Read Hebrews 13:1-6

“I will never leave you or forsake you” (Deut. 31:6). God said it to Moses, instructing him to tell Israel. Centuries later the writer of Hebrews applies the promise to all of God’s people. God has not changed. He will never leave his people nor forsake us. These words are God’s promise for all circumstances of life, applicable in a wide range of situations.

The writer presents a roundup of exhortations on how to honor Christ in our living. He points us toward hospitality, not just to old friends, but also toward strangers. He singles out for our help particularly prisoners and those who suffer for whatever reason. Helping those whose lives are hard is not optional. Reach out to others. All of these circumstances are external to us.

The writer makes it clear that the same promise applies to our internal life circumstances. Keep your marriage vows no matter what. Nobody said achieving a successful marriage was easy, but God promises not to leave you struggling alone in life’s closest bond. He presses on to money. Making money is not wrong. Letting it have first place in your life, letting money rule you instead of your managing it, loving it for its own sake is wrong. You don’t have to do that. Live confidently, he says. Remember, God will never leave you. The Lord of the universe is your helper. What better security could there be?

Read Hebrews 12:18-29

Which is easier to approach, Mount Sinai or Mount Zion? That is the contrast the writer sets before us. Moses climbed Sinai with its smoke, shaking, and trumpet sound. He came away with the Ten Commandments. We are challenged here to climb Mount Zion, spiritually speaking, with its joyful assembly of angels and residents of heaven. We can come away with sins forgiven and a personal knowledge of the God of the universe who lowers himself to meet with each individual human, loving each of us equally.

This is the climax of the writer’s entire argument. He has established Christ as our Great High Priest. He holds before us the old covenant, the Law of Moses, and the new covenant, the way to God open through Christ’s broken body. God is not silent. He has made himself known to us in many ways. Will we respond?

The choice is ours, but the writer warns us of the consequences of refusing God’s offer. Ancient Israel did not escape punishment when they turned away from God after hearing his voice shake Sinai. Now, he speaks from heaven. It’s Hebrews’ two-story approach again. He cautions us bluntly. All the earth—everything created—can be shaken. All of it will someday disappear. We go out into eternity with nothing but God’s unshakable kingdom before us. Will we go in worship and awe, or will we face God’s consuming fire?

Read Hebrews 12:14-17

Can you always be at peace with everybody? Are there guidelines for finding the point where we quit agreeing with those who question our Christian values and start letting the chips fall where they will? Does the writer give us a strategy for such a decision in these verses? “See to it…” he says twice. See to it what?

See to it that you don’t become a peace-at-any-price person, retreating from full obedience to God’s known will for you in order to please another person rather than God. You may spend the rest of your life at cross-purposes, angry with everybody else because you are mad at yourself for violating God’s principles.

The other “see to it,” after an almost casual injunction against sexual immorality, as if anybody with any sense would know better, points to Esau as an example of the worldly-minded, unspiritual person who valued God’s gifts so little that he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup (Gen. 25:29-34).
Sometimes violating God’s will changes things permanently. Esau, by his own poor choices

, missed God’s best for him. Later, in agony of soul he found it was eternally too late. Don’t come to the end of life, Hebrews warns, and realize that the compromises, the half-hearted service to God, cannot be changed. As the Rubaiyat says, “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on:…Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it” (stanza 71).

Read Hebrews 12:1-13

In Hebrews 11 the writer lists many persons, all examples of the kind of successful lives God can give humans who are faithful to him. They all had faith, they all had troubles, they all won in the end. Then, in Chapter 12 the writer turns cheerleader. “If they did it, so can you,” he says. “Let go of your sin, set your eyes on Jesus. Give the race of life all you’ve got.”

He makes it clear that it won’t be easy. Temptation to sin always plagues humans. At the other end of the spectrum is God’s discipline. Notice a little twist. Our attitude toward suffering must not lead us to the conclusion that God is a mean old man. Rather, hardships indicate we are family members. We are not guests or casual acquaintances of God, but his own children born again into his family. Like any children of loving parents, we can expect correction. The Father has a long-term goal in allowing adversity. He wants us to become like him, to share his holiness.

What would it do for your mental and spiritual outlook if you could see the distress in your life as an indication of your parent-child relationship with God? Seen in this light, the hard places are not pointless, senseless frustrations. They prepare us to become mature children of God. Can you hear our spiritual siblings shouting across the centuries? “Run!” “Win!” “We’re with you!”

Read Hebrews 11:32-40

What can you say about a long catalog of strange names, followed be a list of all the troubles those people had? Why do we care, centuries later, that they quenched flames and escaped the sword? Some accepted martyrdom rather than deny their Lord. Can we learn anything?

Whether they escaped or were martyred, these persons are an enormous example and encouragement to us. They were people just like us. They started weak. They did not manufacture their own strength. God gave it to them. What’s the writer’s point? To encourage us. Their “weakness was turned to strength.” They did not escape persecution. But they went into it with the wind of God’s Spirit at their backs.

Shall we not follow their example? Don’t try to live life in your own strength. Paul speaks of such an active faith at least twice. He says we can do all things through Christ; we can be more than conquerors “through him who loved us” (Phil. 4:13; Rom. 8:37). Paul claimed victory in what looked like defeat to the world.

Nobody in this list lived to see his faith rewarded. They looked forward to Jesus’ coming just as we look back to it. God waited so that we could join with this great train of believers. Together they and we make God’s perfect whole. God fulfilled his promises to these who have gone before. Will he do less for us?

