Tag Hebrews

God is at Hand

Todd R Leave a comment

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah lived in a time full of false prophets, where the true word of God was rarely heard.  It was also a time where idolatry and sin ran wild among the people of Judah, Jeremiah’s audience, a nation headed for destruction by Babylon, God’s chosen agent to discipline them.  Yet the false prophets told the people: “You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’”[1]  Later, “They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’”[2]

These false prophets were essentially telling the people they can do whatever they want, so they don’t need a savior since God was not going to judge them.   The false prophets also said that the people don’t need God as Lord, since there would be no negative consequences no matter what they chose to do.

Jeremiah fearlessly confronts these prophets and worked hard to get the people to take him seriously.  At one point, God tells Jeremiah to proclaim: “Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?”[3]  With this question, the LORD lets the people know that they can’t just set him aside as if He doesn’t exist.  While God is a God of love, He is also a God of justice, and sin will not be ignored.

Both the Old and New Testaments warn that those who ignore God can infect the broader population.  In Deuteronomy 29:18-19, Moses wrote: “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.”  [emphasis mine]. The whole church, the “moist and dry alike” can suffer from the influence of members who cast God aside as irrelevant or inconvenient.  People who stubbornly insist on their own way.

The New Testament picks up the “root” image from Deuteronomy in Hebrews 12:15 – “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled”. This verse is in the context of God’s discipline, of understanding that when He judges His own people, it is not a final judgement, but one that is meant to refine them and make them holy.  But it is also a reminder that we need to accept God as Lord, by His grace, in order for Him to be our Savior.

Like the false prophets of Jeremiah’s day, modern preachers can also teach that we don’t need Jesus as Lord and Savior.  Some of them declare that we are free to do whatever we want because He is a God of love and therefore will never judge us no matter what.  These ministers fail to see God’s loving, disciplining hand in our difficulties, feeding the “root of bitterness”.

Other preachers declare that God is a God of love, and therefore if we follow Him, we will be showered with blessings.  These ministers see suffering not as discipline, but as a failure on our part to love God, thus making God’s love conditional.  This also feeds the “root of bitterness” because there is no way we can meet God’s standard.  We will always fall short and without grace all we can experience is frustration.  There will never be enough material blessing to keep us satisfied under this theology.

However, we do need Jesus as Savior, and we do need Jesus as Lord, and we also have Jesus as Savior and Lord.  We need to live like God is “at hand” and not “far away.”  R.C. Sproul used to say Christians need to live “coram Deo” which means “before the face of God” in Latin.  Always knowing that we live in God’s presence, that He is “at hand” reminds us not only of our need for Him as Lord and Savior, but also that He more than meets our need because He is a perfect Lord and Savior.

So, when Jeremiah tells us that God asks, “Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?” we can reply that we know we always live coram Deo because He is near.  Only then can we pull up bitterness by its roots and experience true joy in His presence.

Live coram Deo today.

Amen.

[1] Jeremiah 14:13b
[2] Jeremiah 23:17
[3] Jeremiah 23:23

Do We Have It Upside Down?

Todd R 1 Comment

Fellow travelers,

With other people, we can often decide what they know and don’t know about us.  We can guard our reputation by doing things out of the view of others or behind their backs.  We believe we can avoid any negative consequences of our actions and choices if others don’t know about them, especially people in authority.  Sometimes we may even think this applies to God.  Isaiah recognized this when he said the words of Isaiah 29:15 –

“Ah, you who hide deep from the LORD your counsel,
            whose deeds are in the dark,
            and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?””

The verse is directed at people who assume God has limited knowledge of us.  People who think they can avoid being seen and avoid consequences.  But things that apply to other people do not apply to God.  He knows all of our “counsel” – our thoughts – and all of our “deeds” – our actions – even if we think we’re doing them in secret.  He, as our maker, knows us better than we know ourselves.  He knows all, and Isaiah points out the foolishness of thinking He doesn’t in the next verse:

Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash

“You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay,
that the thing made should say of its maker,
            “He did not make me”;
or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
            “He has no understanding”?”

It’s upside down and backwards to apply what we know about people (“the clay”) to our “maker” and “him who formed it.”  He sees and understands things we don’t see or understand, not the other way around.  Pretending we can keep secrets from Him only deepens our sense of separation.  It darkens our “counsel” and ultimately our “deeds” as well.  God can’t get us back on the right path if we build up walls against Him.  In the case of Isaiah’s audience, since they were not willing to trust God, they end up allying with Egypt[1], something God had told them never to do.  In the spiritual metaphor, Egypt represents our slavery to sin, since Israel were once the slaves of Egypt, and they/we should never want to go back.  But we so often do, and often because we think He doesn’t know about it or care.

Like Paul in Romans 7:15 (“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”), we are people who don’t even understand ourselves.  But God knows how we’re broken, why we’re broken, and what can be done to fix us, because He is our “maker.”  So, what should we do?

First, we need to recognize that God does see and He does care.  Every thought we have and every deed we do matters to Him, because He wants us to be holy, for His glory and for our good.  He knows better than us and He expects us to act like we believe that.

Second, regular prayer of confession for purpose of self-examination and re-alignment with God is necessary, otherwise we will continue down the wrong path.  I find many of the Psalms to useful guides when it comes to these prayers, but the prayers can come from anywhere as long as they’re sincere.

Third, we must constantly seek to know Him and what He wants, and doing so means spending time with Him in His Word, the Bible.  Hebrews 4:12-13 says:

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

His word can reach all of our “thoughts and intentions.”  It can remind us that nothing is hidden from Him, but it can also teach us what “thoughts and intentions” we ought to have.

Lastly, we must walk according to the Spirit, acting on the right “thoughts and intentions” and live with a clear conscience before God and man.  However, if we keep Him out because we are ashamed of our inner desires and rebelliousness, or because we think we can hide it, we are refusing the only solution He has provided for our deepest problems.

Can we do any of these things perfectly?  No, but we can and must try.  Pretending God is like other people who don’t know or care isn’t an option.  He died so we might know Him, and to know Him is to become like Him.

Amen.

[1] Isaiah 30:1-2

Bride of the High Priest

Todd R Leave a comment

Being an Old Testament priest was a demanding profession, full of rules and restrictions about what you must do and what you couldn’t do.  For the one high priest, it was even more challenging.  Within the first 5 books of our Bible (also called the Pentateuch, or the books of Moses) there are long lists of rules for these people to follow that didn’t apply to anyone else.  And sometimes with these rules we find interesting pictures of Jesus, our High Priest.  Today I’m writing about one example of that.

In Leviticus 21:13-15, God tells Moses, and then to the people through Moses, about who a high priest may marry:

“And he shall take a wife in her virginity.  A widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry. But he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the LORD who sanctifies him.”

These verses would be good advice for most people, but for high priests these things are required[1].  The point is to keep the high priest, and those closest to him, as holy and dedicated to God as possible.  Because the high priesthood was an inherited role, “he may not profane his offspring among his people.”  There was to be no question that this man’s children were not defiled in any way.

Today, we no longer have a high priest serving in the temple in Jerusalem for us, but what we do have is Jesus as our High Priest[2].  If He is our High Priest, do regulations about marriage have anything to do with Him?  How do these Levitical rules apply to who Jesus chooses to marry, since He didn’t marry while He was on earth?  These rules matter because in the New Testament, most notably in Revelation, the Christian church is the bride of Jesus Christ.  The church is who He decided to marry.

But, in light of Leviticus 21, how does our High Priest Jesus “marry” his church without being defiled?  None of us are spiritual “virgins.”  Instead, we are a church full of sinners who wed themselves to dead gods, separating ourselves from the true God, and defiling ourselves in worship of other gods.  Spiritually, we are prostitutes committing spiritual adultery with all the things we choose to worship that are not God.

So, how does Jesus follow the Levitical regulation to “take as his wife a virgin of his own people”?

The answer is that He sanctifies His people by His blood.  In the Old Testament we are shown pictures of this concept.  In David’s famous penitential prayer of Psalm 51, he asks God to “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (verse 7).  In Isaiah, God says to His people:

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:
             though your sins are like scarlet,
                        they shall be as white as snow;
             though they are red like crimson,
                        they shall become like wool.” (verse 18)

Back in verse 15 of Leviticus 21, God said: “I am the Lord who sanctifies him.”  Through the shedding of His blood, His death, and His resurrection, we are made as clean from our sin and idolatrous, adulterous worship as we could ever be.  We are made “white as snow”.  We are made to be acceptable in the eyes of a holy and just God.  We are made to be a suitable bride for Jesus Christ, we become “a virgin of his own people,” with no trace of the times we rebelled against our one, true God.  He is the one who sanctifies us.

In this rule that is seemingly irrelevant to modern Christians, there is a picture of the sacrifice of our Lord, and of the way He views His people.  If we were not sanctified, He could not “marry” us.  Do you believe that Jesus sees you as “white as snow”?  The Bible says that His people are, otherwise, they would not be acceptable to Him.  But we are sanctified if we accept Christ’s work on our behalf.

