Unbelief a grievous sin……..

“No one who has faith in God’s Son will be condemned. But everyone who doesn’t have faith in him has already been condemned for not having faith in God’s only Son.”  John 3:18 CEV

Unbelief is surely at the root of all sin, and obviously there is much unbelief in the world today. While this is understandable regarding those who do not know God, it is not understandable among those who supposedly know Him. For instance it is
unbelievable that the Hebrew children could fall into unbelief after God had miraculously delivered them out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. Yet they did.

Men are too apt to think of sin as residing only in outward actions, and not as well in desires and dispositions.  Man likes to justify sin as a positive transgression not as a negative sin.  It is hard for man to accept their sin as bad because they use grace and mercy beyond its definition and use God’s love as justification to sin because God’s love “understands and He knows mans weakness.”

The idea of sin in general is vague and unimpressive.  Any particular sin will hardly be applicable to all, and some who are not wholly innocent will excuse themselves by thinking of others as being much guiltier.

But our text presents a sin of which all who hear it are guilty, all without exception, all alike-the sin of unbelief.

Unbelief is a grievous sin in itself

If a man is unable to believe, it is only because he is unwilling.

Most people understand ‘sin’ to mean wrong things that they do against God. But our sins are not just our wrong actions.  Sin also includes wrong and evil attitudes in our hearts (or minds).  Jesus taught that wrong attitudes in people’s hearts cause all kinds of wicked behaviour (Mark 7:21-23).

When Moses led God’s people through the desert, their worst sin was the wrong attitude of their hearts (Hebrews 3:8). They did not want to trust God, so they would not obey Him. Their other sins were the result of this wrong attitude.

This particular sin is called unbelief.  But by ‘unbelief’ here, I do not mean the doubts of a sincere person who really wants to know God.  I mean the opposite. The people whom Moses led were not sincere.  They did not want to have a relationship with God. And their problem was not really doubt. They knew about God and experienced His miracles.

Their problem was the decisions that they chose to make about Him. They refused to accept His authority over their lives.

If we refuse to trust and to obey, that is unbelief.

The results of unbelief are very serious.

Unbelief will ruin a person’s relationship with God and nothing is more important than to have a right relationship with Him.