The Word of God challenges us to believe God. This belief is not just that we agree with some of the propositions in the Bible like there is a God or we need a Savior. Belief requires a response from us that will affect what we think, say and do. Believing God involves obedience to God.

God tells us to do things and we wonder if it is safe. God tells us to give 10% of what he gives us back to him, but we wonder if it is financially prudent to do that. Is it safe? God tells us to be ready to share with others the hope we have in Christ. We wonder how the other person will respond. Will it hurt our relationship with them? Will people think I’m strange if I share my faith?

We worry about the risks of following God in obedience. The children of Israel in the desert worried about obeying God. How could they live in the desert with no water? Where would they get food? When they got to the Promised Land, they thought it too risky to obey God and go in. What about the giants? How could they survive?

Why did the children of Israel doubt God’s power to give them all they needed? Did he not deliver them from Pharaoh through the 10 plagues and through the Red Sea? The Lord showed his love for them as well as his power to provide. But they operated out of their own experience. They wanted to go back to what they knew and were comfortable with. Unfortunately all they knew was slavery in Egypt.

Are we all that different? We operate out of our experience and hesitate to do something unusual, even when God is calling us to do it. Unfortunately, our experience has to do with sin. Scripture says that anyone who sins is a slave to sin. In many ways we are very much like the Israelites in the desert. We are tempted to return to our old (sinful) ways of doing things rather than do what God is calling us to do. The result of the Israelites doing this was that they died in the desert and never entered God’s rest. That must not become true of us.

We would be quicker to obey God’s leading if we realized that the risk of obeying God is smaller than the risk of disobeying him. We are lulled into thinking that we are safer where we are than we would be if we obeyed God. The truth is, we are not. In fact, the perils of unbelief include never entering into God’s rest. How dangerous is that!

Verse 12 warns us not to have unbelieving hearts that turn from the living God like those who perished in the desert. We often think of those who turn from God as the rough-looking and rough-sounding types. But those with unbelieving hearts in the desert were the respectable leaders who thought it more risky to trust God than to stay in the desert or even return to slavery in Egypt.

Have you been led by God to do something but you hesitated because it was out of your comfort zone? In what ways have we as a congregation not done the things God was leading us because they were unfamiliar? The temptation to have unbelieving hearts that turn from God comes to us as well.

In this daily fight to obey God, we are to encourage each other. But encourage one another daily, as long as it called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. Sin is subtle and deceitful. We often do not see it for what it is. That is why we need one another to encourage each other to believe and obey. And we need each other to challenge us when we are deceived by sin and remain in unbelief.

Verse 14 reminds us that our confidence in receiving God’s rest and blessing comes from our sharing in Christ. The reason we respond to God in obedience is because of God. We are promised to share in the glory of Christ. We are not left to wrestle alone with our doubts or even our sins. In Christ we have forgiveness and eternal life.

In the resurrection of Christ we have hope for eternal life. Through the power of Christ we will endure difficulties. In Christ we have the reason to know that God loves us and will work for the good in all the things that we endure in this life.

God calls us to believe today. It does not matter that we did not believe yesterday. Today is our opportunity. Our part is to believe, respond and follow what God has told us to do. This means forsaking the familiar ways that lead us away from God. Anyone who sins is a slave to sin. God calls us away from slavery into his promised rest. This is for us today if we hear his voice, believe and follow.