What an awesome trip through the Old Testament’s Hall of Faith in chapter 11!!  How important persistent faith is for them and for us!  It’s as some massive cloud of heroes surrounding those Jewish-Christians tempted to leave the Christian faith.  It’s as if those heroes are shouting from the pages of the Bible to them and us, “Don’t give up!!  Keep on keeping on!  You’re on the right track!”  And so the author of Hebrews ends his letter with wonderful words of encouragement living that faith!

I love the athletic picture the author vividly uses to urge his readers on.  In the Greek world of the ancient Olympics he uses a Greek word for race from which our English word “agony” comes.  No pain no gain, right?  The author is talking about a contest that involves the pain of getting in shape, the exertion and struggle then in the race, and as I am constantly reminded being an older guy, the pain beyond the contest.  He uses the present tense that means we should keep on running.  This contest of living our faith is life-long and requires perseverance.  It’s not so much a 100-yard-dash as a marathon.

Not only do we need to run with perseverance, the serious racer eliminates all that can hinder him.  Any extra weight, whether of body or clothing, can only slow the runner.  Greek racers ran in the scantiest clothing, some even nude.  And so we need to heed Hebrews and throw off the sin that so easily entangles.  We can only do that through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.  I always think of Paul as an academic who enjoyed (rather than participated) in athletics.  Paul understood Hebrew’s picture of the Christian life, though.  Paul writes in Philippians 3:13-14, “One thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

But alas, that great cloud of witnesses can only encourage us, but not strengthen us.  For that strength and stamina we need to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”  Again it’s the present tense to remind us that we need to keep on fixing our eyes on Jesus throughout our lives!  He’s the author and perfecter, the One who writes, strengthens and perfects our faith all the way to heaven.  From A to Z he is both the object and the cause of our faith, giving us something to believe in and the faith to do so.

I love Hebrew’s statement of joyous intent regarding Jesus’ lifesaving work for us.  He endured the cross!  As we walk with Jesus this Lententime we feel the pain.  We may give something up for Lent, practicing spiritual discipline that may hurt us a bit.  Maybe, as Hebrews shares, there’s something happening in our lives that God has allowed.  After all, we are His sons and daughters and there’s a lot of teaching our heavenly Father has for us.  It all points us to Jesus who even scorned the cross’ shame and did it all in joy.  Even as he suffered he felt and was motivated by his love for you and me.  What joy he had, despite the pain, in working our forgiveness and empowered lives as Christians!

The unknown author to Hebrews then closes in chapter 13 with encouragement for us to live that very same love and to live it with JOY!  As Jesus love for us is the same yesterday, today and forever, He gives all sorts of practical applications for us to love one another!  In that time of persecution, when everyone was afraid and uncertain of who might be friend and enemy, Hebrews encourages folks to love as brothers and sisters.   (Look at John 13:34, 1 Thes. 4:9, 1 Peter 1:22 & 1 John 3:11.)  So we, too, here the encouragement to love our brothers and sisters in the faith AND strangers as well!

In our so doing, we may even entertain strangers!  During Hebrews time of persecution, many were forced to flee from their towns because of danger.  There were many who also traveled about during these tough times sharing the Good News of Jesus.  Not only would they benefit from hospitality, but the ones who offer it will as well.  Great was Abraham’s benefit in Gen. 18:3 and Lot’s in 19:2 when the strangers they invited into their homes turned out to be angels.

We probably will never entertain angels through our good works for others.  Caution needs to be practiced as we help those we don’t know.  Yet Christian hospitality is the work of those who are Christ-like.  Jesus said in Matt. 25:40, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers/sisters of mine, you did for me.”  May our lives, families, church and country be welcoming to the stranger!

May the author’s blessing for his readers especially be upon us (v.20-21) – May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.  Amen

What a blessing it is to walk with our Lord, living our lives in His Word each day during this time of Lent.  I hope to share thoughts about the daily readings from Hebrews and Matthew.  Please share your thoughts with me via email at holyfaith@verizon.net!  (Past posts may be accessed by clicking the Home page footer “Lent:  Walking with Christ.”)

As we move into chapters 10 and 11, the author of Hebrews shares with us what we are to do with this supreme treasure that is ours because our Great High Priest has entered the Holy of Holies with the sacrifice of Himself.  Just read 10:19.  “Since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place… and since we have a Great High Priest over the house of God… let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith…  Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess…  Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together… but let us encourage one another…  Therein is the Christian life with direct access to God, first He to us through His Word, the washing of Baptism, the Body and Blood of the Great High Priest, which then second spurs us on to draw near to Him in prayer, living the faith He has given and nurtured, living lives filled with good works helping others.  With faith holding onto God with His promises fulfilled in Christ, it is a life filled with confidence, encouragement, fellowship and divine strength!

