‘Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness’ (Hebrews 3.7-8).
The fear of falling
Our seventh antidote is reflected in verses 11-12 and spelled out explicitly in Hebrews 4.1: ‘So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest . . . Let us therefore fear.’ If only the Israelites had been afraid of where their behaviour would lead. Did it not enter their minds that God may withdraw from them? They were utterly unconcerned, and so are we much of the time. We draw
from this an antidote for backsliding: we should fear what may happen if we wander from the pathway, allowing our minds to be absorbed by the things of this world, and giving small attention to prayer and the Word. As our pursuit of holiness wanes, the likelihood of God’s withdrawal from us increases.
Puritan literature is full of this. In addressing believers they used terms like ‘the abandoned soul’, to describe times when God withdraws his blessing in order to awaken believers and draw them back to the place of blessing and assurance.
It is a good thing to fear being deprived of usefulness and blessing. Sometimes believers fall into the habit of looking at everything from their personal point of view, and their own wellbeing and not from the Lord’s point of view, and their indebtedness to him. This is a road that leads to coldness, and backsliding, and then perhaps to discipline from the Lord. The prescription from Psalm 95 and Hebrews is – ‘Let us therefore fear.’
Maintain the daily review
Our final antidote gathered from Hebrews 3 is in the thirteenth verse: ‘Exhort one another daily, while it is called Today.’ This follows verse 12, ‘Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.’ This antidote is broadened to include our watch over each other. To be able to help and encourage one another requires a basis of real friendship coupled with grace and humility in the one presuming to counsel or correct. For the purpose of this article we only pick up the note of urgency and importance concerning gradual, subtle erosion of faith.
Is our trust in the promises and power of God fading? Are weeds of cynicism springing up from the old nature and choking the fruits of the new? If checking the heart is only an occasional activity the battle may be lost. ‘Daily’, is the command of the Word. The garden of the mind must be kept free from despair, pessimism, complaints about the Lord’s service, unworthy murmurings of the heart, or distrust of the promises. Purging out the negative moanings of the old nature is a daily antidote to the chill that can spread through the soul, hardening the heart, and leading into a period of backsliding.
The passage under consideration moves to these final words in verse 19, ‘So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.’ When they heard the preaching of Moses the Israelites remained unmoved and unaffected. When they prayed, God did not hear. They remained strangers to real spiritual union and assurance. And even though we are genuinely converted to Christ, we shall suffer a period of spiritual dryness and lifelessness if we take no precautions, and value no antidotes. But ever-increasing spiritual feeling and fruitfulness lies ahead for all who ‘diligently’ keep their souls in faith.