Covenant & Sacrifice

Wherefore, according as saith the Holy Spirit, To-day, if unto his voice ye would hearken, do not harden your hearts as in the embitterment, in the day of testing in the desert, When your fathers tested by proving, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was sore vexed with this generation, and said, Always err they in their heart; howbeit, they learned not my ways: So I sware in mine anger, they shall not enter into my rest!

Be taking heed, brethren, lest at any time there shall be in any one of you a wicked heart of unbelief in revolting from a Living God. But be exhorting one another on each successive day while the To-day is being named! lest any from among you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

For partners of the Christ have we become if, at least, the beginning of the confidence throughout firm we hold fast: So long as it is said, To-day, if unto his voice ye would hearken, do not harden your hearts as in the embitterment. For who, though they heard, caused embitterment? Nay, indeed! did not all who come forth out of Egypt through Moses? But with whom was be sore vexed forty years? Was it not with them who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the desert? But unto whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, save unto them who were obstinate? And we see, that they were not able to enter, because of unbelief.

Let us therefore fear lest at any time, although there is left behind a promise of entering into his rest, any one from amongst you should be deemed to have come short; For we have had delivered to us the joyful message just as even they; but the word which was heard did not profit them, they not having been blended by faith with the things heard. For we who have believed are to enter into the rest, according as he hath said, So I sware in mine anger, They shall not enter into my rest; And yet, the works from the foundation of the world had been brought into existence, For he hath spoken somewhere concerning the seventh day, thus, And God rested on the seventh day from all his works; And in this again, They shall not enter into my rest.

Seeing, therefore, that it is left over for some to enter into it, and they who formerly had delivered to them the joyful message entered not in by reason of obstinacy, Again, he marketh out a certain day, To-day, in David, saying, after so long a time as this, according as it hath been said before: To-day, if unto his voice ye would hearken, do not harden your hearts. For if unto them Joshua had given rest, it had not in that case concerning another day been speaking after these things. Hence there is left over a Sabbath-keeping for the people of God. For he that hath entered into his rest, He, too, hath rested from his works, just as from his own God rested.

Let us, therefore, give diligence to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall into the same example of obstinacy. For living is the word of God, and energetic, and more cutting than any knife with two edges, and penetrating as far as a dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and able to judge the impulses and designs of the heart; And there is no created thing can be secreted before him, but all things are naked and exposed to his eyes: as to whom is our discourse. 

Jesus the Great High Priest

Having then a great high-priest who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession; For we have not a high-priest unable to have fellow-feeling with our weaknesses, but one tested in all respects, by way of likeness, apart from sin. Let us, then, be approaching with freedom of speech unto the throne of favour, that we may receive mercy, and favour may find for seasonable succour.