Focusing in chapter 10 on the necessity of faith, Hebrews 11 then gives us perhaps the grandest chapter in the Bible on faith.  The author doesn’t pretend to say all there is to say regarding faith.  He gives us a definition and then a visual description of faith.  Before us He sets the heroes of faith, women and men who had faith’s 20/20 vision and as a result trusted God’s promises of what they could not see with their natural eyes and endured persecution which they could not have borne with their own strength.  A walk through of this “Hall of Faith” will do the reader of any century much good.

What is faith?  It’s not some blind leaping into the dark.  Nor is it some uncertain hoping for the best, disregarding facts and assuming all will be well.  “Faith is being sure of what we hope for.”  “Being sure” is having solid confidence.  Faith brings the future into the present because it makes things hoped for as real as if we already had them.  Christ coming again and our future lives with Him in heaven are not only hoped for, but real and certain to the believer.  Faith is “being certain of what we do not see.”  Though we have not seen creation or the crucifixion, though we weren’t present to witness the flood or the Savior rising from the tomb on Easter, though we have not heard His actual voice forgiving us our sins and promising His future return, yet we believe.  For the believer faith is a sixth sense making the invisible seen and certain.

The author then points to the faith-filled heroes of the Old Testament.  Through them he shows his readers that faith trusts God absolutely, that faith is convinced what God says if true and what He promises will come to pass.  These saints of old trusted in God’s promise of the Messiah (chosen One) to come, we trust in the Risen Christ who has come.  They looked forward to the one way New Testament to come, we live knowing that it has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Savior!

Read through Hebrews Hall of Faith in chapter 11 again.  Here are a few awesome insights that jump out at me:

            —  God does not play favorites with faith.  There are men and women, a deceiver like Jacob and a prostitute named Rahab.  Each a sinner and a saint, just like us!

            — v. 5 mentions Enoch.  Only other place in the Bible is Genesis 5:18-24.  Thought to have been taken by God to heaven before an earthly death.  Elijah and his flaming chariot is the only other to be received into God’s house before dying.

            — The faith of Abraham, trusting in God’s promises as he leaves Ur with an uncertain future!

            — v. 19 and the sacrifice of Isaac.  As a father of an only-begotten son I have always struggled with how Abraham was able to carry God’s command forward.  It was only when enlightened by Hebrews and this verse that says “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.”  Abraham knew that even if God took his son, He was able to raise the dead and Abraham would be with Isaac again.  What a powerful type pointing to the sacrifice of God’s only-begotten!

            — The prostitute Rahab in v. 31 ends Hebrews list, yet how many more heroes there were that could have been included!

The chapter ends commending these heroes for their faith.  Yet there was a promise ahead that has been fulfilled now for them and for us in the coming of Jesus.  At our 40^th Anniversary we put up a Wall of Faith with pictures of each confirmation class over the years.  Yes, we are part of Hebrews’ Hall of Faith.  Or better said, we are God’s heroes of Holy Faith!  Our name comes from Jude 20, “build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.  Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”   May we live our faith in Jesus!

Prayer:  My faith looks up to Thee,

            Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine.

            Now hear me while I pray; Take all my guilt away;

            O let me from this day Be wholly Thine!  Amen.

What a blessing it is to walk with our Lord, living our lives in His Word each day during this time of Lent.  I hope to share thoughts about the daily readings from Hebrews and Matthew.  Please share your thoughts with me via email at holyfaith@verizon.net!  (Past posts may be accessed by clicking the Home page footer “Lent:  Walking with Christ.”)

What a wondrous High Priest we have in Jesus!  With Jewish-Christians tempted in the face of Roman and secular persecution to leave Christ and return to Judaism, and with the importance of the earthly High Priest vivid in their minds, the author of Hebrews blesses them and us with an awe-inspiring vision of the greatest High Priest we have!  He serves in the divine tabernacle/temple/church that God has created:  Heaven!

You see, earthly priests of the tribe of Levi served in the earthly, man-made temple of God.  Of course it has its place to strengthen faith-lived lives.  The temple was filled with ritual ceremony based upon the old covenant.  Priests would perform ritual sacrifice over-and-over again, with the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies once a year on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).  There had to be life for life.  The offering of blood and its sprinkling on the people symbolized the atonement (at-one-ment) that God wanted His people to have with Him.  It pointed to the Jesus to come.  But it was all simply a shadow of the Father’s house, a reflection of what Jesus came to do.

