I’ll share here my previous commentary on this chapter.
The Exodus was the very foundation, the defining event of Israel. If the Exodus was a myth, so was Israel as a nation. While they pointed with some smugness to their specialness before the Lord some fourteen centuries later, they paid only lip service to the duty of expressing contrition for the nation flinging challenge after challenge into God’s face. The story of the Exodus is the sad tale of whining and bickering slaves who preferred their slavery to the freedom and identity as God’s Own People. The entire Exodus generation remained unfit for the Promised Land, conditioned as they were to bondage.
Our writer calls this to mind, charging that his readers are the same sort of people. When Christ came to fulfill the promises of Exodus, how very many of God’s Own People rejected Him! The Roman Jews were among those called into the Kingdom of Heaven, a far higher calling than the Kingdom of Israel. Christ, God Himself, called them. If Moses can be held up as the model of faithfulness, who was but a servant in the household of God, how much more Christ the Son? Christ formed a household as His inheritance; Christ built it.
And it was Christ who faithfully discharged all the duties of His Sonship. If He owned it all, He was the very definition of faithfulness. The first household was just an earthly temple. When its purpose was fulfilled in His death on the Cross, it was torn down. From the rubble were found a few stones still of use to God. He chose from among the Jews, but also from the rest of humanity, stones suitable for His house. He built up His household by His teaching and power, the means of trying the stones. These Roman Jews were a part of those passing the test. How then could they return to a house that no longer stands, except in the fallen imagination of mere men? Hold fast the confession of your faith in Christ! It is the only thing that is real.
The writer quotes Psalm 95:7-11. There David recalls testing of the Lord by Israel at Meribah (Rebellion) and Massah (Trial) in Exodus 17:2-7. This was rather early in the journey up from slavery, during the first shock of introduction to desert nomad living. Had they but called out to God in faith, the whole scene would have been remembered as a triumph. Instead, they gave Moses much grief and God took it personally. For the next forty years, Jehovah faithfully stood by them, led them and took care of their every need. Every step of the way, they whined and attacked God’s chosen servant. For the Roman Jews, Jesus was the new Servant, the actual Son of God. This Roman persecution was just the spiritual nomad boot camp. Bitterly wishing they had not come on this spiritual journey was to wish for slavery, granting Satan the victory. It was treason to side with the enemy.
As the Lord swore in His just wrath that the Exodus generation would die in the wilderness, so the Roman Jewish Christians risked losing all hope of finding the true Promised Land of Heaven. Those without Heaven in their souls cannot enter Heaven when they die. Allowing doubts to rise about whether serving Christ was worth it was silly. The word “today” is but the moment of testing and is quickly past. Today we should all face testing with joy and confidence. Were these readers among those who would die in the spiritual wilderness today? Or were they among those who clung to the revelation of Christ and would pass into the Promised Land to see God’s face?
No one can do it for you. God will carry you through, but you must accept His power to commit yourself to His plans. They won’t be like your plans, no more than the Exodus brought Israel to a place like Egypt. Their souls were at home in the swampy river bottom of slavery, not out in the rocky heights of freedom in Christ. All you have to do is hang onto Him.
