Avoiding Unbelief (Hebrews 3:12-13)

Kootenai Church

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With your Bibles open to Hebrews chapter three, let's read together before we begin, verses 12 and 13.

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Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living

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God, but encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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Let's bow our heads together as we pray. Father, we ask that you would open our hearts and our minds and our eyes to your word, incline our hearts to your word and to obedience through your word.

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We pray that you would grant us illumination, that you would energize us in our service to you through your word, sanctifying us and making us holy through your word, and that in all that we do here this morning, our meditation, our understanding, and our response to your word, that Jesus Christ may be glorified, for it is in his great name that we pray these things.

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Well, these two verses that we just read are in the middle of the second warning section in Hebrews, the second warning passage, and it is interesting to contrast the first warning passage in chapter two with the second warning passage that is here in chapter three and in chapter four.

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Not only is the second one much longer than the first one, but the danger that is warned about in each of these passages is just slightly different.

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It is presented slightly differently. You remember in chapter two, verse one, that we looked at the danger of drifting.

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The author warns us of the danger of drifting. Chapter two, verse one, for this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it, and that was a nautical term that described a ship that was allowed to drift off course by a negligent sailor who refused to secure the path of the ship and to secure it into a safe harbor, and through his negligence and his apathy and his lack of doing anything, the ship would just drift right by the safe harbor, and that was a warning against drifting and being apathetic to the things of the gospel.

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Drifting does not require any effort. In fact, it is just the opposite. Drifting requires no effort. You just sit and do nothing, and our natural course is to go right into hell, and if you sit and do nothing and do not heed the call and the commands of the gospel, then your natural result will be to go right into hell.

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Most people do not run headlong into hell. Most people drift into hell simply by not laying hold of Christ, which is presented before them on a regular basis, and so that drifting doesn't require any effort.

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Drifting is not a fast thing. It's a slow thing, almost imperceptible at times. Drifting does not require a hard turn to the right or to the left.

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It's just a slight deviation of course that is imperceptible to the drifter or even to the observer, and in just drifting a little bit off course, somebody misses the safe harbor from the wrath of God, and that's the first warning passage, a warning against drifting.

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The second warning passage is a warning against disobedience, and the language here in the second warning passage is far more active than the language in the first warning passage.

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The language in the first warning passage is do not miss the safe harbor from the wrath of God by simply doing nothing, but the danger to the disobedient is far more active, and you see it even in the language that's used in the verses that we saw quoted from Psalm 95 in verses seven through 11 from last week.

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They heard his voice. They hardened their heart. They provoked him. They tested him. They tried him.

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They went astray in their hearts, and they were disobedient. That's active language. Drifting, hold your hands, do nothing, but this is not the language of drifting.

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This is the language of disobedience. See, the wilderness generation, they didn't drift past the promised land, not like they lost directions.

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The GPS was out of whack. They thought they were going one direction, and they just missed it. It went by on the left, and before they knew it, they were up in Mesopotamia or Italy or something like that.

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They didn't drift by the promised land. God brought them right to the edge of the promised land and said, now, I have promised this to you and to your descendants.

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Go in and enter into my rest, and they looked across the Jordan River at the promised land and said, no.

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No, we're not going to do that. We will not go in. They're greater and mightier than we are, and we do not believe that you will bring us into the land that you have promised to us.

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They didn't drift past the promised land. They disobediently turned and walked away. Well, this warning passage is against disobedience.

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Whether you are an apathetic drifter or an active disobeyer, you're gonna end in the same place, ruin and destruction.

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The one who is apathetic and drifts past the safe harbor of safety from God's wrath, or whether you actively disobey him and turn right around and go the opposite direction, both of those types of sinners, both of those type of unbelievers come to the same end, ruin and being undone in your sin and eternal punishment.

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So the danger is the same, but the response here to the gospel is slightly different in each of these warning passages.

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And the author of Hebrews does not want us to duplicate the mistake of a wilderness generation.

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So having seen him quote Psalm 95 in verses seven through 11, which you will remember from last week, was

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David reciting the lessons to be learned from the wilderness generation, which were several hundred years prior to David.

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David looked back upon that and in his own generation said, this is our responsibility. We are to obey God and to believe in him and do not be disobedient like that generation was.

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Now the author of Hebrew quotes Psalm 95 and says, here are the lessons that David cited. And now these are the same lessons to us.

