HEBREWS (Letter 58, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)

BELIEVE! WAIT! LOVE! DO NOT QUIT ON MY SON!

God referred there to unnamed people who were tortured but refused to secure their release by giving up on His story. They were waiting to ‘gain a better resurrection.’

Those followers were stretched out on a tympanum-a wheel-shaped rack-and while they were being pulled apart, their torturers beat them with a club or leather strap.

How did these Christians not shrink back?

We might begin by listening to Martin Luther’s advice. Luther would reply with the counsel he gave himself and his friends: ‘If you would believe, you must crucify the question, How?’

Crucify the how question. Stop trying to figure out what you can do to develop stronger faith, brighter hope, richer love.

Come to God’s table as an adult prepared to eat meat not just milk [5:11-14].

God loves us too much not to grow us up with solid food.

The meat God provides in this letter includes the truth of: the unique beauty of God’s Son’s life and death that reveals who He is and how He relates, revealed to all who see His glory in the face of His Son [2 Corinthians 4:6;Hebrews 1:3]. the superiority of His Son to the angels who were with Him when He revealed His character at Sinai in the giving of the Law [Deuteronomy 33:2; Hebrews 1]; the superiority of His Son to Moses, who received His law and pastored His people in a failed attempt to keep it [Hebrews 3]; the superiority of His Son to Joshua, who led His people into a rest they could not maintain [Hebrews 4:8]; and the superiority of His Son to Aaron, the priest whose shrinking back prevented him from enjoying free access into His Presence. Aaron was a priest because he came from the tribe of Levi. His Son was a priest ‘on the basis of the power of an indestructible life’ (Hebrews 7:15-16).

And now, God’s Son knows exactly what we’re going through and what it takes not to shrink back. He feels the strength of our temptation to escape from our tympanum, to renounce His story and tell our own, to protect ourself from relational pain in any way that works, and to live the lukewarm good-enough Christian lives that His Son and He thoroughly detest.

And He has already given us the life we need to overcome that seemingly irresistible temptation.

In ways we’ll never understand, He knows how tough it can be to tell His story. When we’re tempted to shrink back, He feels the temptation. When we yield, He forgives us. The pressure to perform is gone. The desire to obey, the same desire that was centered in His Son’s heart during all His earthly life, and most keenly felt in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, is in us.

The better we know Him, the more we will know the joy of ongoing repentance.

Repentance puts us more closely in touch with Him and more fully releases His life through ours.

HEBREWS: From Ray Stedman

Click here for entire Bible Summary from Ray Stedman

to be completed

HEBREWS – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)

Key thought: We must never yield to discouragement, for our Great High Priest is supreme over all and sufficent for all.

Key Verse: Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Hebrews 4:14

Key Action: Persevere!