Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Unbelief vs Faith

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening Scripture

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Passover which led us back to the book of Exodus with the first Passover and God’s

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God’s mighty act of deliverance, or it recounts both His deliverance and Israel’s failure to enter the Promised Land. It is a frequent theme in Scripture. There’s numerous historical recitals of the event, and then there’s various biblical commentary on what happened and why it happened, happened. One of those recountings is here in Psalm 78, and we won’t read it all, but it’s a long Psalm and it talks about Israel’s history and unfortunately Israel’s unfaithfulness.

In Psalm 78 it says in verse 12, marvelous things he did, meaning God, in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt in the field of Zoan, he divided the sea and caused them to pass through. And he made the water stand up like a heap. In the daytime also he led them with the cloud and all the night with the light of fire. He put the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink in abundance like the depths. He also brought streams out of the rock and caused waters to run down like rivers. So So, mighty power in the plagues. They had already seen God’s the mighty power in opening, but even in the wilderness, where God did various miracles. Now you would think, you would think, are you thinking with me? You would think, that after seeing not just the plagues, but just the parting of the Red Sea, but the things mentioned here, the splitting on the rock, the water coming out, you would think that Israel would believe. Wouldn’t you think that? Would you think that? You would think they’d believe. Think of all the things that they saw, all the miracles that they saw right before their eyes. So what did they do? 17 but they sinned even more against him by rebelling against the most high in the wilderness and they tested God in their heart by asking for food of their fancy. Yes, they spoke against God. They said, can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, he struck the rock so that the waters gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can he provide meat for his people? So in other words, in spite of all that they had seen, they still did not believe. Verse 21 says God was angry with them. Verse 22, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation.

Yet, in spite of that, He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of heaven. He rained down manna on them to eat and gave them the bread of heaven. So it talks about God provided for them continually. It says in verse 32, in spite of this, they still sinned and did not believe in his wondrous works. Therefore, there are days he consumed in futility and there are years in fear. So this Psalm goes on and on and there’s. There’s a theme. God does this. God worked miracles. They didn’t believe. chasing them, they kind of repented, but not really, they didn’t believe. God does more miracles, they don’t believe. So this is a really a Psalm reciting the lack of faith or the unfaithfulness of Israel, which is why, unfortunately, they ended up spending their days in futility, it says, very sadly, and their years in fear. In other words, They never got to the Promised Land. Many other Psalms refer to this. We’ll just look at one more quickly. Psalm 95 verse 7 says, For He is our God, meaning Jehovah, we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your heart in rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness. So here’s another rehearsal of the wilderness situation. When your fathers tested me, they tried me, though they saw my wrath they shall not enter my rest.“ Now the wilderness experience is also referred to in the New Testament several places. We’re only going to look at one, but there are several places. Go to the book of Hebrews chapter chapter 3 because in Hebrews chapter 3 we have the author of Hebrews really quoting Psalm 95 and exhorting Christians exhorting believers, believers, Christians professing Christians to enter into the rest that God had provided. Just as Israel was called to enter into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So God is calling his people to enter into a life of victory and a life of abundance. A life of abundance. A life of love, peace, joy. A life of security. A life of blessing that God has called his people to. Psalm, excuse me, Hebrews 3, quoting Psalm 95 with minor variations, he says in verse 7, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tested me and tried me, and saw my works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and said, They always go astray in their They have not known my ways, so I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.” So now he applies this passage to professing Christians. Be aware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast, fast the beginning of our confidence, steadfast to the end, while it is said, today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, rebellion. For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now, with whom was he angry for 40 years? Was it not those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who did not obey? Some of your versions will say those who did not believe, and I’ll explain why later. So we see, verse 19, so we see that they cannot enter in because of unbelief. And he goes on and exhorts the church, verse 11, for 11, let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience or could be translated unbelief. So we see that Israel did not enter into the Promised Land, the apostle tells us, because of unbelief. Now when you read the story, and then you read the commentary on the story in the Old Testament, Israel did a lot of things in the wilderness that weren’t good. And Paul recounts those in 1 Corinthians 10. He talks about how they lusted, how they committed idolatry, how they committed sexual immorality, how they murmured and complained, how they tested Christ, okay. They did a variety of bad things, if you will. However. However, The root problem, the root problem according to the apostle here was unbelief. Yes, they the committed a variety of sins, but the fundamental sin, the sin that ultimately kept them in the wilderness, the sin that was really behind the testing and attempting, the sin that was behind their rebellion, it was the sin of unbelief. The sin of unbelief. called Israel out of bondage, he did not call them to live in the wilderness. Any Amens? He did not call them to live in the wilderness. He did not call them to spend their generation in wandering and futility. God had given them a word and a promise that he was calling them out of bondage, he was calling them into a land flowing with milk and honey. God called Israel out of Egypt and into a land of blessing, but they didn’t make it into the land of blessing because they died in the wilderness due to not the will of God, but their unbelief.

