Category: Hebrews

“Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”

A lot of insight is packed into just a few verses, so today’s passage is shorter than some days. I love versus that start with “Let us…” because they are inspirational. What does it mean to live out the Christian life? All the verses with “Let us…” give us the answers. First, “let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm.” I don’t know about you, but when circumstances look bleak I waver. Is God really good? Can I really trust him? Those heart questions go all the way back to Eve in the Garden of Eden, and it was the open door that allowed Satan to work his way into that situation and bring sin into the world.

Second, “let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.” I love this one! It’s a call to creativity — think of ways. There are endless possibilities to motivate each other and there are countless options for loving and doing good works. Every culture and time in history gets to do what works for them. Finally, “let us not neglect our meeting together.” This is hard sometimes, and some of us never imagined that we could face a global pandemic that could halt our church services. We’ve still found ways to honor this verse, but I think we can do more.

The key reason we get together is to help each other hold on to the truth of the Gospel. It’s so easy to forget who Jesus is and what he has done. After a while in isolation, it’s easy to think, “Why does any of this matter anyway?” Verse 25 gives us a key instruction: encourage one another. We gather because we need to encourage and to be encouraged. In times of crisis when getting together in person is hard, we have to get creative about how we encourage each other. What’s one way you can creatively encourage someone today?

“Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. There is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies. For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us. For we know the one who said,

‘I will take revenge.
    I will pay them back.’

He also said,

‘The Lord will judge his own people.’

It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Proverbs 9:10 says, “Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment.” Today’s passage reminds me of that verse because we often fail to maintain a healthy fear of God. It is certainly a privilege that God has chosen to call us “friend” (John 15:15), but when we take that for granted we diminish the reality of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. “Friend” didn’t come for free.

In light of Jesus’ sacrifice, why would we want to keep on sinning deliberately? Romans 6:1-3 says, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Grace is a gift that we cannot take for granted.

Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Sin harms you, robs you, entangles you, and owns you. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that you could keep on living like that. He died and then conquered death to give you a way out. He died to set you free. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be in the hands of God on judgment day if I have spent my life knowing the freedom of Jesus while doing whatever I want regardless of God’s standards. If you think that sinning means getting to do whatever you want while following Jesus means living by a bunch of rules, you don’t understand the Gospel. God’s ways bring freedom, and sin will always disappoint. Are you living a spiritually free life today, or are you ignoring God for a while to do your own thing? I guarantee that “doing your own thing” is simply letting Satan own you just a little longer. Get out now!

“Think back on those early days when you first learned about Christ. Remember how you remained faithful even though it meant terrible suffering. Sometimes you were exposed to public ridicule and were beaten, and sometimes you helped others who were suffering the same things. You suffered along with those who were thrown into jail, and when all you owned was taken from you, you accepted it with joy. You knew there were better things waiting for you that will last forever.

So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.

‘For in just a little while,
    the Coming One will come and not delay.
And my righteous ones will live by faith.
    But I will take no pleasure in anyone who turns away.’

But we are not like those who turn away from God to their own destruction. We are the faithful ones, whose souls will be saved.”

Have you ever given up on something when it became difficult? Perhaps you really believed in the idea for a while (ahem — New Year’s resolutions…) but then after a while your enthusiasm faded. We start asking ourselves the same question every time: “Is it really worth the effort?”

In the early days of the church (around 40-80 A.D.), Christians were being killed for their belief that Jesus is God. They were ridiculed, beaten, and thrown in jail. Some in the American church have a false martyrdom concept that truly cheapens what religious persecution actually looks like. It’s not about someone making fun of you for going to church, it’s living with a reality that you could be indefinitely imprisoned or killed for going to church. There’s big difference. How much are you really willing to risk for your faith?

If you get your feathers ruffled when someone says, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” it’s time to get some thicker skin. If you are easily offended by non-Christians not practicing Christian concepts, then you are seeking after a mandated religion that is totally opposite of the Gospel. Remaining faithful to Jesus means being willing to risk it all: your comfort, your peace, your prosperity, and even your life. It’s about you, not about other people. We have to identify our idols and root them out of our lives — that’s when we can really understand what it means to give up everything for the sake of Christ. What are you holding on to today?

“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.”

In my high school yearbook each senior chose a quote to represent themselves. I chose Hebrews 11:1. I was one of those smarty-pants kids, and the smarter you are the harder it is to hold on to faith. You learn to trust in what your own eyes, ears, and brain tell you about reality. I wanted to make a statement that I wasn’t going to lean on my own brainpower to get me through life.

Here we see that faith is the gateway to a reality far greater. Verse 3 gives us a perfect example of how faith and intellect can seem in opposition: how was the world formed? It may seem that science and faith are at odds here — the entire universe was formed by principles of physics or it was formed at God’s command. Everything we see came from nothing. I personally see no disconnection between these ideas because I know that science is only trying to piece answers together and faith is helping me see the character of God. Truth-seeking only leads to truth if we are genuine in our humble search for answers.

We see in bits and pieces now what we will see fully someday. Faith is the gateway to supernatural reality. We can study things that we can physically see and touch here on earth, but I can’t study God in any real way except by faith. I can perhaps know about him, but I cannot know him without faith. And if I don’t know God then I don’t have access to the spiritual realm at all. There is so much that will be beyond by senses. For me it comes down to this: I am aware of my human limitations and I have faith that there is more to this world than I can explain. My faith has given me the ability to see supernatural power transform lives and to speak things that could not be known except by faith. Hold on to your faith today, one day it will show you everything.

“It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. Abel’s offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed his approval of his gifts. Although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us by his example of faith. It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying—’he disappeared, because God took him.’ For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God. And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before. By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith.”

We may have to look up some of these stories in the Old Testament — see Genesis 4, Genesis 5:21-24, and Genesis 6-7 — but the Jewish readers of this letter would not have had any trouble referencing these stories. Hebrews 11 is like an ancient Hebrew hall of fame, celebrating the “greats” of Jewish history. Recall that this chapter opened with the concept that faith shows us the reality of what we hope for. Here the author is helping Jewish readers see that this concept has been with them throughout their entire history.

There is a theme throughout the Old Testament showing that God works through acts of great obedience and incredible faith. In these verses we see the theme more clearly: God is pleased when we have faith. He can use our faith to do miraculous things. One tiny, mysterious verse in the Bible holds Enoch among the greats because apparently he did not die the normal way. He’s held as an example of how God rewards those who sincerely seek him. Noah’s whole family was saved because he prepared for rain when it had never rained in recorded history prior to that time.

If you are not kind of freaked out by just these few stories referenced in today’s passage, you might not be paying attention. Suppose your next-door neighbor came up to you and started telling you about her ancestor that — as legend would have it — never actually died… Or maybe she chats your ear off about her great-great-great grandfather who built a boat in the middle of a desert and then there just so happened to be a great flood that year. Come on. If I’m being honest, I’d nod my head, smile politely, and write her off as an unreliable historian. And truthfully, that’s what many people do with the Bible. They turn what is presented as fact into fiction, allegory, or myth. As legend would have it. The Bible forces you to do something with it. How will you understand it? Will you sincerely seek the truth, wherever that may lead? I have taken that approach throughout my life and I keep coming back to one conclusion: there is room for the miraculous. I guess that’s faith.