Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain Hebrews 3:12:
Hebrews 3:12-14
All of us need to guard against unbelief as if it were an enemy that we are going to grapple, wrestling with, battle against, overcome. This is not a heart in which unbelief is merely present because that occurs to everybody. Doubts will creep into our minds regarding some areas.
God expects that and knows that is going to occur. Rather, this is a heart that is controlled by unbelief. It is that kind of heart which will drag a person down.
The peril of unbelief is that it breaks the trust on which our relationship with God is based. An evil heart of unbelief leads to departing from the living God. Departing means walking away from.
Unbelief leads to walking away from or falling away which is the opposite of drawing near. The book of Hebrews shows very clearly that Jesus Christ, as High Priest, has preceded us into the heavens for the very purpose of enabling us to draw near to God. He is there to help us come close to God.
Unbelief or lack of faith causes us to fall away to depart from the living God. When falling away occurs, it is from a Personality. It is falling away from a living, dynamic Personality.
The supreme disaster of life, the ultimate defeat, is to fall away from this Personality. It completely thwarts God's purpose. He wants us to be so near to Him that we are exactly like Him.
The way that we become like Him is to associate with Him and be around Him. This faith needs to be cultivated. It grows by reading and hearing the Word of God meditating upon God's Word.
It grows in an atmosphere of trial because it is exercised by use. As we see results by using the faith that God makes possible for us, it then reinforces and tends to make us stronger as well. It also grows in an atmosphere of exhortation.
Exhort one another daily, while it is called Today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Exhortation is a preventative of falling away. Did you ever think of exhortation as being something that would strengthen your faith?
One of the greater trials that those of us who are part of the Church of the Great God is facing is that we are so scattered and fellowship is not as easily accessible as it used to be. God has brought about this to try us. One of the first things that He wants to establish is that our continued existence as a son of His depends upon the relationship, first of all, that we have with Him the fellowship we have with Him and then secondarily, the fellowship that we have with one another.
We can communicate through telephones, letters, and all of us have at least a little bit of fellowship with one another. Appreciate the fellowship you do have and take advantage of it. When we are fellowshipping, we better exhort one another because that strengthens one another's faith.
It enables us to go on. This is one of the major reasons why fellowship is needful. Without it, we may be able to hold our own and not slip too noticeably, but most people who get cut off will rarely grow because they do not take the opportunity to strengthen their fellowship with God.
There is a very definite link between the quality of faith and the quality of fellowship. Fellowship and exhortation of each other is not an absolute cure but it is a preventative. The fellowship must be of the right kind.
God warns us that evil communication corrupts good manners. If we keep company with the very best Company there is in all the universe that is going to be a plus. That company is the company of the Father and the Son.
That fellowship communication with God comes in prayer and it comes in the study of His Word. When we fellowship with Him, we talk to Him, and He talks to us. We need to begin to look at Them in that way if our fellowship with Them is going to be enhanced.
In Hebrews 3 and 4, a general order of falling away is established. First there is sin and that is something that everybody does from time to time. If the sin is allowed to continue, the second step begins to shift in and that is a deceived mind in which we have justified the sin as acceptable for a variety of reasons.
Our justification may be that we are just weak or that God is merciful and He is just going to have to accept us this way. The mind is moving into the second stage where the sin is now acceptable and we are getting more and more willing to live with it. Third, we subtly and gradually become hardened to it and apathy and unbelief about God's holiness and purpose grow.
Then fourth, finally, apostasy takes place. That means departing from, separating from, precipitating a complete falling away. With the proper type of fellowship that includes a great deal of exhortation it can break that cycle.
Exhortation from loving brothers can encourage someone to break the cycle. It works best in small groups of people where every member knows each other well enough, and trusts each other enough to share their burdens and temptations. It almost seems axiomatic that as a group grows in numbers the fellowship becomes more casual, off-handedly polite, and external.
In a small congregation, it was generally very warm, loving, friendly, kind. People helped one another and knew what one another's burdens and problems were. They shared them by praying about them.
They talked about one another's hopes and dreams. As that congregation begins to get larger and larger, that gradually becomes lost, until we are nothing more than a face in a crowd. In a small school everybody made an effort to try to get to know everybody.
In the large school, the children were so intimidated by the very size of it that they sought out a small group of people a company that they felt comfortable with and stuck with them and did not learn anything about anyone else. The same thing works in a church. When a group is small, there is more effort made to help one another, to fellowship in the right way.
As it grows, we begin to become intimidated and we slowly but surely separate ourselves unintentionally simply because we then stick with the people we feel comfortable with and our knowledge of others in the congregation actually diminishes. This kind of fellowship has to be worked at. It not only has to be worked at by seeking people out, but it also has to be worked at by a willingness to talk openly and freely.
Being willing to talk openly and freely of your hopes and dreams and problems and troubles, in a general sense, so that they can be shared, and so you can be exhorted. Once in awhile, you will run into a person who has been through the same thing and they can give a lot of good advice. Hope, faith, and love increase in an atmosphere of encouragement, of thoughtfulness, and where there is enough trust of each other that we are willing to open ourselves up somewhat.
God swore in His wrath that the rebellious generation would not enter His rest. An evil heart of unbelief can lead to departing from the living God. Paul uses "today" from Psalm 95 in its broad sense, meaning the time of calling.
We have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. These people were neglecting things and not holding steadfast. The quotation from Psalm 95 has never been fulfilled.
The first ones who could fulfill it were those called out of Egypt, but they did not. A promise remains of entering His rest, as they failed to do so. Paul proceeds to discuss Joshua and the people entering the land, which also was not the fulfillment.
