Hebrews 3:15-19
22 June 2025
As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled?
Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?
And with whom was he provoked for forty years?
Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?
So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
So this afternoon, as we conclude another chapter in the book of Hebrews, what we're going to be looking at is the road to destruction is marked by unbelief. And this is something that we don't need to look very far in a culture like ours, which has become increasingly anti-Christian, anti-God, where things like atheism is being promoted with such passion and enthusiasm to see this very destructive direction. And as a chapter like this is making centrally and foundationally clear, unbelief is where this is grounded, unbelief in the truth. But what we have to understand about unbelief with take something like atheism or people who say, I believe in nothing. They would go further than that and also seek to attack the truth, the truth of God and His Word.
So you've likely had conversations with people who would say, yes, I'm on the road to destruction, and that's fine because I have no interest or desire in: this Bible, in this God that you're speaking of. This God that you're speaking of is to blame for all of my problems, this sort of way of speaking and thinking. Now this way of speaking and thinking is not in any way entirely detached from the attitude, the way by which the people in the time in the wilderness spoke. And who were those people? They were the people of Israel, God's covenant people who knew, saw, and tasted the things, the works of God, and they rejected it, and they rebelled, just like we could argue in many ways, a nation like ours, which has known, seen, and tasted, proclaimed, and upheld the truth of God's Word, and then rejected it and rebelled.
And so again, this chapter, though it is very challenging and it deals with some weighty subject matter, is yet still a very important challenge which takes us to the key component of this road to destruction, which as we've marked, is unbelief. And this is what we're going to be working through as we tackle these verses here in Hebrews chapter 3. As we look at the subject of unbelief, we're going to cover 3 key points in this. We're going to look first at the warning, which is a warning repeated, then we're going to think about the consequence, and then we'll spend time at the end looking at the reason.
So the warning, the consequence, and the reason. And as we come to the warning first, we look now to verse 15 of the text. And all of the verses that we've read, we're going to be working through. And you might think, well, we're picking up the pace somewhat if we're tackling quite a few verses in Hebrews. Well, the reason we're doing that is because quite a bit of what's contained in this closing section is repeating and emphasizing and almost to an extent drawing a mini conclusion to a wider argument that is being established in chapters 3 and 4.
So if you're thinking, well, this is a bit too fast paced, we'll be going back to 1 verse at a time when we get to chapter 4. So fear not. But tonight, we're in verses 15 to 19, and we begin with this warning here in verse 15.
Now if you remember, the warning that's being given is from the quote back in verses 7 to 11. It's repeating something that we see in verses 7 and 8.
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."
This is Psalm 95, which David wrote and is about Israel's time in the wilderness, which now the author to the Hebrews is using as a lesson from history for the professing Christians amongst this Hebrew Christian group. Now what we have to be clear about as we look once more at the repetition of this warning is that this is not artillery for the devil to strike you with. As if to say, well, look, here's a repeated warning. Don't harden your hearts as in the rebellion as if there should be some greater degree of uncertainty about the assurance you have of your salvation.
As we've already unpacked in chapter 3, for the believer, when we look at warnings like this, when we look at passages like this, the Lord, by His grace, uses such text to prick the conscience of believers, to challenge and convict us in the direction in which we are to go in our service to Him. But, also, we do need to be clear that passages like this, and particularly warnings like this, are also stern warnings to unbelievers. Notice again from verse 12 of chapter 3, it says,
"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart."
So as we've already noted, there are people, even within the professing church, who would profess to be Christians, who are actually not born again, and they have these evil, unbelieving hearts. So this is the warning that is being given here in this verse, the repeated warning, and it begins with this urgent word today.
"As it is said, 'Today if you hear His voice.'"
Now the urgency of the word today is understood by knowing what today means. And because we've unpacked this already, let me briefly summarise. It's not referring to a specific 24-hour day as if, well, this specific day is what is being referred to here. No.
It's to do with this time, this moment. And in the context of church history in the time of the new covenant, this has been a period where the Lord has graciously given time and opportunity for days “today” like this for the gospel to be proclaimed. So today, there is the urgency to hear what is being proclaimed. There should be an urgency from pulpits to proclaim the truth of the Word of God, to proclaim the glory of the gospel, and to call sinners to repent. And one of the key reasons why is because there is such an impenitency of fallen man, which means there is a shameless, defiant rebellion in the heart of an unbeliever.
Note this. There is not a sense of, well, I don't believe, but I feel pretty ashamed about that. No. There's a shamelessness. There's a defiance to the unbelief. That's what we have to get in view, and this is why such a warning is being pressed.
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."
