Persevering Faith

Enduring the Hard Struggle

Hebrews 10:32-39

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For,

“Yet a little while,
    and the coming one will come and will not delay;
38 but my righteous one shall live by faith,
    and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”

39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Members of the early Church endured many contests and struggles of suffering. They were made a public spectacle, berated with insults, and faced persecution. Yet, they stood in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Christ in prison and strived to joyfully bear the plundering of their property.

How did they get through such loss? By continually reminding themselves of God’s promise of a better possession. Their faith was strengthened by the courage and confidence required of them in trials. When we aren’t forced to stand strong publicly for the faith, it’s actually easier to fall away. It can be a greater challenge to hold fast to Christ in times of blessing and abundance than in times of persecution. The preacher reminds his readers how they survived tough times with boldness and joy in order to encourage them to stand firm for the long haul, during easier times when the struggle and burden seem lighter.

The Lord’s aim is that we stay connected to him though the best and worst of times. Do not shrink back from communion and intimacy with the Lord. Earlier, the preacher had exhorted:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for
he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one
another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as
is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more
as you see the Day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:23-25

The key to staying connected to the Lord is faith—have faith and preserve your soul. But the ground of our faith is not ourselves, but the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. Up to this point in the book of Hebrews, whenever faith is mentioned, it is always in reference to the faithfulness of God to us through Jesus Christ. We hold fast “because he who has promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23). We were also challenged to consider the faithfulness of Jesus in Hebrews 2:17, when he is described as “a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.” Jesus’ faithfulness included taking on frail flesh and blood in order that he might sympathize with us in our weakness and sufferings. He is the One who can help us in our weakness, “if we will draw near to him” (Hebrews 4:12).

We live in a sinful and fallen world. Living as a Christian in such a hostile environment involves struggle and suffering. Being a Christian is no longer cool—it is not cool in our schools or our workplaces. Christians are often seen as ignorant and stubborn enemies to progress. They are shamed into silence in schools and universities when they insist on the centrality of God. They are quieted into submission in the workplace because expressions of faith are considered inappropriate and offensive to others. In social settings, Christians pursuing holiness of life are considered out of touch and out of place by those reveling in the depravity of our world.

The writer to the Hebrews is reminding his readers of the persecutions they and earlier Christians faced to inspire them to hold fast. He describes their plight as a “hard struggle with sufferings” (Hebrews 10:32). But now, that persecution had subsided. They were getting back to “life as usual.” And “life as usual” meant the danger of slipping back into pre- conversion patterns and a worldly way of living.

Have you noticed in your own life that it can be easier to be a person of faith, hope, and love when you’re going through a time of persecution than it is during times of peace? In times of plenty, it is easy to take the Lord and his people for granted and to gradually slip away.

I remember after 9/11, churches were packed. The entire Congress of the United States—Democrats and Republicans—came out on the steps of the Capitol together and sang God Bless America. So much of our nation was united in seeking the Lord’s peace in that crisis. But after the months went by—it didn’t take long—people slipped back into ordinary life again, often without thought of God. The wakeup call had come with suffering but ended soon after.

Ground Zero cross
A photo of a cross from mangled metal taken by Anne Bybee about three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, on the backside of Ground Zero.

What kind of persecutions have you endured that awakened your need for God? What kind of sufferings have you gone through that brought you closer to the Lord? Have there been times in your life when you drifted away? What do you think was going on with you in respect to your circumstances?

We need to be reminded of our past faithfulness during struggles and draw from those memories to find strength for the now. The faith and trust the Hebrew Christians had in days of persecution, says the preacher, can serve as a foundation for vigorous faith now. But he is worried about their faltering. He is concerned that they are shrinking back and falling away under lesser pressures.

Beware when you find it easy to take God for granted. As you get older and older, and the years go by, do not lose heart and become discouraged. As you see the schisms in the Church over cultural, social, racial, and political agendas and the corruption in Church leadership, it can be easy to get disheartened. When you witness friends falling away, giving up on engagement with the church, and returning to a worldly lifestyle, it may be tempting to do the same thing. The questions can haunt us: Why am I still hanging on? Why do I continue to worship every week? Why am I still doing this Christian work? Why do I keep shepherding these sheep who are biting me?

It’s hard. It’s hard to hang in there with the Church over the years. When you have been part of it for 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more, you’ve “been there, done that” and it can be a challenge to keep on.

