Hebrews 13:18-25 – God’s Working in Us, The Blood of the Eternal Covenant

As the author finishes up, and having just exhorted them to have confidence and respect the authority of their leaders, he asks simply, “Pray for us.” I love how symbiotic Christianity is. The word means “any interdependent or mutually beneficial relationship between two persons, groups.” Those in leadership are never to lord it over others they serve, and that’s what leaders do, they serve. How radical and unprecedented for the time it was when Jesus said those who would be great among his followers must be servants, and whoever wants to be first must be a slave. That’s ridiculous! But true, because he says it in the context of why we must do that:

²⁸ just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

So both sides of the relationship can work, any relationship, because Jesus is at the center. If we want our relationships, all of them, to work, the cross and all it represents will be the foundation. He then assures his readers that, “We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way.” In other words, you can trust us. Their lives, as he said previously, and their words, match. He especially wants them to pray that he “may be restored” to them soon. This is a great example of the affection the Christian symbiosis creates.

His final exhortation to them is beautiful and glorious:

²⁰ Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, ²¹ equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

There is a lot here to unpack in a short space. I love that he ends with God’s working “in us.” It is very easy to fall into the trap of seeing our faith as our work, what we do, how we perform, especially when you read something like Hebrews that is filled with warnings and strong exhortations. The appeals he makes throughout are, rightly, to our personal responsibility in the process of living out our faith. As a Christian of the Reformed (read Calvinist) variety, I never play God’s sovereignty off human responsibility. They are both true! However, the latter must subsumed under the former, but most Christians end up making human choice sovereign.

I, and no Reformed Christian, should be a determinist, what our Arminian brethren always accuse us of being. We are free to choose. Our freedom as God’s image bearers is not an illusion. We have agency. That is also not an illusion. Our choices matter. They change things. What they are not, is sovereign. Our choices do not determine things ultimately. How, you ask, does all this work? I have no idea! Nor does anyone else because it is beyond explanation. God in his being, ontology, and working in creation and redemption (re-creation) is incomprehensible. That is a doctrine Christians need to be more familiar with, the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. You could not do better than reading a primer on the topic by the late, great R.C. Sproul. Both Arminians and Calvinists (and any other flavor of Christian) get into trouble when they think they can explain God’s working. They need to meditate on I Corinthians 8:2. While we can all have certain convictions about God’s mysterious working in salvation, we all need to understand our job is to trust him.

One could write tomes on the content of these two verses, so there is no way to do it real justice in the increasingly short space I have. The God of peace . . . . If this were written in Hebrew, the word used would be shalom, and there is no doubt the author and readers so interpreted peace that way: properly, wholeness, i.e., when all essential parts are joined together; peace (God’s gift of wholeness). What “the eternal blood of the covenant” did in bringing “back from the dead our Lord Jesus” (notice the blood accomplished its intended purpose, in Christ and then us) is give us the possibility of this peace, this wholeness. In other words, the possibility of living life the way it was meant to be lived before sin, literally, sent everything to hell. Our rebellion in Adam and Eve made the default position of our sinful hearts that which destroys the possibility of peace and wholeness. In re-creation, redemption and reconciliation, God through sanctification brings back into our lives the ability to actually accomplish some semblance, as much as can be had in and among sinners, shalom. A life in which all the puzzle pieces fit, God working “in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” We can trust that God works all things together for our good and his glory.

One more thing I’ll pick out of this wonderful passage is Jesus, the “great Shepherd of the sheep.” We’re all familiar with Jesus telling us that he is the Good Shepherd which is here tied to “the blood of the eternal covenant.” The context of the passage in John 10 is eternal life, the life that is not only forever, but the life of shalom, this life, this side of the grave as well. Why this is so powerful to me at this particular moment (read the four instances of “my sheep” in this passage, and maybe you’ll become a Calvinist too:) is because I was reminded at the funeral of a dear friend yesterday that this image of God as Israel’s shepherd (his people) is amazingly described by the Lord in Ezekiel 34. In that passage we read these astonishing words:

²⁵ “‘I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of savage beasts so that they may live in the wilderness and sleep in the forests in safety. 

Note that this verse is not primarily about savage beasts and the wilderness. And yes, the word peace is shalom. I could easily write another thousand words just on this! And it’s connection to the “the blood of the eternal covenant,” but alas, I can’t. Just read John 10, Ezekiel 34, and this passage, and be prepared to have your mind blown!

His final greetings are worth reading, but shall not receive comment here. On to James!

Hebrews 13:7-17 – Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever

The exhortations and teaching continues, and the focus of the next several verses is regarding leaders. He first tells them to remember their leaders, look at their lives and imitate them, then says something that seems disconnected from the context.

⁸ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

This is typical of the high Christology of Hebrews, but also of the entire New Testament. As I’ve said here several times, critical scholars for a long time, throughout the 19th and well into the 20th centuries, claimed that the divinity of Christ wasn’t a belief of the first Christians, but was slowly added on after many years by the Christian community. Something akin to the legend growing like the fish, but that isn’t the case anymore. Even the most skeptical scholars agree that the entire text of the New Testament is from the first century, and that Paul’s letters go back to the 50s and 60s AD, certainly not enough time for legendary distortions to grow. This statement is a straight forward declaration of the deity of Christ. Only of God can it be said he is the same yesterday and today and forever.