Their unbelief. We must understand this. Some commentators read the Israel experience incorrectly in my opinion, as if the wilderness experience is a type of the Christian life. It is a type of the failed Christian life. It the Joshua, when they enter and they conquer their enemies, that is the type of the Christian life. You’re in the land of victory, you’re in the land of promise, you’re fighting, but you’re winning. You hearing me? God did not want the first generation to die in the wilderness. That was not his will for them. His will for them was that they would enter the Promised Land and that they would be blessed. That was his will for them. They ended up wandering because, Paul says, excuse me, Hebrews says, because of their own unbelief. Verse 19, 3.19, so we see Do we see? So we see that they cannot enter in because of their unbelief.

A Hard Heart or a Soft Heart

So we need to talk about faith and unbelief. We need to understand both the gravity of

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unbelief as well as the importance of faith. So we’re going to do a little comparison today between unbelief and faith. and if I title the sermon, I would call it testing or resting. Testing or resting. Unbelief or faith. So let’s note a few things here. the Apostle says about unbelief. Here in Hebrews 3, he says in verse 8, he says, Today if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion in the day of trial in the wilderness. So the unbelief is a hardness of heart, a hardness of heart.

Unbelief is a condition in which the heart is drying up. The word literally here means dry, rough, and then hard. So ground, if the rain comes periodically, the ground says relatively soft, right? But when there’s no water, eventually the ground gets dry and then after it dries long enough, it gets very hard. So this is the image here. The unbelievinging heart is a heart that has hardened, the Apostle says. And the evidence of this is that the heart is resist the work of God or is stubborn. It is stubborn. The scripture talks about the stubborn heart, the hard heart. It talks about being stiff necked. The word stiff there means hard, being hard-necked. It is this idea of not yielding to God. resisting God. We’re going to come back here, but in Acts 7, if you want to look at it with me, Stephen, as he was right before he was martyred, he’s preaching and he’s giving a history lesson about Israel. This is another New Testament passage that talks about Israel’s exodus and their journey It’s a long passage. We’re gonna read a little bit So in acts 734 remember Stevens preaching before the Sanhedrin Verse 34 he’s quoting the Old Testament. I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt I have heard their groaning and have come down to deliver them and now come I will send you to Egypt This Moses whom they rejected saying, Who made your ruler? And a judge is the one God sent to be the ruler and deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He brought him out after he had shown wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness forty years. Signs in Egypt, signs of the plague, signs of the sea, signs of the wilderness. This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, The Lord your God will raise for you a prophet like me from your brother and him, you shall hear. This is he who in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers the one who received the living oracles to give to us, whom,“ notice verse 39, ”…whom your fathers would not obey but rejected, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt. That phrase just chills down my spine. In their heart they turned back to Egypt. And then he goes on and he talks more and he says in verse 51, he says to them, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did so do you. This word stiff-necked is the same word as in Hebrews. It means to be a hard-necked. It means not to yield or as we should say, it means to be stubborn and obstinate. Such is the nature of unbelief. In contrast to that, faith is a soft heart. It is a soft heart. Faith, whereas unbelief resists the word, what does faith do? Faith receives the word. It takes in the word. And so just as the hard heart is intractable and it doesn’t yield, it’s really, it’s unteachable. Okay, it’s unteachable. The heart of faith, the soft heart receives the word. The soft heart, the faith heart is a teachable heart. Right? And Jesus uses the picture of soil in his parable, the sowers, and he talks about the different kinds of soil. Some of the soil is very hard, the seed doesn’t even go down. Satan comes and takes it, some seed goes down a little bit and it springs up, it gets hot out, it just withers away, some’s rocky, but there’s the good ground. The good ground is where the word is sown and the word penetrates, it goes in and then it springs up and Why? Because the soil, is a soft soil. It’s good soil. It’s a teachable soil. A teachable soul. So, unbelief is a hard heart, faith is a soft heart.

