Hebrews 3:7-14 “Fight Unbelief”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 14 Oct. 2018

Introduction

· We ended the last sermon with the statement in Hebrews 3:6 “Christ, on the other hand [is faithful] as a Son over His administration, which administration we ourselves are, if indeed we hold on to the confirmed open practice and confident expression of the hope until the end.”

· Now, after this affirmative statement, our author restates his point in the negative. What is the opposite of holding onto and expressing faith and hope in Jesus Christ? It is to harden your heart when you hear the truth about Jesus.

· So he goes back to a time in the history of God’s people when they had similar watershed moment of how to respond to hearing the truth about their salvation. (This affirms, by the way, that the ancient Israelites were saved by faith, the same as we are, but the event that our author recalls is one in which the Israelites did not trust their savior.)

· Hebrews 3 verses 7-11 and 15 are an extended quote from the end of Psalm 95, which, in turn, recounts the history of Exodus chapter 17. For context, this happened after the parting of the Red Sea, after the awesome delivery of the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai, after God’s amazing provision of manna for food for everybody, and after God provided the pillar of cloud and fire that guided them: “Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the command of the LORD, and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water that we may drink.’ And Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, ‘Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, ‘What shall I do to this people? A little more and they will stone me.’ Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.’ And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he named the place Massah (‘testing’) and Meribah (‘contending’) because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD among us, or not?’ (Exod. 17:1-7 NAS)

· Can you imagine? They had seen the drowning of Pharoah’s army, heard the awesome voice of the Lord at Sinai, eaten the miracle-food, and followed the pillar of fire, and then they said, “Is the LORD with us or not?” They should have said, “The Lord is with us, so let’s trust Him to provide water for us,” but instead they said, “Moses mistreated us because we don’t have enough water, so we are going to punish him.”

· This kind of “trial/test/tempting” was more like trying someone’s patience. It was not done in order “to try to learn the nature or character of” God, but rather to express dissatisfaction with God’s provision and distrust in God.

· Have you ever lashed out at somebody who wasn’t responsible for the things you need just because you were upset and they happened to be in your way? I recently ordered a toner cartridge for the church printer, but the company sent me the wrong kind. I had miscalculated how fast my newsletters would use up toner, so I was completely out of color toner before the cartridge arrived in the mail, and I was counting on getting the printer back up and running the day the cartridge arrived, and when it didn’t work because they had sent me the wrong kind, I called customer service, ready to punish the poor guy on the other end. What I didn’t have in my perspective was that that was a “day of trial/testing for me.” God was giving me an opportunity to trust Him when I didn’t have the resources to do what I wanted. But instead of trusting Him, I set my sights on roasting a customer service representative.

· This fits with other places in Scripture where we run into this phrase about a hardened heart:

o Over a quarter of the times we run into this phrase about a hardened heart, it is describing Pharaoh’s response to the and signs and wonders and plagues God miraculously wrought.

§ Turning a stick into a snake,

§ healing leprosy,

§ turning the water in the river to blood,

§ bringing hordes of frogs/insects in & out of the country upon a spoken command,

§ bringing hailstorms and lightning storms and then making them disappear on cue,

§ making the sun disappear and reappear at will,

§ killing every firstborn – and only the firstborns – in an entire nation under the noses of the the best army in the world.

§ Thirteen times in the Greek translation of Exodus, it uses the same verb σκληρύνω to say that God “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart, for instance:

§ Exodus 4:21 “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘When thou goest and returnest to Egypt, see--all the miracles I have charged thee with, thou shalt work before Pharao: and I will harden his heart, and he shall certainly not send away the people.” (Brenton)

§ Think about it: If all these things had happened in your country because a certain ethnic group just wanted to leave, and then they left, and you followed them with your army to the border, then you saw a giant pillar of fire descend from heaven and stand between you and the group of refugees and burn there all night, and then you saw the sea split in half, enabling them to escape, would you have said, “Come on, we’ve got ‘em now!”?? No reasonable leader would have done such a thing. Pharoah’s heart was so set on proving God wrong that it didn’t matter what miracles God did, he wasn’t going to listen to God. He was hell-bent on his own path of self-destruction.

o In several instances, it was the “neck” rather than the “heart” of someone that was “hardened/stiff,” but it meant much the same thing[1]: an unwillingness to be in awe of God or to listen to or obey Him, for instance: Deuteronomy 10:12&16 "And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul… "Therefore circumcise… your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.” (NKJ)

o We see it again when Hezekiah, king of the southern country of Judah, rediscovered the Book of the Law, and he pled with the estranged northern Israelites to worship God together with the southern Jews at a renewed Passover celebration: 2 Chronicles 30:8 “And now harden not your hearts, as your fathers did: give glory to the Lord God, and enter into his sanctuary… and serve the Lord your God...” (Brenton)

o Later kings of Judah were not as faithful as Hezekiah.

