The Root of Unbelief

What is the root of unbelief?  It is disobedience.  In other words, the root of disobedience is even though you hear God’s voice, you harden your heart (vv.7, 13, 15) and disobey God’s commands (v.18).  And when your heart is harden, even though you hear God’s voice you still test Him (vv.8, 9).  The Israelite in the Exodus time tested God for 40 years in the desert (v.9).  And the result was that they made God angry (v.10).  So God declared on oath in His anger, “They shall never enter my rest” (v.11).  Then, how did they harden their hearts?  It is “by sin’s deceitfulness” (v.13).  In other words, because of sin’s deceitfulness, their hearts were going astray and they had not known God’s ways (v.10).  As a result, they disobeyed God’s commands and thus their hearts were hardened (v.18).  According to the writer of Hebrews, this kind of heart is “a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (v.12).  That’s why he exults the recipients of the Hebrews letter to encourage one another daily, “as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (v.13).  He encourages us to “hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first” (v.14).  As God promised to us, He gave us “a new heart” and “a new spirit” is us (Ezek..36:26).  He removed from us our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh (soft heart) (v.26).  And He gave us His Spirit and moved us to keep His commands (v.27).  Now the question is “Are we guarding our hearts?”  The Wise Teacher says that we must guard our heart  “for it is the wellspring of life” (Prov.4:23).  We must be afraid that our hearts maybe hardened little by little.  And it is because we do not fear God anymore (Isa.63:17) when our hearts is being hardened and thus we disobey Him.  Thus, we must be clear minded and self-controlled so that we can pray (1 Pet.4:7).  We must be alert (5:8).  We must ask God to protect our hearts.