The reminder of the book of Hebrews is that there is an end to the challenge, the trials, and the tribulations! There will be a day when the biting sheep stop biting:

“ For yet ‘in a very little while,
the one who is coming will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one will live by faith.
My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back’”

Hebrews 10:38, NRSV

So what the writer of Hebrews is challenging us to have is faith. To hang in there with God’s promises, to believe them and to trust in what Jesus did for us and the grace he gives us now. If you are in a place of faithful intimacy, great! Stay connected to the Lord. Stay in that intimate holy place. Guard your life in his holiness and maintain accountable fellowship with other Christians; you will not shrink back or fall away.

Reflection:

Are you in a posture of deliberate sinning? Have you fallen out of the habit of regular worship? Have you allowed discouragement over an apathetic church to make you apathetic about Christ? Know that God delights in the steadfast! If you feel like throwing in the towel, remind yourself that God wants to help you endure and persevere. Our faithfulness is a sign of Christ’s faithfulness being perfected in us. When you are tempted to slip away, allow the warnings of the preacher to spur you to repentance. Such back sliding is not characteristic of believers, he says: “But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved” (Hebrews 10:39 NRSV).

Keep on keeping on!

This post is excerpted from Draw Near: Hebrews on Christian Worship by The Rev. Charlie Holt (Houston, TX: Bible Study Media, 2019) 113-116.

The Curtain Has Been Torn

In the Temple of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus, there were three sections. The larger part that worshipers were able to enter was the outer courts. Then there was a private inner section called the Holy Place where only the priests could enter. Then the inner sanctum called the Holy of Holies, and none but the most holy were allowed to enter. Therefore, only God could dwell there, and a high priest was able to enter once a year on the Day of Atonement after special animal sacrifices and offerings for his own sin an the sin of the people.

Between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place here was a large curtain that separated these two places. The curtain prevented access to the Most Holy Place where the glory of the Lord dwelt.

We see in the very beginning of the Bible (Genesis 3) and mankind’s relationship with God when Adam and Eve sinned, and they lost access to the Most Holy God. They were separated from God, and they were kicked out of the garden where God dwelt.

Ever since then, man has been longing to return to dwelling with God, walking in His presence and fullness like Adam and Eve did before they fell. Only in God’s presence can we find peace and rest. The Temple was the place where God and man could meet, but only by sacrifice could worshipers even enter the Holy Place, the outer courts of the presence of God. They were continually bringing animal sacrifices, over and over and over just to try to earn minimal access to God. It was an exhausting and ineffective way to live, because we know that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).

However, God had a plan to end that ineffective system. Christ Himself became our sacrifice, once for all, and His sacrifice opened the way for all of us to be restored in relationship with God. When Jesus died, “there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two (Luke 23:44-45). Jesus didn’t just pull back the curtain, He tore it right down the middle! He permanently opened the way for all of us to access the Most Holy Place, to be in relationship with the Most Holy God.

How do we respond to this powerful and wonderful truth? The writer of Hebrews tells us plainly:

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Hebrews 10:19-23

Think on this whenever you gather with the people of God. It is only because Christ gave you access to the Most Holy Place by His death that you are able to be in relationship with God and His people. When we lift our hearts in worship to the Lord, we are lifting them into the Most Holy Place, where Christ gave us access directly to the living God. Worship with confidence and joy, knowing that Christ permanently opened the way for you.

Attending to the Word of the Lord

The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus was “tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.” Christ was tempted the way we are, yet our temptations are never as strong as His. That’s because we give in before they reach their full strength. Then temptation is no longer temptation, it’s sin. The extremes of Christ’s temptations are something we would never experience, because we are too weak. Yet He can sympathize fully with our own struggles with temptations. He is our example of ultimate endurance, and He is our source of comfort and mercy in our time of need. In order to find that comfort, we have to seek to draw near to His heart.

To understand better, let’s examine the wilderness temptation of Christ in Matthew 4. The first part of that temptation was to turn rocks into bread. The miracle itself of turning rocks to bread wasn’t the sin that Satan was tempting Christ to. It’s the trust in bread to fill Christ’s hunger that was the temptation. Jesus had to resist the temptation to believe that the bread itself was His greatest need, and we have to resist the same temptation. Humans are amazing at taking the most mundane things and believing they are of the utmost importance. But Jesus reminds us that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes from the mouth of God.”

The question is, are you present as you are hearing the Word of the Lord? Are you paying attention? It’s easy to live the church life and ignore the reading of Scripture, and we forget that the Creator of all things is lovingly speaking directly to us. Don’t get distracted, don’t zone out, don’t forget where life actually comes from.

It is an awesome responsibility to sit in the pews of the House of the Lord and have the King of kings and Lord of lords speak directly to our hearts and offer us His salvation. What a privilege that we don’t have to go to great lengths to search for the Word of the Lord. He gives it directly to us! What a gift! Don’t lose sight of how precious that is!

God makes His Word accessible and present to us. Pay attention!