‘Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.’

And my title is, What if I Cannot Believe? What if I cannot believe? What’s the situation with me and with my soul if I cannot believe? Now these words are very, very helpful. Take heed, brethren. That’s something to worry about. Indifference to God is hardness. If I do not believe, or if I only half believe, I believe in God to some degree, but not enough to go to him and repent of my sin and obey the instructions of the Lord of the Gospel, to repent, to yield my life, to ask for salvation. If I believe somehow to some extent, but not enough for that, well then it is an evil heart of unbelief.

Now this may seem to be shocking. If there were to be a general election and the political parties begin to mobilise to get their support, and they go around knocking on the doors, and somebody knocks on your door, could be Conservative, could be Labour, could be Lib Dem, and you say to that representative of that party, well, I don’t believe in your party. It is most unlikely he or she will say to you, that is evil, that is wicked. He may think so, but he would never say such a thing.

So you may be offended that you come into a church and you hear that the message of God, the message of the Bible, is that if you don’t believe in him, you have an evil heart. That seems very uncharitable, that seems very unreasonable. We are not quite used to that sort of response.

Yes, but dear friends, this is about God. This is about our Maker. This isn’t about a political party. This is about the God to whom we owe everything, the God who strictly, by rights, owns us and has a right to us. And we may be walking in complete indifference to him.