Well, we're in a series of messages this fall called Battling Unbelief.

And I want to sort of bring us up to speed. I know we have visitors who haven't been in on the series and I know that it's been two weeks since we had one of the parts of the series.

And so let me give you the foundation, the assumption,

the thesis of the in our hearts. The tap root of sinning is unbelief in the promises of God.

Or to put it positively, all righteousness comes from a heart of faith, a heart of trusting in the promises of God.

And wherever sins crop up, whether it be attitudinal sins or outright behavioral

sins, they are the sign of lurking, growing incipient, or large-scale unbelief in God.

Now, perhaps a text or two to provide foundation for that assumption.

One, you recall, was Hebrews chapter 3, where the writer says,

Take care, brethren, verse 12,

lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart

leading you to fall away from the living God.

Now I went over that probably too fast for anybody to catch it.

Take heed lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief.

Notice the connection between unbelief and evil.

An evil heart of unbelief.

The root of the evil is the unbelief.

I think that's confirmed as we read on, 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.

Now the logic then flows,

don't let there be unbelief in your heart

because what it will lead to is a hardening and a deception that gives rise to sin.

...