DISOBEDIENCE
DISOBEDIENCE
HEBREWS 3:7-11
Life is serious and we should remember that failure to give attention to God’s voice carries inevitable consequences.
It follows from what has been said that it is most important that we give proper attention to the gospel. Failure to respond to God’s gracious invitation will have disastrous consequences, precisely because it is God’s gracious invitation, and because it concerns the salvation brought for people by none less than Christ. The author drives home his point by an appeal to Psalm 95:7ff. Notice that the Psalm is ascribed to the Holy Spirit, the writer preferring to draw attention to the divine origin of Scripture rather than to the human author through whom the message was mediated. The quotation follows the Septuagint in substituting “the rebellion” and “the day of testing” (3:8) for the place names given in the Hebrew.
The point of the quotation is that during the wilderness wanderings the people did not give their attention to the voice of God. Throughout the forty years they persisted in hardening their hearts, in rebelling against God and in putting him to the test (this means something like seeing how far they could go). But failure to obey God is never finally successful. The full weight of the divine punishment does not necessarily fall at once, but sinners are deluded if they think they can escape.
The psalmist stresses the fact that God is never passive in such a situation. He is “provoked” by those sinners; he recognizes that they always go astray and that they have not known his ways. The consequence is that they must experience the divine wrath. That this is certain is emphasized by the reference to the divine oath, the oath that they will “never enter my rest” (3:11). In the context this must refer to the Promised Land. But it will also have the deeper meaning of fellowship with God.
Life is a serious business and we should remember that failure to give attention to God’s voice carries inevitable consequences. These days we do not like the thought of “the wrath of God” and many have decided that there is no such thing. Granted that it is possible to interpret it in too human a fashion, the term still draws attention to a grim reality. If someone persists in sin, they must ultimately experience divine opposition and rejection. And that is a frightening prospect whether we call it the wrath of God or whether we prefer some softer description.