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.