath,” that they would certainly not “enter his rest,” if not to those who refused to obey him?
19 And so we see that they were not allowed to enter because of their unbelief.