A Wandering Heart

Secondly, unbelief is a wandering heart. A wandering heart. Not wonder — wander. The wandering heart. Back in Hebrews, he says here in verse 10, Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said they always go astray in their heart. Now your version may read it somewhat differently, but this word go astray literally means to wander. And when you think about Israel in the wilderness, what were they doing? They’re wandering around. I mean, they’re going here, you know, wait a while, then they move, and they go here, wait a while, then they move, and then they go here, wait a while, then, oh, go back here, then we’re going to go here, then we’re going to go here, They’re just kind of wandering around. They’re wandering around. They’re wandering around. The point is, their physical wandering in the wilderness, that physical wandering was an expression of the fact that their heart was wandering. They had a heart problem. They didn’t have a location problem. They didn’t have a water problem. They didn’t have a food problem. Israel had a heart problem. And in their heart, they were wandering around. They were wandering from God, if you will. And that then worked its way out in their actual behavior. And they ended up wandering around the wilderness, because first they were wandering in their hearts. So unbelief is a heart that wanders. It strays, if you will. Therefore it ends up departing from God.

The heart of faith is the exact opposite, whereas the evil heart wanders and then ends up departing. Notice verse 12. He says, beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. That word departing literally is the word we use for apostasy. So the heart wanders and it doesn’t just wander around, it wanders in a particular direction spiritually. Physically, Israel was basically going around in circles, but spiritually they they were going away from God. And so even at any given moment, if they were walking toward the land, let’s assume the Promised Land was over there, at any given moment in their journey, if they were actually facing the Promised Land and walking toward the Promised Land, in their hearts, they were walking away from God. They were departing from God in their hearts. And that’s what unbelief is. It is an apostasy from God. It is a departure from God. The faith, on the other hand, instead of being a wandering heart or an evil heart that departs from God, it’s a good heart. It’s It is a steadfast heart. It is a focused heart. And instead of departing from God, what is faith through? Faith draws near to God. Faith draws near. Faith holds on to God and to His word.

That’s why the author says here in Hebrews, It keeps on using this phrase, hold fast. Hebrews 6, 3-6, excuse me, says, but Christ has a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast, hold fast, then notice again in verse 14, for we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold, or it could be translated, hold fast, the beginning of our confidence, steadfast to the end. So whereas unbelief is a letting go, unbelief is a letting go of God’s word and a letting go of God, faith is the opposite. Faith is a focusing on God, a drawing near to God, a holding on to God and to His word.

Amen.

Rebellion

Thirdly, unbelief is called rebellion. We could say that this rebellion is the fruit of unbelief, but it is. It’s the fruit, but in other sense, it’s part of it. Notice here in verse 8, he says, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion the day of trial. And in verse 15, he says, today if you hear his voice in the heart, your heart is as in the rebellion. The unbelief is an act of rebellion in the heart. It’s a disposition, we should say, of rebellion. Because when God gives his word, what is the appropriate response? Well, you say the appropriate response is faith, right? To believe his word. But when we believe His Word, what are we doing? One of the things we’re doing when we believe His Word is we are submitting to His Word. We’re submitting to it. We’re saying His Word. Word is true, His. Word is right, We’re saying his word is authoritative. You could say a lot of things. But His Word is the word. His word is the word. Not my word is the word. Not my feelings are the word. His word is the word.

