Missions Paul

After each chapter I want to pause and reflect and ask this question. Why?

Over the last several days we have discovered the answer.

If you are struggling in this season of your life then this section of the letter is an encouragement and a command to ‘hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory’ and ‘hold firmly to your faith’. Accompanying this command are several practical instructions; listen and obey His voice, know His ways, watch your heart, continue to move, move into His rest, don’t work for righteousness and take care of your soul. 

But maybe someone needs to hold on to these commands today.

To ‘hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory’ 3 v 6 and to ‘hold firmly to the faith’ 4 v 14.

We don’t know exactly what struggles of persecution this community of believers were facing but they were told to hold firmly to their confidence, hope and faith. 

Yesterday the World Watch List 2024 was published and launched by Open Doors at Parliament, Westminster. Along with many church leaders there were 130 MPs present. The 10 most dangerous countries in the world in which to be a Christian in 2024 are:

1. North Korea
2. Somalia 
3. Libya
4. Eritrea
5. Yemen
6. Nigeria
7. Pakistan
8. Sudan
9. Iran
10. Afghanistan

But those are nations and it doesn’t impact us. We need stories. 

I stood amongst the crowd with tears in my eyes as I heard first-hand stories of a Nigerian Pastor who was away on a ministry trip and Islamist’s came to his house and abducted his wife and 4 girls. They were taken far away but the wife couldn’t make the journey physically so they abandoned her and continued the journey with just the girls. Months of anxiety went by and then the ransom demand came. They could have them back for an equivalent of £20,000. The Pastor sold all that they had, their house and farm, and even the clothes on their back and borrowed to get the money. Then came the day for their release and the handover of the ransom. Before their release all the girls were raped before being let go. This family are now seriously in debt and are traumatised by the evil.

Story after story.

Evil.

And I was in tears. 

Hold firmly to your faith. 

For far less a story people have abandoned their faith. 

And whatever your circumstance. Whether you are one of the 2 Christian women stripped, paraded and sexually assaulted on the streets of Manipur in India on 4 May last year, having watched your younger brother and father killed before your eyes because they tried to intervene, the video was seen all over the world on newscasts on 19 July; or your name is Saleh (not his real name) who today is on Yemen’s most wanted list because he is a Christian Pastor; or you’re an Iranian Christian who is weekly being interrogated by the police having had your home ransacked again; and we can go on and on; or you are reading this and maybe you are not being persecuted but you are thinking of giving up because the devil is constantly plaguing you; then the reason why you should read chapter 3 and 4 is this: hold firmly to your confidence, hope and faith! 

Some days we need someone to represent us. It can feel like even our self is against our self! The evidence can be stacked against us and we know more than others know. We are simply not good enough for this world we live in. And as for another world after this one? Well, if we don’t qualify for this one then how will we make the next one?

We need a lawyer to get us through this season. We need a lawyer who though might know the truth about us can masterfully still defend us and find some mitigating factor that means though we are guilty that we survive.

I’m thankful this morning that we have someone who is far better than the best lawyer. The actual need is not for a lawyer but a High Priest.

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16 

Jesus the Son of God is our great high priest. 

The Pastor has told this community already that Jesus is greater than the angels and the prophets. But there is a higher position because of its function and that is Jesus is the great high priest.

The priest was crucial to the life of a believer in that they taught the law of God and represented God to the people but they also stood on behalf of the people before God and did so through the sacrificial system. They were the intermediary, pleading to God for the people.

But it was the high priest who was most important in keeping the relationship with God good for the people and the special Day of Atonement was his day as he went into the Holy of Holies to cleanse the people through the blood sacrifice. 

Today I want to tell someone who needs to know this truth. No matter what this world throws at you and you might deserve everything, there is one who stands in the gap for you, Jesus your High Priest.

Your prosecutor, the devil, wants to stop you from approaching God and if he cannot then he definitely wants to remove your confidence in doing so. He wants you to fall away and if he cannot make that happen then he definitely wants you to approach God with your head down and await your judgment and condemnation.

There is a gap though and Jesus is standing in it. More than a lawyer. A High Priest. More than the best High Priest of history. One that has ascended to the throne room, the place of judgment, as the one who knows what is to be fully human, he knows how you are feeling, he knows how you are thinking, he knows not only because he sees but because he has been where you are today. Maybe you have fallen into temptation and perhaps you have failed the test but He had the same experience but He didn’t. He is your confidence because He didn’t sin. He is your confidence because He became your sacrifice.

And today the throne is one of grace and mercy and the greatest lawyer, intermediary, High Priest is there representing you, calling out your name. So hold on, stand firm, not because you are right but because He is your righteousness.

How is your soul? And how is your spirit? Which submits to the other?

At the start of this second warning in the letter the community of believers are encouraged by this ‘Pastor’ to listen to the voice of God and through a number of other instructions it ends with bringing us back to the voice through the word of God.

1. Listen and obey His voice, 3:7-9.
2. Know His ways, 3:10-11.
3. Watch your heart, 3:12-15.
4. Continue to move, 3:16-19.
5. Move into His rest, 4:1-5.
6. No works for righteousness, 4:6-11
7. Take care of your soul, 4:12-13.

^“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. ¹³ Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4 v 12-13)

Look what the word of God accomplishes: it divides the soul and spirit.

On the cross Jesus cried out, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Matthew 26 v 38)

The 3 functions of our soul: the will, intellect and our emotions must be directed by our spirit which was created to be in direct contact with God.

In the order of God’s kingdom our souls direct our bodies but our spirit (which God constantly moves upon) masters our soul. This is why the Bible is essential to keep the order of God in our lives.

If I allow the primary focus of my life to be my soul (my will, intellect and emotions) then not only will that dominate my body but it will negatively impact my spirit (my contact with God).

Jesus reversed soulish living so that it is possible to be restored to the original kingdom order. But to do that his spirit, soul and body took a battering for us.

Jesus’ cry is an anticipation of 2 deaths. He knows the pain his body will go through but he is also anticipating being forsaken by God the Father. His spirit will soon lose contact with his beautiful union with God. The result is, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death …” The soul of Jesus was beginning to rule his life through grief, pain and hurt hours before he lost contact with God (his spirit) and his body killed.

He did that for us. Why?

So that our souls are submitted to our spirit and our spirit is in direct contact with God and we live as the nail-printed body of Christ in the world today.

And so that is the warning. Let us make sure the word of God continues to speak to us and let us be obedient to it so that we remain in His rest/in the finished work of Christ.

How many woke up this morning knowing that today they want to please God?

Do you ever worry about being good enough for God? Do you wonder if He is pleased or angry or is He someone who is rolling His eyes at you? How debilitating that must be! And more important what a waste of time as a follower of Jesus!

The Word of God is the same in 2024 as at the time of Israel’s Wilderness years:

1. Listen and obey His voice;
2. Know His ways
3. Watch your heart.
4. Continue to move.
5. Move into His rest.
6. No works for righteousness

“Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, ⁷ God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. ⁹ There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works,just as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.” (Hebrews 4 v 6-11)

Every generation must enter into the rest God has given. Whether that be the Moses generation, Joshua’s, the Psalmists who is quoted here (Psalm 95) and our own generation. There is a greater Joshua who we know is Jesus and though we have rested in Him we know we are also looking forward to that final rest in God when we step into heaven. Jesus finished what Joshua failed to do.

For that then we recognise there is no place for working for your salvation. This is to have the Sabbath rest. We don’t work for our righteousness. Yet ingrained in us is the belief that God is not pleased with us and He wants more from us.

There is nothing you can do to cause you to be saved, not one thing, it is total grace. Not one performance, not one sin-free day, not one commandment or act of purity or sacrificial giving, nothing. Get rid of the whole notion.

I met a man the other day who had achieved so much for God but he was incredibly miserable. Happiness is only found when you receive from God and not when you have earned something from Him (or think you have).

Sit back, receive His presence, be thankful for His forgiveness and be happy today. That’s not as easy as it sounds and for some we have to ‘make every effort’. This is of such importance because if we fail to do so then where is there left to go? Everything hangs on this one thing that our obedience is to enter into the finished work of Jesus. This is incredible but true.

In 2024 God has so much for you but you have to move forward into them not to gain, achieve or grab but to enter in the finished, completed work of Christ. It is called His rest.

Throughout this letter the Pastor will pause from the main subjects to bring a warning to the people. This is the second time in the letter. This time the warning passage is quite long starting in verse 7 and continuing into chapter 4 v 13.

The battle is the same in 2024 as at the time of Israel’s Wilderness years:

1. Listen and obey His voice;
2. Know His ways
3. Watch your heart.
4. Continue to move.
5. Move into His rest.

“Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. ² For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. ³ Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. ⁴ For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.” ⁵ And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.” (Hebrews 4 v 1-5)

I find it a little strange that the Pastor again has said ‘for somewhere he has spoken’ which even for the least experienced student of the Scriptures is obviously Genesis. Didn’t the Pastor not know the Scriptures? It can be proven that he did with so many Old Testament references within this letter. Perhaps it is simply that nothing should distract us from Christ and although David is mentioned the rest of the Old Testament authors are not.

This rest that the Wilderness generation failed to enter because of disobedience, not knowing His ways, having a hardened heart and refusing to move forward into the Promised Land was a foreshadowing of what was to come for us in Christ but also is the Genesis rest of God. This was not a tired God but a God who had completed and fulfilled everything. The Pastor is warning the people not to fall short of that rest where everything has and is being completed. What do I mean?

Because you have entered that rest and as a pilgrim continue to journey further into that rest then you can know for sure that God has your life in His hands.

There is nothing too immense or too numerous or too intense or too small or too detailed in your life that God cannot and will not bring into an order and arrangement that glorifies Him where He can say ‘it is completed, it is finished, it is good, let’s rest!’

It’s what it looks like from God’s vantage point that matters.

Enter into this relationship with Him where He is your source and everything comes from Him and is for Him and then rest. Move into that rest.

I think some of the saddest verses in the whole of the Bible are these, “These are the ones counted by Moses and Eleazar the priest when they counted the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho. Not one of them was among those counted by Moses and Aaron the priest when they counted the Israelites in the Desert of Sinai. For the Lord had told those Israelites they would surely die in the wilderness, and not one of them was left except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.” (Numbers 26:63-65)

They were counted in but they were not counted out. They failed to move forward. They became stuck and died.

Throughout this letter the Pastor will pause from the main subjects to bring a warning to the people. This is the second time in the letter. This time the warning passage is quite long starting in verse 7 and continuing into chapter 4 v 13.

The battle is the same in 2024 as at the time of Israel’s Wilderness years:

1. Listen and obey His voice;
2. Know His ways
3. Watch your heart.
4. Continue to move.

“Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? ¹⁷ And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? ¹⁹ So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” (Hebrews 3 v 16-19)

That generation wasted their opportunity. They blew it and never became all that they could become. Or as Ravenhill’s haunting book title says: They drank from the River and died in the Wilderness. Frightening.

 Read it again. They drank from the River (the rock) and died in the Wilderness.

Many go into the desert as a Christian. It is a place where we must travel. But few come out of that experience.

We serve a God who moves out and moves in.

He takes us as we are but loves us so much He will not leave us as we are but bring us into an ever-increasing likeness of His Son, Jesus.

Therefore we need to be counted in, stay in and counted out.

The Wilderness is there to travel through and to learn from not to die in.

Do not blow your experience of God. Don’t give up in the difficult season. Move forward in it.

The church needs people who have battled and are continually overcoming who they are in order to be who God has created them to be.

Throughout this letter the Pastor will pause from the main subjects to bring a warning to the people. This is the second time in the letter. This time the warning passage is quite long starting in verse 7 and continuing into chapter 4 v 13.

The battle is the same in 2024 as at the time of Israel’s Wilderness years:

1. Listen and obey His voice;
2. Know His ways
3. Watch your heart.

“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. ¹³ But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. ¹⁴ We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. ¹⁵ As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion” (Hebrews 3 v 12-15)

The battle is not necessarily in the order I have given above. In fact the reason why we sometimes do not listen and obey and know His ways is because our hearts have hardened. One thing the Israelite story tells us is that you can have a hardened heart and not know it. You need accountability to tell you. You need a friend who is not afraid of you.

If they had been asked, ‘do you have a hard heart’ then they would say ‘No, their hearts are open to God’. They were worshippers and held to the laws of God. They were not Gentiles, unbelievers.

But they were locked-in. They were closed off from any further revelation from God other than that of Abraham and it would happen again post-Moses generation even right until the time of Jesus.

It is still possible today. We can hold to a revelation of God, an experience, a moment in time, a move of God’s Spirit that was so special and historical that it changed our lives for ever and we live in that experience for the rest of our lives. Of course we can also hold onto a hurt that happened to us. But anything new can then be rejected. What happens unbeknown to us is that the beautiful experience has become a calloused place in our lives. It has trapped us and we now no longer hear and see and understand what God wants to do today. We cannot see the open door set before us.

We need to unlock our heart. We need to change our prayers. We need to use new vocabulary. We need to search again. We need to focus on something new of the nature of God. If our God is a Holy God who demands our repentance and our submission then perhaps it is possible we can become so locked in to that revelation that it hardens us to the truth that He is a God of new things.

If we ever become locked-in then we will be locked-out from progressing in knowing God. This is what happened to God’s people in the Wilderness years and the Pastor does not want this for their community of believers in that generation.

Watch your heart. Ask someone you trust if they see danger there.

Throughout this letter the Pastor will pause from the main subjects to bring a warning to the people. This is the second time in the letter. This time the warning passage is quite long starting in verse 7 and continuing into chapter 4 v 13.

The Pastor is warning the people that they must listen to and obey the voice of God. He reminds them of the Wilderness story and the generation that never entered the Promised Land.

“That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ ¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ (Hebrews 3 v 10-11)

The Pastor highlights the response from God that His people did not know His ways.

A way is not just a thought, or a perceived attitude about something, it is how one lives their life.

It is the customs, institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people or group, it is called culture.

Is it possible to know the ways of God? Is it possible to truly know God? To know His culture?

Moses was around 81-82 years old when he asked God for something new? His task was to lead 10s of 1000s out of a country – these people were dysfunctional generationally. It was a hard task but the result would be wonderful. What does he pray? Was it, “Oh God help me, bless me, anoint me, appoint me, prosper me, help me, deliver me, fill me, reach me”?

Exodus 33 v13 Moses asked, “Teach me your ways.” Moses is asking God to show him His culture. I need to understand your culture, your ways, absorb your character into my character.

But at times God’s ways can be very strange. Looking back we can see why but at the time that is a hard difficult way to walk. But that’s the Bible and the story of God isn’t it?

At some point God is going to send a situation to you that will make you feel He is your enemy and not your friend. You will not recognise the hand of God. You are going to have to struggle and behind that struggle is God. It may not feel like God, the testing and provocation may feel like hell but through the struggle you will learn the ways of God.

Just ask Jacob who struggled with God and forever walked with a limp.

Just ask the Canaanite woman with the daughter who needed freedom and who declared, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matt 15:27)

What had she understood even in the place of rejection? It was this: ‘even Gentiles are included not just the Jew’.

She got it. She understood what the disciples didn’t. That even as an outcast if she persevered she would get a crumb. And one crumb from the masters table is all she needed.

The tests of God are never easy.

To have no hope, no prospects, be impatient, to lose strength; to become powerless, to have little success and yet not accuse God of any wrongdoing could be the point of the test. God does no wrong.

Just ask Job. “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” (42:2)

Just look at the cross!

The more we walk with what we know of God the more we will know His ways. The less rebellious we are the less we will stumble. It takes a lifetime and more to fully know the ways of God.

Maybe you don’t fully understand what God is doing or asking of you. You might not fully grasp the meaning but all you know is you need to surrender all and that is what you do.

The Pastor is reminding the people that to enter in (and we will discover what he is meaning about ‘rest’) then we will go through a season of testing as the Moses generation did and it is so that we might know the ways of God.

Throughout this letter the Pastor will pause from the main subjects to bring a warning to the people. This is the second time in the letter. This time the warning passage is quite long starting here in verse 7 and continuing into chapter 4 v 13.

“So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, ⁸ do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, ⁹ where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did.” (Hebrews 3 v 7-9)

The Pastor has already referred to how God declared Moses faithful in all of God’s house using the words from Numbers 12 when Aaron and Miriam were challenging his leadership. Continuing closely into the next story the Pastor uses the story of the report from the 2 spies on the Promised Land that was drowned out by the majority and who then missed the voice of God and suffered further consequences. He uses Psalm 95: 7-11 where the Psalmist quotes from the same story.

No one will ever forget what September 11th stands for. There were so many heroes that day. One such hero was Isaac Hoopii who was outside the Pentagon building. Wearing only his short-sleeved blue police uniform he ran into the blackness of the building. He called out, “Is anybody in here?” Wayne Sinclair and five colleagues were crawling through rubble directionless when they heard his voice. They cried out, and Hoopii responded. “Head toward my voice.” Following his voice, they soon made their way out of the crumbling building.

Today if you hear His voice.

There are people today, without direction, confused and in danger and they need to head toward the voice of Jesus.

You are in a 24hr. period that you will never have again, you didn’t have it yesterday and you won’t have it tomorrow.

Satan is out to attack your today. He’s not interested in tomorrow but today. He’s planning to mess it up, cause problems, to do everything he can to make it into a bad day. He uses yesterday to do that and he knows if he can destroy today he has broken your tomorrow.

God wants to keep today good. At the beginning of time at the end of each day God saw that it was good. He loves today. He loves the opportunity of now.

 He’s interested in the right now, this day. The most important time for God is now. Despite the attacks of Satan. Despite the circumstances and situations that are not good. To get to the end of this day and be able to look upon our Lord and say ‘Today has been a good day, I’ve kept it good, I have been listening for your voice’

The blessed life is the life that listens, hears and obeys.

However, there are other voices, there is the majority often that skew what God is saying. Be careful.

Safety in numbers isn’t always true.

10 said we can’t; 2 said we can.

10 saw God in light of their circumstances; 2 saw circumstances in light of their God.

10 were bothered about self-image; 2 weren’t bothered what they looked like.

And that night all the people of the community decided there is safety in numbers.

The outcome: 10 died and 2 survived. But the deaths of the 10 led to the death of a generation.

How many people built the ark? How many people defeated Goliath? How many people took on the 450 prophets of Baal? How many people died on a cross to save the world?

If they had listened to popular thought, to the safety in numbers theory, they would have missed their purpose. The whole office are doing this! … So? Everyone says! … So? I don’t want to be the odd one out! … Why? Following the crowd can sometimes mean you end up under a bus.

But it is the voice you see that is the most important. The voice of God. And today don’t be like the rest, don’t ignore what God is saying to you.

Without being cynical, sometimes because of how ‘awesome it was in the house today’ I wonder who actually was awesome. I really want the Church to thrive and be all that God intended us to be. However it is important that just as at the start of chapter 2 we are instructed to pay careful attention to the gospel that we follow another instruction to ‘fix our thoughts on Jesus’. Jesus is greater than the Church and all that happens within it. Jesus is greater than the greatest personality that God’s people can name, even someone like Moses.

“Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. ² He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. ³ Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself. ⁴ For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. ⁵ “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. ⁶ But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.” (Hebrews 3 v 1-4)

• Jesus is greater than the titles within the house.

Jesus is the apostle (the only time in the NT he is given this title) and the high priest. Wasn’t Moses also sent? Aren’t we sent and therefore also apostles? Yes but the huge difference is that Jesus as God was sent to the world/to us and Jesus as God is the one who sends us. Jesus is the high priest and not even Moses was that, but it was Aaron, his brother with a sacrificial system that was calling out for something better. Jesus is that great high priest that the Pastor will speak of later in the letter in more detail. So whatever title you can think of, Jesus is greater.

• Jesus is greater than all the faithful works of the house.

The Pastor is quoting from Numbers 12:6-8 when he is defending Moses against Aaron and Miriam, ‘He is faithful in all God’s house’. Prophets received God’s Word from dreams and visions, Moses received it with a face to face meeting with God who appointed him to the house to serve as he and his generation look to a better future when the Messiah would come but Jesus completed his appointment as apostle and high priest … and as Messiah.

• Jesus has greater honour than the house.

Because Jesus as the Son is over the house. He owns the house. All the honour within it is underneath Him.

• Jesus as the Son is greater than the servant.

For the servant serves the Son.

• Jesus is greater in us … if we, the house, hold firmly to the confidence and hope.

His greatness demonstrated in our lives is not a guarantee. It is dependent on our continued unwavering hope and belief in Him.

Above all titles, works, honour, even demonstrations of servanthood and the Church itself, Jesus is greater.

Let’s get it right. Don’t fix your thoughts, attention so much on anything else but on Jesus. For He is greater.