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He doesn't want us to repeat those exact same disastrous mistakes as the warning, as the wilderness generation did.

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And so he draws his own set of lessons and applications from the warning and from the example of the disobedient wilderness generation.

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And so verses 12 and 13 are the lessons that we are to draw from them, the lessons that we are to learn.

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So he cites that example, and then he says that here is what we are to learn from that. And he gives us two things that you and I are to do if we are to avoid the same mistake.

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If we want to be preserved from a evil and unbelieving heart, there are two things here that we are commanded to do in verses 12 and 13.

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The first in verse 12 is that we are commanded to carefully examine ourselves and one another.

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And then in verse 13, we are to continually encourage one another. Carefully examine and continually encourage.

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So those are the two things that we're gonna be looking at in verses 12 and 13. Let's look first at verse 12. We are preserved by our careful examination.

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Verse 12 again. Take care, brethren, that not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living

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God. Take care. That word is an imperative. By the way, there are two imperatives in the passage, and both of them at the beginning of each of their respective verses, verse 12 and verse 13.

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Take care is an imperative, and encourage is an imperative. These are two commands. So it's as if he is looking back upon the wilderness generation, and he is saying, do you want to avoid that mistake?

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Then here are the two things. Do these two things. Take care and encourage. Those are the two imperatives.

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The word translated take care is the Greek verb blepo. Blepo, now that's a fun word to say.

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In my, it means simply to look or to look upon or to behold or to see. In the introductory

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Greek course that I took in college, this was one of the very first vocabulary words that we ever had to memorize the meaning to.

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It just means to see. And it's fun to conjugate. Blepo, blepes, blepe, blepomen, blepete, blepesin.

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See, I still got all my Greek verb conjugation there. It is funner to conjugate, sorry, it's more fun to conjugate

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Greek verbs than it is English verbs. Apparently I have mastered the English language so well that I can pick up a second one just as a challenge.

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It is more fun to conjugate Greek verbs than it is to conjugate English verbs. And this is a fun one.

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It just simply means to look or to see, and you see it often in scripture. And it means more than just physical sight.

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You look at, you could blepo upon something, or you wouldn't, you would blepes upon something, I guess we get my conjugation right, but you would look upon something physically, but it doesn't just mean to the act of physical sight or physical perception.

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It also can be used of understanding something, perceiving something, looking upon something and reflecting upon it, right, to get the idea of it in a metaphorical sense.

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We use the same thing today. We use that verb the same way today. Not blepo, but you see? You say, well, you see what

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I did there? You're not even talking about physical sight. You might, somebody might come into an understanding or perception of what you're talking about, and they see mentally exactly what you're describing.

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And so that is the, that is sort of the broad use of the word here, blepo. It means to look at it, to behold it, to think about it, to consider it, to understand it, to perceive it, to give some thought.

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He is calling us to a reflection, a careful, intentional, deliberate, active reflection upon something.

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We are to take care that there not be in any one of us an evil and unbelieving heart. Now there is an element, there is a way in which this command here is an individual command, something that we apply and reflect upon individually.

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There's also a sense in which this is a corporate command. I would say individual because he does say, take care that there not be in any one of you.

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This is an individual examination, an individual personal reflecting upon yourself and examining, taking care and watchfulness as to the believing or unbelieving state of your own heart.

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But there's also a corporate element here because in the very next verse, he talks about encouraging one another. So my examination or my watchfulness has to be corporate.

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It has to be more than just a nasal gazing self -reflection on myself and the condition of my own heart. There also has to be a watchfulness that is not just looking at the condition of my own heart, but also looking out and trying to examine the best

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I can as to what might be the condition of my brothers and sisters around me. It is difficult, nay unto impossible for me to encourage you if I do not have in some sense or in some way an understanding of how and the way in which or the direction in which you might need to be encouraged.

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And the only way I can know the way or the method in which you are to be encouraged is if I have at least reflected for a moment upon where you are at in your own spiritual journey.

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And I'm aware of where you're at in your own spiritual journey. This is why connection to a local living fellowship as a body of Christ is so vitally important to our own spiritual lives.

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Because it is not just me, nasal gazingly looking at myself and my own heart.

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It is me also being aware of the condition, the spiritual condition of others around me. And this is not just the role of the pastor, teacher, an elder, a deacon in the church.

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This is the role of everybody in the congregation. This is what we do for one another. We are aware of what's going on around us and we encourage one another accordingly.

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So it is an individual and a corporate command. And there's an evangelistic component in this as well.

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I remember this is being addressed to a mixed audience of people, some of whom he wasn't sure what their spiritual condition would be.

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So appropriately, he knows that some of them are on the fence regarding whether they're going to return to Judaism or whether they're going to stay firm in their commitment and their confession to Jesus Christ.

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And so he is writing to them and there's an evangelistic component in examining one another and being watchful on behalf of one another.

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Now, this doesn't mean that I can know your heart or even that I should try and read your heart or read into what I think your heart might be saying, but it is a watchfulness as to this condition that other people put off.

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It's being aware of where we're at, simply keeping our eyes up and examining the spiritual condition of us as a body.

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And this is something that we all do. And this is going to raise evangelistic opportunities as we do this one with another.

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Because there will be people who come into our body like in the time of the first century with the original recipients of the book of Hebrews, whose spiritual condition we do not know.

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They come in here because they've been invited by friends or they come in here because they haven't been to church in a while or they come in here because they saw the new parking lot and they, hey, that's groovy.

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It's easy for me now to walk in from the South instead of driving all the way around the block. I think I'll go check those people out or they've heard about our potlucks or some other function of our church.

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And so they sit amongst us and they're here with us and they hear the same message that you hear and they sing the same songs that you sing.

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As you examine one another and you're encouraging one another, you come across somebody who you realize this person, as much as they have heard and as much as they have understood and as much as they have sung and heard preached and read, they're not a believer.

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Well, then you can do exactly what the author of Hebrews is encouraging. Encourage them all the more day after day.

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Be careful that there not be in any one of you an evil and unbelieving heart.

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So in examining one another and looking out for one another, being watchful for one another, we come across somebody who is an unbeliever, that's your opportunity to come alongside and put your arm around them and encourage them to, by God's grace, lay hold of Christ and his promises so that there not be in them an evil and unbelieving heart that might miss the rest of God.

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That's the evangelistic concern. Now, who are the brethren that are mentioned here? You'll notice in verse 12, he says, "'Take care, brethren.'"

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Who are the brethren? Now, those who are intent on seeing in the warning passages the teaching that a believer, a true and genuine believer, can lose their salvation, will quickly latch on to this reference to the word brethren.

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And they will say, see here, brethren, he is obviously talking to brothers and sisters in Christ, those who are part of the family of God.

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And if that is the case, then verse 12 is very difficult to explain. "'Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you "'an evil, unbelieving heart.'"

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Now, read the word brethren as Christian. Take care, Christian, that there not be in any one of you an evil and unbelieving heart.

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So if by brethren, he is referring here to a fellow Christian, then it seems to suggest, some would say, that a fellow

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Christian can have an evil and unbelieving heart. And furthermore, what? What's the next phrase? That you fall away from the living

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God. So this seems to suggest, in that sense taken, that an individual's capable of having an evil, unbelieving heart and eventually falling away from God.

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Well, it is true that the word brethren can be used to refer to Christians, to brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, that's true.

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It's used that way throughout the New Testament. It's also true that the word can be used to describe one's fellow countrymen, a fellow

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Jew, or even a neighbor. See, there is not in the word itself any necessary spiritual connotation.

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So it can refer to a fellow Christian, or it can refer to just a fellow countryman without any reference to the person's spiritual understanding or spiritual state at all.

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Now, which way would you take it? As a reference to a fellow Christian, or as a reference to a fellow countryman? You say, well, by the way, is it used that way in the

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New Testament? It is, Paul used it that way of his unbelieving Jewish hostile opponents all the time.

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He refers to them in the book of Acts, listen brethren, when he is addressing them. And he refers to them simply as his fellow countrymen, without commenting at all upon their spiritual condition.

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Now, which way should we take it here? As a reference to Christian, or as a reference to countrymen? I would suggest to you that it ought to be understood as a reference to countrymen.

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Why would I say that? Because remember, this is a Jewish author, most likely, writing to an almost entirely

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Jewish audience. And he quotes a Jewish passage from the Jewish Old Testament, the

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Jewish Psalter, of an instance of the people of God, the Jews, rejecting and turning away from the

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God of the Jews. So there's obviously a very Jewish flavor to this, right? So if he is simply referring to those who are in his audience as his countrymen, it would be an opportunity for them to reflect soberly upon their own heart condition.