In this context it has something to do with leadership, and what he says next, that he does not want them to “be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings.” Having spent 12 chapters establishing the superiority of Christ to the Old Testament nature of the relationship of God to his people, he now calls it “strange teachings.” By this point he hopes it does seem strange to them. Ceremonial foods are no longer a thing, they don’t have any value as they thought they once did. Then he contrasts once again the New to the Old:

¹⁰ We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

If these Hebrew Christians were looking to the temple, longing for something they think might be better, they ought to think again. The altar is Christ, and sacrificing animals isn’t going to get them there. Their blood, which the high priest carried into the Most Holy Place was a sin offering, but of the animal bodies, they “are burned outside the camp.” He implies the worthlessness of this now that Christ has come, and by the comparison:

¹² And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. ¹³ Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. ¹⁴ For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

This is a fascinating passage because the author is addressing without directly addressing the pressure that must have been on these Hebrews to go back to the old ways. I imagine the Jews who worshiped at the temple were like Paul before his conversion, thinking Christians were an inferior and dangerous breed of heretics. Now, as followers of Christ, the Messiah, they are no longer part of the it crowd, and they must embrace the same disgrace he bore. It’s impossible for us to imagine what, as Paul calls it, a “stumbling block” the cross would have been to the Jews, Christ crucified. Anyone hung on a tree to die is under God’s curse. It was inconceivable to any Jew that the long-awaited Messiah should be hung on a tree and cursed of God, which is of course why it could never have been made up by any Jew. It was initially why Paul so hated and persecuted Christians. It was ridiculous, it was offensive, but when Jesus came back from the dead, eventually it all made sense.

That is the point of the “enduring city,” one that lasts forever. It is not here, not now, not this life, which as we all are reminded every day, is passing away, quickly. I think of the author writing these words almost 2,000 years ago! He was just as alive and aware and conscious as we are at this very moment, then poof! Almost 2,000 has gone by. Best put our confidence in an eternal hope, which means:

¹⁵ Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. ¹⁶ And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

That’s an interesting phrase, sacrifice of praise. What is a sacrifice, and why would praise require it? When we think of that word we think of giving something up for another thing of greater worth. This praise that is a sacrifice is done through Jesus, so at its heart is the supreme sacrifice of God’s Son for our sin, for us, in our place, and thus we can offer this fruit continually. That word means all as in each and every part, so this fruit of lips that confess his name is all encompassing. You know those obnoxious Christians who praise God for everything? That should be us! And we don’t praise him just when things are good or when we feel like it, or when it doesn’t cost us anything because all of our existence is “through Jesus.” We also see that these sacrifices of praise are part of sacrifices of our lives for others because God in Christ provided the ultimate example.

He then ties this in with how they are to treat their leaders, to have confidence in them and submit to their authority. That is all part of the sacrifice. In short, it is not all about us! How much more harmony would there be in the world if everything wasn’t about us, wasn’t about our way, our need, our wants, our desires. Those are not unimportant, but we get the great privilege of participating in the greatest sacrifice of all by how we live our lives, dying to self, living unto God, loving him, ourselves, and others. Part of the reason we do this is “so that their work will be a joy, not a burden,” which is not a benefit to anyone. We’ll explore his final thoughts in the next post.

Hebrews 13:1-6 – Trusting God in Love and Money

We come to the last chapter of this magisterial work of redemptive education and exhortation, and the author gets more practical, although he can’t help including more profound theological reflections as well. First we come to philadelphia, brotherly love, not the city. If anything made Christianity unique in the ancient world it was love, something no other religion or philosophy, save Judaism, had any concept of, and it was and is the central driving characteristic of Christian ethics. Then this interesting verse:

² Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. 

In Greek the word strangers is not in the sentence, but every translation includes it. So it must be implied in some way, but the idea follows from the first, brotherly love. The ones who ought to be the objects of our hospitality are brothers and sisters in Christ, not just anyone that comes in off the street. That doesn’t mean those people don’t deserve our generosity, only that they are not the object of the author’s exhortation. The reference to angels is likely referring to Abraham (Gen. 9:1-22) and Lot (Gen. 19:1-3). Next it is prisoners and anyone being mistreated, to think of them as if we ourselves were in prison or being mistreated. I would bet that empathy was as rare in the ancient world as it is common in ours, which shows how transformational Jesus and his followers were and are.

Next he addresses marriage:

⁴ Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. 

