Partakers Christian Podcasts

Highlights in Hebrews 39

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)
39. Hebrews 13:1–7 - Keep on … don’t forget … remember …

Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters. Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it. Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.
Give honour to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery.
Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said,
“I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”
So we can say with confidence, “The LORD is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?” Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith.

There is no one outstanding highlight in these verses but they constitute a brief but important part of the whole writing. So I have to sweep them together into a little pile and say - look at this! The book of Hebrews is crammed full of teaching about our Lord, Jesus, who he is and why we should follow him. Only now, late on in his writing, does the author comment on what it should all mean in hard significant facts about our daily lives.

He is particularly anxious that we should:
1. Be very aware of the need to offer loving support to our fellow Christians through hospitality, special support to any who have fallen foul of anti-Christian authorities;
2. Be very careful about our sex lives. They will have been living in a situation in which it was as difficult to stay sexually pure as in any modern one. Our sexual appetites can be very strong and difficult to resist. But both within marriage and without we should stay pure;
3. Be aware of the dangers of living a life distorted by too great a concern for money and what it can buy.;
4. Be prepared to give full honour to those who work hard in the gospel, particularly through the pastoral ministry.

We all particularly in the West, are living in a society which in historical terms is rich beyond the wildest dreams of people from earlier societies. Even for ordinary citizens with no exceptional sources of wealth - Our houses are bigger, our kitchens are full of wonderful machines, we mostly own a chariot which will take us faster and in much greater comfort than any that have existed before, we holiday in greater comfort and in many more places than any but the very richest used to do.

Just imagine what our writer would have said to all that! What would he have expected us to do with all that in terms of support for the kingdom?

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Bible Reading - Psalm 65

Psalm 65

For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. A song.

65:1 Praise waits for you, God, in Zion. To you shall vows be performed.
65:2 You who hear prayer, to you all men will come.
65:3 Sins overwhelmed me, but you atoned for our transgressions.
65:4 Blessed is one whom you choose, and cause to come near, that he may live in your courts. We will be filled with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.
65:5 By awesome deeds of righteousness, you answer us, God of our salvation. You who are the hope of all the ends of the earth, of those who are far away on the sea;
65:6 Who by his power forms the mountains, having armed yourself with strength;
65:7 who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations.
65:8 They also who dwell in faraway places are afraid at your wonders. You call the morning's dawn and the evening with songs of joy.
65:9 You visit the earth, and water it. You greatly enrich it. The river of God is full of water. You provide them grain, for so you have ordained it.
65:10 You drench its furrows. You level its ridges. You soften it with showers. You bless it with a crop.
65:11 You crown the year with your bounty. Your carts overflow with abundance.
65:12 The wilderness grasslands overflow. The hills are clothed with gladness.
65:13 The pastures are covered with flocks. The valleys also are clothed with grain. They shout for joy! They also sing.

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Highlights in Hebrews 38

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

38. Hebrews13:8 - Jesus, Son of God

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (NLT)

 

Taken as it is this doesn’t say too much! We all have a yesterday and a today. Yet when we hear it or read it it seems to say much more than that. There is a very similar statement in Revelation 1, usually translated as about ‘he who is, and who was, and is to come’. One version translates this, as ‘I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come.’

So we read our passage here as:
Jesus Messiah had a very different yesterday from ours since he existed from before creation; he is today very different from us because he is the Lord of Glory and plays a big part in this world of ours; then tomorrow on one future day he will lead us forwards into a very different and wonderful future.

Our writer has said all these things on his way through his writing. He started off with ‘through the Son he created the universe.’ (Hebrews 1:2). Then he said ‘The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command.’ (Hebrews 1:3). Now, as we reach the end of his writing he says we, ‘have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, … You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. … You have come to Jesus,’

We have all, no doubt, done many things – some good, some bad in our lives so far. No matter, we rest in the arms of the one who always was, is now and ever will be, who will one day take us to be with himself in a better life, the one still to come.

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Psalm On Demand - Psalm 14

Psalm 14

14:1 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”

They are corrupt.

They have done abominable works.

There is none who does good.

14:2 Yahweh looked down from heaven on the children of men,

to see if there were any who understood,

who sought after God.

14:3 They have all gone aside.

They have together become corrupt.