§ Jeremiah 7:25 “from the day that their fathers went forth out of the land of Egypt, even until this day… I sent to you all my servants, the prophets, by day and early in the morning: yea, I sent them, but they hearkened not to me, and their ear gave no heed; and they made their neck harder than their fathers… Jeremiah 19:15 Behold… they have hardened their neck, that they might not hearken to my commands.” (Brenton)

§ 2 Chronicles 36:13b says that King Zedekiah, “… stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart, so as not to return to the Lord God of Israel.” (Brenton) So, during Zedekiah’s reign, God ended the kingdom of Judah and had it taken over by the Chaldean nation.

o The same word occurs later, in the New Testament, describing a Jewish community in Ephesus, where the Apostle Paul preached the gospel: Acts 19:8-9 “And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.”

o It is in the heart – which is basically the same as our thinking and feeling – that we first begin to err and go astray, as it says in v.10. If we will listen to God’s word and believe Him, it will set our heart to think and feel along the right lines, because we will “know God’s ways,” and then we will not go astray. Hardening our heart to refuse to listen to God’s word and to refuse to let it influence our hearts is a sure-fire recipe for going astray.

· V.10 On account of this [God said], “I got disgusted with that generation, and I said, ‘They are always being led astray in heart, because, as for them, they did not acknowledge my ways.’

o God was perfectly consistent; He warned the Israelites under Moses, “But if y'all don't give heed to me… failing to do any of my commands such that y'all break my covenant… Then I will … put y'all's corpses on top of the corpses of your idols, and my soul will disdain you.” (Lev. 26:14-15 & 30)

o In the New Testament, Steven said that it was still a problem in his generation: Acts 7:51-53 "You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One [Jesus], of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.” (NKJV) It’s not that they didn’t know what God’s ways were. They had the law; they just didn’t want to listen to it and obey it.

o Brothers and sisters, we have even less of an excuse. We have multiple copies of the entire Bible sitting around our homes. If we harden our hearts to God’s word and refuse to meditate on it, we too will go astray and suffer God’s anger/grief/disgust for being so provoking to Him.

· V.11 “So, as a result of my anger, I swore, ‘[I’ll be damned] if they enter into my rest.’”

o Now I realize those words are not to be spoken carelessly. It is a very serious thing to swear an oath like that, and even more serious if God Himself is the one making the oath,

§ but this verse follows a formal oath form in Hebrew, assuming the negative consequence of death or damnation if the stated condition comes to pass,

§ and the word “not/never” is not there in the Greek and Hebrew source of this verse, so I tried to render it as literally as possible in English rather than pulling punches about how serious it is to offend God.

o The consequence of not listening to God’s word is that God dedicates Himself to preventing you from entering His rest. Could there be any higher stakes than that, my friends?

o The κατάπαυσίν “rest” which God promised to withhold from the unfaithful Israelites in the wilderness was the “rest” of living on their own property in the Promised Land instead of living as nomads in the desert.[2]

§ Deut. 12:9-10 “For hitherto ye have not arrived at the rest and the inheritance, which the Lord our God gives you. And ye shall go over Jordan, and shall dwell in the land, which the Lord our God takes as an inheritance for you; and he shall give you rest from all your enemies round about, and ye shall dwell safely.” (Brenton, cf. 1 Kings 8:56)

