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36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 37 For, “In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay.” 38 And, “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.” 39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved. ~ Hebrews 10:36-39
Today, we complete our study of Hebrews 10. The writer of Hebrews wrote to a group of young Jewish Christians who were persecuted so much they were tempted to throw in the towel of their faith in the Lord Jesus. They were under tremendous pressure and they were tempted to go back to their old religion and their old way of life. But, the special thing about faith in the God of the Bible is that it points us beyond now. Faith does not claim that everything’s fine now, that we have nothing to worry about. Faith points us to a better future than the present we experience. The person with faith in the God of the Bible can endure almost infinitely more than a person without it, because this faith connects us to Him and His viewpoint of eternity.
Having reminded these young believers of their early days when they were so in love with the Lord, the writer of Hebrews underscored the fact that they endured incredibly bad treatment from non-believers and accepted the plundering of their possessions with joy. This is what happens to the one who goes from the darkness to the light. The light is turned on and we are finally enabled to see what is really real. In the midst of darkness, light persists, and the blind man not only gains physical sight, but he also grows in spiritual light.
In v.36 of today's passage we read, "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised."
The word "persevere" means patience. It is always most difficult to live by faith in the God of the Bible when we are going through the most difficult moments in our lives. This is especially difficult when we know not what it means to walk in the Spirit. To walk in the Spirit is to be led by Him essentially to worship God by thinking His thoughts and choosing according to His ways.
This is what it means to worship God in the spirit. And, when we come to these most intense moments, if we practice patience, we will give God the time needed to give us the perspective we need to persevere in our faith in Him. And, once we have taken a step back to gain that perspective, we will realize the promise of God still awaits us. Interestingly, when we have persevered, we will look back to see the reason we persevered was due to His presence through the Holy Spirit who is at work in our lives.
No believer in Christ wants to lose heart. No believer in Christ wants the heart for living for Him knocked out of us. On the contrary, we all want to be on the cutting edge of usefulness to God regarding that which He is doing in this world. We all know that those good feelings that were associated with our young faith in the God of the Bible tend to drain away. If we are going to be strong on the inside and have hope and joy and resources to love, we are going to have to be renewed day by day.
Life is not static. It is up and down and up. It is a life where we are filled one day and depleted the next. Daily we learning to be renewed, then expended, only to be renewed and expended again and again. This is how our faith in Him grows. As our faith in Him is stretched and we are forced to look to Him, then, we will more clearly see Him with our hearts. And, the harder the trial that is endured, the greater the view we gain of Him.
In v.37 of today's passage we read, "For, 'In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay.'"
Having told these young Hebrew Christians to look back over their former days when they endured by faith, he now encourages them to look forward in faith to the promise of the Lord's coming. They just had to avoid the trap of looking at their problems. I am convinced that when we get to eternity, we will look back on time and space as we know it and we will say, "That was such a short blip in comparison to eternity." Lacking the perspective of eternity often damages our faith which God wants to bolster so that we can now see how insignificant the things of this world truly are and how significant He and those things of His world truly are.
In v.38-39 of today's passage we read, "38 And, 'But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.' 39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved."
The writer of Hebrews closes this great passage with a simple challenge to live by faith. Being made "righteous" precedes the ability to live by faith. These believers had come a long way, they had endured a lot of difficulty, they just needed to be reminded to choose to believe all the way. And, the unction behind our ability to believe is His righteous presence at work in our lives. True Christianity is not living for God, it is allowing God to live through us. The issue is not us becoming more righteous, it is dying to what we think is right and yielding to what He has already determined to be right.
It is not by sight that we live because we are of another world. We are the abiding place of God, and we have been infused by the Eternal One. He has infused us with the eternal and our confidence is growing in Him. And, it is through faith in Him that we gain His pleasure. Sadly, those who do not believe in the God of the Bible will be destroyed.
Believers in Christ are not those who shrink back; no, we are of those who see from the vantage point of eternity. Enduring trials is how we are galvanized in our trust in the One who gave His life for us. And, it is through our trials that we learn to look to Him and see Him and His goodness with our hearts. This is how our faith is strengthened in Him to the point that we do not turn back to what isn't really real.