There is none who does good, no, not one.

14:4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge,

who eat up my people as they eat bread,

and don’t call on Yahweh?

14:5 There they were in great fear,

for God is in the generation of the righteous.

14:6 You frustrate the plan of the poor,

because Yahweh is his refuge.

14:7 Oh that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion!

When Yahweh restores the fortunes of his people,

then Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad!

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Highlights in Hebrews 37

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

37. Hebrews 12:22–24 Our wonderful destination

you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24 NLT

The most astonishing two words in these verses are ‘have come’. Not ‘will come’ looking forward to some future date. Not tomorrow; not next year; not when we die; but now. We are already there. Wow! What is it that we have already come to? Our writer’s words form something of a purple patch in his description of it. He does it all with a half-concealed contrast to what happened to the Israelites as they left their slavery and travelled to the promised land so that there they might build the Temple which was to be the resting place of the Lord.

We are already there, on Mount Zion, that is we are living in the city of God - wherever we may be living in this world of ours. So we are at the place where the Lord God will be. There are countless thousands of angels already worshipping all around us even though we cannot hear them or see them. We are surrounded by God’s first-born children - that is by all those with whom we are in fellowship, world wide. We have only ever met the tiniest fraction of them, a few dozen or a few hundred at most. But they are there, all around us, none the less real because we have never met them. We have met with the Lord, or perhaps we should rather say that he has met with us when we were converted and turned to follow him. He is the judge over all things, but that does not frighten us because we have been accepted through the blood of Jesus. At that same time we met the ‘spirits of the righteous ones in heaven’, that is we entered the spiritual world. But above all we met Jesus.

We are, each of us, one tiny bit of Jesus, the Lord of Glory. Paul says in Philippians 3: 3: 9 he (Paul) had become one with him (Jesus). Turning it the other way round Jesus represents us, every one of us who are his. In all this wide world of ours there is nobody and nothing with which we are in closer relationship than we are with Jesus.

This is because we are now members of the Kingdom, the unshakeable kingdom where no earthquake will ever disturb us, as it did the Israelites as they camped round Mount Sinai. We are now present in the very Temple of God, which is Jesus, a far superior temple to those built in Jerusalem.

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Bible Reading - Psalm 88

Psalm 88

If you can, as you read and listen to Psalm 88, feel the agony of the Psalmist and ask the same questions he does, particularly in regards to our recent troubles across the world...

Psalm 88

A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskilof Heman the Ezrahite.

1 LORD, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.
3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
13 But I cry to you for help, LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken from me friend and neighbour –
darkness is my closest friend.

 

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Highlights in Hebrews 36

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

36. Hebrews 12:7 - Discipline

 

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? (Hebrews 12:7 NLT )

Discipline, now there is a dirty word – in much of the West, anyway. Several hundred years go the great thinkers decided that men and women do not really need God. We are all quite capable of working everything out for ourselves. This idea was called the Enlightenment and began back in the 16th century. Since then that idea has spread and now determines what people think in most of Europe and North America.

If we are capable of working everything out for ourselves that means that the way you work things out may be different from the way I do. And the way children work things out may well be different from the way their parents do. So the parents cannot discipline their children for doing something different from what they would. The result is not good. In fact it is beginning to show up in an increasingly chaotic society. So the whole background idea from which the writer is working – (Hebrews 12:7–10) has no basis in our culture! Ouch!

However that does not make what he says invalid. We are not talking about human beings, misled by the philosophy of many centuries ago. We are talking about the Lord God, who is far above and beyond our cultures. He is going to be our judge one day when we meet him face to face. He has every right to try and bring us to a point where we can be accepted by his grace and goodness because of a life of faith in which we have tried as hard as we can to be his good people. He calls that, ‘a peaceful harvest of right living’ (Hebrews 12:11).

 

That does not happen by accident. Fortunately we have the Holy Spirit himself with us to help us along the good way. It is only when we slip through his clutches, fail to stay in step with him, that we will need to be subject to discipline. Remember that ‘those who are not holy will not see the Lord.’ (Hebrews 12:14)

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Bible Reading - Psalm 36

Psalm 36

36:1 An oracle is within my heart about the disobedience of the wicked:

There is no fear of God before his eyes.”

