Lesson Four: :7-4:16 Unbelief is DANGEROUS, but faith cancels unbelief. Key Scripture: For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. :2 Key Concept: We can be around God and not have faith in God.

Our key scripture, Hebrews 4:2 talks about “they”; the “they” referred to is the Israelites who were around God and yet they did not have faith in God. “They” saw God challenge pharaoh and the gods of Egypt and win. “They” walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. “They” ate manna that miraculously appeared on the desert floor for forty years. “They” heard God speaking from a smoking mountain. “They” were led by flaming fire and protected by a cloud. “They” saw the glory of God fall when entered the tent of meeting. …And yet, they perished due to unbelief!

This lesson uses the colossal debacle in the desert as the backdrop for a candid look at the danger of unbelief and the joy of faith in God. Hebrews 3:7-4:16 explains the ROOT of unbelief, the REST of faith, and the REMEDY that cancels unbelief.

The ROOT of Unbelief Hebrews 3:7-4:2 Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; and they did not know My ways” …As I swore in My wrath, “They shall not enter My rest.” Hebrews 3:7-11

1. A whole generation (except for Moses and ) missed God’s blessing and invoked His wrath. a. How did the Israelites (“they”) provoke God? …Can “we” provoke God? (3:7-11)

b. What is God’s response when people turn away from Him? (3:7-11)

c. How could “they” have avoided God’s anger? (3:7-11)

25 Faith brings us into God’s rest, the place where we know God is for us and with us. When “they” turned away from God’s heart, the Israelites forfeited the inheritance and blessing God had already set out for them. To provoke is to stimulate or give rise to a reaction or emotion, typically a strong or unwelcome one.

God’s plan was to bring His people out of Egypt and into the land of promise and blessing. He wanted to display His incredible love and blessing to the world through these people. God had gone before them and had houses and fields and vineyards and livestock waiting for them, but fear and distrust kept them from experiencing the rest God had prepared beforehand for them. “They” focused on their suffering and hardship and missed God.

2. a. What causes men to fall away from God? (3:12)

b. If we were to honestly examine our hearts, do you think we would see places that are evil and unbelieving? (3:12)

c. Why do we need encouragement from others? How can we encourage good heart health in others? (3:13)

The word encourage literally means “to put heart in”, while the word discourage means “to take heart out”.

3. a. What is the reward of holding fast to God’s Word and guarding our hearts against unbelief? (3:14)

b. How long must we guard our hearts against the danger of unbelief? (3:14)

c. What practical measures can we take to protect our hearts against unbelief? (3:15)

26 Faith is not automatic. Faith is the fruit of taking in God’s Word and wrestling with His truth until it is cemented in the heart and producing fruit.

For four weeks, you have been looking at this beautiful lion poised on the stage (or the video) before you. Have you been wondering why we chose a lion as the backdrop for our study? Well, here is the answer and the central truth that will revolutionize your FAITH!

When you hear the ROAR of a lion, you know it. When we walk in faith, we ROAR, because we know God is working His way and His truth in us. ROAR is an acrostic that demonstrates the way God works faith into our hearts and through our hearts into the world. God ROARS through those who ROAR. The acrostic is ROAR: Revelation---Obedience---Action---Reward

God initiates faith through REVELATION. Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me in the wilderness. Hebrews 3:8; 15

We have to tune our ears to hear the truth God is speaking. His words stretch us and challenge all the places where unbelief is hardening our hearts and blinding us to His great goodness.

God grows faith in the OBEDIENT HEART. Once we have tuned our ears to hear God, we have to train our hearts to believe Him. Heart OBEDIENCE brings our hearts in line with God’s truth.

God turns faith into ACTION. Works that glorify God flow through the heart that receives and believes God.

God REWARDS faith!

If we aren’t hearing God, we do not have faith in God. If we do not believe and obey God’s Word, our faith is misplaced.

If we leave out revelation, the first R, we only have OAR, a great visual of the striving that ensues when we try to please God without first seeking Him and listening for revelation from His heart.

4. What kept the children of Israel from entering God’s rest, physically and spiritually? (3:16-19)

27 5. a. What should we fear? (4:1)

b. What happens when God’s Word is not accompanied by faith? (4:2)

c. What is the reason for unbelief?