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And it would be as if he were saying, listen, I have just told you about your Jewish ancestors, hard heart and unbelief.

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Now listen, my fellow Jew, be careful that there not be in any one of you Jews, the same heart that was in those unbelieving fellow ancestors that we had back then.

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It would be his way of reminding them, look, just because you are Jewish does not mean that there is no danger to you of having an evil and unbelieving heart.

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Exhibit one, the wilderness generation. They were your ancestors. So my countrymen, do not be like those countrymen.

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That would be the essence of that. And I think that is the way that it is to be understood. In which case, since it can be understood that way, and that makes least difficulty with the text,

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I think that that is exactly how it should be understood. Remember, he's writing to a mixed congregation. He's writing to a congregation of people, some of whom had sung the songs and some of whom had worshiped there and they had heard the word preached and yet they were on the fence.

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These are people about whose spiritual condition he is not certain. And there is in this audience that is listening to him, this mixture of people, some of whom were saved, some of whom he wasn't sure if they were saved, all of whom who had made a profession of faith in Christ for a period of time.

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And some of those who had made a profession of faith in Christ for a period of time were wavering in their belief and unbelief and considering going back.

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And he doesn't want them to do that. If they were to do that, it would be an example or an evidence of their evil and unbelieving heart.

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Notice that he does not, notice that he combines evil and unbelief here to describe their heart. Oftentimes we think of unbelief as something that is morally neutral.

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You run across somebody who is an unbeliever and you think to yourself, okay, they just haven't made a decision one way or the other.

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We view unbelief as being a position of moral neutrality. That is not true. Unbelief is not a morally neutral state.

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Unbelief is an active state of rebellion and hostility against God and against his word.

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Unbelief is a love for darkness. And that is why men do not believe. Unbelief is not a position of being morally neutral.

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Now, your average unbeliever will never describe their heart as being evil. They think that their heart is good.

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They're good hearted because in their mind, the examples of evil are all people more evil than themselves. So they view their heart as being good and righteous and true and upright and not at all in need of saving.

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And how dare you should even begin to judge their heart. And though the unbeliever would never describe their heart as being evil,

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God does, why? Because unbelief is not morally neutral. Unbelief is saying no when

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God says do this. It is seeing the evidences of God and seeing

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God's work and then turning away from that. That is what unbelief is. It is a position of hostility.

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It is a high handed crime against the gracious sovereign of the universe just to remain in unbelief.

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So it's not at all morally neutral. Interestingly, the words evil and unbelief are two words that are used back in Numbers 13 and 14 of this wilderness generation, which is the historical incident behind this entire warning passage.

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In Numbers chapter 14, this is God's judgment upon the nation. He says this, how long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against me?

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I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they're making against me. Numbers 14, 35, I, the Lord have spoken, surely this

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I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness, they shall be destroyed and there they will die.

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And they're also referred to as an unbelieving congregation. Numbers 14, verse 11, the Lord said to Moses, how long will this people spurn me and how long will they not believe in me despite all the signs which

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I have performed in their midst? That generation of people who came out of Egypt was not a generation of faithful,

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God -fearing, pious, righteous, believing Jews. They were rank unbelievers who in spite of seeing all the signs, remained hardened and darkened and in their rebellious unbelief.

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That is the example. And he wants us to learn the lesson from them. Make sure there not be in any one of you an evil and unbelieving heart.

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Why? Because the generation that came out of Egypt was evil and they were unbelieving and you don't want to have that in your congregation.

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Why? Because they will fall away from the living God. The word fall away there is apostanai.

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You may hear in there the word apostasy or apostate or apostatize. That's the word. It means to turn from something.

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It means to see something, to look upon something, to know something intellectually and to literally turn your back away from it and to depart from it, to walk away from it.

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That's what the children of Israel did in the wilderness. They came right up to the promised land and God said, go across, it's yours.

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And they said, no. They turned and they went the other direction. They refused to go in. What they did was they looked upon the truth, they saw the truth, they understood the truth, they mentally apprehended the truth.

