Hebrews: Beware of Unbelief! Encourage One Another Every Day!
Hebrews 3:12-15 Hardening of the heart leads to loss of joy, loss of assurance, loss of fruitfulness, loss of purity, loss of influence, loss of peace, and loss of the power of prayer.
“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said,
“Today if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.””
Hebrews 3:12-15 NASB1995
The warning in this part of Hebrews continues, with a very sobering message to the brethren. We cannot see into the hearts and minds of others but we can know how our own hearts are responding to the living God. We have to take care that we don’t harbor an evil, unbelieving heart. Again, the message is that encouraging others in their faith needs to be done day after day and it starts TODAY. The deceitfulness of sin hardens the heart to the Gospel. I have a couple of rather lengthy things to share on this. First, Enduring Word has good commentary, with some quotes from Charles Spurgeon:
Lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief: This is strong language, but we often underestimate the terrible nature of our unbelief. Refusing to believe God is a serious sin because it shows an evil heart and a departing from the living God.
“Unbelief is not inability to understand, but unwillingness to trust… it is the will, not the intelligence, that is involved.” (William Newell)
One can truly believe God, yet be occasionally troubled by doubts. There is a doubt that wants God’s promise but is weak in faith at the moment. Unbelief isn’t weakness of faith; it sets itself in opposition to faith.
“The great sin of not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is often spoken of very lightly and in a very trifling spirit, as though it were scarcely any sin at all; yet, according to my text, and, indeed, according to the whole tenor of the Scriptures, unbelief is the giving of God the lie, and what can be worse?” (Charles Spurgeon)
“Hearken, O unbeliever, you have said, ‘I cannot believe,’ but it would be more honest if you had said, ‘I will not believe.’ The mischief lies there. Your unbelief is your fault, not your misfortune. It is a disease, but it is also a crime: it is a terrible source of misery to you, but it is justly so, for it is an atrocious offense against the God of truth.” (Spurgeon)
“Did I not hear some one say, ‘Ah, sir, I have been trying to believe for years.’ Terrible words! They make the case still worse. Imagine that after I had made a statement, a man should declare that he did not believe me, in fact, he could not believe me though he would like to do so. I should feel aggrieved certainly; but it would make matters worse if he added, ‘In fact I have been for years trying to believe you, and I cannot do it.’ What does he mean by that? What can he mean but that I am so incorrigibly false, and such a confirmed liar, that though he would like to give me some credit, he really cannot do it? With all the effort he can make in my favour, he finds it quite beyond his power to believe me? Now, a man who says, ‘I have been trying to believe in God,’ in reality says just that with regard to the Most High.” (Spurgeon)
The living God: “This divine title is of supreme significance, and shows that God’s character is the same to believers as to all else.” (Griffith-Thomas)
Exhort one another daily: If we will strengthen our faith and avoid the ruin of unbelief, we must be around other Christians who will exhort – that is, seriously encourage us. This shows our responsibility to both give exhortation and to receive exhortation, and to exhort one another daily. It is an easy thing to judge and criticize, but that is not exhortation.
If you are out of fellowship altogether, you can’t exhort or be exhorted. When we are out of fellowship there is much less around us to keep us from becoming hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
Some think that Jesus’ command to not bother with the speck in our brother’s eye while we have a log in our own (Matthew 7:5) indicates that we should not exhort one another daily. Yet Jesus told us to first deal with our log in our own eye, but then to go and deal with the speck in our brother’s eye. He did not tell us to ignore their speck, only to deal with it in proper order.
This emphasis on the importance of fellowship stands in the face of society’s thinking. A United States survey found that more than 78% of the general public and 70% of churchgoing people believed that “you can be a good Christian without attending church.” (Roof and McKinney)
“You are to watch over your brethren, to exhort one another daily, especially you who are officers of the church, or who are elderly and experienced. Be upon the watch lest any of your brethren in the church should gradually backslide, or lest any in the congregation should harden into a condition of settled unbelief, and perish in their sin. He who bids you take heed to yourself, would not have you settle down into a selfish care for yourself alone, lest you should become like Cain, who even dared to say to the Lord himself, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Spurgeon)
Lest any of you become hardened: Christians must be vigilant against hardness of heart. That hidden sin you indulge in – none suspect you of it because you hide it well. You deceive yourself, believing that it really does little harm. You can always ask forgiveness later. You can always die to self and surrender to Jesus in coming months or years. What you cannot see or sense is that your hidden sin hardens your heart. As your heart becomes harder you become less and less sensitive to your sin. You become more and more distant from Jesus. And your spiritual danger grows every day.