The Christian view of marriage, and its inviolability was another unique contribution to Western civilization. Jews of course believed the same thing, but it was easier for a Jewish man to get out of a marriage than a Christian one. Jesus said there was only one reason a marriage could be dissolved, and he addressed this to men for a reason. In the ancient world women were almost always completely dependent on men, so if a man decided to leave the woman would be destitute. A strong commitment to marriage primarily protected women, and in our day we see it protects children as well. One of the great tragedies, of course in the name of enlightenment, of the 20th century was so called no fault divorce. The decimation of the family followed in short order. But marriage hasn’t disappeared, and monogamy once couples say I do is still the norm. It is also a great irony of this century that marriage is so honored among our cultural elites that they even want homosexuals to get in on it. Christianity is the greatest gift to marriage, to men and women and children, the world has ever seen. What else we can read into the word undefiled (untainted, free from contamination) the author doesn’t say.

Next he addresses another great fact of existence, for good and ill:

⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”

Dare I say the exhortation to not love money was also completely unique in the ancient world. In a world in which strength and power were all, it would be irresponsible to not love money and do everything you could to get it. Jews, of course, would have a more nuanced understanding of money given their Scriptures talked about it more than a little, not to mention that not coveting was one of their Ten Commandments. But not loving money, and what it represents, was never a direct command until Jesus. The contrast the author makes is instructive, but easily misunderstood. What exactly does it mean to not love money and be content? Does it mean aspiring to material gain is bad in and of itself? Does it mean ambition is bad? Does it justify laziness? Or not taking responsibility because we, especially men, make too little?

The point, looking at and treating money biblically, if you will, is that we ought to have a proper perspective on money, not want it too much, or too little. We might use the biblical concept of idolatry. Anything can become an idol if we esteem it too much. As I’ve heard it said, idolatry is turning good things into ultimate things. All evil is good perverted, so money, like sex or power, is good in and off itself. It just takes sinners to pervert it. Sinners can also be taught to refrain from their natural sinful inclinations, and knowing the truth is a powerful way we have of doing that, along with the mercy and grace of God in the person of the Holy Spirit helping and guiding us.

Thus the verse the author quotes from Deuteronomy 31. The Israelites are ready to enter the promised land, and Moses is turning the reigns over to Moses. What they have before them is scary and intimidating, and Moses exhorts them to trust God. That is the point. Trusting God is what allows us, as best as sinners can, to treat money as an inanimate tool for our good and the good of others, and not as some kind of God substitute. It is very easy to put our trust in money and our material possessions, and not on God. We can be content not because we don’t want more money, and are willing to bust our humps to get it, but because we leave the results up to God. And whatever we get and have, we thank him for it all, all the time. I’ve often told my kids something I heard a long time ago. Money isn’t all that important, just like oxygen. You can’t live very long without it, and you need it to live. And the follow-up quote from Psalm 118 ties it all together perfectly:

⁶ So we say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
    What can man do to me?

That Psalm is so beautiful, and most importantly it is a Messianic Psalm (see verses 22-24). We can trust God, not fear man, and be content not because of our circumstances, but because of who he is, and his eternal promises to us in Christ.

Hebrews 12:25-29 – Our God is a Consuming Fire

The author now adds another warning to the many he’s issued so far. You don’t hear these kinds of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermons nowadays. It seems kind of impolite to warn people of the fearful judgment of God if they don’t repent, and most people think God as unworthy of judging and punishing sin. The tendency in our more enlightened age is to focus on the positive, and all the blessings associated with following Jesus in this life and in the next. However, Jesus spoke more of hell than any other figure in the Bible, and warned about it’s suffering, and Hebrews while never mentioning the word, has more stark warnings than any other letter in the New Testament. The purpose of this letter/sermon, as we’ve seen, is to keep these Hebrew Christians from turning back to the religion of the Jews, and the author consistently uses allusions to God’s Old Testament dealing with his people as he does here:

²⁵ See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 

He is again contrasting the temporal and earthly nature of the previous, dare I use the word, dispensation. While I think the biblical framework of dispensationalism is not at all biblical, God did deal differently with his people and humanity in the Old Testament because his revelation was unfolding and progressive. Early on there there was little that was eternal and spiritual. The promise, remember, was land, not heaven or a new heavens and earth. The temporal and material, however, pointed beyond itself to something eternal and spiritual. This becomes increasingly clear as you read through redemptive history, although the Jews completely missed it by rejecting Jesus. The Jews were expecting a Messiah whose kingdom would most definitely be of this world, which is not the kingdom Jesus was bringing. The writer doesn’t want these Hebrews to reject Jesus as the Old Testament Hebrews rejected Moses when what is eternal and heavenly is on the line. Then he quotes from the second chapter of Haggai:

²⁶ At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.”

I wrote about that chapter a few years back, that God’s judgment and salvation are of a piece, that when he brings the former it is part of the latter. That is, of course, until the final judgment when the opportunity for salvation is gone. These Christian Hebrews are getting something far superior, so how could they reject it for something clearly inferior and passing away. He points out the “once more” means created things, that they will be shaken and removed, and only what lasts and cannot be shaken will remain. Then we get another of the logical implications of these truths:

²⁸ Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, ²⁹ for our “God is a consuming fire.”