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They knew that the same God who had delivered them from Egypt through the signs had brought them through the

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Red Sea in that miraculous event and had given them the law and the tabernacle and the priesthood and the worship and had delivered his word whose voice they had physically, audibly heard at the mountain and had provided for them for all of those years in the desert.

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They knew that that God was the same God who said, go in and take possession of land. And they said, no.

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That is not just missing the point that is knowing the truth and seeing it and turning away from it.

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Do Christians do that? The very definition of a Christian is no. You don't have an evil and unbelieving heart.

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Christians don't have evil and unbelieving hearts. The definition of a Christian is one who has a believing heart. The definition of a

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Christian is one whose heart has been turned from stone and been given a heart of flesh. And it is the work of God's grace that does that.

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So this is not something that's describing believers. Again, the wilderness generation was evil and unbelieving. Make sure there not be in any one of you an evil and unbelieving heart.

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Make sure that there not be in any one of you this rank apostasy. What was the nature of the apostasy for them?

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For the first Christians who read this epistle? Well, they had come out of Judaism, the temple worship, the sacrifice, the priesthood, all the feasts and the festivals and all of the trappings of Old Testament Judaism.

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They'd come out of that covenant and they had walked over into the Christian community and they had left that behind, having become at least mentally convinced of that they needed

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Jesus and that he was better than that. And since coming out of all of that and abandoning all of that for Christ, they had to begin to suffer the loss of their possessions and the loss of their reputation and fellowship with their believing countrymen and family members or unbelieving countrymen and family members who were still in Judaism.

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And now they were suffering all of that, they were soft and about to grow into hard persecution and they were starting to think to themselves, maybe

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I should go back to that. I could just leave this, leave off my

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Christian profession and step back into Judaism. I could go back to that priesthood with those sacrifices, that covenant and all of those rituals, go back to the temple, things would be so much easier for me if I did that.

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What I want you to notice is that the author of Hebrews regards that departure as an apostasy from the living

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God. Now this is significant because what they were considering was not moving from theism to atheism.

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They were not considering moving from monotheism to polytheism. They weren't even considering changing gods and moving from one form of polytheism to another form of polytheism.

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What they were considering doing was leaving the worship of Yahweh under the terms and the graces of the new covenant and going back to the worship of Yahweh under the terms and conditions of the old covenant.

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Technically speaking, they would still be worshiping Yahweh. Technically speaking, they would still be worshiping

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Yahweh according to the terms of a covenant that he himself signed and sealed by the blood of animals and gave to the nation that had been theirs for hundreds of years.

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But that is what the author to Hebrews regards as an apostasy from the living God. In other words, to leave the new covenant worship of Yahweh in the person of Jesus Christ and to go worship

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God according to something else was to depart from the living God. The author of Hebrews does not regard that old covenant worship according to those terms of that covenant as just another way of worshiping

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God that was more culturally appropriate or acceptable for them or maybe even more comfortable to them.

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If you leave the greatest revelation of God, which is to be found in Jesus Christ, and you go back to something that is inferior, even though technically you have not left

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God, and even though technically you have not left the rituals that God himself gave to them, that's apostasy.

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Because you're turning your back on something that God said that's over, that's done, no more through those means, no more through those functions, those forms.

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They're gone, it's over. Now it is in Jesus Christ. That means that for us, the worship of Yahweh, whether Jew or Gentile or any ethnic background or any race or any nationality at all, our worship of God can only be and is only acceptable in and around the person of Jesus Christ as God has revealed in him.

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And any worship and fellowship that is not around the person of Christ but is according to some other means, even though God may have been pleased with that for centuries that is apostasy from the living

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God. Wow, isn't it? For them, it just seemed like we're doing one thing now.

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We'll just worship the same God a different way. That's to depart from the living God, is to cut yourself off from the life that is in God.

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That is apostasy. To trade one for the other and to go back from the one to the other is to demonstrate an evil and unbelieving heart.

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They're stern words. But for us, given what Christ has done, that all of that is fulfilled, the only acceptable, viable and God -honoring worship is in and around the person of Christ, not according to the terms of an outmoded, dead, no longer enforced covenant.

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Now, what is the application of this? Well, for us as believers, it's gonna be something then for unbelievers. For unbelievers, the application for you is this.

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You need to examine your own heart and know the condition of your own heart, whether it is believing or not. You're sitting here and you know that you've never trusted

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Christ for salvation, but you hear the word of God preached, you sing the songs, you see the evidence of changed lives around you, you know what the truth is intellectually, you are without excuse, and to turn away from that is an inexcusable, justly damnable sin.