Let God be true, but every man a liar, Paul says. In other words, let God’s word stand no matter what people say, no matter what people think God’s word is true. God’s Word is sure. God’s Word is settled forever in heaven. And Jesus said not one jot or tittle, not one point, not one stroke, not one letter, no aspect of His Word will pass away till all is fulfilled. That’s how important His Word is. So God’s word is the word and when we we have the word of God we are called to not just hold on to that word but we are called to submit to that word so unbelief is an act of rebellion against the authority of God’s word it is saying to God to God God, you are not in charge. I’m in charge. Your word will not tell me what to do. My word will tell me what to do. Unbelief is rebellion, but faith is submission. It is submitting to the word and to the authority. And just as unbelief produces testing of God, this rebellion says, they rebelled against me and they tested me. Rebellion produces testing, submission, you listening? Submission produces resting. Rebellion produces testing, submission produces resting. And when we submit to God, we are in a place, not only a blessing and prosperity, we’re in the place of peace. We have peace with God. We are not striving with Him. We’re not debating with Him. We’re not arguing with Him. We’re saying, as Jesus said in the Garden, thy will be done. Not my will. Thy will be done.

Here’s the reason Jesus said to us, take my yoke upon you.

Because to follow Jesus is to follow in submission to His will.

You know, we use this phrase today, control freak, right? various contexts of analyzing relationships, and so-and-so is a control freak. And some of you might be control freaks, I don’t know. But I know this. In our relationship with God, the human heart is a control freak.

We want to be in control. We do. We do. We want God. We want His blessing. We want all the good things that he can give us. But the human art doesn’t want to fully submit. And therefore, by not submitting, it never comes to a place of real rest and peace. The evil heart is the heart that is striving and rebelling against God, whereas the heart of faith is the heart that is submitting, and therefore it is resting in God. You can know, if you have, if you’re, one of the ways you can know if you’re walking in faith is, is do you genuinely have peace? Or are you striving with God? The Hebrews goes on to say that unbelief provokes God, it provokes Him.

In Hebrews 3, it says in verse 10, therefore I was angry with this generation, and so they always go astray in their heart. Verse 11, so I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest. Paul puts it very nicely in 1- 1 Corinthians 10, talking about this experience, and he says, with many of them, God was not well pleased. profound understatement, right? He was not happy. God was not happy about this. So, you know, I think that we do not appreciate the seriousness of unbelief. I don’t think that we appreciate how God sees it because what we see here in Hebrews is some pretty strong language and when you read Psalm 95 or Psalm 78 or Psalm 106 and many, many scriptures that refer to this wilderness experience what you see as a God is displeased, to put it mildly, that he’s angry with the unbelief of his. Unbelief is offensive to God. It provokes him to chase on us. It provoked him to punish Israel in the wilderness. And he got so provoked that the first generation never made it, because they continued to test him. Contrary to unbelief provoking God, faith pleases God. Faith pleases God. As a matter of fact, hold your place here in Hebrews 3 and go to Hebrews 11, because the author of Hebrews says this very thing. Hebrews 11 and 1, it says, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Now what that means, we’re going to unpack in a future sermon. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the world were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. And he gives some examples of faith in verse 6, it says, But without faith it is impossible to please him. Without faith it’s impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. So whereas unbelief provokes God, it’s offensive to him. Faith pleases him. And why that is, we’re going to talk more about at a future time.

An Unprofitable Heart

Last point I want to make is that the unbelieving heart is unprofitable.

