Monthly Archives: November 2009

Hebrews 3:14 (ESV) – For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

Hebrews 3:14 is almost identical to 3:6. In both verses he says that we are Christians if we do not give up. The mark of faith is perseverance. The writer does not consider it redundant to say the same thing so soon after having said it once. We learn by repetition and repeating this particular thing is more than fleetingly important. It is absolutely crucial to the health of our souls.

Temptations do not go away just because in one situation we managed not to succumb to them. They come back again and again and again, tempting us to do the same thing. And we never get tired of their allurements. No one ever says when tempted to sin – “O you have no power over me at all anymore.” We find the same old sins as alluring and pleasant as we ever did. Yet we often complain when we are told the same thing more than once regarding holiness. “Why are you telling us this? Didn’t you say the same thing last week?” is sometimes heard by preachers of the Scriptures. But we need to be constantly hearing the same truths and encouragements and warnings repeatedly, simply because if we do not we will fall.

We need to pray every day about our walk with God. We need to read Scriptures we have read many times before. We need to be in constant contact with other believers to keep ourselves accountable. We need to hear it again, and again, and again. The old hymn caught the sentiment when it said “Tell me the old, old story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.” We should be hungering to hear the Gospel over and over again.

When we encounter repeated phrases in a short space of time in a biblical text it should be a warning to us to pay particularly close attention. We should thank God that He has given us the record of His work in the Bible the way He did. He has told us often what He requires, how we need Christ, the importance of prayer and fellowship and corporate worship.

Read Kings and Chronicles and see some of the same events repeated with slightly different details. Read the four Gospel accounts and note that many times we are told the same things from the life of Christ especially the Passion Week events. Have a look at Ephesians 4-6 and Colossians 3-4 and II Peter and Jude. God is not redundant in His words. He did not make a mistake in inspiring different authors to say similar things.

If we are regular in our reading of the Bible we will encounter these things often and it should really make us glad that God remembers that we are dust and need to be constantly reminded to keep looking to the Saviour who has done it all and of whom we are so prone to take for granted.

So the writer to the Hebrew believers said the same thing twice in the space of a few verses. Take heed. The writer to the Hebrew believers wrote the same thing twice in the space of a few verses. Pay attention.

Hebrews 3:12-13 (ESV)

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.

Verse 12 and 13 are one statement. The point of verse 13 is to tell us how to have hearts that do not turn away from the living God. And how is that? By exhorting one another every day. The church is a community. It is a family. It is a body, building and bride. There is no picture of the church in the Bible that would allow us to portray it in a way that reflects the individualism of North American culture. The individualism is no doubt partly responsible for the lack of spirituality that exists in the church here.

We will not grow as believers if we do not use what God has given us to help us grow in the faith. He has given us the Scriptures. He has given us prayer. He has given us corporate life together. The church is a fellowship of people who need one another. It is not a denial of the work of God to say that we need other sinners saved by grace in order to be the people that God calls us to be.

God has designed us for fellowship with Him and with others. The “just Jesus and me” attitude that some people have is blatantly unbiblical. Maintaining that we do not need anything else but Jesus sounds spiritual but it is a thin disguise for lone ranger Christianity that cannot lead to true Christlikeness. If we are to grow more into the image of Christ it will only be because we obey Him in using what He says to use that will help us grow. That will mean some rather drastic changes in the way most people claiming to know Christ choose to live their lives.

But change is what the Gospel does and if we are unwilling to engage in it perhaps we need to consider whether we really have been contacted by the Gospel in the first place. Do we really want to be holy? Then let us work at becoming a community in the sense that the New Testament says we should.

The church is meant to be, at least in part, a mutual support society where followers of Christ can help one another without the fear of judgement and gossip and shock. It is one follower of Christ saying to another “come on, you can do this, you do not have to give in to this temptation” It is believers praying with and for one each other. It is knowing the sins that others struggle with and helping them overcome, talking to God about it and not talking to others.

Getting to this point requires some rather drastic commitment. It means someone has to be the first to go out on a limb and get the ball rolling. “Here is where I fear I may fall away from Christ. Will you help me?” Or, even more audaciously “Here is where I think you need some help.” It is shocking to even consider doing that because of the church culture which has developed in the west of stiff upper lip (English) and “pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps (American). And it is wrong. We need to stop living as if we were in complete control. God knows we are not and we should be willing to admit it in public. We can all say “I am a sinner”. But how many of us meet with others and say “Here is my sin, will you please help me and pray with me and I will do the same for you.”

Today, see to it that you do not have a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God – get together with some other believers and encourage one another.

Hebrews 3:12-13 (ESV)

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.

The author has brought to the memories of the Hebrew believers the story of the Israelites not being allowed into the promised land because of their unbelief. This was not to just give them something to think about. It was given as a warning to them. They fell into grievous sin because of their straying hearts (3:10). Now then, watch out that you do not have a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, like they did.

God’s preservation of the elect does not cause believers to be careless with their hearts. It does just the opposite. The writer could have as easily said “prove the genuineness of your faith”. Real faith will prove its genuineness. It is not saying that we can lose our salvation to say that believers need to guard their hearts so that they do not turn away from God. Care for one’s spiritual health is a sign of true conversion and to use a biblical truth as reason to disobey a commandment of Scripture is not what a real believer will do.

Presumption is a sin that will end a lot of people in hell, not because they lost what they had but because they never had what they thought they had. Do you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ? There have been others who made that claim who now will have nothing to do with the God of the Bible, who deny the truth of Scripture and who believe all kinds of non-Christian things. Don’t you be one of them. Examine your heart. Test your own faith. Show the reality of your faith through ruthless examination and rigorous sacrifice and cross bearing. The stakes are too high to do any less. Take the Scriptures seriously.

Hebrews 3:7-11 (ESV)

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

[8] do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

on the day of testing in the wilderness,

[9] where your fathers put me to the test

and saw my works

[10] for forty years.

Therefore I was provoked with that generation,

and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;

they have not known my ways.’

[11] As I swore in my wrath,

‘They shall not enter my rest.’ “

Verse 11 is truly frightening. The reason the Israelites did not enter the Promised Land was because God swore an oath that they would not. He had become so angry at them for the intransigence of their sin that they sinned beyond the point where God was willing to even allow them to return to Him. Hope for repentance was gone. This is consistent with the testimony of Romans 1 as well.

The God of whom the writer to the Hebrews refers is our God. He still gets angry at sin. He still holds His hands out to a stubborn and rebellious people. He still grants untold numbers of opportunities for people to turn from sin and turn to Him. And He still makes oaths to destroy those who are so intransigent in their sins that they will not repent.

People who have a smattering of Christian teaching often presume upon the mercy of God and assume that it will always be available to them. It will not. They plan to come to God some day and get their lives straightened out not realizing that God may close the door on the opportunity tomorrow.

It is legitimate to wonder if the culture we live in has come to the point when God has sworn in His wrath that people will not be saved. We do not know for sure and until the doors of the Bible believing church are finally shut by Him we will continue to declare the Gospel to those whom God puts in our path.

People need to hear this. Even though they do not want to they need to. They need to know that their sins condemn them and that if they do not turn to God a day may come when they will not be able to. It is a fearful thing to trifle with the God of all creation. It is a horrible neglect of the Scriptures and of our calling to downplay the wrath of God. It is a horrible thing to imply by our neglect, that God is not going to pour out His wrath on the ungodly. He will. He is. And we who know Christ need to be warning people about it.

Psalm 10:1-12 (ESV)

Why, O Lord, do you stand afar off?

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

[2] In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;

let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.

[3] For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,

and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.

[4] In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”

[5] His ways prosper at all times;

your judgments are on high, out of his sight;

as for all his foes, he puffs at them.

[6] He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;

throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”

[7] His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;

under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.

[8] He sits in ambush in the villages;

in hiding places he murders the innocent.

His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;

[9] he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;

he lurks that he may seize the poor;

he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.

[10] The helpless are crushed, sink down,

and fall by his might.

[11] He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,

he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”

[12] Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;

forget not the afflicted.

The wicked prosper and the poor are abused by them. They live as if God is asleep or doesn’t care or cannot do anything to change his ways. They are arrogant and self righteous and confident of their future. They thrive in their evil ways and the more evil they do the more they thrive and prosper. The Psalmist sees this and questions God about it. “Why do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself?”(verse 1).

This was written about 1000 years before the birth of Christ. People are still asking the same questions today. At least part of the answer to such dilemmas is that God put such things in the Scriptures for us to read and know that the Bible was not written with rose coloured glasses. Life stunk and God put it there for us to see.

Life still stinks. The poor are still abused; the rich still accumulate riches on the backs of the poor; there is still self righteous arrogance and self confidence and the temerity to challenge the Almighty.

When we look around us and see all the horrors that make up life on this planet we should not conclude that the Bible is somehow wrong. The Bible talks about these very things! The Bible has the writings of men who complained to God about the way things were heading.

If the message of the Bible is “come to Jesus and be prosperous, or trouble free” then people might have a complaint to make against God for the way their lives turn out. But the Bible is abundantly clear that sin has messed up life royally and God has a plan to eradicate sin from off the planet. But until then sin will continue to wreak it horrible consequences.

The point is that none of the troubles of life mean that God does not know, is not there, does not care, or is powerless to do something about it. He has. It is called the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People need to hide their lives in Christ and know that the hope the Gospel gives them is not some pipe dream. It is a truth that gives strength and hope and help and meaning and purpose. It forgives the sin that causes the world to be such a horrifying place, and in forgiveness causes people to stop being horrible. And it promises that one day God is going to judge the wicked who oppress and kill and lie and live for themselves.

There is coming a day when no one will be able to look around and ask why evil seems to prosper – because God will have judged the evil and rewarded all those who are hidden in Christ. Until then, let’s do all we can to make sure that no one ever has to look at us and wonder why God doesn’t do something about the wickedness they encounter.