Hebrews 3 - Moses, Christ, and a Warning Against Unbelief

Hebrews 3 compares Christ to Moses and warns against hardening one's heart through unbelief.

Building on the picture of Christ as merciful high priest from Hebrews 2, this chapter calls readers to consider Jesus as the Apostle and High Priest, worthy of more glory than Moses, since the builder of a house deserves more honor than the house itself. Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house, but Christ is faithful as a son over it.


Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, set your focus on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.

He was faithful to the One who appointed Him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.

For Jesus has been counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.

And every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.

Now Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be spoken later.

But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are His house, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope of which we boast.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice,

do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness,

where your fathers tested and tried Me, and for forty years saw My works.

Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known My ways.’

So I swore on oath in My anger, ‘They shall never enter My rest.’”

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from the living God.

But exhort one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly to the end the assurance we had at first.

As it has been said: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion.”

For who were the ones who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?

And with whom was God angry 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 never enter His rest? Was it not to those who disobeyed?

So we see that it was because of their unbelief that they were unable to enter.

The chapter's repeated warning, quoted from <a href="/bible/bsb/psalms/chapter-95/7">Psalms 95:7-11</a>, urges believers not to harden their hearts as the wilderness generation did when they provoked God and were kept from entering his rest. That unfulfilled rest becomes the subject of <a href="/bible/bsb/hebrews/chapter-4">Hebrews 4</a>, which follows immediately after.