A Personal & Present Walk

One of the important lessons I learned regarding statistics, and you might have learned it too, is that correlation does not mean causation. Correlation does not mean causation. This means that just because two things often go together, it doesn’t mean that one of them causes the other, or that they are even related.

The example I remember being given was the interesting observation that the rise of ice cream sales matched the rise of crime in cities. This simple observation could wrongfully lead someone to say that ice cream causes crime to rise. Or maybe that people eat ice cream in response to being robbed. But really, it probably the heat that causes them both.

Falsely or erroneously equating things can lead to dangerous conclusions, and in our passage today, we see multiple warnings along those lines.

At the beginning of the chapter, we saw that Jesus was not simply following the pattern of Moses; He is greater than Moses. He is God’s Son. And that superiority leads the writer to cite a warning from the second part of Psalm 95, which was talking about the first generation of Israelites who left Egypt under Moses’ leadership.

After the quote, we get a more detailed application of that passage, which includes a number of warnings which are as applicable to us today as they were to the Hebrews of that time.

Here’s warning number 1: Don’t equate your own faith with the faith of others. Don’t equate your own faith with the faith of others. In other words, just because someone else in your close circle is saved, that doesn’t mean that you are. And just because you’re sure you’re saved, that doesn’t mean someone else is.

One of the big problems in the Hebrew culture of Jesus’ time was that the Jews assumed they were saved because of their physical lineage. They thought, “Well, we are Jews. We are God’s chosen people. We’re descendants of Abraham and Moses and David, so of course we’re in the kingdom.” And Jesus had to come and destroy that sort of thinking. That’s why He told Nicodemus, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It’s not a physical birth that brings salvation; it’s a spiritual birth.

The Hebrew audience of this letter needed to hear a similar warning, but this time, the author aims it the other way. He’s already been warning them about their own salvation, but now he warns them about one another’s salvation.

Even if they were saved—even if they had already trusted in Christ and were continuing to do so—that didn’t mean that everyone around them was doing the same. The people sitting around them at church in their own congregation might be drifting away. They might actually be deceived about their own faith.

Look at verse 12—Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

In the Greek, the phrase “take care” comes from a simple word that means to see, or to look. It’s like saying, “Look out,” or “see to it.” Don’t just look out for your own salvation, look out for the salvation of others.

To think about the unsaved in our own congregation should lead us to compassion and heartbreak, but it should also be a warning. An unbelieving heart, this verse tells us, is evil. It’s wicked. It is set against God. It rejects Him. It refuses to trust Him. That’s what it means to have an unbelieving heart. To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to surrender to Him, is a command, and unbelief is a rejection of that command.

It is a rejection, this verse says, of the living God. That descriptor is important because it reminds us that everything else, apart from faith in Christ, is dead. Pagan idols and religious rituals are dead. Political activism, part from Christ, is dead. Loving your neighbor, if you don’t have Christ, is meaningless. We serve a living God and He calls us to Himself only through repentance and faith in Christ. Turn from sin and trust in Him.

In the end, unbelief leads to falling away from God. That’s what happens to many people in the church. They are like the rocky soil or the shallow soil in Jesus’ parable; they bear no fruit and prove they were never true believers to begin with.

Paul warns Timothy about that possibility in 1 Timothy 4:1. He says—the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith. He wasn’t talking about unbelievers outside the church. He was talking about professing believers in the church. Some were going to turn their back on God and on Christ assuming they could be saved in some way other than total surrender to Christ.

Since that possibility exists for you and for everyone else around you in the church, what should we do? Verse 13 tells us—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.

We are called to exhort one another. The word for “exhort” or “encourage” here is parakaléo, which literally means “to call to your side.” It’s a stronger form of the verb kaléo. It’s like you’re in one place spiritually, and you’re calling someone else to join you. Or you’re coming up alongside them to help them. Sometimes it’s translated “encourage,” or “comfort,” or “urge,” or “implore.” The point is, you are using words to wake someone up, to call them to action.

