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Hebrews 3:12-19 Episode 7 - Warning Against Deceitfulness of Sin

Hebrews 3:12-19 Episode 7 - Warning Against Deceitfulness of Sin

November 16, 2018 | Andy Davis
Hebrews 3:12-19
Warnings, Exhortations, The Power of Sin

The author of Hebrews uses David’s Psalm 95 to provoke his hearers to stop their unbelief and the disobedience that comes from unbelief, and to come into a full life of faith-filled obedience to the voice of the Holy Spirit. He holds up the terrible example of the Israelites of old, who through unbelief and disobedience failed to enter the Promised Land. He also speaks to them as a community to watch over one another in brotherly love by daily encouraging each other to prevent the gradual hardening of their hearts through sin’s deceitfulness.

       

- PODCAST TRANSCRIPT -

Joel

Hi, welcome to the Two Journeys podcast. This is Episode 7 in Hebrews, Bible Study Questions. Today we're talking about Hebrews 3:12-19, and the title is: The Warning Against the Deceitfulness of Sin. I'm Joel Hartford and I'm here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, this is a very sobering and serious passage that comes in the midst of this warning to this audience. Can you give me a brief overview of verses 12-19 and why it's so important for Christians to hear?

Andy

Absolutely. The epistle to the Hebrews has been called a warning epistle and it's got a lot of serious passages on warning. And this is one of the clearest on the dangers of sin, the progressive hardening of the heart that sin does through its deceitfulness, and we're going to look at that. I also use it consistently as pastor of a local church as a part of my defense of why every Christian needs to be a covenant member of a healthy church. We need people around us to protect us from our own sinfulness. The seeds of our own spiritual destruction are within ourselves, with our indwelling sin nature, and we need protection from that. And the church, which will come out in the text today, the church is part of God's provision to keep us safe from ourselves.

Joel

Well, for our audience, I'm going to read the text, Hebrews 3:12-19. "

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. 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 a rebellion.' 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 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.

So I want to start, Andy, with verse 12 where he says, "Take care brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart." Is this a command? Is it a plea? What is this?

Andy

Well, I've tended to read this as something said to the church, “Take care of brothers, lest there be in any of you.”(Hebrews 3:12) So that gives a kind of a church outlook. I can't just be thinking about myself, but I have to be thinking about my brothers and sisters. Is there in any of us this evil, unbelieving heart or heart of unbelief that would be tending toward leading them to fall away from the living God? So there's an exhortation here that we actually are to care for each other spiritually. As we've mentioned before, you remember that cold-hearted thing that Cain said about Abel? “Am I my brother's keeper?”(Genesis 4:9) We, at First Baptist Church, we have in our church covenant a statement, “We will watch over one another in brotherly love.” This is a great passage on doing that.

We're going to watch over one another. Watch over in what regard? We're going to watch over lest they drift away from Christ or turn away little by little or turn away even decisively. And so for me, I think this is an exhortation toward vigilance. Now, I think it starts with the individual. We are to watch over our own hearts. We are to make certain that nothing's going on with us individually, personally, but we're also supposed to be looking out for the brothers and sisters as well.


"We are to watch over our own hearts. We are to make certain that nothing's going on with us individually, personally, but we're also supposed to be looking out for the brothers and sisters as well."

Joel

Yeah, the book of Hebrews is really strong on this corporate watch over one another language. I'm reminded of where it says, "See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God… that no one is unholy or immoral like Esau."(Paraphrase of Hebrews 12:15-16) And so is the “See to it” looking at one another and helping each other in the Christian life.

Andy

Yeah.

Joel

Now, how do Scripture's warnings really protect us from sin? Because as we talked before, the warnings are the means that keep the faithful, so how does this warning to: “Take care lest there be an evil, unbelieving heart,”(Paraphrase of Hebrews 3:12) how does that motivate the believers to continue to persevere in the faith?

Andy

Yeah, I think we have to understand the role of these warnings, and we just come back to this again and again with the book of Hebrews because there are some very severe warnings in Hebrews. And so the idea here is that God is absolutely sovereign over human salvation and he works in human beings and he works in the elect, the repentance and faith needed for their own salvation. But part of that is, “He who began that good work in us is going to carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”(Paraphrase of Philippians 1:6) And that progressive sanctification really has to do with the ongoing struggles we have with our own hearts. That our hearts are prone to wander, as the hymn writer said it. We really do feel it, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” And the reason we do that, as the text says here, is through a hardening process through sin's deceitfulness. And so the warnings are given to wake us up, to shake us up, to urge us toward strong actions and powerful repentance and renewed vigor in our Christian life. So we need these warnings. The warnings are for the elect. The warnings are for those who will heed them, and that is the people who God is working a seriousness and a faith in hearing the word of God. So I mean this is very, very important, the idea of these warnings.

