John Brown, Hebrews Quote 11

Hebrews by John Brown  p.189

This statement—‘Almost all who came out of Egypt with Moses, after having heard the promise and command of God, provoked Him, by refusing to believe the promise and obey the command’—was well fitted to excite a salutary fear in the minds of the Hebrew Christians.  It cautioned them against resting in privileges, and thinking themselves safe merely because they had by profession forsaken Judaism, and had heard the promises and commands of God made known by Jesus Christ and His Apostles.  All who left Egypt did not enter Canaan.  All who by profession leave the world lying in wickedness do not, of course, enter into the heavenly rest.  Men may hear the Gospel, and yet not believe it.  The grace of God may come to them and yet come to them in vain.  But this is not all.  The great majority—almost all who came out of Egypt with Moses, almost all who heard the promise and command of God—were unbelieving and disobedient.  Was not this a most striking demonstration of the strength of the natural tendency to unbelief and disobedience in the human heart? and was it not reasonable and right that the Hebrews should take heed lest there was in any of them “and evil heart of unbelief,” when it was so plain that there was such a heart in the great majority of their ancestors?  Every new proof of the tendency of human nature to unbelief and disobedience should make us the more “jealous over ourselves with a godly jealousy.”