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Job 1, Hebrews 2:14-15

For the Love of God!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 15, 2019

There is an enemy in the world that draws us away from God’s love to think that God really doesn’t care that much about me, that He is not a good God who has my best interests foremost in mind. Many people see God this way. He’s a policeman hiding behind a billboard trying to catch me speeding. He’s a boss trying to get the best performance out of me that’s possible. Or like Job, the pains and hardships of life come headlong at us and we are tempted to question God’s goodness and His good intentions towards us. The power of Satan is seen in his leading us to think ill of God.  In the Garden of Eden, it was the thought that God was trying to keep something good from us in order to sustain His own supremacy, as if that could ever be threatened. With Job, the effort to demean God in Job’s eyes revolved around the pain and hardships that Satan was allowed to bring upon him. When all his attempts failed to get Job to curse God, Satan attacks Job’s own health and says to God, “Skin for Skin.” Satan challenges God that Job will indeed curse Him to His face if He permits sickness and disease to strike Job. But Job held on and said, “Though He slays me, yet will I trust Him.” “Naked came I into the world, and naked from it I will go.” “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Death is our supreme enemy! It casts a shadow across our lives from the moment we are born until the day it claims our flesh. We’ve all heard of the four teenage girls who died in a car accident in Gretna recently. What a tragedy. I couldn’t help, as I looked at their beautiful faces, thinking of all the families and children and grandchildren the world will never see because of their premature death. Death is the greatest of our enemies. However, “flesh and blood” is part of being human. But God did not create man for death. He created us for life! The author of Hebrews is addressing this fact in Hebrews 2:14-15. He writes, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

Death is our supreme enemy and slave master. But Jesus had to come in the flesh, to become like us and one of us as a brother, and then to die the only death that could have destroyed the one who wields death as his instrument of slavery. God isn’t trying to keep anything good from us. He only wants the best for us. He’s not a policeman or a boss. He’s our creator who, as Jeremiah puts it, “Loves us with an everlasting love.” That love was undeniably demonstrated to us all on Calvary when He gave His only begotten Son. Sinking our roots into that love  and growing in the understanding of that love enables us to enhance our view of God and begin to see others as God sees them! Only in receiving and growing in our understanding of God’s love for us, will we be able to grow in our love for God and others. This is how we mature spiritually. It’s not by trying harder, doing more, or becoming more committed.

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John 3:16, Hebrews 2:11b-13, 1 John 4:19, Ephesians 3:17-19

Learning to Love

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 12, 2019

Through faith in Jesus we are all one big family. The blood we share is the shed blood of Jesus Christ who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and to purchase for us a place in heaven which he offers as a free gift. That gift is received through faith alone. It’s not something you can earn or deserve. It’s only given away. To attempt to pay for it is an insult to God’s love. “He so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son so that anyone who believed in him would not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).  The author of Hebrews is focusing on that truth in Chapter 2:11b-13. He writes that Christ makes us all equally holy in God’s eyes and “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again, ‘Behold, I and the children God has given me.’”

The “congregation” is not about what we do, how hard we try to be holy, what role we play in the church, or anything else related to our own efforts. The people together sing and worship the one and only one that saves! It’s about Jesus being at the center and the family gathering around the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus has called us to love Him and to love one another but that’s impossible if we don’t first have God’s love. You can’t give away something that you don’t have. John put it this way, “We love (only) because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The only way for us to grow in the only commandment that means anything to Jesus, the commandment to love, is to wallow in His love for us as expressed on Calvary. Brothers and sisters who know they are loved by the Father and are growing in the understanding of that love, will grow in their love for one another.

Paul prayed, as the New International Version puts it in Ephesians 3:17-19, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” It’s truly not what we know, or what we do, or what we give, or how we serve, or how often we read our Bibles that stimulates our growth as Christians. It’s focusing our hearts and minds on what God has done for us in Christ; the greatest expression of His love. This is why the author of Hebrews tells us to think carefully, meticulously, inquisitively, and continuously on the person and work of Jesus. The Book of Hebrews is all about the importance of Jesus. The whole Bible is about the importance of Jesus!

