Monthly Archives: November 2009

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.’ “

The reason the people of Israel who left Egypt did not enter into the rest of the Promised Land was their rebellion against God (verse 8). But that land was not the ultimate rest to which they were being led by God. It was a picture of the ultimate rest found in Christ. He is the final rest.

We are saved by grace without works. He has done all the work and we get all the benefits. What the writer to the Hebrews is doing here is drawing a comparison between those Israelites and the church. Their experiences serve as a warning to those who profess faith in Christ (I Corinthians 10:6). It is a warning. If we harden our hearts like they did, then we too will not enter the final rest that Christ accomplished for all His people on the cross.

The reason those Israelites found no rest was their hearts. As verse 10 tells us “they went astray in their heart;” The evil of rebellion and idolatry and law breaking that characterized them was rooted in their hearts. Their lives were impure because their hearts were evil. Only grace always, always, always produces holiness. People can make themselves good for awhile and in many ways people can live lives that are good in many ways. But those lives will never be the holiness that God requires for eternal fellowship with Him. The Israelites who left Egypt perished because of their unbelief (Verse 19).

So, was it unrighteous living as verse 8 says, or was it unbelief as verse 19 says that caused them to perish? The answer is “yes”. Their unbelief was the cause of their unrighteousness. If they had truly believed they would have turned from sin.

The grace of God is a powerful thing. It is not something that we give lip service to. It is not something that we use to exalt God with our mouths – “I am nothing and am saved by grace alone…” while living a life of sin. It is certainly not something that we can possess and not be changed. Grace is a powerful work of God that turns hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, that opens eyes to the glories of Christ and His work. It regenerates, gives life, grants repentance and faith. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness (Titus 2:11-14). It does it all.

To claim grace and not demonstrate it in holiness of life, holiness of intention, holiness of heart … is to deceive oneself that one truly has encountered the powerful grace of God that the Scriptures talk about. Does this mean that God’s grace at work in a heart will produce sinlessness? The Bible says “no”. But there will be a change. There will be repentance for sin.

Today, bow down before a loving, gracious God who has done it all. Show the world that His grace has done a powerful work in your life. Live, by grace, for the praise of His glory. Pray for His help today to live a God pleasing day. He can do more than you ask or think and He can do it in you (Ephesians 3:20-21.

Hebrews 3:1 (ESV) Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession,

Jesus is called the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. The word “apostle” means “one who is sent”, a messenger, and it is not hard to understand how Jesus is an apostle of God to us. John 3:16 – 17 addresses that one. God sent His Son into the world that the world through Him might be saved. He is the high priest of our confession in that He is the only One who can and does stand as the Mediator between us and God. He pleads our case, presenting the benefits of His life, death, resurrection and intercession for us.

We confess Him and Him alone as our priest, our Mediator, the One who offered up a sacrifice once and for all for the sins of His people. In referring to Jesus as Apostle we are being told that in having Christ we need not return to the prophets for a message from God. Christ is greater than all those previously sent including Moses.

The people the author is writing are being tempted to return back to Judaism. The reason that is a bad idea is because Jesus is better. He is the supreme Apostle from God and to return to Moses is to take the lesser and leave the greater behind. Don’t trade in your Mustang for a bicycle. We receive and hear Christ, not Moses. This of course does not mean that we do not need the Old Testament Scriptures. It simply means that following Moses will not save us. Keeping the Law in order to be saved will do less than nothing for you. As verse 5 tells us, Moses was faithful in God’s house. Jesus is faithful over God’s house. Trust the builder, not just another resident.

Speaking of Jesus as the priest whom we confess takes us to Aaron. We do not need the any other priest than Jesus. The Old Testament preisthood and all the sacrifices they offered were a mere shadow of the great priesthood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:1). We no longer need to offer up animals on altars. We no longer need to know who is next in line for the priesthood. We have a Priest and He is better than any other priest could ever be. The whole Old Testament priesthood was pointing to Jesus. Now that we have Him we do not need the other.

