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?