Joel

Yeah, now what about this word evil, unbelieving heart? What is an evil, unbelieving heart?

Andy

Okay, so this is the issue here, and you take verse 12 and 13 together. What's going on is that sin has a deceitful effect on us and has a hardening effect on us, producing in us an evil heart, an increasingly evil heart of unbelief. And we're going to see at the end of this passage in Hebrews 3:19, “So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” The author of Hebrews is going to give us the greatest chapter in the entire Bible on faith. So this is all about faith. And so the idea of an evil heart of unbelief is a heart that no longer believes the promises of God, that's turning away from the promises of God in unbelief and finding relief and joy and satisfaction and the blessings of life in another place, through carnal desires and through other religions and other things. So that's a serious, serious matter. So the idea here is an evil, unbelieving heart leads to an individual turning away or falling away from the living God. And so this, I think, is a progressive hardening effect on the human heart by the deceitfulness of sin.

Joel

How do you warn somebody of an evil, unbelieving heart? Obviously if I were to use that direct language, it might not go over so well, but when you see someone falling away, maybe they used to come to church, used to be regulars. Now they don't come to church and Bible study anymore. They seem to have no problem. "No, I still love God. I'm still", but their affections have really waned for him, and they wouldn't see themselves as having an evil, unbelieving hear, but by scripture, you know that it's tending toward that direction.

Andy

Yeah.

Joel

How do you warn them like that?

Andy

Well, I love the way you put it, and it's very dynamic. It's a continual process of life patterns and habits. It even talks in Hebrews 10 about people who have the habit of no longer assembling together with other Christians. And so it's about habits. It's about your lifestyle. And so what ends up happening is sin is constantly assaulting our hearts all the time. The world, the flesh, and the devil, those are the constant enemies of this life of faith. And so under the constant pull, the corrosive effect of the world's allurements and Satan's clever temptations, we little by little are deceived by sin. And so it talks about sin's deception here or the deceitfulness of sin. So that's a very powerful phrase here in verse 13, the idea of sin deceiving us. It lies to us. Satan is a liar. He was a liar from the beginning and an assassin of souls Jesus said in John 8, "You are of your father the devil, who was a liar and a murderer"(Paraphrase of John 8:44), and the two go together. He murders by lying. He kills souls by lying. And so through the temptation, he lies to us that we'll get pleasure, satisfaction, fulfillment in sin, but sin is lying to us. This is one of the passages that personify sin like Paul does in Romans 7. He says, "Sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me and put me to death."(Paraphrase of Romans 7:11) So that personifies sin. It's like sin is a roaring lion or roving lion seeking someone to devour, just like Satan himself. And so the idea here is that sin deceives us and it has a progressive hardening effect on the heart. So the heart becomes increasingly hardened. And so that's a devastating effect on us.

Joel

Hm. So we talked about the devastation. What about the remedy? He says, but... In Hebrews 3:13, "But exhort one another every day, as long as it's called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." You've already mentioned the deceitfulness of sin.

Andy

Sure.

Joel

So what is the place of exhortation in the Christian life? And then notice it says every day. Are we supposed to meet every day? Am I supposed to be a legalist about that? How does that inform my ministry to other brothers and sisters in my church?

Andy

Yeah, these are great, great questions. And this is exactly right in the center of my defense or persuasion for people to be covenant members of a healthy local church. The beauty, the wisdom of God and the whole church concept is that there's this universal church, the body of Christ, the mystical communion, that all genuine believers in Christ or followers of Christ have, actually, even those that are in heaven, are part of the body of Christ and those on earth. Heaven and earth together, part of one universal body. And that happens the moment that you're born again and that will never change. But there's also local church, and that has to do with people here on earth, in certain localities, in a particular city or a particular town or community, that assembles together regularly. And we call it covenant membership because we make a promise to be certain things for each other. We're going to be a church for each other. And what that means is we're going to know and be known by those people. They're going to know us, what our habits are, our patterns, and they're going to be known by us. We'll know the same thing about them. And we're going to be able to watch over one another in brotherly love.

So the idea here, as we've said, there's a danger. The ongoing effect of sin is to harden our hearts. The deceitfulness of sin hardens the heart and turns it into a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from the living God, apostatizes. So that's a gradual hardening process. What does hardening mean? I think what it means is that the heart is less and less responsive to the Holy Spirit, less and less responsive to the word of God. We're not yielded. We're stiff-necked. Stiff-necked and hard-hearted are the same thing to me. It's an unyieldedness to the word of God, in the direction of God.

