Introduction
Faith in Christ is always contested. Ideologies clash, worldviews collide, and truth claims compete for allegiance in the marketplace of ideas, tempting Christians to abandon Christ for His rivals. This is the primary pastoral concern that Hebrews was written to address. The original recipients were being tempted by suffering and social pressure to turn away from Christ and go back to Judaism. Hebrews, then, is to show the supremacy of Christ over every rival claim and to urge Christians to persevere in wholehearted allegiance to Jesus.
Text: Read Hebrews 3:1-6 and pray.
Passage Summary: The author of Hebrews reminds his readers of the hard-hearted unbelief of the Israelites who wandered for forty years in the wilderness. He calls them to root out evil and unbelief from their own hearts and exhort one another daily to hold fast to Christ.
Discussion Questions
1. “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God” (v12). In verses 7–11, the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95, warning his readers not to be like the exodus generation, who, despite witnessing God’s power, hardened their hearts in unbelief. In verse 12, he urges his readers to “take care” that such unbelief does not take root among them, for it can ultimately lead them to fall away from God.
What do you think about the idea that someone can fall away from the living God? Have you ever known someone who fell away from their faith? What happened?
2. “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” (v13). How do we “take care” lest evil and unbelief lead us to fall away from God? In verse 13, the author of Hebrews answers this question by telling us to exhort one another every single day. For if sin and unbelief are tolerated even for a day, the author tells us we run the risk of being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Why do you think it is so hard to “exhort” or confront somebody when they are straying from God? How can we cultivate a culture of exhortation that doesn’t devolve into an oppressive environment of legalism?
3. “…That none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (v13). The reason we are to exhort one another every day is because sin tolerated today becomes sin normalized tomorrow. That is, if we tolerate unbelief and sin in our own lives and congregations, it will slowly harden our hearts to the sinfulness of sin until we eventually baptize our unbelief or even celebrate it!
Where have you personally tolerated sin in your own life, such that over time your heart became hardened and it stopped feeling like a big deal? Where do you think your Fellowship Group or church community may have blind spots, where unbelief is tolerated instead of called out and repented of?
Close in Prayer
End your time in prayer, praying Psalm 139:23-24:
Search us, O God, and know our hearts
Try us and know our anxious thoughts
And see if there be any grievous way in us
And lead us in the everlasting way