Partakers Christian Podcasts

Highlights in Hebrews 20

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 20 - Hebrews 7:24-27

Meeting our needs

“because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.”

What do we really need? All sorts of things spring to mind but it is unlikely that they are the same things the writer is thinking about. He is concerned almost entirely with our status before God and therefore with our eventual destiny. As that affects us he wants us to have a sense of purpose in life and a sure destination to be going to. These two things are hugely important but many modern cultures ignore them almost completely. Our sense of purpose should come from setting out to follow Jesus and staying faithful to that calling for the rest of our lives. Our destination is to be with him after death - in a way that is not clear but is fully expected throughout scripture. We have a journey to make. It is not the case that setting out to follow Jesus will protect us from all the possible troubles and difficulties of this life. We may still suffer ill health, bereavement, loss of a job, and all the other ills that can affect us but we have a clear and certain path through these things taking us through to our destination.

The basic problem of every human life is sin. From our very first howl as babies when we want fed we have a strong streak of self-interest in all we do. We should be living to glorify the Lord God and his son Jesus but we don’t - we are really more concerned with ourselves most of the time. Jesus has rescued us from the consequences of that level of self absorption. Jesus - holy, blameless and pure - as the writer says. Because he was human he could stand alongside us, represent us and substitute for us. Because he was himself God he could do that for not just one person but for a huge multitude of people - including you and me! Before Jesus died the High Priest had to makes sacrifices every day and particularly on the one day of the year when he went into the innermost part of the temple where, they thought, God dwelt. All that was now unnecessary.

We each have a path to walk through life. Our paths are all different but they are all converging on one spot and one person who accompanies us every step of the way maps them all out for us. Our paths may not be easy. They may not be as easy as we would like. But he is with us and lead us through the difficulties, through the marshy bits, up the steep hills, all the time even as our legs get tired and we want to stop and rest for a while. He knows every way we should walk. He will show up some of our ‘needs’ to be just ‘wants’. All the true needs he will fulfil from his richly abundant grace. We should and must rejoice in our saviour and God.

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Highlights in Hebrews 19

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)
Part 19 - Hebrews 7:17-22
A better covenant

. For it is declared: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.
And it was not without an oath! Others became priests without any oath, but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’

Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant.

Promises are important, particularly when they are God’s promises, but covenants are even more important. God made a great promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:2, 3). Then 24 years later he turned that promise into a covenant (Genesis 15:8 - 19) in what seems to us a very curious ceremony but was the way they did it in those days.

The idea of a covenant was that there was a high king and lesser kings (in more modern terminology we should perhaps say a king and war-lords). The high king would make a covenant with a lesser king. He would promise to come to the aid of the lesser king if he was attacked. The lesser king would agree to send armed men to the high king, if required. to defend one of his other lesser kings. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

A promise is a promise, particularly when it is God who is promising. But a covenant is even stronger. If we promise someone they will have our house when we die that is one thing but if we go to see a lawyer and get it all written down in what we call a will that is quite different. So God is doing something to increase our confidence in what he is doing, not to ensure that he actually does it. Once a will is made the only person who can change it is the person who made it in the first place. In this chapter and the next 3 God is explaining how it is that he has changed his will (covenant) for us into a new and better one. All the covenant with Abraham still stands. It is the bits that were later added to it at Sinai to Moses which are being changed.

The great prophet, Jeremiah, was given a prophecy in which he said “The days are coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. …
This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Our writer quotes these words at length in Hebrews 8:8-12. The critically important statement is in 8:10, ‘I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.’ Jeremiah did not know how that would be done. He probably thought it would be by an intensification of the laws of Sinai and a tighter control of the people. He did not know. He could not know, how it would happen. When the Messiah, God on earth, came to establish his new covenant he would have a sort of secret weapon which would enable all those things to happen. That great secret was the gift of the Holy Spirit of God and Jesus who would enter the lives of his people. Ezekiel gets closer to what would happen when he says in his 36:26, 27 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

That is the great difference in the new covenant by which the Lord God would establish his people, his new people of every tribe and nation. What is the difference because this is a covenant and not just a promise? The answer is that this is a two-way event where promises are only one way. But we will leave that thought for another day.

