We continue reading the challenging chapters of the letter to the Hebrews. It was obviously written in the final years the Temple existed in Jerusalem before it was destroyed in AD70. Those who made the Temple and the Mosaic Law a highly important part of their lives and expectations, although accepting Jesus as their Messiah, were going to be devastated when the Temple was destroyed.

Paul, whom it is generally agreed wrote Hebrews, is making a most urgent appeal to these believers to realize that although “Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant” this was “to testify to the things that were to be spoken later” [3 v.5] by God’s son. Moses was God’s “servant” – “but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son.” [v.6] The Law was “the house” Moses created, it had now been superseded by the work of Christ in creating a spiritual house “not made with hands” [2 Cor. 5 v.1] that could not be destroyed.

“And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting (rejoicing –AV) in our hope” [Heb 3 v.6] Note that word “if” and that Psalm 95 is quoted twice, [3 v.7; 4 v.5] “Today, IF you will hear his voice”

Today – in 2020 – let us “hold fast” to what we hear – and read. If we are not really listening and taking the message into our hearts and acting on it – then the message is no benefit to us. We noted verses 2 and 4 in ch. 4, “For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.”

Could this be true of us also? Are you united with others in the original faith? Note how the word “if” occurs in ch. 3 v.13,14; “But exhort one another every day as long as it is called ‘today’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” May “the message … benefit’ us as ”every day” we seek exhortations as we read God’s word.