Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 103

April 13;    Hebrews 3:12;    103/260(II);    ‘Beware Brethren’

Hebrews 3:12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God;

Paul (I believe he wrote Hebrews under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) is writing to Christians.  He warns us to beware of unbelief.  He calls unbelief an evil heart.  Everything that we receive from the Lord we receive by faith.  The Bible was written by God the Holy Spirit to show us reality and to build our faith in what He says.  We are told that we cannot please the Lord without faith.  This is so important to the Lord that when He sees some depart from Him by an evil heart of unbelief He warns us not to in His Word.  Those who Paul is warning are Christians because Paul calls them brethren.  We are not talking here about their losing their salvation.  We are talking about their missing out on all of the blessings that are legally theirs by faith.  When we do not believe the Word, to the Lord it is as if we turned our back on Him and went a different way.  In the Book of Numbers, Moses sent twelve spies, one from each of the tribes of Israel to spy out Canaan land.  This is the land that the Lord told the Jews time after time that He was giving them.  Ten of the spies told Moses that the people in the land were too strong for them and the Jews would not be able to conquer them.  Joshua and Caleb were the only two spies who believed the Lord when He said He was giving the Jews the land.  Because of the negative report of the ten spies and their refusal to believe the Lord, the Jews sided in with the ten spies and complained bitterly against Moses (they did this a lot).  I said all of this to say that the Lord called their report an evil report.  The Lord hates it when we do not believe Him.