March 30, 2008

Hebrews 3: “More Than a Good Start”

 

Think with me for a minute about how different our lives would be if a good start was all that we needed for a good life.  What would happen if all we had to do to break a bad habit was start well? Imagine a world in which going for a week without smoking, getting drunk, using bad language, gossiping, over eating, not listening when someone else was talking, not cleaning up after oneself, or any other bad habit, meant we were home free!  I don’t know what would happen to those whose bad habit was procrastinating!

 

Think about how different our lives would be if the first boy or girl any of us dated for any period of time was the one we married. This may not require too much thought for those who actually married their first love. But still we need to ask, how different would all of our lives be if we had kept every promise we made to our children or to ourselves about how we were going to raise them?  Would our marriages be different if we kept every promise to we made to our spouses?  Would our lives be different if we really had saved all that money we wanted to save or started to save only to spend it on some bargain or something we just had to have?  Would our lives be different if we truly spent or invested all of our money wisely? What would have happened if we had gone to college or finished the college we started?  Or applied ourselves completely to the schooling teachers offered? or to the training wise advisors encouraged us to take? What if all we had to do to read the Bible all the way through or have meaningful morning devotions was start on time?

 

This may sound pretty good, but let’s turn this whole thought process around and think how different our lives would be if every time we did something wrong just one time we were doomed to carry that activity to its ultimate possibility.  Imagine what would happen: if everyone who ever smoked one cigarette ended up smoking a pack a day for the rest of their lives? if everyone who took one drink of alcohol became an alcoholic?  if everyone who took an illegal drug became an addict?  if everyone who had a sexual encounter outside of marriage married that person and had to stay married to them the rest of their lives?  if everyone who ever overate became obese?

 

I hope we get the picture. While many of us would rejoice if one good, positive forward step meant ultimate success, I don’t think we would rejoice if every misstep condemned us to a life without any hope of ever stopping that sinful behavior. Without having to think too deeply, I believe we can all agree that there is a difference in life between believing we want to do something, even starting well or poorly, and actually following that path to its ultimate end.  Wisdom and hindsight should convince us that wrongly directed activities should be stopped and rightly directed activities need to be carried through to their ultimate conclusion. Isn’t how quickly we stop wrongly-directed activities and far we pursue rightly-directed activities what determines our ultimate measure of success or failure in this life?

 

What amazes me is how easily we can see the folly of this type of thinking in the everyday aspects of our lives and not see the folly of this type of thinking when it comes to our relationship with our Heavenly Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.  At or around the time of the death of a loved one , I have talked with many relatives who believe that some kind of religious experience at some distant point in their loved one’s life will prove to be their ticket into heaven.  It is possible there are even some of us gathered here today who are hoping that a one-day-a-week marriage to Jesus is enough to overcome a six-day-a-week marriage to the other guy.

 

Hebrews, the book we are going to study over the next four weeks, makes it very clear that God will not accept this kind of arrangement.  Would any of us stay married to a spouse who spent 98% of all our money on themselves and other men or women, as the case may be, treated other people’s children well but abused ours, and spent only two hours of their 168-hour week with us and the other 166 hours with another lover, and spent those two hours a week sitting quietly beside us thinking only how many minutes remained until their “sentence” was over? Would any of us call that a marriage?

 

Hebrews 3:1 says A faithful relationship with God begins with our thought life.  “Fix your thoughts on Jesus” the author begins and then goes on to illustrate how we keep Jesus uppermost in our lives by showing us to examples of men who succeeded in this task.  Moses, Hebrews 3:5 & 6 says, was faithful as a servant, while Jesus was faithful as a son.

 

While we have no way of knowing every thought Moses ever had, Scripture recounts many of the actions that resulted from these thoughts. The story in Numbers 14 illustrates the author of Hebrews point. The young Israelite nation “raised their voices and wept aloud.” Their complaining arose from the difficulties they faced in crossing the desert; they were ready to return to their lives of slavery in Egypt. "We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt," they concluded. The assembly even talked about stoning Moses and Aaron.

 

When Moses took their complaints to God, He in turn, offered Moses another option: “I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than the." (Numbers 14:12).  But instead of accepting God’s offer, Moses interceded on behalf of the nation.  He told the Lord, “If you put these people to death all at one time, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, 'The LORD was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath; so he slaughtered them in the desert.' He asked God, “In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now" (Numbers 14:13-19). Because Moses knew the mind and thoughts of God and loved Him, the nation was spared.

 

Although God did not immediately destroy the nation, the answer Moses was to relay to the nation is interesting and leads us into our second point. The LORD did forgive them as Moses asked, but He added:   “not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times-not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it” (Numbers 14:20-25).

 

This particular generation of the Israelite nation started well: they witnessed the plagues, acted in faith and applied the blood to their doorposts on the night of the Passover of the death angel, packed their belongings and crossed the Red Sea, and agreed to the covenant given at Mount Sinai. But their stubborn rebellion—“ten times”—resulted in God refusing to grant them the ultimate end of the faith walk they began.

 

Hebrews 3 echoes this refrain over and over in the remaining verses of this chapter:

 

“And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast” (3:6b)

 

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert…Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest’” (3:7-11)

 

“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (3:12)

 

“We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first” (3:14).

 

The author’s point is that A faithful relationship with God must never have an end.  “Nowhere in the New Testament more than here do we find such repeated insistence on the fact that continuance in the Christian life is the test of reality.  The doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints has as its corollary the salutary teaching that the saints are the people who persevere to the end”  (The New International Commentary on the New Testament, The Epistle to the Hebrews, F.F. Bruce, Eerdmans, 1964, p. 59)

 

Bruce summarizes his point by saying that we have everything to lose by slipping back and everything to gain by standing fast. Hebrews 3:12-14 offers us an alternative to the road the first generation of the Israelite nation walked. The author reminds us that this life is like being let out of sin’s prison on probation. Every day we confess what we have done and wait to hear what opportunities await us. As we join with our fellow probationers in a fellowship of mutual encouragement, we are able to overcome the rationalizations that could lead us to defeat.  This fellowship and our growing obedience keeps our minds and hearts sensitive to our officer’s directing and keeps us from any rationalizations and thoughts of rebellion. Each faithful day the opportunities are easier to recognize and our untied resolution to stand firm and walk that faithful path grows stronger. This is the life-long path we are called to walk. Our refusal to walk this path, either by never getting on it in the first place or by willfully turning from it at any point can result in our spending the rest of lives going in circles.   

 

God is not arbitrary and vengeful. He offers us a life-long love affair filled with moving and memorable moments. The other guy offers us a life-long relationship with desires that can never be fulfilled. Leon Morris writes in his commentary (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol12, Frank E. Gaebelein, General Editor. Regency, 1981, p. 38): “Sin is self-defeating and unbelief of itself prevents us from entering God’s rest.  This is not an arbitrary penalty imposed by a despotic God.  It is the inevitable outcome of unbelief.” 

 

I believe we all understand this intuitively. We get divorces.  We struggle for years to overcome bad habits or to keep them from returning.  We break promises—others know whether or not to trust our words. Do we believe God is so gullible or that the rules of our entrance to heaven are so different from the ones we are to live by in this world?  We need to renew our commitment to God, to Jesus, and to the Holy Spirit right now.  Will you join me in inviting them to touch us in a very special way right now?  Make it personal: “Right now I submit myself once again to you as my Heavenly Father, my Savior, my Lord, and every-moment Counselor. My life can only be lived in relationship to You. Amen!”