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It is to walk away from the only source of life, which is the living God, and it is to depart from him. And if you do so, you will not fare any better than a wilderness generation.

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You will die and perish in your sins under the judgment of God, just as they did in their unbelieving state.

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So I beg with you to repent and to trust Christ today and to believe upon him, to cling to Christ, to come to him, to turn from your sin, and to believe savingly upon him.

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Lay hold of the promise of rest and eternal life in Jesus Christ while it is called today, that is right now.

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Now for us as believers, for Christians, the application is gonna be slightly different. As a Christian, it is not possible for me to be without saving faith.

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The idea of being evil and unbelieving is not something that can be applied to a genuine and true believer, because we've been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of light.

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We've gone from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear son. There's been a regeneration that has taken place by the sovereign grace of God in which the heart has been changed and we become new creatures in Jesus Christ.

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So it is not my saving faith that is in any way in jeopardy. It is impossible for my heart to be evil or to be unbelieving in the sense that the text is describing it here.

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But it is possible for us as Christians to give heed to and to fall prey to unbelief in a number of subtle forms, a number of subtle ways.

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It's not that I would ever apostatize and deny the saving truths of the gospel. I would not do that.

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I don't fear that at all. But what I do fear is falling prey to certain forms of unbelief that apply to my daily walk with God in Jesus Christ.

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So it is possible for a Christian to begin to question the love of God during difficult times and trials.

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It's possible for us as Christians to do that. For us to wonder, does God really know what I'm going through? Can he really sympathize with me?

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Does he really understand this temptation or this pressure that I'm facing? Does he really know what it's like to turn your back on your family and your false religion of your past and to embrace a gospel that now

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I am hated for? Does God really know that? It's possible for us to question whether God is really wise in allowing afflictions and sufferings to come into our lives.

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Does God really care for me now that I have cancer? Is God really wise in allowing this to happen to me now that I get this diagnosis and this report?

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It's possible for us to question the wisdom of God, the love of God, the grace of God, the provision of God, the power of God. It is possible for us as Christians to fall prey to all kinds of unbelief, little subtle forms of unbelief that when we imbibe them and when we entertain them, they harden our hearts in sin and they make us numb to the presence and the blessing and the graces of God.

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So though I do not fear for one moment that my saving faith, being a gift from God that he has given to me, a divine gift,

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I do not fear for one moment that that may fail, I do fear that I may sacrifice the blessings and the grace and the sanctifying effects of God because I fall prey to other little forms of unbelief.

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So as a Christian, the application is this. I need to examine the state of my own heart and ask, am I really walking in the faith that I profess?

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Am I really trusting God? Not for salvation, saved, secured, sanctified, my glorification is certain.

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I don't doubt that at all, but my day -to -day walk, am I really trusting God that he is sovereign, that he's providential, that he's good, that he's kind, that he's wise, that he's loving, that he knows what he's doing.

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He's working it all out for his glory and for my good. Do I really trust God in those things? Those are the forms of unbelief that as Christians, we need to be careful that we don't fall prey to.

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So God preserves us from an evil and unbelieving heart through careful examination, individually and corporately.

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Second, he preserves us by constant encouragement. This is in verse 13, but encourage, that's the second imperative, but encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called today so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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Now this is a corporate activity. It is one thing for me to encourage myself. You could try this sometime.

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It's very difficult for you to do it without really pumping yourself up. How do you encourage yourself without sounding like you're all full of yourself?

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Which you would be, right? So mostly this encouragement is something that we would do one for another. This is outwardly focused, whereas the examination,

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I think is primarily inwardly focused with an outward element. This one I think is primarily outwardly focused with a self -benefiting reciprocation.

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There is something that comes back to the one who gives encouragement to other people. So it's not like you give encouragement out and you don't get anything back in return.

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But primarily our focus now in verse 13 is upon others and what it means for us to encourage others.

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And this is a corporate action just as the fall of the children of Israel in the wilderness and their rebellion was a corporate rebellion.

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This is a corporate thing that we are to do one with another so that there not be any corporate unbelieving or evil hearts or any corporate rebellion.

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So the children of Israel that they didn't, their rebellion was not just one or two people acting on behalf of the whole nation.

