Twenty - Hebrews - 3

3:1  Therefore, Christian Brothers, you who, all alike, have received the Call from Heaven, fix your attention on Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our Religion.

3:2  See how faithful he was to the God who appointed him, as Moses was in the whole House of God.

3:3  He has been deemed worthy of far higher honour than Moses, just as the founder of the House is held in greater regard than the House itself.

3:4  For every House has its founder, and the founder of the universe is God.

3:5  While the faithful service of Moses in the whole House of God was that of a servant, whose duty was to bear testimony to a Message still to come,

3:6  the faithfulness of Christ was that of a Son set over the House of God. And we are his House--if only we retain, unshaken to the end, the courage and confidence inspired by our hope.

3:7  Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says--'If to-day you hear God's voice,

3:8  Harden not your hearts, as when Israel provoked me on the day when they tried my patience in the desert,

3:9  Where your ancestors tried my forbearance, And saw my mighty deeds for forty years.

3:10  Therefore I was sorely vexed with that generation, And I said-- "Their hearts are always straying; They have never learned my ways";

3:11  While in my wrath I swore--"They shall never enter upon my Rest." '

3:12  Be careful, Brothers, that there is never found in any one of you a wicked and faithless heart, shown by his separating himself from the Living God.

3:13  Rather encourage one another daily--while there is a 'To-day'--to prevent any one among you from being hardened by the deceitfulness of Sin.

3:14  For we now all share in the Christ, if indeed we retain, unshaken to the end, the confidence that we had at the first.

3:15  To use the words of Scripture--'If to-day you hear God's voice, harden not your hearts, as when Israel provoked me.'

3:16  Who were they who heard God speak and yet provoked him? Were not they all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses?

3:17  And with whom was it that God was sorely vexed for forty years? Was not it with those who had sinned, and who fell dead in the desert?

3:18  And who were they to whom God swore that they should not enter upon his rest, if not those who had proved faithless?

3:19  We see, then, that they failed to enter upon it because of their want of faith.