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Highlights in Hebrews 18

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 18 - Hebrews 6:20–7:10

The great high priest – Melchizedek

The argument our writer is pursuing is going to be that Jesus is the greatest High Priest, superior to all others and therefore the one who should set us all the greatest spiritual example. So he says “… Jesus … has become a high priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek. This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace. Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.”

Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder! So the argument continues “Now the law required the descendants of Levi who were the priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, from their fellow Israelites—even though they also were descended from Abraham. This man, Melchizedek, however, did not trace his descent from Levi - who was not yet born - yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. And without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater. In the one case, the tenth is collected by people who die; but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living. One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor.”

There have already been several references to this rather strange episode involving Melchizedek. The argument of our writer is that Jesus was and is the greatest high priest ever, surpassing all others. This is not obvious because he was descended from Judah and not from Levi and Aaron as all high priest had to be.
The connection he uses is in Psalm 110. Here there is a prophecy of a man with three roles. He is to be the Messiah. That is not obvious from the psalm but is the way it was interpreted by both Jesus and the Pharisees (Matthew 22: 41 - 46). Then the Psalm refers to ‘your sceptre’ (Psalm 110: 2) and a sceptre is the symbol of kingship. Finally it says ‘you are a priest for ever’ (Psalm 110: 4).

How can this be? King Saul got into major trouble with Samuel because he acted as a priest when Samuel was late for a ceremony (1 Samuel 13: 8 - 14). Only Solomon seems to have been allowed to offer sacrifices as a king (1 Kings 8: 64 - 66). The Messiah was to be both a king and a priest because he was to be ‘a priest in the order of Melchizedek’. This refers to the unusual story of Genesis 14. It is about how Abraham had to rescue his nephew Lot when he got caught in the skirmish between 4 kings and 5 kings. (Since Abraham could sort them out with only 318 men, ‘king’ is a bit of an exaggeration. ‘Warlord’ or ‘Clan chieftain’ would probably be more realistic titles.) On his way back Abraham meets Melchizedek. Every other significant man in the book of Genesis gets a detailed genealogy. Melchizedek doesn’t. Hence our writer says “Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.” He just comes into the account from nowhere and disappears again. Yet Abraham treats him as the senior personage, giving him the tithe of a tenth of all his plunder and accepting a blessing from him. All that is very difficult to understand; it seems that Melchizedek was a priest of some senior line, which also worshipped the God of Abraham.

All this is exactly what our writer wants to explain the role and status of Jesus. From his very first verses he speaks of Jesus as the Son, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his [God’s] being. Beyond dispute Jesus was and is King. Now we see he was also a priest, a High Priest, senior to the Levitical high priests, more able than any one else has ever been to “ save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests men in all their weakness; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.” (7: 25 - 28).
This is the glorious reality the writer presents to our wondering gaze. Worship Jesus.

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Highlights in Hebrews 17

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)
Part 17 - Hebrews 6:18-19

Hope is an anchor

God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain,

Hope is the desire for something longed for. At school it was perhaps to be in the top team; then it became the hope that our new computer would be as good as we hoped; then we hope for a good and loving life mate; for a happy and enriching family; for a satisfying and rewarding job. In all probability it is only when we reach old age that we begin to think of hope in terms of what might happen when we die. Hope stands out in the New Testament as something to be sought and it is about the last of those things. We, in the more developed parts of the world anyway, are little concerned with such thoughts. They, in the writer’s days, had a life expectancy probably only in the 40s or 50s and a good chance of dying at any age. We, with all the modern medicine available to us, can expect to go on in a reasonable state of health much longer than that. It is therefore no wonder that we are less concerned with hope than they were. They will have been much more used to seeing people die young or not very old. We hide the thoughts away for many years until we come to the point where we begin to hope we shall not get dementia, or will not only die until after a long and painful illness. And what happens next is not a major consideration until we are so set in our ways and beliefs that we have no real hope.

