Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation.
10 For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.
11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end,
12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself,
14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” 15 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.
16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.
17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath,
18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,
20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
The words that are used in our text are words that describe diligence and a mind, set like flint to the labors of love for the people of God. Is that our mind set?
Do we set ourselves to the love of God and His church? Do we do so without thinking about whether or not they like us or appreciate us? We are the recipients of his love, even the beneficiaries of his grand display of love and mercy, the giving of his life!
Do we thank Him and appreciate Him as we should? Not always. Yet He does not stop loving or serving us as our great High priest.
After the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 and the Huguenots in France were persecuted, the church went underground. Most ministers of the church would eventually
be caught and killed. A seminary was established in Switzerland to send men back to France after their training with an almost certainty of death. The diploma was known as, “a certificate to the gallows”. Faith-filled men, one after another received that
diploma and went back to minister to God’s people knowing that if caught, death was certain. All because of a love for the Lord and His church.
We might be a lot like the people that Hebrews was written to. We are found ready to help our brothers and sisters but the virtue of constancy is rare and many cool
to the idea especially when it begins to require sacrifice from them. “And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end that you do not become sluggish but imitate those who through faith and patience
inherit the promises.”
The author has blended praises with exhortation. Calvin concludes that what we have here are the two parts of Christianity: We have faith, which corresponds to our
knowledge and trust in the promises of God and action, which is the outworking of that faith.
The two are inseparable and the apostle seems to warn that although it is possible to do outward works without faith, it is NOT possible to have faith without labors
of love. Faith and obedience go hand in hand. Paul says to the Romans that he is speaking to them of the obedience of faith, or the obedience that comes from faith. Faith necessitates obedience…always! And according to this text that means that faith and love
go together…always!
The author says that we are to show diligence in this, diligence unto the end, that is unto perfection. He reminds them by saying this that they had not yet reached
their goal and that there was further progress to be made.
There is indeed nothing more difficult than to keep our thoughts fixed on the Kingdom when the whole power of our nature inclines us to focus on what is seen and yet
that is the point for us in this life, to live the Kingdom even though its fullness is not yet seen.
Tubby Smith was the head basketball coach at Kentucky for years. Coach Smith is one of 17 children and when asked the most important advice he ever received he said
it was from his father who told him, “Keep going, don’t give up and you will succeed because most people simply quit.” How much more for us who have not the goals of men in mind but the goals and aspirations of God’s glory filling the earth!
In verse 12 we are called to imitate those who have gone before us. There is sloth and there is imitation. And as a note the word that is translated sluggish, do not
become sluggish, is the same word that is translated in 5:11 as “dull”. He says there that some have become dull, lackluster, flat, unmotivated, unconcerned, sluggish about the truths of God and the life that we are called to live, and to conquer this temptation,
he says imitate those who have not grown dull.
Since faith at times must wait long for its reward the believer may be sorely tempted to grow weary and lose heart. They wait cannot be shortened but hope can be revived
by a reminder that hope in the Lord will never be disappointed. Abraham is an example of that. He had to wait many years for even the beginning of the fulfillment of the promises God made to him.
The words in verse 12, “faith and patience” are important for us as they proved to be the case in the life of Abraham. The true evidence of faith, its character, is
seen in its endurance. True faith is not that which is fleeting, but is that which stands upon the promises made by God even in the face of adversity and the apparent silence of God.
God promised a countless offspring to Abraham and it seemed an incredible thing. Sarah was old and barren, Abraham old and as Calvin put it, “seemed closer to the
grave than to a conjugal bed.” Yet God made a promise to this man that not just a son but a nation would come from him and that all nations of the world would be blessed through him. Abraham
believed God. Even when God told Abraham to sacrifice this child,
Abraham so believed God’s promise that he concluded that God would raise Isaac from the dead!
That is what the author argues. Look to those who by faith believed the words of God and do likewise. Do not be sluggish and dull as if God’s word and the promises
that he has made are false. And it was these two immutable things, the promise of God Himself, two things that do not and cannot change, that God makes this promise to Abraham. And the promises of God are the same to us as well!
Prayer:
Father, I do not often stop to consider how easily I forget what you have promised. I forget because I am foolish. My sin is grievous as it is first against You and Your holiness, kindness and mercy. But it also ripples in the lives of others. Father, give
me a true sight of all that you have given to Your people, that I might rejoice and believe and that I might give myself by the power of Your Spirit to proclaim all that You have said, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn: Come Ye Sinners