36:2 For he flatters himself in his own eyes,

too much to detect and hate his sin.

36:3 The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit.

He has ceased to be wise and to do good.

36:4 He plots iniquity on his bed.

He sets himself in a way that is not good.

He doesn’t abhor evil.

36:5 Your loving kindness, Yahweh, is in the heavens.

Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

36:6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God.

Your judgments are like a great deep.

Yahweh, you preserve man and animal.

36:7 How precious is your loving kindness, God!

The children of men take refuge under the shadow of your wings.

36:8 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the abundance of your house.

You will make them drink of the river of your pleasures.

36:9 For with you is the spring of life.

In your light shall we see light.

36:10 Oh continue your loving kindness to those who know you,

your righteousness to the upright in heart.

36:11 Don’t let the foot of pride come against me.

Don’t let the hand of the wicked drive me away.

36:12 There the workers of iniquity are fallen.

They are thrust down, and shall not be able to rise.

 

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Highlights in Hebrews 35

Highlights in Hebrews

(with Roger Kirby)

35. Hebrews 12:1-3 Keeping spiritually fit.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. NLT

If the writer to the Hebrews had known that we all have a mix of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles throughout our body he might have used them as an illustration of what he wanted to say. If, like me, you are short of the fast-twitch type you always come in at the back of all the sprint races. You may, however, do much better at the cross-country races. He would have been asking us to ensure that we develop as much slow-twitch spiritual muscle as possible. Experts in such things tell us our muscles are a mixture. Slow -twitch enable us to keep going for a long time: run in cross country races or marathons, or row across the Atlantic. Fast-twitch are good for sprinting, playing tennis and catching the bus. Different people have different amounts of each of these in the blend in their legs and everywhere else. Chickens have slow-twitch muscles in their legs with the brown meat so that they can walk and run a long way. The white meat of their breasts and wings gives them much better intense activity like flying, but they can’t keep it up for long. You may know some people, there are too many of them around, who become Christians with a great flourish in their early days or their teen years. They are full of enthusiasm rushing around telling us all to follow Jesus, do a lot of evangelising, go to many youth rallies and so on. But where are they a few years later? They seem to have disappeared from the church scene. Oh, dear. They were so concerned with their fast-twitch spirituality they failed to develop any of the slow-twitch sort.

The writer is talking about slow-twitch spirituality. He talks about ‘endurance’ in 12: 1; about not becoming weary and giving up in 12: 3; about getting a harvest in 12: 11; and, of course, the outstanding characteristic of the heroes of chapter 11 - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and all the rest is that they fought their way through many difficulties to reach their barely understood destinations.

Above all there is Jesus, who endured hostility and the shame of the cross, because he knew he was going to a place of honour at the right hand of God on high. We know where we are going - not quite to such an honourable place, but into his immediate presence.

If you want to stay healthy into your old age it is no good waiting until you are old before doing anything about it! It is no good thinking you were fit and healthy at school when you played a lot of football, cricket or netball. Health is something that has to be kept up throughout life.

All that is true of physical health, but it is also true of spiritual health. Don’t think you can turn off your fast-twitch spirituality when you leave your teens, get married, move house to another area with the need to fit into a new church. It will probably slowly decline, as the years pass but it must be replaced steadily by slow-twitch spirituality. That does not mean that you just become one of the too many people who go to church, sit in their pew or their comfortable chair and think that is now their Christian life. After all you would have a job to stay even reasonably healthy physically if you only did anything remotely healthy just once a week. No! You need to join a prayer group, a study group, teach Sunday School, or do something to maintain a reasonable level of spiritual fitness. Come on - get off your backside and do something! (with apologies if you already do.)

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Psalm On Demand - Psalm 58

Psalm 58

For the director of music. To the tune of "Do Not Destroy."

Of David. A miktam .

¹ Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge uprightly among men?
² No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
³ Even from birth the wicked go astray;
from the womb they are wayward and speak lies.
⁴ Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears,
⁵ that will not heed the tune of the charmer,
however skilful the enchanter may be.

⁶ Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
tear out, O LORD, the fangs of the lions!
⁷ Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows be blunted.
⁸ Like a slug melting away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun.
⁹ Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns-
whether they be green or dry-the wicked will be swept away.
¹⁰ The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
¹¹ Then men will say,
"Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth."

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