Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 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 have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Comment: Quoting from Psalm 95, and claiming God the Holy Spirit to be behind the human author in some way, the author reminds the early Christians that the Jews who were led out of Egypt never reached the rest of the land promised by God to Abraham. Abraham was the initial father of the whole Jewish nation. Apart from Joshua and Caleb the whole adult population who were led out died in the 40 years of wandering through the wilderness before they came to cross the Jordan river. They rebelled in complaining and even more seriously worshipping a golden calf when Moses was away communing with God.
Nowadays the promised land has become not an earthly nation but life in Jesus as the promised Messiah. The author claims that turning back on their initial turning to faith in Jesus will be like dying in the wilderness and not reaching the end of the God planned course for them.
Prayer: Again I pray for stickability, O God.
As I read it! 