This is a very hard thing to do in our culture. I think we should admit that. It’s easy to talk about movies and sports and music and kids and the weather, but talking about the heart is a challenge. We prioritize being polite over being productive spiritually. We’re not used to talking to someone about the state of their souls. And if we do that in the church, though, some people might be offended. How dare we consider the possibility that they are not in a good place spiritually! We’re in church, aren’t we?

But think about the difference these kinds of conversations make. A fellow members tells you he’s having problems with his wife. You could just say, “Hey, I’m sorry, brother. I’ll be praying for you.” Or you could say something like, “That’s really hard brother. But don’t forget, we’re here to love our wives the way Christ loved the church. How are you doing in that? Is that what you’re after? Are you trusting in Christ for the grace to do that well?”

That second response reminds that person that they have responsibility too. They aren’t just victims in the situation. They need to respond appropriately to Christ.

And I don’t think you want to corner someone on a Sunday morning in the middle of a crowd, and say, “Brother, I exhort you in Jesus’ name! Repent of your sin! Keep trusting! Don’t fall away!” But in a way that demonstrates love and personal concern, we should be encouraging one another. That should be a normal part of our Christian relationships. We should be talking to one another about the state of our souls.

Verse 13 says we should do it as long as it’s called “today.” That could be a way of saying, “Do it every day.” If it’s today, exhort someone. Our exhortations should be daily. They should be regular.

But they also need to be urgent. If you remember, this is a message following up on Psalm 95, and that word “Today,” was part of the quotation. It’s at the end of verse 7. The call not to harden your hearts came with a deadline.

And this leads to a second major warning for the Christian faith. A second mistake to avoid: Don’t equate today’s calling with tomorrow’s calling. Don’t equate today’s calling with tomorrow’s calling

What I mean by that is that just because God is calling you, or inviting you to respond to Him today, that doesn’t mean the invitation will be there tomorrow. One day, either due to death or to a hardened heart, you’re not going to be able to come. Today’s invitation will expire one day.

So, when the author of Hebrews says “as long as it is called ‘today,’” he’s also implying a deadline. God’s call says, “Today,” and one day, that invitation won’t be there anymore.

It’ll be a while until we get there, but later in chapter 12 of this letter, there’s a reference to Esau. It says there that he traded his birthright, but later he desired to inherit the blessing, but he was rejected. He found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. There was no way for him to undo what had been done. It was too late.

In 2 Peter 3, it mentions people mocking Christ’s message. They say, “He hasn’t come in thousands of years. It’s all a lie. He’s not coming. This world is just going to continue like it always has.” But Peter says things haven’t always continued the same. Od created this world. And one day, God sent a flood to destroy the world. And one day, God is sending fire, and time will be up. Judgment and destruction are coming for the ungodly. One day, time is going to be up. It will be too late to respond.

The same is true for everyone who is only pretending to follow Christ. God mercifully and urgently calls them to repent and believe, but one day it will be too late. Their hearts will be hardened. That’s the urgency behind our regular exhortation of others. We encourage one another, verse 13 says, so that none of [us] may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

When my dad got his knee replacement, he had a lot of pain afterward. And when something hurts that much, your natural tendency is to not want to move it. Just wait until the pain goes away. But doctors know that’s not a good thing. That’s why after a major procedure like that, you go to physical therapy. They want you moving. They don’t want the joint to freeze up or the muscles to grow weak.

Our hearts have the same danger. Sin is deceitful. It tells us that honoring God, or repenting from sin, is not going to be good for us; it’s going to be painful and harmful. It just doesn’t seem to be the right way to heal. And so, someone stops responding to God. They stop moving toward God. And when someone gives in to that deception long enough, they will reach a point where their heart is hardened. It doesn’t respond anymore. It no longer moves toward God. All of us face that danger, and so we all benefit from, and need the encouragement of one another.

Our faith doesn’t save someone else, but God will use our witness and our testimony to draw others closer to Him. God will use us to call others around us and keep them close to Him. And we need to do that urgently because we never know when time is going to run out. Today’s call could be the last one.

The exhortation of verse 13 isn’t just a call to salvation. It’s a call to persevere in the Christian faith. And this gives us a third warning about the Christian life. Don’t equate yesterday’s faith with today’s faith. Don’t equate yesterday’s faith with today’s faith.