Why, he doesn’t say, but implies, would you want to go back to something that is fading away. God is giving them, and us, a kingdom that is forever, that is nothing like the mess that is this world. The pride and the hubris of the rulers of this world, and the kingdoms they think so great, are nothing before God, but God has called multitudes of the peoples of those nations. The second chapter of Haggai is a powerful picture of the historical and eschatological, and God bringing to fruition this kingdom in Christ that cannot be shaken.

So our response ought to be one of gratitude while living among the things that are being shaken. As I’ve pointed out here many times, our attitude of gratitude is rarely found in circumstances going our way, or the way we think they should go. I remember not too many years ago praying something along the lines of, “God, it would be ideal if . . . . ” And one day it struck me: what a moron I am! How in the world would I know what “ideal” is. I don’t know anything! Best leave ideal up to God. And the word rendered “worship acceptably” can also be rendered to serve in a way that is proper, worthy of the God who is in fact God. We’re familiar with what reverence is, but the English doesn’t quite capture the Greek for awe, which literally means cowardly or fearful. Combined, the words mean something like it might feel standing outside in the middle of a raging thunderstorm, knowing you are completely safe, but not quite being sure. You’re awestruck, trembling but amazed at the power displayed so magnificently. That is a very small glimpse of what it is like to serve and worship our God who is a consuming fire.

That phrase is not uncommon in the Old Testament, and the author is likely quoting from Deuteronomy 4. Since the fall, human beings have done everything they can to create a God in their own image, one who in some way affirms them on the one hand, or is merciless on the other. You might say it’s a love/hate relationship. None of these gods, however, in all of recorded history bear any resemblance to the God revealed to us in creation, Scripture, and Christ, a God of absolute holiness, and absolute justice, whose wrath must be satisfied in judgment. Sinful people naturally don’t much like this kind of God because he is their judge, jury, and executioner. That fire, that wrath, was poured out on Christ for us so that we don’t have to be consumed by God’s judgment. If any thing or one is worthy of reverence and awe, it is that God, and our hearts should be moved by him in a way that is indescribable.

Hebrews 12:14-24 – Peace and Holiness in Mount Zion

The writer has delved deeply into theology and history, and now finally gets into the practical implications for how the Hebrews, and we, are to live, and even this is interspersed with theological affirmations and exhortations. The Christian life can only be lived in light of Christian truth that is the motivation for why we ought to live the Christian life! He starts with:

¹⁴ Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 

This kind of effort is a pursuit, something we seek after. It is up to us, it is our initiative to seek out peace with others. This doesn’t mean Christians are milkquetoast people, and pushovers who can’t be assertive or confrontational when necessary, but it does mean we need to see ourselves as responsible for the harmony of our relationships. We are not to be contentious or argumentative, and when we come across those who are, we need to see if we can pour water on the fire. Along with this, he calls us to be holy, to be set apart, different than a world that doesn’t know the Lord. Holiness is not just to do with morality, but with how we live our entire lives unto the Lord. Then

¹⁵ See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.

How does one not fall short of the grace of God? What does that mean? Grace is unmerited favor, specifically that favor which God poured out upon us in Christ. Maybe he means that since God has been so gracious to us, we ought to live the holy lives he mentioned in the previous sentence. It’s the least we can do. Notice that holiness is never purely a personal thing, but lived out in context of others, and in this context it is clearly among others who claim the name of Christ. Bitterness and resentment are two sides of the same ugly coin.

Notice that he calls bitterness a root, something underground and unseen. It is a poisonous attitude that is harbored in the heart and can’t be seen until the tree of its ugliness grows up to cause the harm reflected in the soul of the one who harbors it. It is really ugly, and its fruit is ugly because it’s pure selfishness and self-centeredness, the complete opposite of love. It’s an attitude of entitlement, that somehow life or God or others owe me, instead of, as Paul says in Romans 8:13: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.”

He then exhorts them against sexual immorality. Have you ever wondered why there is so much focus on sexual immorality in the New Testament? We think we live in a sexually drenched culture today, but the pagan world before Christ had zero Christian influence to hold back the sinful human nature. Sex was also an integral part of pagan religion, so it was everywhere. He then tells them to not be “godless like Esau,” who sold his birthright, which was his as the older son, to Jacob for a pot of stew. It says that “Esau despised his birthright.” Why is this “godless”? Maybe because he didn’t care where he came from, what line he was in as a descendent of Abraham and Isaac, and of the promise. All he cared about was his belly.

The the author then contrasts two mountains, the first one that Moses led the people of Israel to, Mount Sinai we read about in Exodus 19. It represented a holy God and was frightening and dangerous. One wrong move and a person or animal would be killed. The distance between sinful humanity and a holy God was something Israel, and the entire human race through them, had to be taught. “You will be like God” echoes in every sinful heart, and the true God says, oh no you will not! The other mountain is open and available to us because of “Jesus the mediator of a new covenant”:

²² But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.

We could do an entire post on the meaning of Zion, but it had and has eschatological significance, meaning it points to the fulfillment of all things at the end of time in Christ. It represents God dwelling with his people in a metaphorical fortress that can never be destroyed, as opposed to the mountain represented by the law which cannot even be touched. Remember, the whole letter or sermon is built around that contrast so these Hebrews would never want to go back. Mount Zion by contrast:

You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, ²³ to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. 