How believers need to get hold of this. What we have in Christ, is unsurpassable. He cannot be improved upon. You cannot find better by going back to the old system and you cannot find better by seeking for something new. We have the very highest, the very best. Do not long for anything else. All else is mere decoration compared to the reality that Jesus Christ is.

Bow down and worship.

Tell this to those who do not believe. Tell them that what they need is Jesus Christ and no one else. Tell them that the very best has come and to trust anything or anyone else is to trust that which will fail them. Tell them that the Only One who can save them is willing to save them. He turns none away who come to Him in faith. If, as a believer, you are truly thankful for what Christ has done you will want others to know about it. Pray to be able to pass on this incredible message to others.

Psalm 44:5 (ESV)

Through you we push down our foes;

through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.

The strength of the ones God uses is never the issue. This is a recurrent theme throughout all of the Scriptures. Moses, Gideon, David, Samson, Peter, Paul are the biggest examples in the Bible of God using people who did not have what we normally consider to be the qualities necessary to accomplish great exploits. Yet these men did just that. And there are many more mentioned throughout the Bible. Even Jesus Himself, came in ordinary appearance, in obscurity, and accomplished His mission in ways unknown to those expecting the Messiah.

The Gospel is spread throughout the Roman empire and eventually the whole world by people without power, influence or education, for the most part. In fact, it could be argued that one of the worst things to happen to the church was its legalization and becoming the official religion of the Empire. Once it became accepted and trendy and desirable, it lost its vitality.

Parts of the church today are caught up in the thought that what it takes to grow an effective church is effective leadership and people. What is meant by effective is gifted for the task, skilled, dynamic, charismatic. We see this in our critique of large “successful” churches in that we talk and plan as if using their technique, mimicking their leadership style and generally following them in their methods will reap the kind of growth that they have enjoyed.

We also see it in church leaders who conclude that since they are not superiorly gifted or talented or dynamic that they should not expect to accomplish much in their ministries. We give lip service to “Without Me you can do nothing” but it is worth asking whether we really believe it. Those who are not experiencing growth as we think it ought to be experienced in particular, can fall into believing that the lack of growth or effectiveness cannot be reversed since we have so many impediments.

When leaders in the Scriptures used such reasoning (and they did) God’s response was usually along the lines of “This is not about you. It is about Me and what I can do”(See Exodus 3 & 4). The point? If God has called you to a task, to hold back from going into the spiritual battlefield of church leadership against the odds and with great gusto is sin. It is a testimony that we trust ourselves more than God. It is a way of blaming God for our failures. It is to lay the charge against Him that if only He had made us with the right abilities we could have accomplished so much more. It is to blame Him for our failures.

Our problem is not lack of gifts. It is not a matter of insufficient resources whatever we conceive them to be. It is our lack of trust in the power and willingness of God to accomplish His purposes through even us. If God has called you to a work He has not called you to fail and He has not called you to accomplish nothing. He has also not called you to get your definition of success from anywhere but the Bible.

But He has called you to go into the battle against the odds and show His power. It is through Him that we will win souls for Christ. It is through Him that we will live non-conformed to this world. It is through Him that we shall do things that no one will be able to analyse and attribute the results to anything in us. We need to proudly put on the mantle of the great failures of the Bible and take a stand for God against all the odds. Let us not mourn the lack of talent that we possess. Let us remember that God uses the talentless who simply trust in the power of God to do far more than we can ask or think.

Neither he who plants and he who waters are anything (I Corinthians 3:7). Well, if they are not anything, what are they? Nothing. Let us not blame God for our fears or our beliefs that victory can only come through the super gifted. It is the Gospel that is the power of God and it is the Gospel that we must live and deliver.

Does God guarantee us greatness as the world (and many Christians) define it? Absolutely not. We must not succumb to the pressure that we are failures if budgets, numbers, influence, popularity in Christian circles, are not grabbing the attention of the evangelical world.

The universal testimony of the Scriptures is that our abilities are supremely not the issue. Our fear and sin may be.