§ Earlier, in Numbers 14, God had told the people of Israel that it was time to move into the Promised Land, but instead of moving in, they heeded the negative report of the 10 spies and decided to go back to Egypt instead of into Canaan. “But Joshua… and Chaleb… spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, ‘…If the Lord choose us, he will bring us into this land, and give it [to] us; a land which flows with milk and honey. Only depart not from the Lord; and fear … not the people of the land… for the season of prosperity is departed from them, but the Lord is among us: fear them not.’ And all the congregation bade stone them with stones... And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long does this people provoke me? and how long do they refuse to believe me for all the signs which I have wrought among them? … But as I live and my name is living, so the glory of the Lord shall fill all the earth. For all the men who see my glory, and the signs which I wrought in Egypt, and in the wilderness, and have tempted me this tenth time, and have not hearkened to my voice, surely they shall not see the land, which I sware to their fathers; but their children… to them will I give the land; but none who have provoked me shall see it. But my servant Chaleb, because there was another spirit in him, and he followed me, I will bring him into the land into which he entered, and his seed shall inherit it.” (Numbers 14:6-24, Brenton)

o That generation passed, and Joshua and Caleb led the next generation into the Promised Land. But the Book of Hebrews is warning us that the God who punished unbelief “back in the day” is the same God we have to deal with today.

§ As the 19th Century Scottish commentator John Brown put it, “If unbelief and disobedience to the will of God as ‘spoken by Moses’ brought down on our fathers such judgments, what may we expect if we are unbelieving and disobedient when He makes known His will to us ‘by His Son?’ Death in the wilderness, exclusion from Canaan, will be found but very feeble figures of the evils in which unbelief and disobedience to Him will involve us.”

· V.12 Keep watch, brothers, otherwise there will be in some of y’all an evil heart of unbelief in the act of apostatizing/departing/falling/turning away from the Living God,

o An “evil heart” that does not believe God and seeks to distance itself from God is the natural state of mankind:

§ c.4000BC – Genesis 3 Adam & Eve disobeyed and hid from God

§ c.1650BC - Genesis 6:6 “And the Lord God, having seen that the wicked actions of men were multiplied upon the earth, and that every one in his heart was intently brooding over evil continually” (Brenton)

§ c.950BC - Ecclesiastes 9:3 “There is this evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event to all: yea, the heart of the sons of men is filled with evil… (Brenton)

§ c.600BC - Jeremiah 16:12 “…ye sinned worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the lusts of your own evil heart, so as not to hearken to me” (Brenton)

§ c.30AD – Matthew 9:4 And Jesus, knowing their thoughts said, “Why are you [yourselves] thinking evil in your hearts? … 15:19 out of the heart come evil rationalizations, murders, adulterous affairs, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, [and] blasphemy” (NAW)

o That’s why we have to “Βλέπετε/keep watch/take heed/take care/beware/see to it” that we “exhort/encourage” one another to believe the Gospel of the Son of God and resist the lies of sin.[3]

· V.13 rather encourage one another throughout each day – as long as it is called “today” in order that some of y’all might not be hardened by means of the deceitfulness of his sin.

o Sin is deceitful (ἀπάτῃ τῆς ἁμαρτίας)

§ Wealth/materialism deceives people: Matthew 13:22 “Then the one that was sown into the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, yet the cares of this age and the deception of wealth choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.” (NAW)

§ Your own discontent will deceive and corrupt you - Ephesians 4:22 “put off of you what pertains to the former way of life – the old man which is being corrupted according to the lusts from deception” - (NAW)

§ Men are also trying to deceive you with their vain philosophies - Colossians 2:8 “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” (NKJ)

§ And then there’s the Devil who is also dealing in lies - 2 Thess. 2: 9-12 “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (NKJV)

§ With this many deceivers inside and outside of us, we really do need exhortation and encouragement not to be deceived by sin!

o How can you “encourage” one another successfully? Follow the example of the apostles:

§ Preach the Gospel - Acts 2:38 “Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’ And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’” (NKJV)

§ Affirm good things you see in fellow-believers - Acts 11:22 “Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and encouraged them all that with purpose of heart they should continue with the Lord.” (NKJV)

§ Ask to hear the Gospel again - Acts 13:42 “So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.

§ Exhort believers to continue in the faith – Acts 14:21-22 “…they [Paul & Barnabas] returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith…”

§ Encourage believers to take a further step of faith - Acts 27:34 "Therefore I urge you to take nourishment, for this is for your survival, since not a hair will fall from the head of any of you." (NKJ)

§ Invite believers over to your house for fellowship – Acts 28:13-15 “…the next day we came to Puteoli, where we found brethren, and were invited to stay with them seven days. And so we went toward Rome. And from there, when the brethren heard about us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum and Three Inns. When Paul saw them, he thanked God and took courage.”