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Isaiah 53:5, Hebrews 2:10-11a

The Only Source of Holiness

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 11, 2019

Think carefully about Jesus’ work on our behalf. Christ, the perfect human, took upon himself the consequences of our sin and suffered in our stead. The Old Testament contained this prophecy hundreds of years before Christ was born. Isaiah 53:5 says, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” Jesus’ absolute perfection was demonstrated completely through His suffering on our behalf. Sanctify means to make something holy. Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins is the basis for our holiness. Apart from that, there is no holiness. All our own righteous deeds are as polluted garments. They have no “holiness” in and of themselves. Christ is the one who makes us holy. There is only one source of holiness. It’s Jesus’ holiness and not our own!

This is another reason why Jesus and His work on our behalf make Him more important than the angels or the prophets. The author says in Hebrews 2:10-11a, “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.” The holiness of Christ is attributed to all believers and as the writer of Hebrews will say later on in Hebrews 10:10, He does that “once for all.” There is only one “source” of righteousness with God; His only begotten Son, Jesus. You have no righteousness of your own. I have no righteousness of my own. The blood of Jesus cleanses us all from our sins and binds us together as family. That’s why we are often referred to as “brothers and sisters in Christ.” We are all children of God, declared to be righteous (sanctified), through the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. We are all equal! No one is better or worse than anyone else. The truth is, we’re all sinners, saved by God’s grace based on God’s love. Steadman says, “But it was love for the lost human race that drove both Father and Son to choose that process.”[1]

When this truth is the central theme of church life you have a body of believers who understand that the ground at the foot of the cross is level. No one stands higher than anyone else. The unconditional acceptance by God based on the unconditional love of God becomes a foundation that fosters love and acceptance in the whole body. When the central theme of church life is your own works of righteousness, being more committed or dedicated, or trying harder, you develop cliques of those who do more than others. You have competition to prove one’s worth or efforts to measure up to the acceptable standards of church life. What one does, what one gives, and how one serves, become the measures of one’s value in the church. This fosters strife and contention rather than love and acceptance.

[1] Ray C. Stedman, Hebrews, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 1992), Heb 2:10.

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Hebrews 2:7-9, Philippians 3:20-21, Ephesians 2:8-9

By the Grace of God

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 10, 2019

Jesus set aside the glory that was His in eternity past when He took on the nature of a man. During His time on earth as a man, Jesus was somehow reduced to a status below the angels just as sinful humanity was less than the angels. But Jesus was sinless, representing the second Adam who was the person that God originally designed us all to be. Even in the flesh, Jesus exercised dominion over angels, both good and fallen. He controlled the seas. He controlled sicknesses and even had dominion over death. As Hebrews 2:7-9 says, God left nothing outside of Jesus’ control: “You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

As it was mentioned in the first chapter, Jesus is now at the highest place in Glory at the right hand of the Father waiting the day when God will put all His enemies under His feet. He exercised dominion over all things while on earth, but His own people rejected His kingdom according to plan so that you and I might share in His glory. Paul writes in Philippians 3:20-21, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Through His death, He paved the way for our redemption from the consequences of our sin and opened the gates of heaven for us all through faith alone: “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

We should pay closer attention to Jesus than to the angels because He died for our sins. They didn’t and they couldn’t. As Brown points out, “Death was the terrifying problem of the ancient world and if Jesus was to be really and truly ‘like his brethren’ (2:17), he had to go through its grim experience. The angels could not feel these pangs of human desolation. Death was unknown to them.”[1] Please note that Jesus’ death was “by the Grace of God.” This is how one commentary describes this: “The grace of God is equivalent to the love of God (by analogy to Rom. 5:15; 2 Cor. 8:9; Gal. 2:20–21; Eph. 1:7; 2:5, 8; Titus 2:11; 3:7). In the words of John Calvin, ‘The cause of redemption was the infinite love of God towards us, through which it was that he spared not even his own son.’”[2] Again, sinking our roots into God’s love for us as expressed on Calvary is what will change our lives, not trying harder!