That is what is being warned of here. And note again what it is saying. It is saying, if you hear His voice. It is not saying, today, if you do some Christian things or today, if you work harder at being religious. It is saying today, if you hear His voice.
Now whose voice is this referring to? It is the voice of God. And maybe some would sit and think, well, how do I hear the voice of God? Should I be hearing something audible in my head?
Well, by the grace of God, if you hear the Word being proclaimed from the authority of scripture, that is exactly what you hear. God has ordained that His truth, His Word is revealed in this book. And so as it is proclaimed, where then comes the hearing? Because as we will know, there are some who hear truth, they hear God's Word, but they're not actually hearing. Just like this morning, as Mike was dealing with the subject of God foreknowing, He knows all things, but there's a special knowing of His elect.
And here, this hearing is referring to knowing and hearing with belief. And this is a work of the Spirit of God in the heart of men and women. And if you are sitting here hearing the voice of God, which means you're reading this and you're not seeing it as some irrelevant religious text that has nothing to do with your life, but you're actually hearing this as God's Word speaking to you. The warning is do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. And this is why the word that is to be proclaimed is to be based on this truth, and it is centred upon what the book of Hebrews is centred upon.
We are not simply opening up our Bibles to try to make people in our society more moral. We're not opening up our Bibles to give a rallying cry to tackle the issue of abortion, full stop. As fundamentally important as these things are, that is not the heart of the Christian message. The heart of the Christian message is the Lord Jesus Christ, the proclamation of the gospel. It is why we preach Christ crucified.
And as it says in 1 Corinthians 1, that is “a stumbling block to [the] Jews and folly to [the] Gentiles” (v.23). Why? Because of their unbelief, and yet still we are called and exhorted to proclaim this truth, to call sinners to repent, to call people to look to Jesus Christ. That's what everything of the book of Hebrews is driven towards. These Hebrew Christians, these professing Christians who are tempted to go back to their Jewish rituals, hear “pay closer attention to” Jesus (Hebrews 2:1) [and] "Consider Jesus" (Hebrews 3:1).
Look to the glory, the excellencies, the beauty, the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, and see what He has done for fallen and broken sinners like us. See what He has done in coming to taste the native waters of this earth, but did so without in any way sinning or being of sin in any shape or form. He is the perfect sinless one that He would lay down that sinless life for sinners like us.
This gospel must be proclaimed, and it is why we point people to this truth, to Christ, His death, His burial, His resurrection, His victory over the grave, His ascension to be seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, the One who is exalted over all, Lord of lords and King of kings. We proclaim this. And yet, how many times, how many times have you proclaimed with passion, with conviction, with biblical clarity, the truth of the gospel? And what you're met with, blank expression, disengaged, disinterested.
"Oh, yeah. I know. I've always been a Christian. I prayed my prayers."
You've just proclaimed the gospel. You've called this person to repent.
They say, yeah. I've always been a Christian. I've grown up in church. What's on TV tonight? I went to Sunday school, but I just really lost interest. But I know the gospel. I did make a commitment to Jesus once upon a time, but there's so much suffering in the world, I kind of just lost interest.
How many times do we encounter not just the hardened atheist who has no time to listen to a single word of the Bible, but those who are lost in their confusions about the gospel, some even thinking and saying, hey, I'm a Christian.
On what basis are you a Christian? There are countless people in a nation like ours saying they are a Christian, and they are absolutely seeped in their unbelief about the Lord Jesus, about Christianity, about salvation. And the warning is clear.
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart."
And that can include saying you're a Christian, but you are so hardened to the realities of the gospel and the call to repentance.
This is why there is the urgency.
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."
The rebellion, what's that? Well, we remember back to the instance with Israel in the wilderness. And this is where the author to the Hebrews goes back from verse 16, goes back to this time in history.
And this is where we come to our second point: the consequence. First, we've dealt with the warning in verse 15. Now verses 16 to 18, we have the consequence. Look at verse 16.
"For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?"
Now note what it says there. It's not saying, oh, there were a few outliers, a few rebels in amongst God's chosen and holy people. It says,
"Was it not all those who left Egypt?"
Literally, Joshua and Caleb are the only 2 who will not fall in this wilderness. That's the extent to which this all is a startling all. And we've already looked at the attitude, the behaviour, the conduct of Israel, who saw God strike their enemies with a series of plagues and deliver them from slavery, deliver them from the Red Sea. And yet, what do we see again and again and again from Israel? When a problem arises, they grumble. When there's no water, they become aggressive. When there's no food, they complain. And even as we saw in the book of Numbers, when they have even the opportunity to enter the promised land, they refuse. This is it. This is who left Egypt and rebelled.
