Jesus Our Apostle and High Priest

1Therefore, holy brethren, sharers with others in a heavenly invitation, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest whose followers we profess to be. 2How faithful He was to Him who appointed Him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house! 3For Jesus has been counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, in so far as he who has built a house has higher honour than the house itself. 4For every house has had a builder, and the builder of all things is God. 5Moreover, Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant in delivering the message given him to speak; 6but Christ was faithful as a Son having authority over God's house, and we are that house, if we hold firm to the End the boldness and the hope which we boast of as ours.

Do Not Harden Your Hearts

7For this reason—as the Holy Spirit warns us, "To-day, if you hear His voice,

8do not harden your hearts as your forefathers did in the time of the provocation on the day of the temptation in the Desert,

9where your forefathers so sorely tried My patience and saw all that I did during forty years.

10Therefore I was greatly grieved with that generation, and I said, 'They are ever going astray in heart, and have not learnt to know My paths.'

11As I swore in My anger, they shall not be admitted to My rest" —

The Dangers of Unbelief

12see to it, brethren, that there is never in any one of you—as perhaps there may be—a sinful and unbelieving heart, manifesting itself in revolt from the ever-living God. 13On the contrary encourage one another, day after day, so long as To-day lasts, so that not one of you may be hardened through the deceitful character of sin. 14For we have, all alike, become sharers with Christ, if we really hold our first confidence firm to the End;

15seeing that the warning still comes to us, "To-day, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as your forefathers did in the time of the provocation."

16For who were they that heard, and yet provoked God? Was it not the whole of the people who had come out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses? 17And with whom was God so greatly grieved for forty years? Was it not with those who had sinned, and whose dead bodies fell in the Desert? 18And to whom did He swear that they should not be admitted to His rest, if it was not to those who were disobedient? 19And so we see that it was owing to lack of faith that they could not be admitted.