The deceitfulness of sin: The sin of unbelief has its root in deceit and its flower is marked by hardness (lest any of you be hardened). Unbelief and sin are deceitful because when we don’t believe God, we don’t stop believing – we simply start believing in a lie.
One great danger of sin is its deceitfulness. If it came with full revelation, full exposure of all its consequences, it would be unattractive – but the nature of sin is deceitfulness.
From the very beginning, much of the power of sin lies in its deceitfulness.
Sin is deceitful in the way that it comes to us.
Sin is deceitful in what it promises us.
Sin is deceitful in what it calls itself.
Sin is deceitful in the excuses it makes, both before and after the sin.
Partakers of Christ: Believers – those who turn from sin and self and put their life’s trust in Jesus – are gloriously called partakers of Christ.
Partakers of Christ – this is the whole picture. Partakers of His obedience, partakers of His suffering, partakers of His death, partakers of His resurrection, partakers of His victory, partakers of His plan, partakers of His power, partakers of His ministry of intercession, partakers of His work, partakers of His glory, partakers of His destiny. Saying “Partakers of Christ” says it all.
There are many ways that the believer’s union with Jesus is described:
Like a stone cemented to its foundation.
Like a vine connected to its branches.
Like a wife married to her husband.
Do not harden your hearts: We often say our hearts become hard because of what others or circumstances do to us. But the fact is that we harden our own hearts in response to what happens to us.
Some key takeaways and reflections from reading this commentary:
Transient doubts are not disbelief. Doubt afflicts the true believer, but these weaknesses are put aside when you refresh your belief daily.
Disbelief is in opposition to faith. If someone tells you that are trying to believe they are deceiving themselves. Their stubbornness at coming to belief is because it would make them question some worldly paradigm that they accept without question and this means that their hearts are hardened. My heart was hardened pretty badly in those wandering years!
We attend a very large non-denominational church. This makes it more challenging to really get to know other believers. We sit in the same seats at the service we attend and have yet to have the same people sitting near us in over a year of attendance, except for a man who is training a service dog. We are a passive audience for worship and the word with limitations for exhorting and encouraging one another in the faith. The prayers that we get from the prayer ministry reflect this lack of encouragement as people want prayers for their fragile faith. The church relies on small groups to do this task. We haven’t joined one yet. This stubbornness on our part to join a group reflects the individualistic mindset that Steve and I have still not discarded.
Sin is certainly deceitful! Many people will claim that they don’t sin because they are usually thinking about “big” sins like murder or robbery or adultery and they have never done those things. I think I shared in a long-ago devotional about a conversation I had with another passenger (who was also a guest lecturer) on a cruise that began with a discussion about abortion. This person agreed that there is a valid pro-life position so that was a good start. Somehow this ended up in a discussion about Christian belief and sin. Just like the person that Spurgeon described who said they were trying to belief, this gentleman said that it was useless for him to confess any sins because he had never sinned! I informed him of all the ways that we can sin that seem like normal human behaviors, including having the delusion that we never sin (that’s a sin of pride). It was a fascinating conversation and it did not end up in an argument, but hopefully he went away reflecting on what we discussed.
The excuses that the enemy (and your own mind) makes about sin are frightening! All sorts of behaviors manifest themselves, like guilt for abandoning friends, a “what the heck” attitude because it’s a sunny day, or a curiosity about something that could be considered sinful, but hey, everyone’s doing it, so just this once we’ll try it! Peer pressure has worked since the Garden of Eden, even among partakers of Christ. Don’t open the door to sin.
Let’s do a word search to complement this passage
Partaker comes from the Greek adjective μέτοχος or métochos (Strong’s G3353) with the following Biblical usages and Strong’s definitions (third usage):
sharing in, partaking
a partner (in a work, office, dignity)
participant, i.e. (as noun) a sharer; by implication, an associate:—fellow, partaker, partner.
We are partners and fellows in the dignity of our Savior and Lord!
I put a picture of a donkey here because these cute critters usually represent stubbornness. Hardening of the heart and disbelief arise from stubbornness of disposition, a lack of ability to offer our hearts to Him. Now I’m going to share bits and pieces from a very long Charles Spurgeon exposition that I found on Precept Austin on this tendency towards disbelief and what it does to the believer (this is totally awesome):
Dear friend, even you may fall into unbelief. Are you not aware of that fact? Have you not been already tormented with it? I daresay, like myself, you did at one time indulge the idea that old Incredulity would soon die. You took him by the heels, and you put him in the stocks, and you said to yourself,
“He will never trouble me again; I shall never doubt the promise of God any more as long as I live. I have had such a wonderful experience of God’s faithfulness, he has been so exceedingly gracious to me, that I cannot doubt him any more.”’