New Testament hope is quite different. Paul talks of “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1: 27). It is that part of hope that, I am guessing, does not come much into your thinking until you are fairly old. In a way that is not surprising because our natural hopes exist with vast gaps between them. When we are younger that final hope is something that flits in and out of our thoughts at quite rare intervals. But this - hope in our future beyond this life, and in our Lord Jesus - is another matter. If we are members of the Kingdom here on earth we have a great and wonderful hope that we shall still be members after we die.

What guarantee do we have that this will indeed be the case? Our writer says it is as secure as an anchor that is firmly embedded amongst rocks on the sea bottom.

Going back a couple of verses he has said that there are two unchangeable things. It is not obvious what these were but he must be referring to what God said to Abraham after Abraham had passed the terrible test of being prepared to sacrifice his son and thus appearing to destroy the previous promise of God that he would have many descendants. “I swear by myself, declares the Lord …” (Genesis 22: 16). Nothing we experience will ever be as bad as what happened to Abraham. The Lord gave his great promise to Abraham and confirmed it ‘by himself’. In other words our God is totally trustworthy, whatever may be happening to us that seems to prove otherwise. This is our hope. Then, mixing his references up in quite a confusing way our writer says that our anchor is in ‘the inner sanctuary behind the curtain’, which is where the Lord God was thought to reside more than anywhere else.

The rocks between which our anchor is so firmly wedged that it can never be pulled out are our Lord, his person, his Word, our Lord and Master.

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Highlights in Hebrews 16

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)



Part 16 - Hebrews 6:4-8

The perils of falling away.

 

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.

This is a tricky passage. It seems not to agree with what is said elsewhere in scripture. But here it is in front of us and we must heed what it says. To highlight the problem here is one famous type of theology, followed by Reformed churches, which indicates the alternative very forcefully. T.U.L.I.P. is the mnemonic used by some of the more extreme advocates of a Calvinistic theology. These stand for:

• T - Total depravity. This does not mean everyone is just as bad as they could possibly be but that everyone is naturally so sinful the initiative for their salvation must come from God, even when they think it is their own choice to follow him
• U - Unconditional election. God chooses us; we do not choose him.
• L - Limited atonement. Jesus did not die for all men and women, being only made effective for those who he chooses. Rather he only died for those who God knew he would call.
• I - Irresistible grace. If God decides to call us we are called. There is nothing we can do about it; we cannot refuse his offer.
• P - Perseverance of the saints. Once chosen, called and saved we cannot turn away from that. We are believers for ever.
  
  

There is much to commend in this view of faith. All these points can, and are, easily supported by scripture quotations.

Reading through all these things is a useful reminder that becoming a follower of Jesus is not like joining the Boy Scouts or the local golf club. There we, or our parents, pay the joining fee and we are in. It is all our doing. But when we become followers of Jesus we are not the sole partakers in what happens. God has a part to play. In fact he has the major part to play. In particular we receive from him the gift of the Holy Spirit. Once we have received that gift can we back out of the arrangement? No, of course not says TULIP. But the verses in front of us in Hebrews say something different.

There is no easy way to reconcile the two. The easy, but rather unsatisfactory, way out is to say the one who is falling away was never really a Christian believer in the first place, but was just imitating the activities of those who are. But that doesn’t really fit. Our writer talks about a person being enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift (presumably meaning experiencing the power and joy of heavenly love), sharing in the Holy Spirit, becoming excited by reading the Bible and looking forward to the eventual life in the kingdom. These two things simply do not fit.

How you resolve this tension will depend almost entirely on your background and the sort of church you are in. I will say just this:the TULIP type approach gives us great confidence in the Lord and encouragement on our way; what our writer says is a strong warning against the perils of turning away from faith once embarked on the great journey it offers. Both points of view are found in scripture and we must heed both.