This is a place of welcoming and joy because it is the work of God, not the work of the law and trying to make ourselves righteous by it:

You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

Only God can make anyone perfect, which he did to all those who embrace “the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word then the blood of Abel.” In Genesis 4 we read of Abel bringing an offering to God, which is the first recorded human sacrificing of an animal to God. Any human effort to pay the price of sin would always end short, which is why God’s people needed Jesus as their mediator “of a new covenant.” Only in him are we made perfect, and it is only the perfect who can have a relationship with a holy God. We are perfect in Christ! I know it’s hard to believe most of the time, but that’s why we live by faith, by trust in what he did for us, not what we do for him.

Hebrews 12:4-13 – God Disciplines us As His Children for our Sanctification

These Hebrews are obviously suffering for their faith, and he’s just encouraged them to consider Jesus and opposition he got from sinners. Their struggle is not quite to the level of Jesus’ suffering because they have not resisted to the point of shedding their blood. He then encourages them to see their suffering as the Lord disciplining them as a father disciplines his son, and quotes from Proverbs 3:

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
    and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
⁶ because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
    and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

There are two ways we can look at our daily struggle with the gravitational pull of sin. One is to see the “stuff” that happens in our lives as a product of chance. The other is to see it all as part of God’s providential control of all things. There is no in between! I’m afraid that our wailing and moaning and complaining reflects the former perspective, and that we really don’t trust God when push comes to shove. That we really don’t buy into Paul’s assertion in Romans 8:28 that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This is why I’ve learned over the years that the number one sin I have to repent of is not trusting God. But God is of course gracious and merciful, and because we are his children he gives us innumerable opportunities to learn how to build the trust muscle, if you will. It does get easier to trust him as we mature and grow though his loving discipline.

The author tells us why we can look on these struggles with confidence and hope:

⁷ Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 

I love the Greek word he uses for discipline, paideia-παιδεία, properly, instruction that trains someone to reach full development (maturity). It was often used of the training and education of children. I like the way C.S. Lewis puts this perspective on life in Christ:

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.

For the Christian, life is a school. Everything teaches because God is God! And our Father, because he demonstrated his love for us by sending his Son to die for us, we can always be assured that his intentions toward us are never malignant. So even in the most challenging times we can give thanks as we are exhorted to do throughout Scripture. Unlike the non-Christian we have the assurance that when school is out, we will be prepared for eternity!

He then tell us that we respect our human fathers for their discipline, so “How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!” What does it mean to submit? I think not complaining and giving thanks is a good start. We can do this because while our earthly fathers discipline us as they think best, they are finite and mortal. God, on the other hand disciplines as only God can, “for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.” In theological terms we call this sanctification, which is an inevitable part of God’s salvation for us in Christ. In other words, we don’t have a choice! He will sanctify us whether we like it or not. If we are truly his sheep who hear his voice, we will come to love it and embrace it because we know he is working in us “to will and to work for his good pleasure.” This verse is the great perspective we ought to have on life:

¹¹ No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

What I love about Christianity, among the infinite number of things, is that it is real. God doesn’t call us to be phonies who call painful things in life not painful, or things that hurt, not hurtful. Human emotions and feelings and desires are good and natural, but in Christ with trust in the Father and dependence upon the Holy Spirit, we don’t have to allow those things to define us or interpret reality for us. We can realize all these trials and travails, frustrations and struggles, profound or petty, large or small, are part of the plan. Think about it. When the lousy distracted driver cuts in front of us, that isn’t happening to annoy us, but to produce “a harvest of righteousness and peace” in us! As I said above, just as everything teaches, everything is training as well. All of it. Every single thing. What an amazing way to go through the challenge that is life, with hope and purpose and meaning that only God Almighty in Christ can give!

Then the author gives us another therefore. Since we now have the proper, godly perspective on things:

¹² Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ¹³ “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

The realness of Christianity extends to us being able to admit without shame that we are feeble and weak. Accepting that is half the battle because it’s true! We fail, and will continue to fail, but in failing we succeed. We don’t wallow in failure, we learn from it, and extend mercy and grace to ourselves as God does to us, and as we do to others. Knowing our weakness allows us to love others because we know God loves us in spite of it. This whole dynamic is why love is the ultimate Christian ethic (and healing the result), and the most absurd thing, seemingly, is at the heart of the mercy and grace that makes love possible: a Roman cross, and a crucified man dying on it. As I often say, you just can’t make it up!

Hebrews 12:1-3 – Since we are Surrounded by Such a Great Cloud of Witnesses . . .

Although we’re almost certain Paul didn’t write Hebrews, the writer likes a transition Paul uses throughout his letters, therefore. Having just finished a majestic passage about the great heroes of the faith, he makes such a transition reminiscent of Paul in Romans 12:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. 

