Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 257

September 14;     Hebrews 3:13;      207/260(IV);      ‘Exhort One Another’

Hebrews 3:13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Sin is deceitful.  Hebrews 11:25 teaches that sin is a pleasure.  The verse does not stop there.  Sin is a pleasure for a season to lure you in and then sin will hurt you desperately.  Religion teaches that if you sin, God will punish you.  The biblical truth is that it is not the Lord who punishes you if you sin, it is the sin itself.  Verse 13 tells us that you can have an evil heart of unbelief, caused by the deception of the devil and sin, which leads to a ‘backslidden’ condition.  Here is one place where believers in a local church help each other.  If you know that another Christian is having a tough time and is yielding to sin, we have the responsibility to do what we can to help them ‘get back on track’ with the Lord.  The devil is a liar and his goal is to hurt the believer yielding to sin and neutralize him or her so that they do not continue doing the work of the ministry.  The allurement of the world, with all of its glitz and glamor, quickly turns into a nightmare when life happens.  A caring brother or sister in the Lord, because they love their fellow Christian, will do everything they can to help that person walk away from their backsliding and get right with God again.  There are many Christians today who do not attend a local church, declaring that you do not have to attend a church to be a strong, practicing Christian.  That is not true.  Just this one benefit of a local church, knowing and being in fellowship with several others in the church and caring enough to reach out to a believer going in the wrong direction makes ‘belonging’ vital.