It was all based on the Old Covenant which was flawed.  The flaw wasn’t present by God’s design.  The Old Covenant worked in and of itself.  Jeremiah (some 600 years before Christ), quoted by the author in vv. 8-12, says it well, “…they did not remain faithful to my covenant…”  It was a two way, conditional (Ex. 4:8), and sinful humankind just cannot live up to it to be at one with God.  The fault didn’t rest with the covenant.  God found fault with sinful people!

God, in His all-knowingness and in His love for humankind, from the beginning planned for a new covenant.  The word translated here “covenant” can mean a two-way conditional contract or it can be translated “will” or “testament.”  God already had a new covenant or last-will-and-testament in His divine will for us.  And it would require a Mediator, Jesus, who would shed His own blood to make things right with His and our Father.  God has written the boundaries of His will in our hearts (the Law) so that with the forgiveness of our God (Gospel), offered by our great High Priest, we can live in Christ’s strength, keeping the Law (yet imperfectly) out of love for our Lord.  He establishes a New Covenant, a one-way last will and testament from Him to us, giving us the inheritance of everything He has earned on the cross.  We have His Supper where He is both Host and Food.  He sets the table and Himself gives us His body and blood, are foretaste of the Feast to come.

 Jesus entered the Holy of Holies in God’s temple once.  On a Friday we call “Good” only because of the forgiveness we now receive, Jesus willfully, in love with us gave His life once and for all on a cross.  We will mournfully remember in Tenebrae (darkness) His sacrifice in just a few short weeks.  The Yom Kippur above every Yom Kippur, when Jesus proclaimed “Father forgive them” and “it is finished” within the action of His loving sacrifice, everything for us to be free from sin, guilt, and death has been and remains completed for us!  Remember the earthquake that split the thick, metal mesh curtain covering the entryway to the Holy of Holies?  We have direct access to our God, He to us and us to Him.  And then Jesus signed, sealed and delivered His last will and testament by His glorious resurrection!  All of God’s promises for us are fulfilled in Him.

Christ is the One!  Because of our Great High Priest, as God said through Jeremiah so long before,  “I will be their God, and they will be My people…  For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”  How hard that is for us to do, right?  How often the words are shared by those flawed with sin: “I will forgive them, but I can’t forget.”  Yet our omniscient, all-knowing God, who could remember every itty-bitty detail of our most egregious sin chooses to remember those sins no more!  If God has so let go of our sins because of His Son, we can too with one another!

Pray with me:  Jesus, we thank You for being THE High Priest for us.  You sacrificed Yourself once-and-for-all so that we are forgiven and right with our God.  Continue to bless our Lenten walk.  Empower us to love and forgive each other as our God loves and forgives us.  It’s all because of You!  In Your name.  Amen.

I learned a new word.  Well, I’m not sure it’s really a word, but perhaps I can call it an allowed one as we consider what we have just celebrated this past Christmas.  The word is “Simplexity” and as I type it my auto word search is underlining in red.  It is a conflation of the words Simple and Complex and describes what we as Bible believing Christians need to be.

How important to dig deep in our Biblical theology!  As we mature in our faith we’re able to digest the meat of the Bible’s teaching.  At Christmastime we celebrate the incarnation.  God Himself incarnate, made flesh for us by being born of Mary in the village of Bethlehem.  I have to confess:  when I took my doctrine qualifier for admission to the seminary, I got that one wrong.  I knew the teaching, yet didn’t have the word in my vocabulary.  With red face, though, I celebrate that God came to walk in our shoes, to do the perfection that we cannot, to die the punishment for our sins, and to rise again so that we have new life in Him.  God incarnate!

This is how St. Augustine shares the complexity of the incarnation:

            Maker of the sun, He is made under the sun.
            In the Father he remains,
                        From his mother he goes forth.
            Creator of heaven and earth,
                        He was born on earth under heaven.
            Unspeakably wise, He is wisely speechless.
            Filling the world, He lies in a manger.
            Ruler of the stars,
                        He nurses at his mother’s bosom.
            He is both great in the nature of God,
                        and small in the form of a servant.

Yet this Christmas, as we have praised our God for His incarnation in Jesus, He sends us into a New Year as His hands and feet and voice.  Our incarnational ministry together is simple, to share Jesus, simply Jesus.

Karl Barth was a German theologian who dominated the theology of the 20th century. One night he lectured at a seminary in the U.S., and after the lecture he met with students in the coffee shop for some informal conversation. Someone asked him if there was any way he could summarize his complex theological findings. A student asked, “What in your judgment is the essence of the Christian faith?” Barth paused for a moment. No doubt the others waited for some profound insights from this theological giant. They got their pens and paper out and were poised. Then Barth answered, “Yes, I can summarize in a few words my understanding of the Christian faith. Let me put it this way: “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, for the Bible Tells Me So.”

