See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3:12-15, emphasis added)
One of the most difficult aspects of our sinful desires is their deceptiveness. We are often aware of certain longings we have that are clearly wrong and shameful, but at the same time, it is the sin struggles that we are unaware of that prove to be the most dangerous to our walk with Jesus. It is the desires that we justify and indulge that prove, in the end, to be more spiritually fatal than the sin struggles that often get the most attention. The proverbs speak to this struggle very clearly:
All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. (Proverbs 16:2)
We so quickly give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We convince ourselves that our little indulgences, secrets and compromises are all springing from "pure motives"—but it is the Lord who sees the true motives of our hearts. Again, another proverb puts it:
A person may think their own ways are right, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2)
And so, we are in a constant predicament in our lives that we are not only facing open, obvious enemies to our souls, but also deceptive, hidden enemies lurking in our motives and self-opinions. We risk, through being deceived by our sinful desires and justifying them, becoming like the godless people that David spoke about in the Psalms:
In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin. (Psalm 36:2)
So what are we to do? How are we to be protected from the worst kind of deception of all—self-deceit? Well, blessedly, while the dangers are real, we have not been left without hope by our heavenly Father. That hope is found in humility.
Humility is needed to accept the fact that we are so often the very worst judges of our own motives and character. That fact cuts right through our pride, which thinks we know ourselves the best, but the truth is that we are often the last to sense the truth of our motives and character in life. We're too close to the matter to form unbiased judgments about ourselves. And so, the Lord has given us "mirrors," so to speak, in which to see ourselves and our choices for what they truly are. The first of these is the Scriptures:
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13)
The Word of God slices and dices us, giving us no safe place to hide if we are willing to measure our attitudes and actions against its teachings.
But the Word of God is, in a sense, in our hands. We can ignore it or we can simply cherry-pick passages we feel affirm us and ignore the others. This leads us to our second "mirror," which is mentioned in our original passage:
But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:13)
We have been given, by grace, each other to speak the Word of God into one another's lives. Our Christian brothers and sisters can see us as we really are. And they can bring the Word of God to us in a way that we cannot cherry-pick. This is why we are exhorted not to miss a day in encouraging our brothers and sisters around us in their walk with God. And, of course, we must be willing to listen and humbly receive truth from our friends who speak into our lives and minister the Word of God to us, instead of giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt.
May we never neglect this wonderful grace of God found in our Christian family. May we both give and receive encouragement (in all its many forms) each day, that we may be protected from the deceitfulness of our sinful desires, and hold firmly to our walk with Christ to the very end.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matthew 23:27-28)
We need to look at the need for all of us to listen to believers around us because of the dangerous deceitfulness of sin in our lives. So often, sin is able to deceive us with its false promises because we want to believe the lie. For this reason, the writer of Hebrews calls on us to encourage one another every day so that we can avoid self-deceit.
But the battle doesn’t end here. Self-deception has a second line of defense, even after the Word of God and/or our brothers and sisters have helped us see some folly in our lives. The Bible calls this "whitewashing"—a type of paint that was around in the ancient world. The picture is simple and clear. When a wall is poorly built and falling apart, you can either fix the wall—a costly and labor-intensive task—or you can simply paint (whitewash) the wall so that faults are no longer visible. Whitewash in no way fixes the actual problem but instead covers it from human eyes. God speaks to the people of Israel about this through the prophet Ezekiel:
“‘Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, “Where is the whitewash you covered it with?” (Ezekiel 13:10-12)
In our spiritual lives, we can also "whitewash" our sins and faults by making them look "good" to others. And this is the choice we have when our sinful desires, thoughts or actions are exposed by the Word or by the saints; we can either accept the truth, or we can “cover” that sin with excuses. This is one of the biggest differences between Saul and David. See the differences in response when confronted with sin:
When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord’s instructions.”
But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”
“Enough!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”
“Tell me,” Saul replied.
Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”
“But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”
But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.”Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them. Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord.” (1 Samuel 15:13-25)
And David:
Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
“This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.” (2 Samuel 12:7-14)
See how Saul, upon being confronted with the truth of his sin, made excuses, while David's reply was simply, "I have sinned against the Lord." Here we see in Saul a classic example of "whitewashing"—justifications, lack of responsibility, even quasi-confessions ("I was afraid of the men..."), but no true humility, no willingness to give up the fruits of his sinful actions.
It is to this end that James warns us:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. (James 3:13-18)
We are so often tempted to "deny the truth" of our motives, even when exposed by the Word of God. When we do this, we enter into a deeper type of self-deception. This type is intentional, as opposed to the often unintentional "self-bias" of the kind we looked at in the previous article. And this is the kind of sin that marked the Pharisees. Our Lord Jesus called them "whitewashed tombs"—nice looking on the outside, but filled with death within.
To defend against this kind of deception, we must, like David, be willing to simply and humbly receive the Word of God, no matter how we look in the eyes of others. We must lay down our excuses and be willing to say to the Lord:
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)
Amen.
Essene Press Team