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Highlights in Hebrews 15

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 15 - Hebrews 5:11 – 6:3

Poor scholars

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.

The writer has a grumble about the poor level of knowledge of Christian things in many of the churches of his day. If your situation is anything like ours you will agree that nothing much has changed in nearly 2000 years!

I would place a lot of the blame on the idea of the sermon as it is commonly used in our country. What is the purpose of a sermon? The answer would seem to be something like this:it is part entertainment and part so that those attending may be convinced that good things have been said. They will therefore go home pleased by what they have heard rather than gaining anything from it. This is particularly true of the so called ‘gospel address’. This consists of a statement about the sinfulness of the average person, a call to repentance and conversion and an exhortation to ‘follow Jesus’. This is preached even if there is no one present who is not known to be a Christian or is a hardened listener to such things without the slightest intention that they should change their ways. Everyone goes home pleased that ‘the gospel’ has been preached even if there has been no effect, and no effect could ever have been expected. Any preacher who fails to follow this pattern will be in grave danger of never being asked again however Biblical what he, or she, said may have been. This is the pattern in thousands of churches, chapels and meeting houses in our country. What about yours?
No school teacher or university lecturer could expect to get away with such things. Only a minority of the population is capable of learning anything after about 10 or 20 minutes anyway so the preacher who goes on for a further 10 or 20 minutes is wasting their breath. There - I’ve had my grumble too to add to that of the writer!

What can we do about it? Not a lot has to be the sad answer. We need to think hard and carefully about what it is we are doing. I remember a church in a city containing a large number of students. The preacher catered for the students preaching in a university lecture style and many of them took notes as he spoke. But some of the older locals grumbled about that because it was not the conventional wisdom they expected. I also remember asking the pastor of a church in Pakistan, many of whose congregation will have been illiterate, whether he got them to learn passages of scripture off by heart. He was amazed at the very suggestion even although he was working in a culture where learning by heart the Qu’ran was an accepted and encouraged practice. Conservative Evangelical churches tend to be generally conservative so any change is frowned upon.

We need to learn these things our writer talks about. That is why Dave works away at these Partaker notes. Read them and learn from them every day. If possible go on to some of the study courses he also makes available.

Learn and teach to be a true disciple of the Jesus who ran a 3 year study course for his disciples and a true user of the Holy Spirit in your life and that of those you are able to disciple.

Two of the action words of the Great Commission in Matthew 28 are discipling and teaching. Go. Disciple and teach.

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Highlights in Hebrews 14

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 14 - Hebrews 4:14–16

Jesus the great high priest

Here are the first 6 verses: “Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people. And no one takes this honour on himself, but he receives it when called by God, just as Aaron was. In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him,
“You are my Son; today I have become your Father.”
And he says in another place, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

Chapter 5 starts with what may be a somewhat idealised description of life with the original high priests. All too often a man appointed to a high position will forget his background and begin to lord it over people rather than ‘dealing gently with them’. Perhaps, you may retort it was different because these men were appointed by God, not man, but we must remember that although Aaron was appointed by God he became the prime mover at the incident of the golden calf so even that was no guarantee of always having a good man in post as the high priest.

Anyway, after quoting two Old Testament statements, our writer proceeds to talk about Jesus, where he was on firmer ground. And so we come to verses 7 to 10 which are indeed the central statement of the whole book.

Here they are, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”

The curious use of Melchizedek is a big subject, which comes to prominence in chapter 7, so we will look at it then.

There are 2 possible ways to see problems in these verses. Was Jesus originally disobedient if he had to learn obedience? And was he less that perfect if he had to be ‘made perfect’? These two things touch on the very central core of the Christian faith. It is the common view of people that it is best to be strong and dominant, to be one who does not give way or suffer being put down. Jesus taught otherwise. But his way is so different even he had to learn it in his obedience to his Father. It came to a pinnacle as he approached the cross. It was his supreme test. And as the perfect student only reaches perfection when he, or she, sits the exam and achieves 100% so it was only when Jesus was put to that final test that he could be shown to be perfect.

Paul puts it beautifully in Philippians 2:6 - 8 when he says,
“Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!”

Of course Paul then goes on to say, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And that is it. The way up is down; our Lord and Master lowered himself, setting us an example which it is very hard to follow. If we are naturally not one of nature’s strong men or women it is not so difficult. But if we are one of them then it is very hard to walk as he walked. He is the “source of eternal salvation for all who obey him”. May the good Lord find us to be those who obey him.

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Highlights in Hebrews 13

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 13 - Hebrews 4:14–16

Jesus the great High Priest

 

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

Apart from a passing mention in Hebrews 3:1 this is the first mention of Jesus by the writer as the great high priest - an idea which is going to dominate the next 6 chapters and thus forms the central core of his book.

He is going to talk of Jesus as high priest against the background of the Old Testament and not the current reality of his day. The high priest used to be the spiritual leader of the people of God. But by the times in which the writer lived he had become a political figure as well. The Romans appointed him and he was regarded by them as responsible for the way the people lived within the Roman empire - quite a difficult task.

In those next few chapters we will have plenty of opportunity to think about the spiritual aspects of high priesthood. Here we will look at the political work of Jesus. This was that he had set up a new kingdom, the kingdom of God, of which he was the king or at least the Crown Prince under his Father God.

It is the kingdom to which we belong as citizens of heaven, as Paul said in Philippians 3:20 ‘our citizenship is in heaven’. If we are Christian we have two passports, representing two citizenships. One, the obvious one, is our citizenship, our membership, of a nation in this world, the one into which we were born. The second, less obvious but more important one, is our citizenship of the kingdom of God. We are here, now, members of it on earth. One day we shall become members of it in heaven when we die. What a huge privilege that is and will be.

It is hard to change your citizenship from one country to another. It is equally hard to change our citizenship and leave the Kingdom of God, which is just as well considering how easily we can be tempted to try to do so. That is what the writer means when he talks about how we are to ‘hold firmly to the faith we profess’.

And it is only from within the kingdom that we can ‘approach God’s throne of grace with confidence’. That is pretty obvious. The king does not go visiting other kingdoms, so we need to be members of his kingdom to approach him. The kingdom is not all pleasure and excitement. Many difficult things will happen within it but we need not worry because the king has been there before us ‘tempted in every way just as we are’. The prime temptation that the writer will have been thinking of was the way in which Jesus felt a natural human horror at the thought of the cross, and how he wrestled in the garden of Gethsemane with his wish that he could avoid it. Someone has said that the biggest miracle Jesus ever did was not to turn away from his destiny on the cross! But he didn’t, so we can ‘find grace to help in our time of need’.

What a king! What a kingdom! What a great high priest to lead his people not only in spiritual things but in all the many difficulties and troubles of their every day lives.

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Highlights in Hebrews 12

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 12 - Hebrews 4:12-13
Under the knife.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

It is hard for us to see any benefit in the work of a sword. The writer will not have known anything about a surgeon’s scalpel so he could not have used that picture for what he wanted to say. But that does not stop us doing so. A surgeon’s scalpel, that little thin knife, is probably the sharpest sort of blade that there is around these days so it would make a good illustration.

‘The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any surgeon’s scalpel ….’few of us modern people will not at some time in our lives had to willingly submit ourselves to a surgeon carrying out an operation on us. He (or it may have been a she) may have had to sort out some part: a finger, an arm or a leg, that got broken. He will cut to make it better, to ensure that things naturally heal in the way that they should and not in some twisted way that will leave us permanently crippled. Or there may have been something wrong with one of the major organs in our body and he has had to go deeper in and try to sort things out. Yes, a surgeon’s scalpel is a better illustration of what the writer wants to say than a double-edged sword because its purpose is beneficial

The word of God that the writer was thinking about would almost certainly have been mainly the Old Testament. It may, or may not, (we don’t know when this book was written) have included any of the New Testament we know, but will almost certainly have included information about the life and words of Jesus. Our Bible has both Testaments, of course. Paying close attention to these Words of God will not always be a comfortable process. Sometimes, it will cut deep in order to straighten us out, make sure we do not get twisted in our thinking, keep us long term healthy when things were beginning to go wrong.

