The Unbelieving Heart

Would you bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer? We pray for families who are struggling with marital difficulties. Lord, because too often we don't trust you like we ought to. We falter in our faith.

We act in disobedience. Lord, help us to see ourselves in this passage. And where we need repentance, please grant us the grace that we might have that repentance. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

I want to start this message with a little test. I want you to listen to these names and then see if you know who they are and could tell me. Jumuah, Shaphat, Egal, Palti, Gadiel, Gadai, Amiel, Sethar, Nabi, and Gaduel. Do those names ring a bell?

Let me give you two more. How about Caleb and Joshua? I gave you the name of the twelve spies of Israel. We know two of them pretty well, Joshua and Caleb. But the other ten we don't know.

Why? Because they did not act in faith and they did not finish well. Folks, you know the story. The Lord is ready to take the children of Israel into the promised land. They had been in slavery for over 400 years and now one and a half million Jews are ready and have been set free. The Lord had done a mighty work in their heart. They had gone through the Red Sea and then the Lord destroyed the Egyptian army in that Red Sea. And Egypt is no longer a threat to Israel.

And now Israel is poised to go into this land, a land that is rich and prosperous, that they might take it, that it might be their new home. So God commands Moses to pick out twelve men, one man from each of the tribes of Israel, to go and check out the land. God specifically tells Moses to pick out twelve leaders and Moses does that.

He picks out twelve leaders. These are men who are not rookies. They are salty veterans. These are men who have proven themselves to be leaders. They have a proven track record.

They have a great vision of the future. Let's put it this way. Moses was not going to choose wannabes and has-beens to go into the land and spy out the land. These men were not like that. They were not on the third string.

They were the starters. And they had the responsibility of going and checking out that land. God told them to check out the land and they were to come back and then they were to inspire the nation of Israel to obey God and go and take the land. But we know that didn't happen. It did not happen at all. Why did it not happen?

It didn't happen at all because they were in great trouble. They came back from the promised land in absolute fear. They said to Israel, there's no way that we can take this land. There are giants in the land. They have huge walls, cities.

The soldiers are mighty warriors. If we were to try to take this land, we would all be slain. If we were to use a little common sense here, we can't take the land.

Caleb and Joshua got very upset. They said, wait a minute, we can take the land. God said that we're to take it.

We are just to obey him. Let's go in right now, take the land as God has commanded us to do. They took Joshua and Caleb and they pushed them to the side and they said, no, we will not take it. The scripture says that their hearts melted within them. They said, we believe what the 10 spies say and we cannot take the land. These 10 leaders had a great start.

They just couldn't finish. And they delayed Israel's taking the promised land for 40 weary years. And that entire adult generation ended up dying out in that hot, nasty Sinai sand because of the 10 faithless spies. Folks, the writer of Hebrews is a man who has a pastor's heart. He's a man who loves the Lord Jesus and he wants that early church to love Jesus, too.

And he wants the current church to love Jesus, too. And so he warns them at all cost to not develop in themselves an evil heart of unbelief. Folks, this writer of Hebrews is using some doctrinal truths to get to our heart. But he doesn't just give us doctrine. He gives us biblical illustrations that ought to tear the unbelief out of every heart.

I got three points that I want to share with you this morning. Point one is that we are to exhort one another. Look with me at verses 12 through 13. 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. In verse 13, we are being told how to avoid the evil heart of unbelief. And we are told that we are to exhort each other daily.

We are to exhort each other every single day. What does it mean to exhort? The word exhort comes from a Greek word parakaleo. And that's the word that Jesus used the root word of it to describe the Holy Spirit. It means comforter. It's very important. What does it mean to exhort?

It means to beseech, to entreat, to invoke, or to call near. It is a positive challenge. This is not so much a rebuke as it is an encouragement to persevere. And, folks, we persevere through conviction but not condemnation. I want you to listen to what Jesus said in John 16, 7 through 8. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper, Paraklete, will not come to you.

But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, listen to what the Paraklete, the Holy Spirit, does, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Notice it says he will convict, not condemn.

There's a big difference in that. And we as children of God really ought to know that. In Romans chapter 8 verse 1, the scripture says, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. God does not condemn his children.

Folks, that's extremely important. Condemnation is punitive. Condemnation takes place not that somebody might be lifted up, but that somebody might be destroyed. When a person turns from Christ, rejects Christ as his Lord and Savior, and just dies in defiance against God, God sends him to an eternal hell. And I want you to know that hell is not remedial.

Hell is not a place of restoration. When a person is condemned to hell, it is punishment, just pure punishment. Folks, God does not condemn his children. God does convict his children. And he convicts his children in order that we might turn from sin.

Let me give you a good example of this. My dad was a godly man. And my dad, if I would get out of line with him and disobey him, disobey my mom or disobey my God-given authorities, he was very quick to give me a spanking. And I didn't get just a few, I got a lot of them. And I needed a lot of them. But you know, when my dad spanked me, I didn't think he was doing it because he hated me and wanted to condemn me. He spanked me because he loved me.

And he wanted to get me on the right track to do the right thing. Listen to this. Sometimes we as Christians feel condemned, don't we? Where does that condemnation come from? It comes from Satan.

And we need to understand that. In Matthew chapter 23 verse 4, Jesus is preaching a scathing, condemning sermon to the Pharisees who are great at condemning people. And in verse 4 of that chapter, he says this, they tie up heavy burdens hard to bear.

They lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their fingers. Jesus was telling us that the Pharisees were agents of Satan, that if they did the very same thing that Satan does, they love to condemn people. Condemnation steals your hope. Condemnation makes you want to quit. Condemnation makes the idea of persevering seem like it's just an exercise in futility that it's just not worth it. Conviction is different. Conviction is a work of the Holy Spirit. It stings and it hurts, but it doesn't paralyze.

It makes you look up instead of looking down. I guess we could call it a healthy wound. I can't continue on in my sin. It's hurting me. It's hurting others. And it's hurting God.

And I don't want to do this anymore. I hate my sin. So by the grace of God, I'm going to repent and I'm going to turn from this sin. But that's conviction.

That's what conviction does. So what is an exhortation? An exhortation is a convicting challenge to persevere.

Let me share a personal illustration about exhorting. When I was in the first church that I pastored in Creedmoor, Olive Grove Church, there was a man in our church. I didn't know him very well.

And I'd heard that he was upset about some things and he's getting all frustrated and mule-lipped over it. And so I decided that I probably just needed to go and see him. So before I went to see him, I prayed.

And I prayed that the Lord would help me to bring exhortations to this man, that there would be conviction but not condemnation. I went to the man's house, knocked on the door. He opened it up and invited me in. I sat down in his living room with him. His little boy sat down right in front of us. His little boy is five years old.

He's playing with a toy truck. And I started talking to this man and the man went into an absolute tirade. And he began to tell me how there was this hypocrite in the church and this person said this and this person said that.

Finally he got quiet. And I was able just to share some scripture with him. And I said, you know, it's not doing you any good just to pout about what somebody else is doing. I said, you just need to remember and focus on what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. And I said, you need to get back in the church. Hadn't been in church for three or four weeks.

I said, you need to get back in the church. And boy, he got mad. And he just said, no, I'm not coming back to church and it's time for you to leave. About that time his little boy, five years old, went running over, jumped up in his dad's lap, threw his arm around his dad's neck and he said, that's right, Daddy, you tell him.

We don't like old Jesus, do we? And that man's face, all the color just drained out of his face. Man, you talk about an attitude adjustment. He realized what he was doing to his son. And he started weeping. And he apologized to me. He apologized to his son. He said, Daddy's acted foolishly.

I should not have done this. And then right there in front of us, he fell down on his knees and he started praying. And he said, Lord, I have been able to see the sins of others. I have not been able to see my own sin.

Please forgive me. And Lord, I pray for my little boy that you would save his soul and that he might grow up to know and love you. He opened his eyes back up and said, Amen.

Came over and hugged my neck and said, Preacher, I'll be at church Sunday. Folks, that's what we need to do. We need to exhort in order to convict. Not to condemn, but to convict.

To get people to repent as they need to in order that they might be in right fellowship with the Lord. We have accountability groups here. I'm in one. And we really try to major on being honest. We get together each time and we exhort each other. We encourage each other. We don't discourage each other.

And we know that there's nothing special about any of us. All we are is sinners saved by grace. So when we get there, we really make a great determination that we're going to be honest and we exhort. Why is it so important that we exhort one another and that we should do it daily?

Look at verse 13 again. Let's exhort one another every day as it is called today that none of us may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. The hardening of the heart does not take place instantaneously. It takes place over a period of time.

And it's usually done in cycles. You'll sin and God will bring great conviction and there's great guilt in your heart and it hurts. And then you go on a little bit of time, you don't really repent and you sin again. And this time the conviction comes back but it's not quite as strong. And the next time you do the same thing and the conviction is a little weaker. And the more you go through that cycle, the shallower and shallower the guilt becomes until it just doesn't bother you anymore and the heart is hardened. The hardening of the heart happens through the deceitfulness of sin. One of the principle characteristics of sin is that it deceives.