That’s the message this Christmas and always!  Jesus loves me, my family, my church, and every lost, hell bound person He places in my path in 2023!  May we enter 2023, a new year that will be filled with God’s forgiveness, love and peace, on fire for Jesus — simply Jesus!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  Pastor Craig

PS:  Click below…

As the Church of Christ, we find ourselves positioned between two great victories.  Behind us is the victory of our Lord who died upon the cross and was raised again.  That moment of human history spelled the end of the power of sin and death.  Now we await the second victory, the final liberation of the world from sin, evil and death at the re-appearing of our Savior when He comes again at the end of the age.  We are in a period of waiting and expectation, with the promise that the One for whom we wait will not disappoint us.

However, Jesus warns us that the interim period would not be easy.  As the day of salvation approaches, he warns, there will be greater conflicts and outpouring of evil among people and natural disasters in the earth.  These are the signs that should alert us to the fact that we live in a world that is in need of redemption.  Jesus says, “When these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

Look up!  Raise your heads!  That runs counter to the advice of the world and our own natural instincts.  When things start flying all around us, as one Biblical scholar put it, the inclination is to duck, retreat, and keep your head down.  Instead Jesus calls us to stand up, raise our heads, and be out in front.  Why?  Because as things get worse, and the need for a Savior becomes more obvious, it becomes all the clearer to those who believe that God will act to save His people.  Simultaneously we stand to make bold witness that the Christ for whom we await brings redemption, salvation from all that threatens us.  To lift up our heads is an act of faith and witness to the promises of God that await us and which have been assured to us in the first victory of our Lord at the cross and the empty tomb.  In a year of tragic hurricanes; devastating earthquakes and wildfires; terroristic acts with more than 600 mass (over 4 deaths not including the perpetrator) shooting events in America alone; a country that’s politicized in all things now is the time for us to strike a posture of courage and hope.  It’s not a time for us to take a low profile.  With the worship themes during this season of Advent we hear God’s call to renew our expectation and hope in the return of our Lord, and to stand up boldly to call the world to look to Him for salvation!  May we boldly share the forgiveness and strength that only Jesus can bring!

Maranatha!  “Come Lord Jesus!”

How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to me?  I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.  I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people.  Psalm 116:12-14

Can you believe it?  Ever since Halloween, media has been pushing pushing the world’s idea of Christmas!  I have a dear friend that often reminds me of how many days left before Christmas.  Yet in the church there’s still Thanksgiving and Advent ahead to prepare us to celebrate our Savior’s birth.

With November how important it is for us to remember Thanksgiving.  It becomes the heart-set to the Advent and Christmas seasons to follow.  This morning I read Psalm 116 in my devotion.  The question raised by the psalmist gives us Thanksgiving pause:  “How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to me?”

During gift purchasing for the celebration of Christmas, many of us will jokingly complain about how hard it is to buy a gift for the person who has everything.  The joking pun (especially by the fiscally minded like me) is to then say, “I will just give them the gift of myself.”  With God, it’s not just a joking matter, but a serious challenge.  God does have everything!  Everything, including ourselves, is the work of His creative hands.  This puts us into a position of obligation.  We owe our lives and everything we have to God.  So, how do we respond to the psalmist’s question?  How do we express ourselves to the God who has given each of us life and eternal life in His Son, Jesus Christ?

Fortunately, we’re not left to guess.  The Bible tells us what God is looking for from us.  He is looking for nothing more than a sincere “thank you!”  God expects us to receive His generous gifts with a thankful heart.  That’s what Thanksgiving is all about.  How could we not be moved to gratitude when we think of the lengths to which God has gone to create us and then to redeem us in the death and resurrection of Jesus?  Our heavenly Father loves us so much He gives the gift of His Son!

God in His Word also repeatedly stresses that He expects our thanks be given to Him in worship!  I’m sorry to pop the bubble of all those who brush God off with the comment, “I can worship God anywhere, at home or on the golf course.”  Well, no, the psalmist says, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.  I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people.”  When we gather to worship, whether during the time of Thanksgiving or during Advent  or on Christmas or any Sunday, it is with the purpose of thanking and praising God, giving to Him the only thing which He really asks in return for His generous blessings:  grateful worship offered to Him in faith and love.  And then a life filled with thankful worship through loving acts for others

May our worship on Thanksgiving Eve (7:00 p.m. with a pie fellowship) throughout Advent and at Christmas (Eve:  5 & 8 p.m. and Day:  11:00 a.m.) swell with the hearts and voices of God’s thankful people who take time to thank God for all His goodness to us!  I give God thanks for each of you!  Love in Christ, Pastor Craig

On this day of remembrance a message of hope: