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
HEBREWS: All About Faith
Hebrews is one of the three New Testament commentaries on a single Old Testament verse:
the just shall live by his faith {Hab 2:4b KJV}
This is the verse that struck a fire in the heart of Martin Luther, and began the Protestant Reformation 450 years ago.
This verse opened the eyes of Augustine, and helped him to become a mighty man of faith, and it is still striking fire in many hearts today. It is expanded and amplified in Romans, Ephesians, and Hebrews. Each of these epistles emphasizes a different aspect of that statement.
· The book of Romans talks about “the just” – the justified – those who have been accepted as righteous in Jesus Christ: The just shall live by faith.
· The book of Ephesians emphasized the words “shall live,” and it tells us about life as a justified person – the walk in the Spirit, the life in Jesus, the life of Christ in us: The just shall live by faith.
· And finally, the book of Hebrews takes up the last two words, “by faith,” and it shows us how to lay hold of the life by which we are justified.
The strength of faith is directly related to the strength of what you believe in:
· What are you believing in?
· Who are you believing in?
· What kind of a person is he?
If we see Jesus Christ as he is, we cannot help but be strong in faith.
Throughout this letter, Christ is compared with the basic thing that men trust in days of peril and trial. And every one of them is found insufficient – except him!
The writer argues, anybody who trusted in prophets ought to be interested in listening to Jesus Christ.
If Jesus is higher than the prophets, and higher than the angels, then we ought to listen to him.
When we learn to operate on God’s work in us, we learn to be perfectly peaceful, calm, undisturbed by circumstances, trusting, powerful, effective, accomplishing things for Christ’s sake. And that is rest.
Let God lead you into his rest, or you will be in serious trouble.
Your psychiatrist may go on vacation – he might even die – it has been known to happen! But Jesus Christ never dies, and he is never off duty – he is instantly and permanently available, and he actually strengthens you with the impartation of his own life, symbolized by the body and the blood, the bread and the wine.
A terrible warning; if you trust too long in the untrue, the unreal, the phony, there will come a day of desperation, when you will look for the true, and you will not be able to find it.
God is not interested in buildings. That is why I think it is such a desperate error to refer to a building as the house of God.
Jesus provides all the power we need to walk in righteousness if we will take it. All the Law does is demand; it never enables; but Jesus comes in and demands and enables. He who is faithful is he who calls us, who also will do it.
Think of it! God has provided for us at infinite cost a way of being righteous before him, strengthened within, kept strong and pure in the midst of all the adverse circumstances around us, and we set it aside and say, “No thank you, Lord, I’ll make it on my own.” Could anything be more insulting to God? And so he warns us not to presume on God’s grace.
So, in the last section of the letter, he comes to the means of obtaining all that God has, which is faith.
But when you look at Jesus, he will not only inspire you, but he will empower you. That is why we are exhorted to look away from these others unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of faith.
Our faith is increased by living constantly in trouble – the disciplines of life. If you did not have any problems, how could you exercise faith?
We are facing the times when God is going to allow everything to be shaken that can be shaken – that is everything visible. But what cannot be shaken?
The kingdom of God, the rule of God in our hearts; the right of Jesus Christ to be Lord within us can never be shaken. And that is what is being tested today so that all phoniness is being exposed. But the things that cannot be shaken will remain, and that which is based on the phony and the untrue will crumble and fall.
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!