You and I are called to persevere. No matter how real or strong we believe our faith is, we need to persevere in it. Look at verse 14. This is part of the motivation to encourage one another. Verse 14—For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. [15] As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

“We have come to share in Christ”—that’s a beautiful promise. The holy, glorious nature of Christ is in us. But that’s only ours if we hold our original confidence firm to the end. What’s our original confidence? It’s the confidence that Jesus is the Son of God who died to paid the price of sin and who is worthy of all worship and glory. That’s the Christan faith—the Son of God traded places with sinners, and then He rose again in victory. We’re called to repent of sin and trust in Him. That’s the Christian faith. That’s our confidence, and it cannot change.

So, your faith yesterday in Christ might be the same as your faith in Christ today, make sure you’re not simply resting on yesterday’s faith instead of practicing faith in Christ today.

If you’re not sure whether your faith is real, or if your faith feels weak, don’t simply look back to the days when it felt stronger. Look to Christ today. Faith is how we cling to Christ. We don’t cling to faith; we cling to Christ and His truth.

If you get exhausted in the ocean, and a lifeguard comes by on a raft, you don’t grab your own hands, right? You grab the raft. Or you grab the hand of the lifeguard reaching out to you.

Some people feel weak in their faith, but rather than looking to Jesus, they look to their own faith instead. They try to drum up something inside themselves rather than looking to Jesus by faith through prayer, and through the word, and through genuine Christian exhortation.

Persevering in the faith means looking to Jesus, which, as we’ve mentioned is really the theme of this letter. Keep looking to Jesus. Don’t get complacent. Don’t fall asleep spiritually. Don’t let your heart be hardened, which is what gets repeated in verse 15.

This brings us to a final warning about the Christian life. Warning number 4: Don’t equate physical blessings with eternal blessings. Don’t equate physical blessings with eternal blessings.

I’m not saying that if you’re truly saved, physical blessings won’t come. I’m saying that we shouldn’t interpret God’s temporal and physical blessings as signs that our eternity is secure.

Verses 16-18 is a string of rhetorical questions, and the basic question being asked is, “Who were the people that God did not allow into the Promised Land? Who were they?”

VERSES 16—For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? [17] And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? [18] And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?

This was the group that experienced the blessing of being freed from Egypt. They saw the Red Sea be parted. They watched Egypt’s army be destroyed. They saw God give them manna and meat. They saw God’s glory. They heard God’s law. They built the Tabernacle.

But notice how their responses are characterized in the verses we just read. They rebelled. They provoked God. They were disobedient.

And what was the consequence? Their bodies fell in the wilderness. They never got to enter God’s rest.

The physical realities of that generation point to a spiritual reality for today. It’s possible to experience a number of God’s physical and temporal blessings but not enter into His eternal blessing.

There are many people who profess Christ and attend church regularly who might also begin to experience some of God’s physical blessings. They see improvements in their families, in their finances, in their relationships with other. But those blessings, in themselves, don’t mean any one of us is getting into heaven.

First Corinthians 7 talks about an unbelieving husband who is blessed because of an unbelieving wife. The household is sanctified because of her presence. And while we hope that man comes to salvation, the physical blessings don’t mean he is saved.

The same can happen in a business. A Christian employee brings God’s blessing to that place. God is providing for him. But the president may simply think that business is doing well. He may think a Christian is a good luck charm. He may see God’s hand upon him, but that doesn’t mean he is saved.

Do not confuse temporal, physical blessings with eternal spiritual blessings. That’s why Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul?”

God swore that that generation would not enter the Promised Land. They came out of slavery with joy and hope, but their lives ended tragically. That’s because a disobedient heart will be judged by God.

Verse 19 is the conclusion of this principle. Here’s the simple point being made—So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

They saw so many examples of God’s goodness, but because of their unbelief, they were unable to enter the Promised Land, described here as God’s rest.

That word “unbelief” links back to verse 12. This is the warning of this section. Be careful about a heart of unbelief. Be careful.