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In the words of verse 16 in Hebrews chapter three, it was everyone who came out of Egypt who did this.

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They launched a rebellion against God. The entire nation wanted to do the same. Joshua and Caleb and Moses, the entire nation wanted to stone them and return back to Egypt.

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That was what they wanted to do. So that was a corporate rebellion, a corporate unbelief. The entire nation was in that state.

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So how do we preserve from corporate unbelief? Through corporate encouragement. We encourage one another.

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The word encourage here is the Greek verb, parakleo, or paraclete. You're familiar with that because it means comfortable.

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It's a word that's used of the Holy Spirit in John chapter 16 when Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit. It has the idea of coming alongside someone and urging them and comforting them, encouraging them and sort of sustaining them.

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That's the picture of that word. This is something that we are to do for one another. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 24 and 25.

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Later on in this book, he writes, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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First Thessalonians 5 .11, Paul says, therefore encourage one another and build up one another just as you also are doing.

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So this is something that we do as a body. We encourage or come alongside one another. How often are we to do it? What does the text say?

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Encourage one another day after today. So how often do you do it? Do you do it today? Well, is today the day after another day?

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You know, upon reflection it is. Okay, then today is the day that you encourage one another. How about tomorrow? Well, if tomorrow is preceded by a day, then tomorrow will be the day to encourage one another.

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We do this day after day. This is a continual act. And how long do we do this for? What does the text say?

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As long as it's still called today. Is today called today? And today is a good day to encourage one another.

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Is yesterday called today? No, yesterday is called yesterday. When yesterday was today, then yesterday would have been a good day to encourage one another.

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Is tomorrow called today? No, tomorrow is not today. Tomorrow is tomorrow. But when tomorrow is called today, then tomorrow will be a good day to encourage one another.

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But today, today is called today. And so today is the day that we encourage one another. So this is something that we do continually.

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And why must we do it continually and always and day after day? Because just as in the time of Hebrews and just as in the time of the wilderness generation, unbelief, evil and rebellion are always present among the people of God, always there.

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The temptation to not believe, to fall away, to leave, to depart, to turn, to grow cold and to wane in our affections is always present.

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It's always there. We are fallen people still in an unredeemed flesh on our way to glory.

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But until we get to glory, we will need this constant encouragement. Because unbelief is always present amongst the people who are gathered as the people of God, our encouragement must be fit to meet the need for that encouragement.

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And so we are to encourage one another day after day, every day, as long as it is still called today.

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But does this mean I have to send a note of encouragement to every person in the church every single day?

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Could you possibly do that? No. See, that's an unbearable burden.

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But what does it mean? It does mean to be, because of my watchfulness and my carefulness for one another, because we do this together as a body, that from one day to another, we will be more aware of opportunities to do this.

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And some days we'll present more opportunities to encourage people than other days will present. And some days we'll present less opportunities to encourage one another because I won't see very many people that day.

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And some days we'll become aware of greater needs than we are at other days. But because I am watchful and because I am committed to do this, we do this for the glory of God and for one another.

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Why? Because unbelief and evil, hard hearts are always present. The lure is always there. The temptation is always there.

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Everything in our culture, and we are bombarded constantly by messages that say leave, depart, turn away, give it up, grow cold, do this, give in.

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And so since that is the message that we get from every angle surrounding us all the time, we need to hear constantly from one another, keep on, keep pressing on, keep believing, keep enduring, keep suffering, keep up under the trial, keep believing, stay strong.

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God is in this. He will encourage you. God will strengthen you in this. All of those are the things that we need to hear.

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It doesn't mean that we do this for every single individual all the time, but it does mean that we are aware of it all the time.

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We are alert to it and we are intent to do it when we see the need arise. Now, what is the aim for this? What is the aim?

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The aim is in verse 13, so that none of us will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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That's the goal. The goal of our encouragement is to prevent people from being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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Now, since I know what the goal of my encouragement should be, that helps me to know what I am encouraging people to do, right?

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It helps to know that. This means that our encouragement is not intended to be observation of people's dress or their shoes that they're wearing or the way they did their hair that day or you look really nice or you're really talented.

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That's not the goal of our encouragement, not a halftime locker room pep speech sprinkled with a lot of sugar -coated platitudes.