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Incredulity will work his wicked will upon you if he can, and you must ever remember that it is possible even for you to fall into unbelief, — you who are rejoicing, you who have hung out all your flags, and are keeping high festival, — oh, tell it not in Gath! — even you may yet be found doubting your God. May the Lord grant that you may be delivered from this evil! But it is only almighty grace which can keep you with faith pure and simple, and free from any tincture of doubt and unbelief.
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Brothers, it is easy to depart from the living God spiritually, — gradually to lose that serene and heavenly frame which is our highest privilege, to forget Him Who ought ever to be before our eyes as the chief factor in our entire life, the great All-in-all, compared with Whom everything else is but as a dream, a fleeting shadow. [Bold text was added on Precept Austin].
I bear my witness that, to walk with the living God, is life; but to get away from Him, is death; and that, in proportion as we begin to depart and put a distance between ourselves and the great Invisible, in that proportion our life ebbs away, and we get to be sickly, and scarcely alive. Then doubts arise as to whether we are the people of God at all; and it is sad that such a question as that should ever be possible.
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But, my brethren, if you do not continue steadfast and firm in your faith in its simplicity, if your evil heart of unbelief begins to prevail, and you are turned aside from your confidence in Christ, and so begin to get away from God, you will be great losers thereby even if you do manage to get to heaven, “saved, yet so as by fire.”
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR JOY
For, first, you will lose your joy. That is no small thing. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” The joy of the Lord is one of the means by which you are to be made useful. The joy of the Lord sweetens trial, lightens care, and turns service into delight but if you lose that joy, you are as one who travels alone in the dark, and who stumbles and falls. I pray you, do not depart from the living God in any degree, for if you do so, your joy will begin to get clouded, the brightness and the warmth of it will be taken from you, and you will become faint-hearted, trembling, timorous, and sad. If the evil heart of unbelief shall prevail against you, depend upon it you will lose your joy.
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR ASSURANCE
Then you may be certain, also, that you will lose your assurance. Full assurance cannot exist with unholiness. One has well said,
“If thine assurance doth not make thee leave off sinning, thy sinning will make thee leave off enjoying assurance;”
and I am sure that it is so. If we begin to look to second causes, and do not trust in God, we shall then put forth our hand to some one sin or another; and when we do that, we cannot be certain that we are children of God at all.
That man who feels sure of his safety, and yet can play with sin, and find pleasure in it, may be assured of his own damnation.
I remember, in my boyhood, one, who never talked so religiously as when he was the worse for drink; and in public, before ungodly men, he used to boast of his full assurance of salvation, when he was much too far gone to be assured that he would get home in safety that night. That kind of conduct is atrocious, and no one would excuse it for a moment; we know that men who talk so only proclaim their own shame to their own eternal disgrace. But do not let any of us indulge even in a measure of that kind of sin. That, evil heart of unbelief will not only lead us away from a holy walk with God, but it will also take from us our assurance if it is an assurance that is worth, the having.
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FRUITFULNESS
Then, next, it will take from us our fruitfulness. Dear child of God, I am sure that you do not wish to live here without doing good to others; but how can you do good if you are not yourself good?
You cannot bring forth fruit unto holiness unless you are watered with the dew of heaven, and the sunlight of God shines upon you; and you will not have either of those blessings if you live carelessy, and if you fall into an unbelieving state of mind, and get away from contact with the everliving God.
If any of you have tried this kind of life, you must have become painfully aware what it is to have all the sap and. juice, out of which the clusters ought to come, dried up within the tree, and everything turned to barrenness because you have yourself departed from God.
YOU WILL LOSE PURITY
These are all serious losses to a child of God; it is no light matter for you to lose joy, and assurance, and fruitfulness; but the evil heart of unbelief will cause you also to lose purity. There is a delicate bloom upon the fruit that grows in Christ’s garden, where He, as the Gardener, cultivates it with tender care; but sin comes, and rubs away that bloom, and spoils the fruit. If you and I fall into sin, we shall have to weep bitterly over it; we shall not be able to enjoy the high privilege which belongs to those who keep their garments unspotted from the world. Of these the Savior says, “They shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.”
I believe that, of all fortes of spiritual loss, one of the worst is to lose tenderness of conscience, quickness of apprehension when sin is near, — to lose a sense of cleanness of heard and of sanctification by the Spirit of God.
When those are gone, we are something like Adam when he lost Paradise, and we turn our faces back again toward that purity, and cry to the Lord to restore it, as we moan rather than sing, —
“Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?”Take care that you do not lose it, for it will hardly be likely to be restored to you in the same degree as you had it at the first.
