| Chapter 3 |
1 |
Therefore, holy brethren, sharers with others in a heavenly invitation, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest whose followers we profess to be. --
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2 |
How faithful He was to Him who appointed Him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house! --
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3 |
For Jesus has been counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, in so far as he who has built a house has higher honour than the house itself. --
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4 |
For every house has had a builder, and the builder of all things is God. --
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5 |
Moreover, Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant in delivering the message given him to speak; --
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6 |
but Christ was faithful as a Son having authority over God's house, and we are that house, if we hold firm to the End the boldness and the hope which we boast of as ours. --
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7 |
For this reason--as the Holy Spirit warns us, 'To-day, if you hear His voice, --
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8 |
do not harden your hearts as your forefathers did in the time of the provocation on the day of the temptation in the Desert, --
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9 |
where your forefathers so sorely tried My patience and saw all that I did during forty years. --
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10 |
Therefore I was greatly grieved with that generation, and I said, 'They are ever going astray in heart, and have not learnt to know My paths.' --
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11 |
As I swore in My anger, they shall not be admitted to My rest' -- --
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12 |
see to it, brethren, that there is never in any one of you--as perhaps there may be--a sinful and unbelieving heart, manifesting itself in revolt from the ever-living God. --
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13 |
On the contrary encourage one another, day after day, so long as To-day lasts, so that not one of you may be hardened through the deceitful character of sin. --
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14 |
For we have, all alike, become sharers with Christ, if we really hold our first confidence firm to the End; --
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15 |
seeing that the warning still comes to us, 'To-day, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as your forefathers did in the time of the provocation.' --
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16 |
For who were they that heard, and yet provoked God? Was it not the whole of the people who had come out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses? --
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17 |
And with whom was God so greatly grieved for forty years? Was it not with those who had sinned, and whose dead bodies fell in the Desert? --
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18 |
And to whom did He swear that they should not be admitted to His rest, if it was not to those who were disobedient? --
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19 |
And so we see that it was owing to lack of faith that they could not be admitted. --
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