Memorise: Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: Hebrews 3:8
Read: Hebrews 3:7-19 (KJV)
7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)
12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
Bible in one year:
Job 25-29,
Matthew 16:5-28,
Hymnal:
Sing hymn 10
Message:
Unbelief has been a reoccurring problem of mankind in spite of the abundant signs and wonders which the Almighty has demonstrated over the years.
It is even more pronounced in this generation, where knowledge based on observations has tremendously increased as indicated by the Holy Spirit (Daniel 12:4). Because the human mind is crafted from childhood to be built around sense-based observations and not on faith, unbelief reigns supreme within the natural man. No wonder the Lord Jesus Christ in Luke 18:8b asked this question:
“Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”
The devil has craftily repackaged this old menace of unbelief in our time. When the authenticity of the Bible is being questioned and the relevance of its contents to the 21st century Church is being debated among high ranking church councils and leaders, should we be looking for unbelief elsewhere? Decades ago, some scholars sowed the seed of unbelief, and the Church seemed to be careless about it. They suggested that the New Testament needed to be “demystified”, so that the modern man could embrace the divine literature. In essence, certain things such as the accounts of miracles should be removed from the New Testament so that Christianity could sound logical to the modern mind.
The Evangelicals and Pentecostals never thought that this is evil seed would find its way into their fold. Now we know better. Today, we have a situation where several Church leaders don’t believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Several so-called archbishops don’t believe Jesus is the only Way that leads to salvation. Several Christians don’t believe in the reality of eternal punishment in hell fire. These and several other forms of unbelief have taken hold in the hearts of many simple hearted Christians who are too lazy to search the scriptures to experience the truth of God’s word themselves.
Little by little, the core of our faith as Christians is being eroded away. The question that Jesus asked about faith, which seemed so farfetched in His day, is increasingly becoming real in our day. This is why the Holy Spirit is saying to us in Habakkuk 2:4b:
“…but the just shall live by his faith.”
What is the state of your faith in God and His immutable word today?
Prayer Point
Father, please help me so that my faith may not be eroded by unbelief by unbelief under the guise of ‘modernism’.
Open Heavens Daily Devotional Lessons was written by Pastor E.A. Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the largest evangelical Churches in the world and also the President of Christ the Redeemer's Ministries.
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