YOU WILL LOSE PEACE
The child of God who wanders away also loses peace, and many other attainments of the spiritual life. He is like a boy who is sent down from the top of the class; it may take him a long time to get up again. Or he is like the man who has risen from the ranks, but who has misbehaved himself, and is therefore made a private again. He who once could lead the people of God has to be very thankful that he is permitted to go into the rear rank, and to follow where others lead, he who could talk for God boldly now has to sing very small, and let others speak. He who used to encourage others now needs to be encouraged himself. He was once strong in faith, and a mighty man of valor, but now he has to use Mr. Ready-to-halt’s crutches, and to go along with the feeble ones among the pilgrims, because an evil heart of unbelief has made him depart from the living God.
YOU WILL LOSE INFLUENCE
This brings, of course, a loss of influence with the people of God, and with worldlings, too; for when a man has injured his reputation, it is not soon repaired again. If he has slipped and fallen, brethren weep over him, and love him, and seek to restore him, but they do not trust him as they used to do. They are some little while before they dare to follow where he leads the way. I have seen a man, whose judgment was like that of Solomon, whose position in the midst of his brethren was that of a hero inciting them to daring deeds; but he has fallen, and all Israel has wept over him. Perhaps there has been no shameful sin, but yet there has been an evident decline in spirituality, and in force and power. The Lord has left him, and great Samson, though he shakes himself as aforetime, is fast bound in chains, and his eyes have been put out. Happy will he be if, at; some future day, when the locks of his hair have grown again, he shall be able, to pull down the temple of the Philistine lords upon them; but so far as his brethren are concerned, he will have to be the object of loving pity rather than of joyful confidence.
YOU WILL LOSE POWER IN PRAYER
Do not tell me, then, that you do not lose anything by getting into a state of unbelief, and departing from God, for, in addition to all this, such a child of God loses power in prayer. It is
“the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man” that “availeth much.”
Our Lord Jesus told his disciples,
“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”
But disobedient children will find that the Father will turn a deaf ear to their supplication. “No,” he will say, “you would not hearken to me, neither will I hearken to you,” for God has a way of walking contrary to them that walk contrary to Him. Then there very often follow, at the back of that, chastisements heavy and multiplied.
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Now, in the second place, and very briefly, I want to apply my text to All In The Visible Church, whether they are indeed God’s people or not. If you profess to belong to Christ, it is enough for my present purpose. “Take heed,” I pray you, professing Christians, “lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”
For, first, many professors have had an evil heart. It is not every church-member who has a new heart and a right spirit. Judas was in the church, but he had an evil heart, and was a devil. It may be so with me, my brother, or with you. There are some in the church who have no real faith in Christ. Their very heart is crammed full of unbelief, though they pretend that they have believed in Christ. I know that it is so; we cannot help observing that there are unbelievers who bear the name of Christians.
Many of these have turned aside. To our sorrow, we have lived to see it in far too many cases; they were members of churches, but they grew weary of the good way. Nothing pleased them; the preacher who used to charm them has lost all his power over them. Prayer-meetings are dull, and they would rather not have anything at all to do with religion. We have known some go back to the world for no reason that they dared even to tell themselves; it was because of the fickleness of their unregenerate spirits.
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Remember, dear friends, that your unbelief is an affair of your heart. It is not an evil head of unbelief, but “an evil heart of unbelief” of which the apostle speaks; and that is what is wrong with you.
Oh, my! This hit me like a ton of bricks! I need to read this over and over again. The original sermon can be found here: https://www.spurgeongems.org/sermon/chs2552.pdf.
I know I shared a large part of it, but the entire thing is worth reading. I really pray that modern-day pastors would preach stuff half this compelling, because it might make a difference to those who are half-hearted (which means they are hardened against the word). One more from Mr. Spurgeon (I downloaded this from the Charles Spurgeon group on Facebook):
That’s probably enough to chew on for this devotional. My next devotional examines the last four verses in Hebrews 3 (16-19) - We are left in the wilderness because of our disbelief.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Please help me to fight the deceitfulness of sin and the creeping evil of disbelief. I know that I still block some of the joys of being a partaker in Your assurance of my salvation and eternal life because my heart is still hardened in many ways. Please fill my heart with Your word! I ask for Your help! Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.Lockman.org
Enduring Word commentary by David Guzik is used with written permission. Minor formatting changes have been made to improve readability.
The Blue Letter Bible was accessed on 10/30/2025 to review the lexicon for partakers.
Precept Austin was accessed on 10/30/2025 to review commentary for Hebrews 3:12-15.