Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 384
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IMMERSE
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MESSIAH
3:8–4:4
“Today when you hear his voice,
don’t harden your hearts
as Israel did when they rebelled,
when they tested me in the wilderness.
There your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
even though they saw my miracles for forty years.
So I was angry with them, and I said,
‘Their hearts always turn away from me.
They refuse to do what I tell them.’
So in my anger I took an oath:
‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”
Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts
are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You
must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you
will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to
the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share
in all that belongs to Christ. Remember what it says:
“Today when you hear his voice,
don’t harden your hearts
as Israel did when they rebelled.”
And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard his
voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God
angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in
the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that
they would never enter his rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed him?
So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.
God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with
fear that some of you might fail to experience it. For this good news—that
God has prepared this rest—has been announced to us just as it was to
them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those
who listened to God. For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for
the others, God said,
“In my anger I took an oath:
‘They will never enter my place of rest,’”
even though this rest has been ready since he made the world. We know
it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the
