Why Do We Ignore this Bible Verse?
September 11, 2011
I’m in Sunday School this morning; we’re engaged in a study of Jeremiah, and it’s a good class, taught by a well-prepared teacher and filled with folks fluent in the Bible. The teacher referenced Hebrews 3:13-14, which reads,
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.
My hand shot up to ask a question (which I admitted was really only tangentially related to the topic he was discussing, which centered on falling away from God), and it’s basically this:
Why do we effectively ignore the first part of verse 13, which says that we are to “exhort one another every day“?
I have an answer, but first I’ll run it up the flagpole for those of you who may have rediscovered my blog and would care to comment.
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