God has an enemy who works night and day to keep people from hearing His voice and understanding the good He has planned for them. Satan is terrified of faith filled people, so he runs interference and tries to block our ability to hear. He counters every truth with all kinds of arguments and speculations and lofty ideas. Once a person hears the truth, Satan tries to keep them from digesting it and applying it, because he knows the power of God is released in anyone who actually believes what God says and obeys it. The Holy Spirit protects the truth and guides us into the truth. When we successfully hear and believe, the Holy Spirit comes alongside to show us how to walk in the truth. Obedience generates more truth and truth obeyed generates faith. Faith grows in direct proportion to our willingness to hold onto the truth God whispers in our spirits until it can grow and flourish and produce fruit.

For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end. Hebrews 3:14

The REWARD of REST Hebrews 4:3-10 Hebrews 4:3-10 introduces the marvelous concept of REST. This may be a new concept for you, but it is an essential element in understanding how God rewards faith. REST is also the test that allows us to know if our faith is anchored in God.

6. a. How would you define rest? …How does God define REST? (4:10)

28 b. Who enters God’s rest? (4:3) …Who does not enter God’s rest?

c. Here is a mind-boggling truth about the REST of God. When did the REST of God begin? (4:3-4)

d. From what did God rest? (4:4)

From the foundation of the world, God has kept a door open between heaven and earth. All they had to do was listen to Him and obey his voice.

7. The way of REST is open, but some never find it. Why do some enter the rest of God and some fail to find it? (4:5-6)

8. a. When should we listen for God’s voice? (4:7)

b. What is God speaking to you today?

c. What are you going to do with what you hear?

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d. What will happen in your heart if you fail to heed what He is speaking to you today? (4:7)

e. What would it take for you to stop striving and enter into the REST of God?

Faith is rest. God carries the person who obeys Him. The burdens are transferred from our shoulders to His shoulders. REST is the place where we stop doing things our way and start doing things God’s way, the place where we would rather trust God than trust ourselves.

Faith is daily. Faith is a full time endeavor; it never takes a vacation. Faith looks for God in everything and searches for truth everywhere. When faith sees God and finds truth, it holds on and presses in until it is rewarded with assurance and confidence and REST.

Faith is active, not passive. If we are passive in pursuing God, we will miss Him. There is just too much competition, too much noise, and too much self.

Watchman Nee, a Chinese Christian brother from the last century, describes passivity as the inactivity of the will. The following comments are paraphrased from The Spiritual Man; Volume Three, The Path to Freedom.

Anywhere a believer does not exert his will is ground he is ceding to Satan. The Christian must learn a) to obey God’s will, b) to resist the devil’s will, and c) to exercise his own will in collaboration with the will of other saints. Recovering ground ceded to Satan is an act of the will. Personalize these I WILL’s… I WILL receive enlightenment from the Holy Spirit (listen to God’s voice and His truth). I WILL resolve—set my will toward pleasing God. Set my mind on things above. I WILL choose to engage my will to defeat Satan. I will express my choice to honor God. I WILL resist. I will exert force to contend with Satan and His will. I WILL refuse to listen to Satan or to let him control my thoughts. (Attitude) I WILL refuse to act on impulses generated by Satan. (Actions) I WILL retake ground surrendered to Satan.

30 Drifting away takes time; recovering lost ground also takes time and perseverance. “Every foot of surrendered territory must be recaptured; every bit of deception must be uncovered. The child of God needs to contend patiently with the enemy over each and every matter. He must ‘fight through.’ All ground is not necessarily removed at the moment of refusal. The evil spirits will yet mount their last struggle; the children of God must be strengthened through many battles.” (p. 131) “A spiritual Christian is one who has full authority to exercise his own volition (will). He always chooses God’s will and rejects Satan’s. While at times he is uncertain whether something is from God or from the devil, yet he is able to choose and reject.” (p. 135)

9. a. Is there still a promise of rest? (4:8-9)

b. What effect does unbelief have on others, even generations later? …Can you identify how the unbelief of others has affected you?

c. On the other hand, how does genuine faith impact others? …How has someone’s faith impacted you?

Disobedience in one generation or in one person does not and cannot cancel the promise of rest from God!

10. What amazing thing happens when we enter into God’s precious rest? (4:10)

31 The REMEDY for unbelief Hebrews 4:11-16 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. Hebrews 4:11

Diligence or disobedience? Diligence allows God’s Word to pierce and dissect the heart. Disobedience just looks away. All that is required to disobey is to respond passively to God’s Word.