So sin has a gradual, deceitful effect on us. And so the remedy that you mentioned here is brothers and sisters who know us and we know them and they have gained a place in our lives to speak into our lives. They're not total strangers. They're not like the book of Proverbs says, "A passerby gets involved in a quarrel not his own. It's like someone who seizes a dog by the ears."(Paraphrase of Proverbs 26:17) Don't do that. But that's not what's going on here. We've covenanted to do this for each other. We're going to watch over one another in brotherly love. We promised to do this for each other. So there you could say... All right, let's say you mentioned some Bible study attendance let's say. Let's say somebody was all in for the men's Bible study on Saturday morning or the Home Fellowship on Sunday evening, something like that. And they never missed. And they had their Bibles, they were eager, they were into it. Yeah, but that was a year ago, now they miss two-thirds of the time or even more frequently. And when you talk to them or even when they're there, they're not there. It seems like they've changed. And you've got a baseline behavior pattern that you saw. You knew what they used to be like, and now they're different. And so you mention the remedy here, and that is exhort. Exhort one another. The Greek word is related to the word for the Holy Spirit, the counselor, the Paraclete. It's a strong word. It has to do with... I don't know, exhort, rebuke, correct, give advice to, all kinds of stuff from that one Greek word. So just get involved in each other's lives. Get in each other's grill. Now there's ways to do it. You do it with gentleness, you do it with humility, but we need to do it.


"Sin has a gradual, deceitful effect on us. And so the remedy that you mentioned here is brothers and sisters who know us and we know them and they have gained a place in our lives to speak into our lives."

Joel

And again, this every day. I think this must speak to really just being and doing this on a regular basis, like the regular meeting.

Andy

Yeah, I think that's the idea. I don't think we meet together every day. We don't. I mean, we have meetings throughout the week and we have different things we do. But no, we're not a legalistic community that says if you don't come to everything every time the doors are open that you're in sin. We definitely require able-bodied people to be at corporate worship, the one main gathering that we have on Sunday morning. That's going to be a benchmark of piety and local church involvement. So the elders are going to be very interested and shepherd people who stop attending Sunday morning worship. We don't feel the same about our Home Fellowship Sunday evenings, but it's an important mark and we want to see if people are involved or if they've made changes. Used to be involved, now they're not, and that's a big deal. And then other things.

So I think the idea of exhorting one another daily or encouraging one another daily. I mean you can get on the phone. I mean, we're more in contact with each other and our friends than ever before by means of social media and other things like that. So I think we can do it actually hourly if we wanted to do. We could be texting each other continually. But I don't think that's what the author had in mind. It's just a don't let it go too long. Like it says in another place, "Don't let the sun go down on your anger."(Ephesians 4:26) You have some worries about somebody, give them a call, go over and visit them. Text them. Be involved in each other's lives. I think that's what he's saying.

Joel

Yeah. Now we come up again with the concept of “today,” “As long as it's called ‘today. ‘”(Hebrews 3:13) We talked about that last week. Can you remind our listeners just the importance of this word “today” in the text we've been reading?

Andy

Yeah. The word “today” just has to do with a theology of Today, capitalized here in Hebrews 3 and 4, that there's something called Today. And there's a sense of as long as it has this special name, Today, and what that means is this is the moment of opportunity. This is what we can do something about. It just has to do with the fact that we are time-bound creatures. We can't go back in time to redress something we did yesterday. We messed up yesterday. Can't do anything about it. It's part of the historical heavenly record and nothing will change it. And we can't go ahead in time to tomorrow or a year from now and jump up ahead and say, "I've got an important test coming up," spiritual test or even a test in your university classes or something like that. You can't do it.

All right. All you can ever do is today. As Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”(Matthew 6:34) “Sufficient unto the day is the evil therein," KJV has it. So all we've got is right now and as long as we're in that era, this present era of today and today and today, as long as we're in that, be exhorting one another toward love and good deeds. Remains to be seen.

Joel

That's good stuff. So verse 14 he says, "For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end."(Hebrews 3:14) And then he goes into the psalm, which we talked about last week. But this “If indeed”, this almost conditional phrase, what does this teach us about again, the need to hold fast and persevere to the end, though we do believe in the perseverance of the saints?

Andy

Yeah, I mean, let me take the end of your question first. We believe in the perseverance of the saints. What we mean by that is if somebody has been truly justified by faith in Christ, they cannot lose that justification. They cannot become non-Christians. They can't be un-born again. I mean they have eternal life. Eternal life's eternal. And so we believe in that. So we do believe in that. But here we've got this troubling, actually it's even troubling grammatically. It speaks of a past tense action, decisive action in the past, “We have come to share in Christ,”(Hebrews 3:14) I think it says. And then it puts a conditional on a past completed action.

