Brothers building Brothers - 11/29/10

Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.  For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said:  “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your heart as in the rebellion.”  Hebrews 3:12-15

Beware is a word designed to get our attention.  Most of us are tuned to words like, CAUTION, ALERT and DANGER.  In the bible, “beware” is one of those words.  Caution, there is something dangerous that you need to (be aware) of; beware!  So what is it that is so important that we need to be startled to attention?  The writer of Hebrews is warning us about the dreaded heart of unbelief.

I fear that most of us are not as keenly aware of this problem in our lives as we should be.  Being bombarded by media as we are in this generation, our minds are constantly at work accepting and rejecting information as worthy or unworthy of belief.  The news media, education, religion and even science have proven to be unreliable and even, it seems, deliberately skewed to distort the truth.  So when we come to the bible many times we are still picking and choosing what we will believe and what we will reject.

The problem in our lives that causes us to reject those difficult parts of the bible is sin.  The text calls it deceitful and warns us of a hardening effect that it can have on our heart.  It’s a gradual thing that can start with something as simple as hurt feelings at church.  It is amazing how unfulfilling the worship experience can become when someone has rubbed you the wrong way; or how dry and long those sermons can get when the pastor hasn’t lived up to your expectations.  Sin is deceitful and it is the source of the evil heart of unbelief.

So what does the writer say is the solution?   Because sin is so deceitful and because our hearts are desperately wicked; (so wicked in fact that sometimes we can’t even know them), God has given us each other.  The unclouded eye of a brother is sometime all that stands between us and shipwreck.  “Exhort one another daily while it is called “Today”.  Of course if we would do it daily we wouldn’t find so many of our brothers broken on the rocks of unbelief and despair.  Exhort someone today in love and, O yes, remember to accept exhortation humbly yourself.

Your needy brother,

Jack