Read Hebrews 11:23-31

Suppose an order came from Washington, D.C., to kill all the baby boys of a particular race. How would you feel? That’s the situation Moses’ parents faced. The king of Egypt said to kill all the Hebrew boys less than two years of age (Exodus 1 and 2). Little Moses’ parents must have shared the revulsion of all parents. But they did not act from fear. “By faith,” the record says, they took bold action. Moses’ older sister spoke fearlessly as well. The Lord rewarded their faith, turning the situation around so that Moses’ own mother became a paid nurse to him (Exodus 2:7-9).

No doubt Moses was aware of why his people were slaves in Egypt. Probably he knew of the prophecies that they would leave Egypt some day. Faith is not irrational. It is belief in and knowledge of the person who makes the promise for the future. And God had promised. In faith Moses left Egypt, in faith he returned. He did not turn back because he did not look back. Moses’ attention was focused on God and what he could do in the future. The writer hints that Moses looked forward in faith even to Messiah.

Forty years go by between verses 27 and 28, and another forty years pass between verses 29 and 30. The entire chapter covers centuries. God does not change. Do we believe him as Moses and Rahab, the Gentile prostitute, did?

Read Hebrews 11:7-22

Faith is not to be confused with a warm, fuzzy feeling. In faith Noah built an ark on dry land, working in “holy fear” of unprecedented high water. By faith, he knew it was coming. Faith is not always easy. Abraham, trusting God, offered his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. Faith is an act of will, a conscious decision to believe God rather than people. When Abraham left home, he did not know where he was going. In faith he departed. What do you suppose his old friends in Ur said when they found out he had no destination? He had that two-story idea. The tents he lived in were temporary. Somewhere there was a permanent, glorious city built by God.

God doesn’t seem to dwell on the past. The writer lauds persons who looked to the future. Abraham was not alone in his faith. The generations of his family mentioned here—Isaac, Jacob, Joseph—didn’t live to see the promises fulfilled. But they died in faith believing a better country lay ahead, a heavenly one.

“I am going…to prepare a place for you,” Jesus said (John 14:2). Later, John, who heard Jesus speak those words, saw a vision of the city that is God’s creation and wrote of it. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth….the Holy City” (Rev. 21:1-2).

The persons named here would have understood both sayings. Their vision of faith included Messiah.

Read Hebrews 11:1-6

Is the writer taking time out from his book to include some biographical information that interests him? No, this chapter is an integral part of what he needs to say to make his case.

He has just gotten through instructing us to move forward in faith (Heb. 10:39). Now he illustrates the point.
If you think argument about creation is new, read these verses. Those of us who believe God created the universe are criticized for not being able to explain every last detail of how he did it. The writer assures us that we can never prove the whole thing. God created the universe out of nothing. I have no idea how he did it or how long it took in earth years. Scripture teaches that a thousand years are as a day to the Lord (Psalm 90:4).

If you believe that the old animal sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s death as the once-for-all sacrifice for all human sin, you are not alone. The writer ticks off examples of faith chronologically, beginning with Abel, the fourth human being, Adam and Eve’s second son (Gen. 4:2). Here is a list of persons who, in faith, looked forward to the reality you have experienced. He begins with the classic definition of faith. He interrupts his list to repeat the same thought. Without being sure of what you hope for and certain of things you don’t see, you won’t get far with God.

Read Hebrews 10:32-39

Nobody knows to whom the book of Hebrews was originally written, except that those first readers were evidently Jewish. We learn here that they had suffered for their Christian witness. They were publicly insulted and had their property unlawfully seized. But notice what else these people did. They stood in solidarity with others who were mistreated, sympathizing with those in jail for their faith.

Although this is an appeal to memory, the thrust is forward. Only rarely should we look back. What is the secret of their victory? It’s the book of Hebrews’ two-story view of life again. These Christians knew they had “better and lasting possessions.” Earthly belongings are not the real, permanent things. Our true possessions, of much greater worth, are the rewards found in heaven, at home forever with the Lord. The writer says, “Remember how you lived in the Lord’s victory during hardship before? Do it again. Don’t falter. Just a little while, and you will come out victorious.” Always he instructs us to be encouraged. He quotes the prophet Habakkuk who tells us not to look back in gloom, but forward to the Lord’s glorious return. The writer has moved from exhortation to warning to encouragement. We are enjoined to courage and joy in the face of trouble because of the hope of Christ’s second coming, and our eternal reward. Have courage, he says. The Lord could return at any time. Happy day!

Read Hebrews 10:26-31

God takes human sin seriously. People make jokes about doing wrong, but God doesn’t.

Why do people do wrong? Original sin, we say. Adam and Eve sinned, and we inherited the tendency. Well, yes, that’s true. What else? What lies behind greed, gossip, murder, stealing, and lying besides the inherent weakness of human nature? Selfishness? I want my way no matter what. I’m self-centered. I am the hub of my universe. Self-satisfaction? Do I consider myself wiser than God? I can run my life quite well, thank you. I don’t need God’s help. Besides, he might ask me to do something I don’t want to do. Or we may believe the devil’s lie that we must run our own lives because God does not really have our best interests at heart. When we believe that, we are forgetting that God died to deliver us from our sins. He loves us and wants the very best for us or he would not have bothered.

God loves us, but sometimes even he is powerless to save us from ourselves. Not wanting robots bobbing up and down before him rather than true, voluntary worship, he made us with something called free will. We can turn away from God if we want to. Only trouble is, if we do that, finally God will have no choice but to say, “Sorry, I cannot admit you to a heavenly home. You turned it down long ago.”