Read Genesis 45, Job 11, and Hebrews 3.
This devotional is about Hebrews 3.
Although the grace of God caused us to believe in Christ and keeps us believing in him, the pull of sin never goes away in this lifetime. The sin nature that each of us was born with pulls us toward temptation like a magnet pulls a nail. This chapter in Hebrews taught us that Christ was greater than Moses but just as Moses, the great lawgiver, dealt constantly with sinful rebellion from the people, we–the church–see people who claim to be among us pulled into wickedness and unbelief.
Verses 12-14 urge us to keep an eye our hearts in order to guard against the pull of unbelief. Verse 13, in particular, reminds us that how easy it is to be drawn back into sin. By calling it “sin’s deceitfulness,” the author of Hebrews labels the tendency that we all know too well. That tendency is the tendency to think we can sin without anyone ever knowing or that we can sin without any negative consequences or that we can sin because, in our case, it is justifiable. These lies and others call to us and tempt us to disobey God’s word and to pull away from following Christ.
One of the defenses against sin’s deceitfulness is the community of other believers we call the church. Verse 13 commands us to “encourage one another daily… so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” This is a call to fellowship that is much deeper than chatting over donuts and coffee on Sunday morning. It is a call to fellowship that urges us to get involved in each other’s lives, not so that we can pick each other apart and question each other’s salvation, but so that we can redirect each other’s attention back to Christ and away from the lies that sin is constantly telling us. Verse 14 tells us that continuing to cling to Christ to the end is really the only way to know that we belong to him: “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.” We don’t hold to this conviction in order to become Christians; rather, holding our conviction is the evidence that we did come to share in Christ on the day of our salvation.
Think about your friends in our church. Is there anyone who seems to be wavering in faith? Anyone who seems like they are dropping out? Anyone who’s commitment to the Word of Christ seems to have cooled? Maybe the Lord is bringing that person to your mind today so that you can encourage him or her to hold on to Jesus and not trade him in for the false promises of disobedience and unbelief.