We would be familiar with the Greek word for witnesses, martus-μάρτυς, from which we get martyr. It has come to mean someone who dies for their religious faith, but that’s not what the Greek word means. It simply means witness or, “One who can give a firsthand account of something seen, heard, or experienced.” So what exactly did this great cloud (a dense crowd, a multitude, great company) of people we read about in chapter 11, and all those they represent, witness? As we know, Christianity is unique among all the worlds’ religions. When I say that, I always want to say “completely unique” because there isn’t another one even remotely like it, but that phrase is a redundancy, either something is unique or it isn’t. If it’s not completely unique, it’s not unique at all! This idea of witness is at the heart of that uniqueness, and Christianity is really, really unique! How’s that for redundancy.

Few people understand that Christianity is based upon verifiable historical events, and not upon certain teachings or ideas. The latter are obviously part of it, but without the former, events that actually happened in space and time, among real people, the teaching and ideas are worthless. What most people also don’t understand is that no other religion on earth is so rooted in historical events. People tend to think other religions make similar historical claims, but they don’t. So it follows that Christianity must be founded upon the eyewitness testimony of those events. The events are the thing! These witnesses, along with us, testify to the great and sovereign work of God in the salvation of his people. They witnessed the history of redemption as it was unfolding, we might say redemption accomplished, we witness redemption as it is being applied in the salvation of his people.

Sometime in the last year I started listening to Christian testimonies I’ve found online, and I’ve realized that I too am a witness to God’s sovereign work in the salvation of his people. Most of the people I’ve listened to would not share my Reformed theological perspective (all five points!), but when I hear them tell their stories, it is clear that God is saving one of those for whom Jesus died. I just listened to this incredible testimony yesterday of a woman who grew up a Jewish secular atheist, and I became a witness of the power of God to save one of his sheep who had no choice but to listen to his voice. It is very much worth a listen. Along with all the saints who have gone to glory before us, Nikki, you, and I are part of this great cloud.

https://the-side-b-podcast.castos.com/episodes/nikki-naparst

It’s interesting that when we believe to the depths of our being that this Christianity and God thing is real, it becomes a tad bit easier “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” The point is that we want to because God has transformed our affections. We can run with perseverance because our eyes are no longer fixed on us! No longer navel gazing, focused what we want, on who we are, what we think makes us happy. It’s a much preferable existence when our selves are put in proper perspective in the order of things as God created them to be before our descent into hell and sin.

When we “fix our gaze” we look away from one thing to focus on another. In this case we focus on the one who was the pioneer of perfect trust in God the Father, the trust that we also live in. Not only that, but finishing the race is ultimately not up to us. The pressure is off because he is the one who consummates that trust in us, and brings that process to its appointed end. We don’t have to live walking on eggshells which is where legalism always takes us, not to mention the pride it builds in our own efforts. It is grace, God’s unmerited favor to us and in us, from first to last. Yes, we seek him, we work out our faith in fear and trembling, we learn, we love, we struggle, we grow, but we always keep our focus on him! And we have one who did indeed lead the way:

³ Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Those who critique Christianity can never say God can’t relate to our suffering and struggles. He himself in Christ went so far as to become one of us! Immortality experiencing mortality. The sinless and perfect one, treated as a slave and common criminal. The one who showed ultimate love experienced ultimate pain. Whatever opposition we endure, within or without, spiritual or physical, our God and Savior can relate. We can endure because he endured. We can trust and obey because he trusted and obeyed unto death for us.

Hebrews 11:29-40 – By Faith is Forever

The author now moves from Moses to the people who passed through the Red Sea on land “by faith,” while the Egyptians were drowned. I imagine it would take a lot of faith, or trust, to walk through a body of water on dry land with the water somehow piled up on either side, and not just you, but with all your family and friends. The image that comes to mind is of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments lifting up his arms and the water parting before him. Not bad special effects for 1956. This act of faith in their God who would rescue his people from slavery would define the Hebrews and then Jews for all time. Only God could pull off such a great salvation, and his people trust that he can do it. They could not save themselves, which is why it’s a picture of our salvation from sin.

The next by faith action is the people marching around the walls of Jericho for seven days before it fell. I can imagine, knowing human nature, that the people inside Jericho were feeling completely safe and likely mocking the stupid Hebrews as they marched around their city. That’s the way obedience to God often looks to those who don’t know him. Next is an interesting one in the list, a prostitute, Rahab. Anyone can choose to trust God, and she did by lying about the spies. She sided with the Hebrews for a very specific reason. The people of Jericho had heard of their escape, and knew it as a supernatural event. She tells the spies, “for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.” So she decided to trust him with her life and the lives of her family.

The author could go on and on, but he can’t, so he gives two broad overviews, one of the great deeds of God’s people, and the other the horrific suffering of those same people. The first group of saints, through faith,

conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴ quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. ³⁵ Women received back their dead, raised to life again. 

