Pastor Rusty Milton
"Bringing Truth Where Change is Needed"

Sin is progressive, and there is a road it is trying to take the believer's life down--away from safety, church, support--toward a hardened place. When this happens, or when you see it happy, we are exhorted to show others the truth. We are to show them the Word so they can see clearly, and run back to Christ for restoration. We often think of exhortation as harsh words, impatience, or threats. We don't think of acting patiently, gently, and speaking in love to restore others, but that's the Biblical perspective on exhortation.

Our hearts, however, are full of deceptive sin (3:12-13). When we gradually turn away from God, his grace, and our relationships with others, we fall into hardness and deception. As Christians, sin is being addressed by the Holy Spirit; nevertheless, we can be deceived by sin from seeing the true nature of our hearts and the things of God. 

God alone knows the hidden things of the heart (4:13). He reads every thoughts, knows every feeling, and knows every motivation for why we do the things we do. We are an open book to our Creator, and yet he sympathizes and empathizes with us. He still calls us his beloved children and draws close to us.

So, in order that we might not be controlled and governed by sin, he shows us our hearts through the Word (4:11-12), which is living and active, reaching to the hidden places or our hearts and revealing our deception. Nothing is hidden from its illumination. Nothing is so broken that it cannot be healed. Nothing is so lost that it cannot be restored.

Therefore, allow the mirror of God's Word to reflect back your true heart. Be open and approachable to others' exhortation. Run to the cross when the Spirit brings insight into our hearts and we recognize our sin. 

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Hebrews 3-4 ESV

JESUS GREATER THAN MOSES

3 Therefore, holy brothers,[a] you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's[b] house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.[c]

A REST FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
    on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers put me to the test
    and saw my works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
    they have not known my ways.’
11 As I swore in my wrath,
    ‘They shall not enter my rest.’”

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts&