The Danger of Unbelief
Hebrews 3:1-19
7 Warnings in the Book of Hebrews
1st. Drifting
2nd. Unbelief
3rd. Immaturity
4th. Apostasy
5th. Deliberate Sin
6th. Rejecting God’s grace
7th. Refusing to hear God
Hebrews 3:12 (NIV)
See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
5 Dangers of Unbelief
1. Unbelief causes people to lose courage
Hebrews 3:1 (NIV)
Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.
Hebrews 3:6 (NIV)
But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.
1 John 2:19 (NLT)
These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.
Hebrews 3:6 (NIV)
And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.
Hebrews 3:14 (NIV)
We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.
2 Timothy 1:12 (NKJV)
for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.
Numbers 13:27-33 (NIV)
They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan." Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it." But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
2. Unbelief never has enough proof
Hebrews 3:7-9 (NIV)
So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did.
Psalm 95:8 (NIV)
do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
10 plagues that God had poured out on Egypt.
1. Nile turned to blood
2. Frogs
3. Gnats
4. Flies
5. Livestock
6. Boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Firstborn died
Exodus 17:7 (NIV)
And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"
3. Unbelief wavers between faith and faithlessness
James 1:6-8 (NIV)
But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
Hebrews 3:10 (NIV)
That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.'
Psalm 103:7 (NIV)
He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
Hebrews 3:11 (NIV)
So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'"
Hebrews 3:12 (NIV)
See to it, (Take heed) brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
4. Unbelief hardens the heart
Hebrews 3:7-8 (NIV)
So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts...
Hebrews 3:13 (NIV)
But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.
Ways that unbelief hardens your heart:
1. If you allow unbelievers to influence your life then - their unbelief will harden your heart
"The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil bears dangerous fruit."
~Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle, No. 3,217
2. If intimacy with God is lacking then unbelief is present & hardening of the heart is the result
3. When sin doesn’t bother you, unbelief is present & your heart will become hard
4. When you are comfortable saying “no” to the Holy Spirit’s voice, unbelief is present and your heart will become hard
Hebrews 3:7-8 (NIV)
So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts...
Hebrews 3:13 (NIV)
But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.
5. Unbelief diminishes God’s blessings
Hebrews 3:15 (NIV)
As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion."
2 Corinthians 6:2-3 (MSG)
God reminds us, I heard your call in the nick of time; The day you needed me, I was there to help. Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we're doing.
Hebrews 3:16 (NIV)
Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?
Hebrews 3:17-19 (NIV)
And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