That’s quite an amazing list! Jesus did say that all things are possible with faith, to him who believes. If we stop here we might think this faith thing is kind of awesome, that we can have these incredible supernatural lives, conquer all things, and live a victorious life. But there is another “by faith” life:

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. ³⁶ Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.³⁷ They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— ³⁸ the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

It’s interesting that the author doesn’t seem to think these two diametrically opposite modes of existence are in any way incompatible. What ties them together is by faith. For the latter it’s not exactly “your best life now.” Being sawed in two is an especially gruesome way to go, and tradition says it was Isaiah who endured such a horror. Whoever it was, that doesn’t exactly seem like a great reward for enduring in the trust of God. Yet, that’s exactly the point. This world is not the thing! Matter is not all that matters. This is a hard truth to swallow when everything in us wants to avoid going to the next one, especially in an age that is so suffocatingly secular. Clearly, our circumstances are not what ultimately defines our life.

If you go throughout the Bible you will notice an overarching context that puts all things in their ultimate perspective. That concept is forever, and that word is not used as hyperbole, as we might use it. We’re driving somewhere and we complain, that took forever! That’s not the biblical usage of that word. Even God’s land promises to the Patriarchs were “forever.” No, forever means for ever, eternal, never ending, and that is why we live “by faith,” whether that means we are blessed to be more in that first list, or blessed to endure more of the second. This brings to mind a verse from Acts 5 after the apostles were flogged by the Jewish authorities for proclaiming the name of Jesus:

⁴¹ The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.

Flogging is a nasty business, and yet it causes these men to rejoice. No wonder the Roman Empire didn’t know what to do with these people. All this tells us that our lives belong to God to do with as he pleases, and everything, every single thing, is for our ultimate good and his glory. And this is how the author ends this chapter and his hall of fame of faith:

³⁹ These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, ⁴⁰ since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

That promise of perfection is the entire message of the author’s sermon: Christ! I’m reading a wonderful book now about C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud called The Question of God, and I’ll end this post with a quote that capture by faith well:

“We have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy,” Lewis writes, but they never quite satisfy our yearnings. God withholds from us “the settled happiness and security which we all desire.” Otherwise, Lewis says, we would think this world our home rather than a place we are passing through. He writes that the Creator “refreshes us on our journey with some pleasant Inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for our home.”

Hebrews 11:23-28 – Moses and the Verbal Nature of Faith

By faith Moses . . . . Now we come to the one whom God chose to begin to define the nature and fill out the content of the promise. For the Patriarchs, the promise concerned land and innumerable descendants, but with Moses God introduces his law, and the entire sacrificial system that would point to the ultimate sacrifice, Christ. The preface to all this was of course God’s people in slavery in Egypt for 400 years (yes, God is never in a hurry!), which, also of course, was a picture of God’s people enslaved to sin. They, and we, needed a mighty work of God, and a mediator, to allow an escape from that which blinds hearts and minds to all things not God. This passage is remarkable because it is all action, reflecting the verbal nature of faith, as in verbs, five of them. By faith Moses:

• Refused
• Chose
• Regarded
• Left
• Kept

As I’ve said numerous times, faith, or trust, has nothing to do with mere intellectual assent. In English faith is not synonymous with belief, but in Greek faith and belief are from the same root word, trust. We can believe something is true, but not act on it, but if we trust that person of thing, we are compelled to act. So was Moses. Before we look at what he did, it must be emphasized that like all servants of Israel’s God he was a very imperfect vessel. He questioned God, was full of doubt about his capabilities, was not always obedient, and had an anger problem. But God uses very imperfect vessels because he doesn’t have a choice!

First, Moses “refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” when he grew up. This is an interesting take on the circumstances that lead to Moses having to flee Egypt (Exodus 2), and it wasn’t exactly faith that drove that refusal, but fear. He’d killed an Egyptian, and Pharaoh wanted him dead, so he had to flee. The faith part likely comes in when you realize that Moses knew his history, knew he was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that he was a Hebrew, one of God’s people. He tried to rescue one of his fellow Hebrews, and that didn’t work out very well, so he fled. As the author says,

²⁵ He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 

This is also an interesting take because when he killed the Egyptian he thought he’d gotten away with it, and if he had he would have remained a closet Hebrew. And I guess the author considers living in Pharaoh’s house, and whatever came along with its benefits, “the fleeting pleasures of sin.” Living outside of God’s people and outside of God’s purposes is certainly fleeting and certainly sin. Then for the next verb he says something that doesn’t seem to fit:

 ²⁶ He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. 

First, what does “for the sake of Christ” mean, and what is the disgrace, or in Greek reproach? Moses couldn’t have known that what he was called to do would eventually be paving the way for the Messiah. Old Testament saints in some sense knew that God’s promise wasn’t just about land, but Moses knew that whatever it meant to be a Hebrew, to be part of God’s promised people was a far greater treasure than anything Egypt could provide. God never calls us away from something without providing something of value in return, even if its only or primarily in eternity. The greatest reward, and the only one that ultimately counts, now and forever, is him!

The motivation for the next verb enabled him to do something that seems crazy to those enslaved to this world:

²⁷ By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. 