Why? Because our hearts are open to it. Jeremiah 17 verse 9 says, the heart is desperately deceitful and is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things who can know it. Satan's not stupid.

He doesn't go fishing without attractive bait. He knows exactly what he needs to trap us. It was with deceit that Satan lured Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit. We'll have the passage in Mark chapter 13 where Jesus is telling the parable of the sower. And in verse 22 he talks about the deceitfulness of riches.

Listen to what he says. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word. But the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfaithful. So, how is sin deceitful? Sin takes you further than you want to go.

It costs you more than you want to pay and it will keep you longer than you want to stay. Sin is filled with deceitful promises. It promises us fulfillment but it brings emptiness. It promises us happiness, it brings sadness. It promises us excitement but it brings misery. It promises us fulfillment of life but it brings death. James chapter 1 verse 15, James said, Then when lust is conceived, it brings forth sin and sin.

When it is full grown, it brings forth death. One of the most deceitful lies of all is this. It really just doesn't matter if we glorify God or not. Sin teaches me that my wants, my desires, my temporary happiness is what's really important. And that the truth of the matter is the whole universe is supposed to revolve around me. How many people in our community, in our culture today live with that very understanding and believe that very lie? Will that harden your heart?

Ask yourself this question. Are you involved in anything right now whether physically or mentally that you know is displeasing to God and it bothers you less than it did six months ago? If so, then I promise you this, your heart is becoming hardened. This is what John MacArthur said, Deceitfulness means trickery or stratagem. Sin is trickery. It seldom appears as it really is. It always masks itself. It lies and deceives. And when a person becomes spiritually hardened, he rarely is aware of it. He can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ time and time again and not respond.

My father often used this well-known expression, the same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. If your heart is not melted in faith, it will be hardened in unbelief. The old nature constantly suggests that sin is not as bad and that trust in Christ is not as important as the Bible says.

Becoming a Christian seems too costly, too demanding, too restrictive, too drab and unexciting and above all, unnecessary. From one's own perspective, he does not seem so wicked. I take care of my family. I'm a helpful neighbor, good citizen. I'm not perfect, of course, but I'm not evil either.

My life has room for improvement, but it doesn't need saving. So thinking goes. This is what the sin nature deceitfully tells men about their need for salvation. God's assessment is quite different. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the persevering of the soul.

There we have it. You stand on the edge of decision, a decision which you cannot escape. Either you believe to the saving of your soul, or you fall back to damnation. All right, my point too is hold fast. Look at verse 14 through 15.

For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, as it is said, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. The following story I'm going to tell you is a true story here. In 1987, there was a man named Henry Dempsey and got on his little small plane, had a co-pilot with him, and they were going to go from Maine to Boston. The plane took off. They were flying over the Atlantic Ocean several thousand feet up, and Henry heard some kind of rattle in the plane. So he told the co-pilot to fly, and he went back to check to see what that rattle might be. He went over to the side door, and it seemed that the rattle was coming from there, and he just kind of pushed it. And when he did, the door just opened wide open, and he fell out. And when he fell out, he started reaching for things as fast as he could. It happened to be a very strong steel cable on the bottom of the door, and he reached up and he grabbed that cable.

He tried to pull himself up, but he absolutely couldn't do it. His body was banging forth up against the side of the plane, and finally the co-pilot saw what was going on. And the co-pilot called back and told him they were coming back and told him what had happened, and they turned around and they headed back.

It took 15 minutes to get back. He held on all that time. As they were coming in and getting ready to land, he lifted his feet up and the plane just went right on down and landed. There was a huge crowd there because they were all waiting for him, and they came around and they wanted to help him. And so they came over, and his hands were still grasping that steel cable. And they tried to get his hands off, and his hands wouldn't let go. And he reached over, and they had to take each finger and prise his fingers back to get him loose from that cable. I want you to put yourself in Henry's shoes for just a moment. What do you do in a situation like that?

Several thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean, do you just let go of the cable and drop down into the ocean and become shark food? No, you want to live. You say, wait a minute, my arms are tired. Well, your arms can rest later. What matters is, am I going to live? That's the important thing. Let me ask you this, you ever lost a wallet?