11. Hebrews 4:12 is one very powerful verse, because it shows us how God’s Word is the weapon God uses to defeat unbelief and stimulate roaring faith. a. Why is God’s Word a divinely powerful weapon?

b. What happens when God’s Word enters our hearts and minds?

Apply these truths: God’s Word cuts through the line separating soul and spirit. It is the weapon He uses to help us embrace His thoughts and identify and toss the ideas we are hearing from the world. His Word separates what is flesh from what is Spirit. God’s Word pierces the joint from the marrow. It shows us where we are responding to the world and where we are responding in God’s love and life. The joint is reflexive action—action in response to stimulation from outside sources. The marrow is where life and health flow from God and produces acts of faith. When God’s life is in the DNA, the marrow produces clean blood, God’s life flows, and God directs the action. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10 God’s Word judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. God’s Word shows us what is really in our hearts. We see ourselves clearly through His Word. As we take in God’s Word and draw close to Him, we discover junk in our hearts. It is easier in the short term to ignore or excuse what we see, but junk that is not surrendered to Jesus will sit and fester and grow and take up more space in our hearts and minds. Eventually it will fill our hearts and diminish our ability to hear or see God.

12. Can anyone escape God? …Why? (4:13)

32 We will all stand before God and give an account of how we have used His precious gift of life and breath. Some will stand with Jesus; some without Him. Those who stand with Him have the incredible privilege of presenting their souls, actions, and hearts to Him while there is time to make things right. Jesus calls us to come and let Him help us see and be and do the things that please God. When we take up His generous invitation, we find REST.

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light. Matthew 11:28-30

13. a. Where can we go when God’s Word pierces the façade of self-righteousness and exposes the sin that contaminates us? (4:14) Sin is any idea, thought, opinion, or action that opposes God and His truth.

b. Who is the high priest who stands with us before God? (4:14)

c. Why can Jesus sympathize with us and with our weaknesses? (4:15)

14. a. Where must we go when God’s Word exposes wrong motives or soul life or places where Satan’s deception is contaminating God’s life? (4:16)

b. What can we expect when we go to Jesus and bow at the throne of grace? (4:16)

33 Apply these truths: All sin begins with Satan, who constantly introduces ideas that challenge and distort God’s Word. Jesus understands how Satan operates and has faced the intensity and perversity of Satan’s attacks. He was tempted in all things, as we are, yet without sin. Satan did his best to get Jesus to listen to his ideas. He knew Jesus was vulnerable to attack while He was here on earth. He also knew that was his only chance to defeat Jesus and establish Himself as the Most High. But, Jesus did not sin! Jesus took every idea to the throne in prayer and cried out to His Father for the Word that would cancel Satan’s argument. Temptation is an attack from Satan; it is an idea that entices us to move away from God—to stop listening, believing, and obeying God. When we listen to Satan’s ideas, we sin. We are not guilty when we are tempted, because we cannot keep Satan from lying and trying to entice us, but we can control the way we respond to his ideas. We are living in enemy territory, but God is here and Jesus has already overcome Satan. Remember, Jesus knows sin is from Satan and He wants to defeat Satan and set us free. But, we have to want to be set free. We have to choose God (truth) over Satan (lies). The problem is that Satan sends us lies specifically configured to appeal to what we want (lust). Let no one say when He is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. :13-15 God does not tempt anyone, because He only speaks truth. At its core, all temptation is a bad idea from Satan that appeals to the sinful nature in us that has not been redeemed in Jesus. God will lead us away from temptation if we listen, believe, and obey Him.

God wars with Satan and defeats the sin that brings forth death by speaking truth. God shines His light into our minds and hearts. (4:12) God disarms the enemy while we are in His presence. (4:13) God leads us to Jesus, our great high priest. (4:14) God confronts the sin within us. (4:15-16) Jesus stands with us as we look at our sin through God’s eyes. Jesus sympathizes with our weakness, our vulnerability to sin, but He does not coddle us or look past the sin. The sin is laid out at the throne of God. If we confess it, Jesus picks it up and tucks it into His heart. (4:15; 1 John 1:9) If we say we have not sinned, we make Jesus a liar and the truth is not in us. God redeems the place marred by sin. Jesus pours out mercy to those who trust Him with their sin. Mercy is God’s gift to those who confront their sin before the throne of God in heaven. Jesus gives grace to help us when we struggle with the temptation again. God sends us home with a care package filled with all the grace we need to defeat Satan and walk in righteousness. And we need it! What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Romans 8:31-32

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