Unprofitable. Back in Hebrews 3 and 4, after recounting the wilderness experience, the author says in Hebrews 4.1, the author says in Hebrews 4:1, therefore since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to come short of it for indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them but the word which they heard did not profit them not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. Some of you have heard it saying not being mixed with those who have faith or something but it amounts to the same thing that the problem and therefore they did not profit from the Word. You know, the Word of God is not like some magical incantation, that you just read it and puff. That’s not how it works, okay? The Word to be profitable in our lives, it has to be believed. It has to be embraced by faith. We have to take hold of it. Now this is obvious when you’re talking about justifying faith or saving faith, right? If you talk to someone about Jesus and you tell them that God loves them and Jesus Christ died for them and rose from the dead, that word doesn’t do them any good unless they believe it, right? It’s only when they believe the word. Now how many of you knew the gospel before you actually believe the gospel? Yeah, right. me too. I heard the gospel repeatedly for at least a year. Over and over I heard the gospel and over and over I resisted the gospel. I hardened my heart against the gospel. I did not receive or believe. Therefore, if I had died in that state, I would have spent eternity separated from Christ. Because the word, even though I had the word preached to me and I heard the word, it didn’t do me any good. Was there a problem with the word? No. The problem isn’t the word. The problem was the condition of my heart. And as a result of my unbelief, I didn’t benefit from the word. The word didn’t profit me, if you will. And so unbelief is unprofitable in the sense that what it leads to provoking God, which we’ll talk more about at a future date. But it’s unprofitable in the sense that the result is futility. It says in Psalm 78 or here, wandering, spiritual barrenness. So for the Christian who may be saved, maybe, I don’t know, but who doesn’t walk in faith, if the walk in faith isn’t embracing the word by faith. Their life will be unfruitful. Their life will be barren. The fact that God has made them promises, the fact that the Holy Spirit really does live inside of them if they know Jesus Christ, if they’re truly saved, the fact that God is provided for all of their needs in every situation doesn’t matter if they don’t believe.

It doesn’t matter. There’s no difference between an unbelieving Christian and a lost person in terms of how they live. There’s no difference. Why? Because faith is the means by which we receive the blessings of God.

Faith is the means. So if God promises us certain things in His word, the means by which we experience that in our lives is through faith. As I said earlier, God made, a promise to Israel and the promise that He would give them a land flowing with milk and honey. The first generation died in the wilderness. They never tasted the milk and the honey. Never. Why? did not believe. It was not a failure on God’s part. It is not because God’s Word was not true. God’s Word is always true. Always. The problem was this. They didn’t believe the true Word. They said the true Word was untrue. And so as a result of that they lived for a generation in barrenness. They ate manna and their mouths were full of sand. That’s how they lived. What a perfect picture of some believer’s life. Their lives are just wandering around in sand. Well, Jesus is my Savior. You don’t look very saved. No, I’m serious. We say things like, you’re my Savior, you’re my Redeemer, you’re my Lord, you’re my provision, you’re my joy, you’re my this, you’re my that. We say these things, but do we believe them? Do we believe them? Because if we don’t believe them, it doesn’t matter how many times we read them or how many times we even say them. If we don’t believe them, then we don’t experience the reality in our lives. Because faith is the substance of these things. It is through faith that we receive the blessings. It is through faith that we experience the fulfillment of the promises of God in our life.

When the scripture says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. I can say the same thing to every Christian today. The thing you want God to save you from or out of. on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. As we have received the Lord Jesus, which is by faith, so walk in Him. Walk in Him by the same faith, hopefully more mature, hopefully more deep, hopefully more knowledgeable, but still the same principle of faith. We are saved by faith and we walk by faith. We are saved by faith and we live by faith. We are justified by faith and we are sanctified by faith. Amen? The Christian life is a life of faith. The Israelites, because of their lack of faith, did not profit from the word preach to them. And the author of Hebrews says that the gospel was preached to us as to them. So they’re an example of what happens when the preached word is not received. Does anybody wanna live in the wilderness? No. Anybody wanna die in the wilderness? No, I hope you don’t want to. Then we have to exercise faith. We have to believe God. So just as the unbelieving heart is unprofitable, so the believing heart is profitable, it is useful, meaning it is the heart which leads to a place of rest and fruitfulness and abundance in the Christian life. Jesus said He came to give us life, that is our new birth, but He came to give us life abundantly, that is the Christian life. Jesus has not called His people to live in the wilderness. Amen. And if you’re in the wilderness, it is God’s will for you to get out of the desert.