After Joshua, the nation declined spiritually. Even in David's time, roughly 300 years later, it had not been fulfilled. The apostle writes that God's promise still remains unfulfilled.
Paul hopes it will be fulfilled by the church, despite their drifting away. There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Those who have entered His rest have ceased from their works as God did from His.
This rest refers to the Kingdom of God, which lies ahead. We must be diligent to enter that rest, lest we fall like the example of disobedience. The Sabbath points to the past creation, present redemption and sanctification, and future Kingdom of God.
These are the perimeters within which Sabbath use and obedience fall. There remains a keeping of the Sabbath. Sabbath rest has already begun if we strive to use it right.
The children of Israel did not enter God's rest because they did not hear His word and obey. The illustration is the Sabbath, for breaking which Israel and Judah went into captivity. This is written to the first-century church as an illustration of what to do with their lives.
If the Sabbath had been done away, the illustration would be useless. This is strong proof that the first-century church was still keeping the Sabbath. The apostles reinforced its keeping by using it as an illustration of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus Christ is the epitome of loyalty and faithfulness. He is called a merciful high priest and He fulfills the role finally and ultimately in the service of God to make expiation for the sins of the people. Jesus Christ is faithful in Moses' role.
He surpasses and fulfills the faithfulness and loyalty of Moses in building and ruling the household of God and the church of God. We are in danger of being depersonalized, of having our hearts hardened. Unbelief is faithlessness, and part of faith is loyalty; therefore disloyalty equates to unbelief, to faithlessness.
It is loyalty to God and Jesus Christ first, and then to our brethren, as long as we are following God and doing what He says in His inspired holy written word. The servant owns nothing, is heir to nothing, has no authority and no right to control anything and is himself wholly at the will of another. A son, however, is the heir of all, has a prospective right to all and is looked up to by all with respect if he is a good son or righteous son.
The idea is not merely that Christ is a son; it is that as a son, He is placed over the whole arrangements of the household and is one to whom all is entrusted as if it were His own. We are part of God the Father and Jesus Christ's family. We belong to the family over which Christ has been placed as the Firstborn Son.
Jesus Christ is the consummation of God's determined loyalty to His gracious covenant relationship with His people. Christ is faithful and loyal to the Father and the Father to Him. We have the wonderful opportunity to be part of this faithful and loyal family.
The training ground for it is here and now, in our own households, and in the household of God. Loyalty means enduring commitment to a person over a long period of time, often with the implication of the commitment persisting in the face of obstacles that threaten the lasting commitment. Jesus Christ's words on loyalty and faithfulness suggest complete sacrifice for others, which is exactly what Jesus Christ did.
God has implanted a power enabling us to respond in faith to His Word, but it needs to be exercised and nourished. If it is not, then like most other things in life it will begin to dissipate, degenerate, and eventually fade away. This faith is dependent upon a relationship.
If we do not nurture a relationship with another person, they become further and further away from us until we hardly even know them. The same thing can happen with God. The thing that binds us to God is faith, which binds us into a relationship that has to be nurtured or we begin to drift apart and become less and less alike, less and less attuned to one another.
All of us need to guard against unbelief as we would against an enemy. The peril of unbelief is that it breaks the trust on which our relationship with God is based. Unbelief leads to falling away, which is the opposite of drawing near, and falling away is the supreme disaster of life because it completely thwarts God's purpose for creation.
When a person falls away, he is not merely falling away from a doctrine or set of doctrines, but from a living, dynamic Personality. Faith needs to be cultivated through reading, studying, and meditating upon God's Word. It grows in an atmosphere of trial because it is exercised through use.
Faith also grows in an atmosphere of exhortation that comes from others who are fellowshipping with us. Exhortation is a preventative of falling away, and this is a major reason why fellowship is so needful. Without fellowship, a person may hold his own, but he will rarely ever grow.
We need to keep asking God to increase our faith because it is capable of growing.
The recipients of this epistle were not violently rebelling against God, as the context of the book makes clear. Instead, they were drifting away through neglect, neglecting their great salvation. They did not hate God but were simply allowing their Christianity to rust away by not maintaining or growing in it.
Consequently, their lives, consciences, and hearts were gradually hardening. The intensity of their feelings about right and wrong was slipping away, hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. The heart and conscience adjust to such a hardened state that repentance becomes impossible.
A person in this state becomes inured to sin and no longer cares, accustomed to accepting the undesirable. Sin and its effects are undesirable, yet human nature views sin as desirable due to its enmity toward God. Yielding to human nature accustoms the heart and conscience to sin until indifference sets in.
This hardening of conscience echoes Old Testament descriptions of Israel being stiffnecked or having hardness of heart. It expresses the same phenomenon. For those under the New Covenant, however, it is far more dangerous, representing the ultimate departure from God.
The world creates a spiritual callous, hardening our hearts and minds. Nothing deceives a person as subtly as familiarity. Lot's wife was familiar with Abraham, the lessons, and the teachings, and she became comfortable with them.
The unbelieving heart does not mean a heart with no belief, as we all have weaknesses there, but rather a heart where unbelief or doubt controls conduct. Familiarity is an influence we all must deal with, perhaps the greatest trial for second-generation Christians or those living in prosperity within Israelitish nations. This familiarity helped set up Lot's wife for the worldliness that led to her premature death.
We need to consider this because Paul is showing here where the problem lay. God says very clearly it was in the heart. Paul makes it much more specific in that it was a problem having to do with faith, unbelief.
A connection is made between the heart, disbelief and sin, almost as though he is showing a progression. Because the heart was not unshackled there was disbelief and the result was sin, a going aside, a turning off the way. It is a direct connection, almost as if they are synonymous between unbelief and sin.