Make sure that you live a long and healthy life by paying close attention to the wonderful Word of God that we have in the scriptures. Sometimes they may cut deep to sort us out so that we continue along the good and narrow way. That will then ensure that we reach the ‘rest’ we were thinking about a few verses back, the Kingdom of God both in this life and the next. Another psalmist said, (Psalm 119:11) “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” The writer of Hebrews was thinking of what we should do; the Psalmist was more concerned with the outcome.

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Highlights in Hebrews 11

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

Part 11 - Hebrews 4:11
Seeking rest

“Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.” Hebrews 4:11

‘Rest’ now there’s a thing! I hope you manage to get some even if you are a young Mum with several children , a farmer striving to get enough to eat out of a patch of not very good ground, or a busy executive in industry. Our writer never says very much about what he means here, thus indicating that the expects us all to know what ‘rest’ is. He has at least four different sorts of rest in mind:

1. ‘Rest’ is an essential and totally necessary part of the world we live in because even the Lord God rested ‘from all his work’ (Genesis 2:2). Rest is an essential part of creation.
2. Having set this example to all creation it became part of the law set out for all the people of God in Exodus 20: 8 - 11. Leviticus 16:29-31 even associates the day of rest with the cleansing of atonement. Unfortunately it became, and still is, one of the walls built around Israel to keep others, Gentiles, out. So that, instead of being a good thing it became a bit of a bad thing.
3. The Psalmist in Psalm 95:8-11 thinks of the Promised Land, towards which they journeyed through the desert, as a place of rest. There they would be able to settle down, stop travelling and putting up tents every night, build houses, cultivate the land and by generating a little more than they actually needed become richer and be able to have some leisure. Unfortunately that did not go well. They were not obedient in all they did as they travelled; they ‘hardened their hearts and ‘tried’ the Lord making him angry with them, thus delaying their arrival in the land by forty years (Psalm 95: 9, 10) thus serving as a warning to those for whom the psalmist was writing not to behave as they did.
4. The writer to the Hebrews uses all this background as a warning to his readers, including us, about how to behave. He does this by laying emphasis on the word ‘Today’ thus connecting the words of the psalm with the situation of his readers, like us. It is not completely clear what he now means by ‘rest’. He calls it a Sabbath rest but seems to mean something rather more than a weekly day off. One way of thinking of it is as entry into the Kingdom. In the Kingdom of God we will be able to rest; we shall no longer be struggling to gain acceptance by God because Jesus has secured that for us by his death on the Cross; when our days here are done we shall move, still within the Kingdom, into the glory where we shall surely have the real and final ‘rest’.

‘Rest’ number 4 takes us back to number 1 and the greater glory. ‘Rests’ numbers 2 and 3 are but stepping stones on the way. In a practical every day way these things are important. There is a realisation amongst those who know such things that there is a limit to how much work a person can do in a week. If someone is overworked in terms of hours, or demand on them, they become less effective than if they have a reasonable amount of rest. In our society that used to be accomplished by most people taking a Sunday/Sabbath rest. Shops were shut. Fields were not ploughed. By far the greater number of people in our society did not have any work to do on a Sunday.

All that has now changed. In our society the urge to get as many sales and therefore as great an income as possible means many people now have to work on a Sunday. Since the same number of people have the same amount of money to spend (allowing for the increase in population and general levels of affluence) it is hard to see who has benefited by this change. It just makes it harder for ordinary people to get an adequate amount of rest. As so often the Biblical, God-given way of doing things was, and is, better than that developed by ever greedy human beings. I hope you do not have to work beyond gaining a reasonable amount of rest, day by day and week by week.

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