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That's not encouragement. Instead, what we mean by encouragement is with the goal in mind that I want to encourage somebody so that they not be brought in and tricked and lured in by sin in all of its deceptiveness, and I'm glad for that description, the deceptiveness or the deceitfulness of sin.

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Sin is deceitful. Now, sin never comes to us and approaches us and tells us the truth about what its intentions are, and I'm anthropomorphizing sin here for just a moment.

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Sin doesn't come to us and say, you know, if you give in, I will harden your heart to the point where you won't even recognize it.

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If you just give in, I will make you so cold in your affections for God, so hardened in your spiritual sensitivities, so uninterested in spiritual things,

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I will kill your hunger for the word of God, I will cool your affections for God, I will make you forget your original first love.

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Church will never find out. This is just between you and the computer screen, so do it.

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You're all alone, and this won't affect your relationship with the Lord at all. That's what sin says.

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Sin deceives and says you'll never get caught, you'll never have to answer for this, you'll never grow cold, you can just go back and confess it, and God will forgive it, and you can walk on as if nothing has happened.

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There'll be no effects to this at all. That's what sin promises, it's deceitful. It never tells us the truth.

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To these original Hebrew Christians, here's what it sounded like. Go ahead and go back to the temple, to the sacrifices.

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You don't have to worry about not having a high priest because there's one in the temple waiting for you there. He'll offer the sacrifices for you.

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You don't have to worry about not having a blood sacrifice because you can just grab a lamb and you can go do that. You don't have to worry about whether or not you're worshiping the true

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God because of course this is how God has revealed to our ancestors for hundreds of years that he was to be worshiped. Just go back.

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Just stop with the Christian thing, stop with the name of Christ, stop with your confession. If you just go back, everything will be better.

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That was the deceitfulness of sin. And he is concerned that they might give ear to that and listen to that and be hardened by it.

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Sin hardens the heart whenever we engage in it, whenever we indulge it. It hardens the heart.

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There's a hardening effect to it where it dulls our emotions and our affections. It makes us cooled to spiritual things.

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It makes us uninterested in spiritual things and it dulls our affections. It removes our joy and delights that we ought to take in the

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Savior and in his holiness. Sin has a way and it always hardens the heart. So if this is the aim for them, this is the aim for us that we would encourage one another all the more as we see the day approaching.

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So if you see somebody who you think is, this person is just dealing with physical affliction. How can

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I be of an encouragement to them so that they don't grow weary in doing well? How can I be encouragement to this person who is serving the

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Lord with fervor and maybe isn't being recognized and I could just come alongside them and encourage them? This person looks like he's about ready to give up the fight against sin.

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How can I be an encouragement to that person? What do they need to hear from me to press on, to keep going so that they not be hardened in their sin and by the deceitfulness of sin?

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That's the goal of our encouragement. So it's not nice shoes, nice shirt today, glad to see you here, good job on the promotion at work.

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That's not the type of encouragement we're talking about. Keep going, stay steady, keep persevering.

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The suffering afflictions of this present world are not worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us. So keep your eye on the prize, keep pressing forward, keep walking in obedience.

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God will sustain you, he will encourage you. That's the encouragement that we need. I'll close with a quote from Charles Sturgeon who preaching on this text, he said this.

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And then let us endeavor if the Lord is keeping us by his grace to exhort one another daily. We are not to scold one another daily, nor to suspect one another daily, nor to pick holes in one another daily.

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But when we see a manifest fault in a brother, we are bound to tell him of it in love. And when we do not see any fault of commission, but the brother is evidently growing lax and cold, it is well to stir him up to a greater zeal by a loving encouragement.

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Wisely said, a word may save a soul from declension and sin. A good fire may need a little stirring.

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The best of believers may grow better by the communication of his friends. And so alas, we do not care enough for the souls of our brethren.

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If we thought more carefully of others, we would probably think more carefully about ourselves. Exhort one another daily.

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Father, make us men and women who by your grace are aware of the dangers of unbelief and evil around us and of the deceitfulness of sin.

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And that by your grace, we may give ourselves to a continual watchfulness and a continual ministry of encouraging one another.

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As times in our world get tougher, as we grow older, we need more and more encouragement to stand strong, to stay steady, to having put our hand to the plow to not look back.

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We pray that by your grace, you would make us an encouraging body of believers that delights in this grace and delights in your preserving work for us.