And brothers and sisters, is this not why the Lord Jesus calls us to be watchful, to watch and pray? Think of the disciples, how quickly they were to become tardy and sleepy in some of the most crucial moments in the history of mankind. Take the time of the transfiguration, at the time of Gethsemane, as we look to Israel's rebellion—their downfall is a lesson for you and for me because “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). He is the righteous Judge, and in His wrath, He condemns sinful man. And this is what we go on to see as we come to verse 17 when it then says,
"And with whom was He provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned? And then this is striking, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?"
Now the first part of verse 17, the reason we're being brief with this is because we've already packed this in verses 7 to 11. But just briefly on this, the Lord has been provoked for 40 years with their hardness of heart, in their testing in the wilderness.
They are the ones who have sinned against God by not trusting God. And this is why verse 17 ends by saying, "…whose bodies fell in the wilderness." Now that translation is a little bit more mellow than what is actually a more literal translation. More literally translated, the end of verse 17 should read that their “…carcasses fell”. Now such a word as carcasses to describe God's covenant people shows the contempt and the indignation for a people hardened in their sin.
Numbers 14:29,
"Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number listed in the census from 20 years old and upward who have grumbled against Me."
And in Deuteronomy 32:20, it says,
"And He said, 'I will hide My face from them. I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.'"
The language is strong, brothers and sisters, and such people, a chosen and set apart people, who see and taste some of the excellencies of the majesty of God, what should be their response? Their response should be one of a posture of worship, of adoration before Yahweh.
When a problem comes, they trust Him because they love Him, they know Him, and they have entered into a covenant with Him. But what do they do? What so many have done, even in the name of Christianity, they have seen, they have heard, and they abandon, and they reject. And this is exactly where our nation is. This is exactly where all too many of our churches are.
Yes, we do rightly need to proclaim and uphold the wonder and the glory of God's mercy, and we do pray that in God's wrath, He will remember mercy, but also understand what the wrath of God means and looks like against those who know these truths, and yet they rebel in their hardness of heart. For Israel in the wilderness, their carcasses, such contempt on even their bodies will fall. What would be the judgment of the living God upon the church in our nation in recent times? We didn't get to a place this past week where suddenly there is such a progressive direction in celebrating death in the name of abortion and assisted dying. This has been a trajectory of much rebellion, of much hardness of hearts, where the church has sat by silently and increasingly even argued for such wickedness and evil. Because our churches have given way to apostasy, and we certainly see our governments are ruled by faithless idolaters. And this is why in 2 Peter 2:21-22, it is so stark where it says,
"For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them."
And note this,
"What the proverb says, the dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire."
Look at this. Look at what this passage is saying in 2 Peter 2. It would have been better if they'd never known the way of righteousness. What a stinging rebuke this is to a people like Israel in the wilderness, and now to a nation like this former Christian nation of ours, having seen, heard, and tasted, and we've turned our back on it like a dog returning to its vomit. It's utterly disgusting and despicable, and this is the consequence of sin, and this needs to be proclaimed from the pulpits this very weekend. Because we're wallowing in the filth of such sin, deserving of death and destruction under the weight of God's righteous anger, which is His wrath. It's why Romans 2:8 says,
"But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury."
Wrath and fury. This is the God that we worship, the consuming fire which looks at nations like ours, people like Israel in their rebellion, in their hardness of heart, and this is the judgment of God against such wickedness. And as we go on in verse 18,
"And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient?"
Now this subject of entering rest will be unpacked in much more detail when we get to chapter 4. So we're not overlooking that, but we will be unpacking it in detail then. But this is in reference to, ultimately, what would be our spiritual destination. The picture is one of Israel not entering the promised land of Canaan, and they didn't. Their carcasses fell. But it also gives us a picture of the spiritual and damning reality. Which is what?
Revelation 21:8,
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."
When the carcasses fall, is that the end? No. It is not.
There is coming a time when the first heaven and first earth will pass away. The sea will be no more—Revelation 21:1. And the justice of God demands that sin is dealt with, because God's law demands perfection, and sin is defined as lawlessness. And every person who dies in a state of lawlessness will be eternally condemned in hell. Note this, underline this, every person who dies in a state of lawlessness will be condemned to hell. And the Lord Jesus describes hell as the furnace of fire—Matthew 13:42 and 50—there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And we also have another picture in Matthew 25:30 where hell is described as “the outer darkness…where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Oh, we can caricature it. Man in his unbelief likes to make a big joke of it, even to say, well, I'd rather be in hell than heaven, it sounds more fun. What utter folly. Do such people know and understand what the weight of hell actually means? It is a place where God is present in the sense of being eternally under the wrath of God. Every little thing that we enjoy, every good pleasure that God has graciously given to us here on this earth, hell is devoid of it all. It is a torment beyond what we can imagine or reconcile. That is the reality of hell.