Pray for God to reassure us of this truth today!  Pray for Him to wash away all of our guilt and shame.  Pray that we would know that we, in spite of ourselves, are accepted because of what He’s done for us.

Amen.

[1] Because the Aaronic priesthood was hereditary, celibacy was not required, or even recommended. Marriage and procreation were encouraged, or the line would not continue.
[2] Hebrews 3:1, 4:14, 6:20

Hope’s Anchor

Todd R 4 Comments

Sometimes we fall into a pattern of trying to rely on our own merit to please God.  We try our hardest to do everything we think He wants us to do in order to earn His love.  We live like the classic hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” was changed to “Great is My Faithfulness.”  We put our hope in our own efforts to earn our salvation.

Hebrews 10:23, which says “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” helps explain why we’d much rather have it be “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”  This verse reminds us that He is faithful and is worth putting our hope in.  In contrast we are often unfaithful and disappoint ourselves, falling short of the ideals we strive to achieve.  But we can hold fast to our hope, because it’s based on His promises.

Earlier, Hebrews 6:19 says “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” where “this” refers to the promises of God that were fulfilled by the life of Jesus and give us access to God’s presence.  Counting on our own faithfulness is like being on a ship that attaches its anchor to itself, and the captain wonders why the ship keeps drifting uncontrollably.  So, as the verse says, we must attach our anchor to something else (God’s promises), because an anchor is only as good as what it’s attached to.  Something solid is needed, and God’s promises in Jesus are a solid, unchanging thing we can cling to at all times.

If we relied on our own faithfulness for salvation, every time we disappoint God, we would have to worry about losing our salvation, our place in God’s family.  We would have no security, no way to avoid “wavering.”  Our faithlessness discourages us, but His faithfulness gives us hope and strength.

God is faithful and worthy of our trust.  As the hymn declares about Him:

“There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.”

We can “hold fast” to Him in all times and in all circumstances.  All of the Old Testament testifies to God’s faithfulness toward His people, and the New Testament testifies to the fulfillment of God’s promises in the life and work of Jesus.  Therefore, His faithfulness is backed up by centuries of history, and through His grace, He offers salvation to His people.  As Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”. Even our faith is a gift from God, based on His faithfulness, not ours, and given in His grace.  When our faith wavers, His does not.

Therefore, thank God that our hope is in His faithfulness, not in ours.  Our faithfulness is far too uncertain, but through the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus we inherit Christ’s own merit in the eyes of God and couldn’t please Him anymore no matter what we do.

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful”

“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father”

God, Our Eternal River

Todd R Leave a comment

When comparing Genesis and Revelation, we find similarities between the Paradise man lost and the Paradise to come.  Consider these verses about each:

Genesis 2:8-9: “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.”
Revelation 22:1-2: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

A stream in Llanberis, Wales.

In each description is the tree of life, and also a river. Rivers are greatly beneficial to the growth of cities and civilizations, providing benefits for agriculture, trade, travel, etc.  Even today, most large cities that don’t border a large body of water have a navigable river nearby or flowing through it.  A big city without one is rare: in the United States, Dallas, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, may be the only major cities not located near a significant river.

Rivers are mentioned a lot in the Bible, including in this Psalm about God being our refuge and fortress.  An unnamed river in the “city of God” is mentioned:

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
            the holy habitation of the Most High.” (Psalm 46:4)

However, Jerusalem, the place Jews in the Old Testament period would have considered the “city of God” does not have a river.  The Psalmist certainly knew this, so their point is about something else, that the “city of God” has, well, it has God, as described in the next verses:

“God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
            God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
            he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD of hosts is with us;
            the God of Jacob is our fortress.  Selah” (Psalm 46:5-7)

Jerusalem may not have a river, but it has God who provides all it needs and more.  No river required.  Even though the literal, ancient Jerusalem was eventually destroyed by the Babylonians, and later by the Romans, the eternal City of God will never be moved.  All other nations “rage” and “totter,” but God’s kingdom is forever secured by the One whose voice melts the earth.  Hebrews 1:10-12 (quoting from Psalm 102:25-27):

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,
            and the heavens are the work of your hands;
they will perish, but you remain;
            they will all wear out like a garment,
like a robe you will roll them up,
            like a garment they will be changed.
But you are the same,
            and your years will have no end.”

Do you worry that you lack things others have?  Things that would provide benefits for your business, spare time, or other pursuits?  With God as our fortress and refuge, we don’t need a river, but in Paradise He will provide one anyway.

Fret not, for you have God, our eternal river.