Joel

How do you know?

Andy

Yeah. My feeling here is it's actually to some degree historically it'd be absurd. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States if... Well, what would you put on the other half of that that makes any sense at all? There's nothing. If he was the 16th president, and there's nothing else you can put there. Either it happened or it didn't. But in this case, it's more experiential. It has to do with assurance, assurance of salvation, “Have I come to share in Christ? Did that actually happen? Was there anything real there? If all I have is today, we're talking about something in the past, so how can I know that I actually did genuinely trust in Christ 11 years ago? How can I know?” And this verse answers that question. We actually did in fact, come to share in Christ at that point way back when. As proven by the fact that we continue to the end the same confidence or the same confession of faith we had. So that's what he's saying. The ones that begin, definitely finish. So if you want a solid assurance, keep running with Christ, keep following Christ. That's what he's saying.

Joel

Hence, the importance of Today.

Andy

Today.

Joel

Because this is the day you have to hold your confidence to the end.

Andy

Yeah. If you want to know whether was my faith in Christ 11 years ago or twenty-six years ago genuine? The answer to this verse is you want to know for sure, follow him today, trust in him today; believe in him today. Keep holding onto that confidence. That's what he's saying here. So we actually did in fact come to faith in Christ and get a share in heaven back then if we complete this journey right to the end. That's what he's saying.

Joel

Now, he mentions the psalm that we talked about last week. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."(Hebrews 3:15) And then he gives frankly a terrifying example from church history that we talked about two weeks ago or last week. He says, "Who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?"(Hebrews 3:16-17) Right? He's talking about the nation of Israel between Sinai and the Promised Land. "And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief."(Hebrews 3:18-19)

Andy

Yeah. What the author's doing here, and he's going to consummate this argument in the next chapter. He's making the actual pilgrimage or journey, the Exodus from Egypt into the Promised Land a bit of an allegory or spiritual analogy, maybe would be a better word, for the progress of an individual soul from Satan's kingdom, slavery to sin to ultimate eternal life with Christ in heaven, our eternal Sabbath rest we'll talk about in the next chapter. And he zeroes in on Psalm 95 that David wrote 500 years after the Exodus, 1,000 years before this author wrote this. Psalm 95, it says, "Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion."(Paraphrase of Psalm 95:7-8) So let's see where we're at in the flow of the argument. Remember we've said like, "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God as the Jews did back then, but encourage one another daily as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We actually did in fact come to share in Christ in the past if we keep holding on to our confidence right to the end. As has just been said, ‘Today if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion.’"(Paraphrase of Hebrews 3:12-15) So what the author is doing is saying, remember we already talked about that. If you want to be certain you're a Christian, then today, don't harden your heart. As the Holy Spirit speaks to you through the Word, through the Gospel, through the extended teachings of the apostles in the New Testament, as the Holy Spirit speaks to you through the Psalms in the Old Testament, as the Holy Spirit speaks to you in the Word of God, don't harden your heart. Don't develop a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. So that's how he uses Psalm 95. The repetition emphasizes that.

And then as you said, he looks at the actual history of what happened with the Jews. What happened with those people? What's the backdrop of Psalm 95? And we know that story and it's a tragic story. None of the Jews, the adult Jews who came out of Egypt, none of them actually ended up crossing the Jordan and entering the Promised Land except Joshua and Caleb. Those people were, as Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 10:5, "God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered all over the desert." Now, keep in mind who the author of Hebrews is writing to, he is writing to Jewish people who had made a profession of faith in Christ, but who were being sorely tempted to give up that profession and turn back to old covenant Judaism. And what he's saying is, “Look at your Jewish ancestors. What happened to them? They never made it in the Promised Land. And why? Because they did not believe the promises of God. They had an evil, unbelieving heart that turned away from the living God.” That's what he's doing here.

Joel

And that's powerful. So he's basically saying they turned back right before entering and you're in danger of turning back right before entering.

Andy

Oh, yeah. And he's going to do exactly that at the end of Hebrews chapter 10 when he talks about those folks. He says, quoting Habakkuk there, he says, "In a little while the coming one [Jesus] will come and will not delay, but my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved."(Paraphrase of Hebrews 10:37-39) So that's what the author is going to say. Well, you get the same kind of thing here. The generation of Jews who didn't cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land, the one who believed all the slander that came from the 10 spies, they were an evil, unbelieving generation according to the author to Hebrews. And David would say the same thing. God swore on oath in his anger they would never enter his rest. And the problem was that they didn't believe what they heard. They didn't believe the promises of God.