It is no laughing matter. And it's why when we come to texts like this, we need to see the severity of what is contained here. Because remember what we're looking at, it is the road to destruction. What is it marked by? It's marked by unbelief, unbelief that produces this hardness of heart, this rebellion, which we saw of Israel.
It's why their carcasses would fall, and why as we're seeing in verse 18, they will not enter God's rest. And this, brothers and sisters, is the consequence for man's sin and rebellion. The fiery furnace, the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, And this is the wrath of God.
And so we come then to the reason, which we've already been dealing with in this text. The reason for this is unbelief.
Verse 19,
"So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief."
Despite all that they saw of the mighty hand of Yahweh, they still could think that life in Egypt was better. Many, in the name of Christianity, will start well saying they're Christians, but then when the tasks and trials come, when the world comes calling, when the enemy strikes, they'll fall away. That's the warning we saw back in verse 12.
Because ultimately, it is an evil, unbelieving heart that does not believe in God. It's unbelief. If there is someone who is living according to the flesh in the direction of the world, and there may be fobbing everybody off saying, well, I'm a Christian actually. No. You are marked by unbelief, and you are headed to destruction. And this is what destruction means, do not think that you can mock the living God.
And it is why we need, week by week, to hear the glory and the majesty of Jesus Christ. Turn with me to the gospel of Mark in chapter 9. When we think of the challenge, the dangers of unbelief, and the reality that even some in the name of Christianity are living in such a way, here we're confronted with a text about a boy with an unclean spirit, and Jesus heals this boy. But in the context of the dialogue with the father, this is what we find in verse 22 of Mark 9.
Father saying,
"And it's often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him," (referring to the evil spirit). "But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us."
So this is the father saying to Jesus, if You can do anything, help us. Have compassion.
And note what Jesus says in verse 23,
"'If you can!' All things are possible for one who believes."
Believes in what? Believes in Who? Religion? Your own righteousness? No. Jesus Christ. And note what this father says in verse 24, and may this be our cry.
"Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe; help my unbelief!'"
Here is the posture of a man who trusts in Christ, and yet weak and feeble though he is, struggling in the circumstances of suffering and bodily affliction to his own son.
Was it not just back in Hebrews 3:13, where we saw the warning of the deceitfulness of sin? And brothers and sisters, if you're sitting here this evening considering this road to destruction, where doubts, where uncertainty or uncertainties can set in, where maybe some could say, I believe in God's plan, but I don't think it would be like this. I know God's sovereign, but I struggle with even the doctrine of hell. I know God is good, but the suffering is hard. I know Christ conquers sin and death, but this temptation is great.
When these challenges confront us, we recognize this is the battle of the Christian's life. And yet, for a man like this in Mark 9, weak in his faith, he declares that he does believe in Christ. He wants and needs the Lord's help. The Lord is our strength in the face of the battle against any unbelief. And thanks be to God that in Christ, He “is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble” (Psalm 46:1).
He is with us. He will strengthen us. He will help us and uphold us—Isaiah 41:10. “According to the riches of His glory…[we are] strengthened with power through His Spirit in [our] inner being” (Ephesians 3:16). The Lord Jesus is our “sure and steady anchor” (Hebrews 6:19).
Your trust this evening, your faith, your belief is in the gospel. That's your hope and your assurance. And it is your hope and assurance every day of your new life in Christ until the appointed day where the Lord calls you home. It is the message that we have to the lost, to the broken, to those seeped in their unbelief, headed in the road to destruction. It's why we must proclaim the reality of God's wrath and judgment which leads to hell, because this is exactly what the Lord Jesus faced on the cross.
It wasn't an ignoring of sin. It wasn't God just deciding that His justice could be redefined. No. It was God's justice being satisfied; His wrath being satisfied by the perfect sinless One laying down His very life for His children. With such a damning reality of a road to destruction marked by unbelief, where is our belief? It is only in—it can only be in—Christ and the gospel.
It's why chapter after chapter, verse after verse in the book of Hebrews throughout the entire Bible, it is centred upon this glorious reality, this gospel truth and hope. What a glorious Saviour we know, we trust, and we worship. That we were the unbelieving sinner, headed straight to destruction, which means hell. And Christ faced the hell that we deserve on Calvary. But for those who truly repent and believe in Him, there is salvation and eternal life.