Because he trusted God, he left everything of earthly value; Egypt was one of the most wealthy and powerful kingdoms on earth. You can imagine his Egyptian friends saying, are you nuts! Giving all this up? But he was able to do that because he did something that seems impossible, oxymoronic, seeing what can’t be seen. That’s true, of course, God is invisible, but we can infer God from everything. As I’ve taught my kids all their lives, everything points to God, and the Hebrews knew this. They were the only people in the entire world whose God was the eternal creator of all things, the invisible who made all things visible. That’s why the affirmation of God as Creator is all over the Old Testament Scriptures. If we decide to “see” this God, we can like Moses persevere, especially when it’s most difficult. Ironically, Moses fled from Egypt specifically because he was afraid. Possibly this ties into the next verse when Moses had gone back and faced Pharaoh’s anger mano e mano:

²⁸ By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.

A lot happened between the time Moses initially left Egypt, and the Passover we read about in Exodus 12, and Moses didn’t let any fear he may have had of the king keep him from confronting the most powerful monarch on earth. He trusted Yahweh through all the plagues, even the dreaded last one, the killing of the first born. One day 1,500 years into the future, the firstborn of creation would submit himself to the Destroyer for us, so God’s wrath would pass over us, and be taken out on his Son. That is all ours simply by trust, the same trust in God’s ability to pull if off that Moses had in sprinkling the blood; nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Hebrews 11:17-22 – Passing Down Generational Faith

After establishing that all those who are living by faith, by trust, are aliens and strangers on earth who are longing for a heavenly city, the author gets back to Abraham and the Patriarchs. He continues with the story of Isaac:

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, ¹⁸ even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”¹⁹ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

What kind of trust must this have taken. We read the amazing narrative in Genesis 22. Skeptics have a field day with it as if it’s the dumbest thing ever, that God would ask Abraham to sacrifice, to kill, his only son, and the promised one at that. But I look at it and wonder, who would make up such a story. From a merely human perspective it is ridiculous, which is why it reads real and I am compelled to accept its authenticity. As we’ll learn through Moses and the law, God is a jealous God and he commands that we shall have no other god’s before him. Imagine having waited a hundred years to have a child, and 25 of that on the Lord to fulfill his promise, and they finally see their dream come true. It would have been easy to confuse the fulfillment of the promise as the ultimate fulfillment, and not a means to something much greater.

Abraham, though, when asked to do what seemed absurd, decided to trust God. And knowing the rest of the story, God didn’t ask Abraham to do anything he wouldn’t himself do, sacrifice his “one and only son” for the salvation of his people. When you read the account in Genesis, Abraham had plenty of time to contemplate what God was asking him do to. It took a perfectly biblical three days for the trip to the mountain where he would have to do this terrible deed. I imagine he didn’t get much sleep those nights wrestling with his thoughts, seeing his son, the promised one, and realizing what he was about to do. It must have been horrible. As I said previously, God never makes it easy.

Why would Abraham reason that he could trust God to do something as impossible of bringing his son back to life after he had killed him. Probably because God had already done the impossible by giving him a son in the first place! From every human perspective, having a child at 100 and 90 is impossible, yet there was Isaac, and now God was asking for Abraham to give him back. His embracing the promise that got him the son, was an embracing of the power and character of the God who made it. He believed this God could not break his promise, so that was how he could reason, and reconcile what he was about to do with this God. He who gave life from basically nothing, could give back life again. One day we’ll have to ask Abraham about that three day journey.

Then the author leaves the story there, and gets briefly to the faith of Isaac. Imagine Isaac knowing the great faith of his father, the trust he had in Yahweh for his own life, that it would be natural for him to pass that faith on to his sons, he “blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.” The the sons of Isaac in the story of that blessing (Genesis 27) don’t come off as paragons of virtue, especially Jacob. Duplicity was part of his nature, but by it he got his father’s blessing, and the promise would continue through him. The writers of Scripture never go out of their way to make the characters look good. What they in fact do it tell the history that makes them look awfully human. As I said above, it reads real because it is! And God uses sinners to fulfill his promises; he has no other choice! So whenever we start feeling like the sinners we are, because well, we sin, and start feeling like God can’t use us, we just need to read our Bibles! (Sorry for the three exclamation points in a row.)

Next, we read of the trust continuing through Jacob when he blesses both sons of Joseph who were born in Egypt, Manasseh and Ephraim (Genesis 48). In effect he adopts them. He realized the fulfillment of the promise was yet to come as he was nearing death, and consistent with the God turning cultural expectations upside down in the history of redemption, Jacob places the greater blessing on the younger, Ephraim. He then blesses his other sons, including Judah through whom the ultimate fulfillment of the promise will come. The words of Jacob to Judah are awesomely prophetic.

Finally, Joseph gets old and the promise is yet to be fulfilled, so he too must exercise faith, and trust that the promise to his father, grandfather, and great grandfather will come true in due course. So we read in Genesis 50 how he “spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.” In a very real way we too are like the Patriarchs, not yet having received the ultimate fulfillment of the promise, which is God with us, Immanuel, forever. Death, Paul tells us, is the last enemy to be destroyed, and the exodus is the historical metaphor for God by his almighty power rescuing us from sin to live resurrected with him forever. We constantly look back to promises fulfilled, to trust the ultimate fulfillment in Christ.