Get out of the desert. That is not God’s will for you. It is God’s will for you not to be living on manna, but to be eating the honey and drinking the milk of the Promised Land. There’s a life of victory awaiting you. There’s a life of blessing awaiting you if you will believe the Word of God, if you will believe the promises of God, if you will submit yourself to the Word of God.

Don’t blame God because that’s what Israel did and that’s what testing God is.

They blamed God. Well, God, you know, I’m with this thing. They blamed God. And the irony is is that their situation, their hunger and their thirst was ultimately the fruit of their own unbelief. And yet they blamed God. Don’t blame God. He’s not the problem. He is not the problem. God wants every Christian to be in the Promised Land.

According to Your Faith

So if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you truly know Him, it is not not God’s will for you to be wandering, is not God’s will for you to be defeated, It is not God’s will for you to be in bondage. It is not God’s will for you. Is anybody hearing me? So you need to get out of the desert and you get out by believing the Word of God, taking hold of the promises by faith. And if you believe, you will receive. Jesus said over and over and over, and we’re going to look at some of these at a future date. right now, Jesus Christ, who you profess to be your Lord and Savior and God, He says over and over and over in His word, according to your faith, so be it. So people came to be healed, and He said, what do you want? He said, I want to be healed. He said, okay, do you believe? They said, I believe. According to your faith, so be it. According to your faith.

And when you read the account of Israel in the wilderness, guess what? You know what God says? He says, because you say, because you say we’re never going to get in, then I’m going to give you what you say. You’re not getting in. What they said was just an expression of what they believed. It was an expression of what they didn’t believe. It was an expression of their unbelief. So it’s like, okay, fine. You don’t believe? I’m going to give you what you really believe. You believe you’re going to die in the wilderness? Go ahead, and die in the wilderness. Jesus Christ gave, he blessed, he healed, he restored, he set at liberty, those who believed. And he even said over and over, because of your faith, according to your faith.

Let it be according to your faith, over and over. And so much of what we don’t have in the Christian life, it can be reduced to the simple fact that we really don’t believe. It’s true. But we work up various theories about why this is so. And I’m sure that in Israel they had their theories that I can just see the elders sitting around coming up with their theology of the wilderness. But why this is a good thing for us to walk around here for 40 years. But how we’re honoring God by walking around here for 40 years. On and on and on. And God says, you know what, that’s, it doesn’t honor me. It provokes me. It is unprofitable. It is evil. It is hard. I want you in the Promised Land. Now I don’t know about you, but I think it’s awesome that God wants me in the Promised Land. Isn’t that awesome? God wants me to bless me. God wants me to have an abundant life. God wants me to be victorious. God wants me to be set free. That’s the will of God for me. That’s a good thing. That’s an awesome thing. But I have to believe if I’m going to receive. I have to believe Him. And the, same applies for every one of you. Tozer said it a long time ago, and he was so right. He said, you know, we have as much of God as we really want. Now, don’t get me wrong. worship this awesome God. I’m not saying that the life in the Promised Land isn’t, it’s never hard or it’s never, there’s never battles. Matter of fact, if you read the book of Joshua, it’s all about battles. But it’s about victorious battles. There’s nothing like winning, right? Nothing like winning. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather win the Christian life than be defeated. Amen? I wish we could get the Rams to understand that. The winning is better than losing. It’s true.

Closing

Let’s stand. And I want to encourage you, maybe you’ve been convicted today by the Holy Spirit, where there’s unbelief in your heart. Well, there’s always the same solution for every sin, and that’s simply repentance. Acknowledge it to the Lord and confess it. And there’s a beautiful prayer in the Bible, and it goes like this, Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief my unbelief. And you can pray that prayer. Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief. I thank You, and, Lord, that You are worthy of our trust. That You are a faithful, covenant-keeping God. And that Your Word is true. It was true when You gave it to Israel. It was true in the first century of the church. And it’s true today. Today, if we will hear Your voice. Today we can receive your promises. Today we can enter rest. Today we thank you. Your word is true.