How do we avoid making the same mistakes that they did in Moses’ day and Joshua’s day? Since we’re in danger, what do we do about it? What I love about Hebrews is that the writer doesn’t just give one answer. There’s no single solution to this question. There are a few things that we must do, and this passage mentions some of them.

Big Idea: Israel only got a sample of what we get to enjoy, so don’t miss out on Jesus and all that he’s given us.

I feel like I know you well enough to share a fairy advanced Bible reading technique for the Hebrew Scriptures. It goes by the acronym HCTBSS. Sound complicated? Here’s what it means: How could they be so stupid?

Here’s how it works. We read a story in the Old Testament. For instance, we read in Numbers 13 about the time that Israel approached the land that God had promised them from the south. They sent in spies, and 10 of the 12 spies came back and said they couldn’t take the land. They’d just watched God rescue them from slavery from the one of the most powerful empires in the world. They’d watched God perform miracle after miracle to set them free, and now they were terrified of some tall people.

The HCTBSS method of interpreting Scripture is to shake our heads and say, “How could they be so stupid?” We know we would do better. This is such a versatile technique for reading Scripture that we can use it in the New Testament too. For instance, whenever the disciples blow it with Jesus — and there are plenty of examples — we can shake our heads and think, “How could they have been so stupid!” and think that we would have done a lot better.

Today’s passage introduces us to a better technique for reading Scripture, particularly when we read about when people get it wrong. Here’s the technique that this passage teaches us: WITSD. It stands for “We’re in the same danger.” Whenever we’re tempted to read Scripture and think, “How could they be so stupid?” we should actually be thinking, “We’re in the same danger.” We’re not better than the people of Scripture. In fact, we’re just like them. We need to learn from their mistakes because we’re in danger of making the exact same ones ourselves.

I want to show you this from the passage we just read. Here’s what I want to show you: two examples of disobedience, and then how to avoid making the same mistake ourselves.

Two Examples of Disobedience

Here are the two examples of mistakes that people made in the past in Scripture.

The first has to do with Moses.

Moses is a great figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. He led Israel from Egypt to the brink of the Promised Land. He built the tabernacle. God gave the law through Moses. God spoke to Moses face to face (Exodus 33:11). It would be hard to think of many people in the history of redemption who loom larger than Moses.

But how did Israel do under Moses leadership? Not that well. In verses 7 to 11, the writer to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 95:7-11:

Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”

Look at the interpretive technique that the writer uses in the verses that follow:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12-13)

Do you see what he’s saying? We could make the same mistake! We’re in the same danger that they were.

In fact, the writer argues that we’re in even greater danger. The first part of Hebrews 3 argues that although Israel had a great leader — Moses — we have an even better leader. Verses 1 to 5 argues that Jesus is superior to Moses. Verse 3 says, “Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.” Moses presided over a house, the tabernacle; Jesus not only built that house but everything. Verse 5 says that Moses was a servant in the house, but Jesus is God’s son over that house. As great as Moses was, Jesus is much greater.

And so the stakes are so much higher for us. They rebelled against Moses, but if we make the same mistake, we’re rebelling against somebody even greater than Moses. We’re rebelling against Jesus! We could make the same mistake they did, except against an even greater person: Jesus himself.

Do you see the writer’s urgency here? He’s not holding a dispassionate theological study. He’s highlighting mistakes from the Hebrew Scriptures and trying to get our attention: we’re in the same danger! We could make the same mistake!

The results were catastrophic for Israel. At the end of chapter 3, he says that every one of the rebels died in the wilderness. The wilderness where Israel wandered for 40 years was littered with bodies not just because people die, but because they rebelled against God and missed out on entering the land that God gave them.

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