That's miserable. You've got your credit cards in there, you've got your driver's license, maybe your social security number, you've got money in there, you've got pictures that you love, and all of a sudden it's gone, and you think, oh, no, I'd give anything if I just had my wallet. While he was up there bouncing back and forth against that plane, his wallet fell right out of his pocket, and it fell all the way down the Atlantic Ocean.

What should he have done? I've got to get that wallet and just drop down and gotten it? Absolutely not. He said, buy a wallet, you can go. You don't matter anymore. Money's not a big deal now. What matters is my life.

That's what the writer of Hebrews is calling for here. He is saying, don't let go, don't turn away. Nothing is more important than your relationship with Jesus Christ. What does money or fame or popularity mean if you're splattered across the Atlantic Ocean? It doesn't mean anything.

This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? When all that stuff was happening back at that airport, there were several reporters that had gotten there, and they started asking him questions. One of the reporters said, you don't look that strong. He said, you don't look like Charles Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger. He said, how in the world do you hold on to that?

He said, it wasn't my strength that held on. It was my fear. Mark chapter 10, verse 28, Jesus said, do not fear that one who can kill the body but cannot harm the soul, but fear that one who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Folks, the Christian is to fear God. We are to fear God, and what does that mean, that we're to run from God like he was a grizzly bear?

No, no, no. Fear of God is a reverential awe. It's that we are to look at God as a loving father to us, and we are to fear him by respecting him and by obeying him and by doing what he's called us to do. The God who has said that we are to fear God tells us this, that we are to hold fast.

All right, point three is the cost of rebellion. Look at verse 16 through 19. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?

And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Listen to those three questions. Who heard and yet rebelled? Israelites. Who was God angry with for 40 years? Israelites. Who missed out on the rest of God? The Israelites. Verse 16 tells us that they heard God, that they knew what they were supposed to do, but they did not do it.

Why? The answer is unbelief. The answer is unbelief. That whole adult generation was not allowed to enter into God's rest. They were not allowed to go into the promised land. They died there, that whole generation, rather than entering where they could have had joy and peace and a wonderful life. The Israelites did a lot of stupid and wicked things, didn't they? I think back to when the Israelites asked Aaron if he would mold for them a golden calf, and he did, and they worshiped it as a stupid, wicked thing. But that's not what caused them to miss getting into the promised land. What caused them to miss getting into the promised land was their absolute unbelief. I'm a fallible and sinful man, and I realize that.

But if I tell somebody that I'm going to do something, and they say, well, I don't really believe you're going to do it, that bothers me because they're questioning my integrity. I've heard people say, hey, I can't really believe the Bible because I've got an analytical mind. I've got to know the facts. I've got to have plenty of evidence here. I can't live by faith. Let me tell you something, folks. We live by faith every day, don't we?

It might be faith in the wrong thing, but that's how we live. You ever thought when you go to a restaurant, what's that cook doing back there? Is he going to drop my hamburger down on the floor and pick it back up and put it on my plate?

He might do that. We don't know. We eat that food by faith, don't we? What if you're flying down the road, and it's a road you've never been on before, and there's a big curve in the road. You've never been there before. How do you know if there's not a cliff right on the other side that you could go barreling off and kill yourself on that cliff? Well, you trust the people who built the highway, and you trust the travelers who have gone on that road before.

I want you to think about it. If we can put our faith in the highway department, if we can put our faith in cooks at these restaurants around here, can we not trust the perfect, omniscient, sovereign, holy God of this universe who loves us more than we could ever imagine and cares for us more than we could ever understand? Go through the New Testament. Study what Jesus has to say about faith. It's amazing how many of the statements that we have recorded about Jesus are encouraging us to have more faith or rebuking us for not having enough faith. I want to close this by sharing with you something A.W.

Pink said, and I'll close with this. He said, the application of the whole of this passage to the case of the sorely tried and wavering Hebrews was most pertinent and solemn. Twice over, the apostle reminded them that the unbelief of their fathers had continued for 40 years, almost that very interval that had now lapsed since the son Jesus had died, risen again, and ascended to heaven. In Scripture, 40 is the number of probation.

The season of Israel's testing was almost over. In A.D. 70, their final dispersion would occur, and God changes not. He who has been provoked of old by Israel's hardness of heart would destroy again those who persisted in their unbelief. Then let them beware and heed the solemn warning. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. May God grant us hearts to heed the same admonitory warning.

Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, this passage of Scripture is so convicting. We are told to hold on, to be steadfastly faithful, to hear your word, and to be so sure of your unchangeable sovereign integrity that we would just simply obey you. Father, help us. We know that faith in God means trust in God's integrity. Help us to be unwaveringly faithful. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.