Joel

Andy, I wanted to ask this. You said they didn't enter because they didn't believe. How do we stoke the fire of belief in our hearts?

Andy

Yeah, I mean, we are justified by faith. "My righteous one will live by faith." That's Habakkuk 2:4. And that's what the author will quote at the end of Hebrews 10. And so what it means is we hear about Jesus. We hear the message that Christ is the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, lived a sinless life, did all these incredible signs and wonders, these miracles, stilled the storm, fed the 5,000, walked on water, raised Lazarus from the dead, healed every kind of disease and sickness among the people, drove out demons, could do anything, but especially that he died in our place on the cross. And we recognize that transfer of guilt to Jesus and the transfer of his righteousness to us. And we trust in all of that by faith. We haven't seen any of that. We've never seen Jesus. As 1 Peter said, "You have not seen him but you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him."(1 Peter 1:8) So there's that faith, the eyesight of the soul. We're going to talk more about that later. But the eyesight of the soul, and you're able to see through the eyes of your heart being enlightened, see the crucified Christ crucified for you, the resurrected Christ raised for your justification, raised for your hope, and you fix your mind on that entirely. Life means nothing apart from that. It's meaningless apart from that. It's dust in the wind apart from that. So you feed your faith by the same way that it came into your heart to begin with. Faith comes by hearing the Word. And so your faith is a dynamic living thing. And if you don't want an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, feed on the Word. Go to church and hear good Bible-centered sermons. And if your pastor doesn't preach them, then go to some place that will. Let your mind be fed on the word of God. Preaching is powerful. And then feed yourself every day. Every single day be in the Word so that you don't develop an evil, unbelieving heart. Instead you've got a vivid, clear sight of Christ crucified and resurrected, your Savior, your Lord.

Joel

Amen. I have one final question and then you can also give me your final comments on the passage. As a pastor with a regular preaching ministry, how has this text informed how you preach, how you shepherd, and how you pray for your people?

Andy

Great question. I'm going to say again, this is the number one text I go to, to answer the question, why should I be a covenant member of a local church? My guess is I'm speaking to a lot of people here that might be asking that question. Why is membership in a church important? People might think, especially if they partake in ministries like this, and we're not the only one. There are a lot of good teaching ministries online. Well, why should I go to church? Well, this is part of the answer. You need to be protected from your own destruction, your own indwelling sin. Romans 7, Paul says that, "The very thing I hate I do and the things that I want to do I do not do. And the reason why there is sin living in me."(Paraphrase of Romans 7:15-17) So I need protection from that. I will destroy myself if I don't get help. And God is a God of means and the means that he has given us is the ministry of the word of God as mediated or ministered to us by spiritual gifts in a local church. Not just the pastor, but godly brothers and sisters who speak the word of God. They let the word of Christ dwell in them richly and then teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. So as a pastor, I'm just going to be hitting that key on the piano over and over. You need to be a covenant member of a church. You need to commit yourself. Covenant is like a marriage. You can say “I do” to that local church. It's lesser than a marriage because that's for life. And people can in a very godly way, change that covenant by going to another church. Actually in our covenant that's even part of the covenant, if you leave, you have to be in another local church. If you go to Phoenix, we can't shepherd you. All right? So the way I look at it is this text teaches me to never let up on this. You need help. You are surrounded by assaults on your soul every day. And our hearts will become hard by the deceitfulness of sin. It's too strong for us. And so we need help. And so what I would say is be a covenant member of a good local church. And then to those that are covenant members of our church, we shepherd those people. We ask how are they doing? As a matter of fact, this very night we're going to have an elders meeting and we're going to shepherd the flock. We're going to ask how is so-and-so doing, how is so-and-so doing? And we're going to see if there's intervention needed. Do we need to come alongside them and encourage them or exhort them in some way? So that's how it is.

And then when it comes to preaching, I preach for that. I preach that people would keep developing their faith, that they can see vividly Christ crucified and resurrected. They can see vividly their own sinfulness still. They can see vividly the invisible spiritual force of evil in the heavenly realms that are arrayed against them and that they can realize they're in a war and they need help. And so they feed on the Word. If I can just be an expository preacher and just get out of the way of the text I'm preaching on, just feed it to the people, my desire is that they would have a strengthened faith and not develop this evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

Joel

Well, thank you, Andy. That's really helpful. That was Episode 7 in the Book of Hebrews. Please join us next time and we'll talk about entering God's rest, which is from Hebrews 4:1-11. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast and God bless you all.

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