… ⁸ do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, ⁹ where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, And saw My works for forty years.

Hardening of the spiritual arteries, that’s what it is. With every disobedience comes a further searing of the conscience, a callousness of the heart. That’s the lesson for today. We have an excellent, or should we say, pathetic example in the people of Israel during their wilderness wanderings.

The great irony of it all is that they had experienced God’s miraculous workings in an unparalleled way. Next to the time when Jesus walked on the earth, what people were witnesses to more and such concentrated demonstrations of God’s power on behalf of His people? They had personally, firsthand, front-row center seats, witnessed no less than 10 humungous, undeniable, bona-fide, first-rate miracles. And then He sustained them for 40 years where their clothes never wore out (Deut 8:4)! Millions were affected, and even the antagonist (Pharaoh) finally recognized God’s demonstrated defense of the Hebrews.

There was no excuse for the Israelites. It began with the bitter complaining over their seeming lack of food (Exodus 16) and water (Ex 17). It reached its penultimate treachery in the golden-calf incident (Ex 32), and achieved the apex of rebellion when they flat out refused to enter the promised land (Number 14). The final disobedience came rather easily. Rather than one huge leap to flagrant rejection of the Lord’s authority, they had built up to it slowly, beginning with murmuring and complaining. The final step did not seem so bad.

Hardening of one’s conscience is a terrible thing, we really don’t want to go there. Tomorrow will not be easier to obey the Lord than today. Why do we believe that lie we tell ourselves? The original recipients of the book of Hebrews were in danger of this very thing. They were ostensibly Christians. Those that weren’t, apparently had a good understanding of the knowledge of salvation (we see this from a study of the rest of the book). The temptation was to fall away from faith and back into the legalistic system portrayed in the Law of Moses. Yet, how absurd was this patent error, for Israel of old, under the direct leadership of none other than Moses, the “Law giver,” could not successfully under the law. They rebelled and hardened their hearts. So for Christians now to think that the way to right living and resting in our relationship with the Lord is by going back to living under the law – that is ludicrous. The message: Don’t do it! You will only harden your hearts further.