3. You are not alone

An exploration in faith

22 August 2010

Hebrews 12:18-29

We continue our short series in the Book of Hebrews and look at 12:18-29 where we discover a community in crisis. We discern from the book that there was a degree of concern and fear as the writer addressed a disheartened community which, in some ways, was ready to give up.

There must have been a measure of hostility – so severe that it appeared to be undermining their commitment to Jesus Christ. They were Jewish Christians (evident from the language used throughout the book) and they may well have felt themselves drawn back to a Judaism which did not acknowledge Jesus as Messiah. The correspondence or document seems to have been written at a time when their confidence had almost gone.

One of the sub-headings of Hebrews could be ‘Faith in Difficult Times’. The preacher or teacher is not speaking in a vacuum … he is addressing real and urgent pastoral questions. How do you deal with life when it is difficult? How do you deal with a crisis when you are exhausted? Consider their situation:-

Their hands droop and their knees are weak (12:12)
Attendance at church is low (10:25)

Thomas Long writes, ‘The threat to this congregation is not that they are charging in the wrong direction; they do not have enough energy to charge off anywhere. The threat here is that, worn down and worn out, they will drop their end of the rope and drift away. Tired of walking the walk, many of them are considering taking a walk, leaving the community and falling away from the faith.’

The difficulty seems to be great and the challenge will stretch them to the limit of their endurance. But hold on, for there is better news in our text.

Text: Hebrews 12:28 -
‘… we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.’

Everything in this community has been shaken up and turned upside down and so such a text speaks with clarity to their situation. The author of Hebrews is pointing them to the rock of their stability and how they can come through the most difficult of situations.

We recognise that this picture of a kingdom that is not shaken speak precisely to our needs.

Life does shake and is unpredictable

Imagine that the phone rings and it’s a friend who you have known for years. The voice is much quieter than usual. She or he says that their world has been shattered and they don’t know where to turn to for help. I am sure we can identify with such a situation. What might be the cause of such pain?

Some dreadfully sad news of a relative’s illness.
Their husband or wife has demanded a divorce.
Their child has been involved in an accident.
After a lifetime of work, a redundancy has occurred.

Life does shake at moments like this. Someone has said that the only constant in life is change. So it’s only natural to expect change but, when it comes, it can knock us sideways and take the breath out of us.

In such situations, it is understandable that we should look for something to hold onto, something that might enable us to stand in the midst of the storm. This is exactly the kind of experience tackled in our Bible context.

There is the recognition of living in an unstable world and echoes of 2 Peter 3:10 – ‘But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.’ The picture is of things that happen suddenly, for which we are ill-prepared. Nearly all of us, at some time, experience such sudden change.

The idea of ‘kingdom’ is not often talked about outside of the Synoptic gospels, where it is a frequent subject in the teaching of Jesus. Here the author understood ultimate reality and purpose in terms of God’s kingdom. The idea that God’s kingdom does not shake is in sharp contrast to the many kingdoms that do shake.

This has been an important weekend in Australian life following our Federal Election … and, when an election occurs, many people find their future is on the line. New leaders bring in fresh people and re-elected leaders shuffle their pack. Uncertainty is part of life and we cannot be sure what the future will bring.

The author of Hebrews has emphasised the profound differences between the old covenant and the new covenant of grace which he refers to as ‘a better way’. The description of Mt Sinai is terrifying. It was a holy place that cannot be touched by ordinary people (12:18-20) and even Moses shared that terror (v.21).

In this section in Hebrews, the feeling of fear and terror that surrounded the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses and the people is contrasted with the heavenly Jerusalem, where those in Christ worship him as Lord.

In contrast to the dread associated with the law, there is a picture of promise … made clear in v.v. 25-29. Recalling the shaking of the earth, the author makes the point that God is going to shake the earth once more, so that what cannot be shaken (the eternal) will remain.

We are all required to take life seriously. There is an old maxim, ‘Yesterday is a cancelled cheque, tomorrow is just a promissory note; only today is cash.’ George Guthrie, in his commentary on Hebrews, challenges this idea, but recognises that Jesus did say, ‘Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’ (Matthew 6:34)

Guthrie comments that Jesus’ concern, however, ‘was to prevent people from becoming so preoccupied with meeting their own material needs that they are distracted from more vital spiritual issues. His listeners were captivated by the need for clothing and food and were forced to live hand to mouth and thread to tunic.’

In this passage, our attention is riveted on the consummation of the ages which brings all of life into a clearer focus. We only live for a finite time and existence as we know it has a limit set upon it … all of this brings us face to face with the fragility and finality of life.

The unexpected and the unprepared-for do make us aware of the bigger picture. Jürgen Moltmann has written that Christian theologising about the end of the world remains sterile unless that future event is allowed to exert impact on present thought and action.

Last year, I spent some time with Philip Yancey and, in his book Reaching for the Invisible God, he tells of his father-in-law, a Bible teacher and committed Christian. The older man’s faith troubled him in his final years. A degenerative nerve disease confined him to bed, preventing him from sharing in most of the activities he enjoyed. In addition to his own illness, his 39-year-old daughter battled a debilitating form of diabetes.

During the most severe crisis, he composed a Christmas letter and mailed it to family members and friends. He expressed his uneasy feelings about many things he had once taught. What could he believe with certainty? The old Bible teacher staked his faith on three realities. Here is his list: “Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure.” Those three things, he concluded, he could count on without reservation! When his daughter died of diabetic complications the week after he sent out this letter, he clung even more firmly to those truths.

Life is difficult and can shake us to the very foundation.

It knocks at all doors

There is something very indiscriminate about the shaking of life. No-one is exempt …

The successful person to whom life has been kind.
The energetic person whose enthusiasm abounds.
The healthy person whose energy is enormous.
The deeply Christian person whose life is holy.

However, as Mildred W Struven said, ‘A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.’ When we are walking alongside people in their need, it is so important that we recognise the normality of the shaking of life.

It calls for us to be prepared

We have talked about the fact that the community to whom Hebrews is addressed was ill-prepared – and the same applies to our lives – but it doesn’t stop us seriously examining our lives and considering how we can be better prepared for the times when life shakes our foundations.

Thomas à Kempis wrote, ‘Jesus has many who love his kingdom in heaven, but few who bear his cross. He has many who desire comfort, but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share his feast, but few his fasting. All desire to rejoice with him, but few are willing to suffer for his sake. Many follow Jesus to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of his passion. Many admire the miracles but few follow him to the humiliation of his cross. Many love Jesus as long as no hardship touches them.’

An old inscription on the clock in Chester Cathedral cannot be ignored:

When, as a child, I laughed and wept, time crept.
When, as a youth, I dreamed and talked, time walked.
When I became a full grown man, time ran.
And later, as I older grew, time flew.
Soon I shall find, while travelling on, time gone.
Will Christ have saved my soul by then? Amen!

Mark Twain rather cynically said, ‘Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.’ We are called to be prepared and not to procrastinate.

God's kingdom is unshakeable

After talking a good deal about the things for which we can never be fully prepared, and the fact that life does shake and is unpredictable, we are led to consider the unshakeable aspect of life – and that is God himself.

Morris comments on the words ‘let us be thankful’ which follow immediately after my actual text. Thanksgiving, he tells us, is not a familiar theme in Hebrews. He prefers the work of H W Montefiore who appears to say that we should appropriate the grace of God and never let it go. It is only by grace that we live our lives.

Louis Evans says, ‘That which cannot be shaken, which is not of human manufacture, is the kingdom of Jesus Christ.’ There have been endless attempts to shake God’s kingdom. Morris writes, ‘The author does not simply say that it will not be shaken but that it cannot be shaken.’

The kingdom of God has a quality that differentiates it from all else. We remind ourselves that the kingdom is ‘received’ and because of this it has an impact on every aspect of our lives.

This inspires an immediate and active response

Only last week we said Christians need to be alert and ready to run the race with perseverance. In such a race, we cannot allow ourselves to be hindered by obstacles – or held back by lesser priorities. Both earthly trouble and celestial joy can contribute to losing our real focus. In the time of shaking, it is more important than ever to be alert.

Brown comments: ‘Where everything around them was being shaken, the believers were not to be afraid, but to rejoice in the secure, immovable kingdom to which they most certainly belonged.’

Our faith is always lived out ‘as in the light of …’ Winston Churchill was once invited to address Harrow School. It was in the dark days of October 1941. He was ill-prepared, owing to the weight of World War II and the formidable challenges in London.

He stood up and said, ‘Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never give in.’ Then he sat down.

A frustrated wife once said, ‘When a man needs to do a household job, he goes through three periods: contemplating how it will be done, contemplating when it will be done, and finally contemplating!’

It puts all of life into clearer perspective

When you live life in the context of the changing and the unpredictable, we tend to have our:-

priorities sharpened.
pride softened.
perspective shaped.

In an interesting book called Failure: the Backdoor to Success, a young student wrote the following letter to her parents. It was two pages long and her alarmed parents read on the first page:

Dear Mum and Dad,

Just thought I’d drop you a note to keep you up with my plans. I fell in love with a guy called Jim. He quit high school after grade 11 to get married. About a year ago, he got a divorce. We’ve now been going steady for two months and we plan to get married in the Fall. Until then I’ve decided to move into his apartment (I think I might be pregnant).

At any rate, I dropped out of school last week, although I’d like to finish college sometime in the future.

The parents rapidly turned to the second page, which read:

Dear Mum and Dad,

I just want you to know that everything I’ve written so far in this letter is false. NONE of it is true. But Mum and Dad, it is true that I got C minus in French and I’ve flunked Maths … it IS true that I’m going to need a lot more money for my tuition payments.
The girl made her point! Even bad news can sound good if seen from a different perspective.

Such assurance leads us to responsibility

Once we begin to live our lives in the light of an unshakeable kingdom, we not only gain a deeper sense of the assurance of God, but we willingly take up the greater responsibility which attends such a life.

Obedience – 12:25

Belonging to the permanent and abiding kingdom of God ensures that we not only want to follow Christ, but we exercise a life of Christian obedience. This is not a word to which we readily relate today, but it is so closely attuned to faith and active service that we cannot avoid it.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that the Christian leaders were often persecuted: ‘The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!”’ (Acts 5:27-29)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed obedience was essential to faith and wrote, ‘Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.’

Confidence – 12:26-27

The Old Testament background to Hebrews cannot be ignored. The description of the events at Mt Sinai is linked to a prophetic account in Haggai 2:6 which refers to the last days. Christians actually belong to the order of life which cannot be shaken.

We read the newspaper, see the events around us in the world and are concerned to be actively engaged in the issues of justice and righteousness. However, we are not ultimately filled with fear. We recognise that:-

there is much political instability.
people’s lives are influenced by social pressures.
economic factors often lie beyond our control.
moral decay is all around us.

However, we have a confidence in Christ which cannot be shaken.

Reverence – 12:28-29

This is an interesting third aspect which follows on from confidence. We need to be sure that our confidence does not lead us to arrogance.

One aspect of much of our modern believing is that we have lost a sense of reverence … an acknowledgement that we are in the presence of God, which should lead us to:-

meaningful worship.
sincere gratitude.
appropriate living.

I feel that this sense of the loss of reverence is such an important one for us to identify and address today. God is more than ‘a mate’ or even ‘a close friend’. He is the Lord God Almighty, whose grace is sufficient for our living.

Augustus Toplady wrote the famous hymn ‘Rock of Ages’ after being caught up in a sudden storm at Burrington Coombe in Somerset near Cheddar Gorge. A plaque marks the event to this day and there is also a commemorative window in Blagdon Parish Church, were he was the curate.

Lightening and thunder arose very quickly and was quite merciless. The young curate was travelling along the road near the cliff when the storm struck and he dashed into a cave for shelter. He was fortunate to find a hiding place so quickly, while he waited for the storm to abate. He mused on the idea of ‘the rock of faith’ and ‘the shelter from the storms of life’.

He had come to faith under the preaching of James Morrison in Ireland. Morrison was one of John Wesley’s preachers, though Toplady was to have many disputes with Wesley. The hymn says a great deal and perhaps its most famous verse helps us to find a real place of meaning in Christ:

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

Christian Life