§ Ask for prayer - Romans 15:30 “Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me” (NKJ)

§ Warn Christians about potential problems - Romans 16:17 “Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them.” (NKJ)

§ Help Christians get over their differences - 1 Corinthians 1:10 “Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (NKJ)

§ Visit other Christians - 1 Corinthians 16:12 “Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers...” (ESV)

§ Comfort hurting people with the comfort you have received from God - 2 Corinthians 1:4 “…comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (NKJ)

§ Forgive those who have wronged you - 2 Corinthians 2:7-8 “…you ought rather to forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore, I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.” (NKJ)

§ Share good news about the progress of God’s kingdom – Eph. 6:21-22 “But that you also may know my affairs and how I am doing, Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will make all things known to you; whom I have sent to you for this very purpose, that you may know our affairs, and that he may comfort your hearts.”

§ Train young believers in how to live like Christians – 1 Thess. 2:11-12 “…you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.” (NKJV)

§ Confront sins in the lives of others - 1 Timothy 5:1 Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers” (NKJV)

§ Remind Christians of Christ’s return – 1 Thess. 4:16-18 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” (NKJV)

o How often should we do this exhorting and encouraging?

§ “All day long” is the prima facie meaning of ἄχρις οὗ τὸ σήμερον καλεῖται,

§ but it also has an extended meaning in the context of this passage that includes “while the time is opportune[4].” (John 9:4b”…the night is coming when no one can work.”)

o Why should we watch out for sin in one another and exhort and encourage one another?

· V.14 Because we have become companions of the Anointed One - if indeed we hold on to the beginning of our confirmed understanding until the end.

o Back in v.1, it said we are “companions/partakers/shareholders of a heavenly calling” and now in v.14 it says we are “companions/partakers/shareholders in Christ” Himself!

o Notice the similarity to Hebrews 3:6 “Christ, on the other hand [is faithful] as a Son over His administration, which administration we ourselves are, if indeed we hold on to the confirmed open practice and confident expression of the hope until the end.”

o In addition to “exhorting” others not to become “standoffish[5]” toward God, we need to hold fast ourselves to the truth that we came to believe when we first heard the Gospel, and keep holding on by faith to it until

§ the “end” of our life when we are ushered into the presence of our Lord in heaven

§ or until the “end” of the age when our Lord comes down to earth again.

o What is it that we are to “hold fast” to? The Greek word is hupostasews, literally “what stands underneath.”

§ We ran across this word in Hebrews 1:3 (where it says Jesus is an exact copy of God’s substance/nature/being/person) Jesus personally is the substructure of our salvation and our faith.

§ and we’ll run across it again in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the hupostasews /substance/ assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (NKJ)

§ Trusting God is the substructure that we stand on.

o But again, our “holding fast” is not what makes us “partakers of the Anointed One;” the Perfect tense verb “have become” partakers/companions means that our union with Christ happened before we held it firm/steadfast. When we come to the “end” still trusting Jesus to forgive us of our sins, still trusting Him to give us our daily bread, still relying on His Holy Spirit to pour out His lovingkindness into the world through us, that will only prove that we were really His metochoi-companions all along.

· Conclusion

o The Holy Spirit still says, “Today if y’all happen to hear His voice, don’t start to harden your hearts…”

o If you are in circumstances where you can hear God’s word (Albert Barnes, Lander) then you should respond with an open heart to Him and help others respond in the same way.[6]

o Notice the importance of the word “today.” Christianity is not essentially about what you did in the past or about what you will do in the future; it is about where you are in relationship with God TODAY.

§ Although we will have to give an account before God on judgment day for everything we have done, His grace is such that it doesn’t matter what you did yesterday, and it doesn’t matter how much you promise to do in the future, what matters is how you are responding to Him today.

§ Don’t begin hardening your heart by saying your past makes you hopeless, and don’t begin hardening your heart by promising to trust God later in the future; listen now and trust now what God says and act now on it.

§ Christianity is about heeding God right now, not about pulling out old baptismal records to prove you are a Christian.

o “The food of faith,” wrote John Brown in his commentary on Hebrews, “is truth and its evidence. All that man can do to produce faith and maintain faith is just to place these before the mind. It is the duty of every Christian… often to turn his own mind to a serious consideration of the truth and its evidence, as contained in the [Bible] and it is his duty too… to bring before [the] mind [of his fellow-Christian] the truth and its evidence … nothing is better fitted to prevent apostasy than … the ‘exceeding great and precious promises’ … the good news… of a free and full salvation through Christ Jesus…”

[1] cf. Neh. 9:16, a parallel of this passage which substitutes “neck” for “heart”

[2] The first time we see this word for “rest” in the Greek Bible is in Exod. 35:2 Six days shalt thou perform works, but on the seventh day shall be rest--a holy sabbath--a rest for the Lord: every one that does work on it, let him die.” (Brenton) The other uses of this word for “rest” have to do with God resting among His people (Num. 10:35, 2 Chr. 6:41, Ps. 131:14, Isa. 66:1, Acts 7:49), so there is a reciprocal nature to this rest - of God with us and us with God.

[3] Jeremiah 3:17 prophesied that it would happen: “In those days… they shall not walk any more after the imaginations of their evil heart.” (Brenton)

[4] Cf. A. Clark, Gill, JFB, Vincent, and M. Henry for the latter interpretation.

[5] This is a literal translation of the infinitive ἀποστῆναι

[6] This position was advocated by Albert Barnes and affirmed by the SIL team which tagged every word of the NT with Louw & Nida semantic domain numbers in 2016. The idea of “paying attention” (Gill, Henry) or “obeying” (JFB) would be a positive restatement of the apodosis, so I don’t think they belong here in the protasis, otherwise it becomes a sort of tautology (i.e. “If you heed, don’t harden your hearts.”).

Majority		NAW/LXX			KJV
	7 Διό, καθὼς λέγει τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ῞Αγιον· [A]σήμερον ἐὰν τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ ἀκούσητε,		7 On account of this, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if y’all hear His voice,	7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
	8 μὴ σκληρύνητε τὰς καρ-δίας ὑμῶν ὡς ἐν τῳ παραπικρασμῷ[B], κατὰ τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ πειρασμοῦ ἐν τῃ ἐρήμῳ,		8 don’t y’all start hardening your hearts like [they did] in the embitterment at the time of the testing in the desert,	8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
	9 οὗ[C] ἐπείρασάν [με] οἱ πατέρες ὑμῶν, ἐδοκίμασάν[D] [με][E], καὶ εἶδον τὰ ἔργα μου 10 τεσσεράκοντα ἔτη·		9 by which y’all’s forefathers tried me. They passed judgment on me and saw my works forty years.”	9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
	διὸ[F] προσώχθισα[G] τῇ γενεᾳ ἐκείνῃ[H] καὶ εἶπον· ἀεὶ πλανῶνται τῃ καρδίᾳ, αὐτοὶ δὲ[I] οὐκ ἔγνωσαν τὰς ὁδούς μου·		10 On account of this, “I got disgusted with that generation, and I said, ‘They are always being led astray in heart, because, as for them, they did not acknowledge my ways.’	10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
	11 ὡς ὤμοσα ἐν τῃ ὀργῃ μου, εἰ εἰσελεύσονται εἰς τὴν κατάπαυσίν μου.		11 So, as a result of my anger, I swore, ‘[I’ll be damned] if they enter into my rest.’”	11 So I sware in my wrath, X They shall [not] enter into my rest.)
	12 Βλέπετε, ἀδελφοί, μή ποτε ἔσται ἔν τινι ὑμῶν καρδία πονηρὰ ἀπιστίας ἐν[J] τῳ ἀποστῆναι ἀπὸ Θεοῦ ζῶντος,		12 Keep watch, brothers, otherwise there will be in some of y’all an evil heart of unbelief in the act of apostatizing from the Living God,	12 Take ~~heed~~, brethren, lest there X be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
	13 ἀλλὰ παρακαλεῖτε ἑαυτοὺς καθ᾿ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἄχρις[K] οὗ τὸ σήμερον καλεῖται, ἵνα μὴ σκληρυνθῇ τις ἐξ ὑμῶν ἀπάτῃ τῆς ἁμαρτίας·		13 rather encourage one another throughout each day – as long as it is called “today” in order that some of y’all might not be hardened by means of the deceitfulness of his sin.	13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
	14 μέτοχοι γὰρ γεγόναμεν τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἐάνπερ τὴν ἀρχὴν^ASF τῆς ὑποστάσεως μέχρι τέλους βεβαίαν^ASF κατάσχωμεν,		14 For we have become companions of the Anointed One if indeed we hold on to the beginning of our confirmed understanding until the end.	14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;

Hebrews 3:7-14 “Fight Unbelief”

Introduction

APPENDIX: Side-by side Greek Text and English Versions of Hebrews 3:7-14