Israel had just been mightily redeemed and delivered from Egypt. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had done as He had promised: He saved his people from slavery, brought them safely through the Red Sea, and soundly destroyed their enemy through powerful signs and wonders. Yet in no time, barely started on their desert journey, the people found themselves unable to trust in their self-evident Savior. Already, they were threatening and grumbling against God’s man Moses because they were without water. So God instructed Moses to strike a rock with his staff, producing a miraculous outpouring from which the people could drink. Moses then called that place Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17:7)—meaning “testing” and “provoking”—because they had tested and provoked God through their unbelief of His presence and power.

This event from Israel’s history is “the Provocation… the day of the testing in the desert” to which David refers in Psalm 95. It is also the example that the author of Hebrews repeatedly calls attention to, exhorting his readers to avoid imitating it in their own lives.

“Do not harden your hearts, as in the Provocation,” the Psalmist writes. “For forty years, therefore, I was grieved with this generation and said, ‘They always go astray in heart,’ and ‘These have not known My ways.’ So I swore an oath in My anger, ‘They will not enter into My stopping-place’” (Hebrews 3:7-11, mjlt).

The author’s goal in citing this Psalm is clear, reminding his brothers of the fate of that wayward generation:

See this, brothers; otherwise, there will be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief resulting in the falling away from the living God. (Hebrews 3:12, mjlt)

The author’s warning to us is as powerful as it is severe. Consider the people of Israel, having personally witnessed God’s divine deliverance from Egypt, literally living in His presence in the desert, being set apart, saved, and redeemed. Yet since they had an “evil heart of unbelief,” that generation which came out of slavery ended up “falling away from the living God.” And because they caused God to grieve by “harden[ing their] hearts,” “always go­[ing] astray,” “not know[ing His] ways,” and sinning (Hebrews 3:17), God did not permit them to enter into the stopping place which He had prepared. Instead, an entire generation of God’s redeemed and delivered people died in that desert, never entering in to their Promised Land.

And we today face this very same danger of falling away.

This is the author’s warning to us: if such a falling away can happen to a redeemed Israel, it can also happen to us—even we who are redeemed in Yeshua. We, too, will not enter in to our stopping-place—our eternal promised land—should we go astray, not knowing His ways, and having within us a hardened, evil heart of unbelief.

And this is why the author so strongly admonishes us to

…exhort one another every day… so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of the sin. For we have become sharers of the Messiah if to the beginning of the confidence we hold fast until the end… (Hebrews 3:13, mjlt).

The specific “sin” with which the author is concerned here is the sin of disbelief—of not holding fast to our faith in who Yeshua is, and His power to deliver and save. Like that generation of Israel in the desert, we have a choice about what to do with the salvation that has already been provided for us. We can fall away from it, having become “hardened by the deceitfulness of the sin,” and believing the lie that God can’t even provide us with a cup of water. Or we can have “confidence” in our salvation and “hold fast until the end.” Because only if we do this, will we forever “become sharers of the Messiah.”

The author’s warning is alarming, waking us up to the consequences of provoking God. Yet it also comes with the great encouragement and assurance that “Messiah is faithful as a Son over His House, whose House we are if we hold fast until the end to the boldness and the rejoicing of the hope” (Hebrews 3:6, mjlt).

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