[1] Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 56–57.

[2] Simon J. Kistemaker and William Hendriksen, Exposition of Hebrews, vol. 15, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953–2001), 68.

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Ephesians 3:14-17, Genesis 3:16, Hebrews 2:5-8

Jesus: A Man among Men!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 9, 2019

Up to these verses, Hebrews 2:5f, the writer has been focusing on the deity of Jesus and how His superiority to the prophets and to the angels should drive us to “think more carefully” about Him. We should fix our attention on Jesus because there is so much for us to see and understand about His person and His work. The deeper we sink our roots into Jesus and His sacrifice on our behalf, the stronger our branches will be in life. Paul prays that the Ephesians would do just that in Ephesians 3:17-19. He explains that Jesus is God’s love demonstrated to us in the flesh and wants them to sink their roots into that so “…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Growth in the spiritual life comes not from trying harder, but from sinking our roots into God’s love as expressed on Calvary. There is so much nourishment to be drawn from the person and work of Christ.

The author of Hebrews gives us more wonderful truths about the person and work of Jesus to which we should pay close attention. He moves on in these verses to talk about Jesus’ humanity. He writes in Hebrews 2:5-8, “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.’” The title “Son of man” was Jesus’ favorite designation of himself. It’s the focus on His humanity as foretold in Genesis 3:16 that He would come into the world as the seed of the woman. The Psalm that is quoted here is normally taken to refer to mankind in general because in Genesis, God gave dominion over all creation to us! But we gave it away. Hagner observes, “Jesus is the true embodiment of humanity, the last Adam who realizes in himself that glory and dominion that the first Adam and his children lost because of sin. In him the words of the psalmist have their fulfillment. If the words were meant originally to apply to human beings, they find their fullest realization in the one who is preeminently human, who reveals humanity as humanity was meant to be.”[1]

Jesus was not like the angels because He was fully human. He knows what we know. He feels what we feel, as the author tells us later in his letter in Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” We must sink our roots down deep into God’s love as expressed in Christ. His divine position in eternity past as creator of all things was set aside because He loved us. He took upon Himself the nature of a man, being born of a woman, and experienced the pain and sufferings of death because He loved us. As a man without sin, He restores to us the dominion God had planned for us over all creation. Here is where we should focus our attention! These are the things we should be thinking carefully about. Only in Christ will we find peace and rest with God and dominion over the world. The law brings nothing but condemnation.

[1] Donald A. Hagner, Hebrews, Understanding the Bible Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 45.

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Hebrews 2:3b-4, Romans 5:8, 1 John 1:1

God’s Law or God’s Love?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 8, 2019

We are all in the same boat as the author of the book of Hebrews. He was not around when Jesus proclaimed the good news and died on the cross to seal the fate of all believers. Whoever wrote this book is relying on the testimony of the original hearers. He tells us in Hebrews 2:3b-4, “It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”

It was Jesus Himself that declared salvation. God used to speak to man through His prophets, but not anymore! It wasn’t prophets or angels who mediated God’s final word to man, it was the Son Himself. The importance of Jesus’ message in comparison to the mediated message of angels and prophets is like comparing the beginning of a story with its conclusion. The whole Old Testament is about God’s love for mankind. But Jesus gives us God’s final word regarding His disposition toward us. Again, I must quote Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrated his own love for us in this. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” From the creation account in Genesis 1 through the end of Malachi, God expressed His love for mankind in many different ways. But in Christ God “demonstrated” that love in an undeniable way! Jesus is both the messenger of God and the message of God. How does the Bible end? With Jesus!

Those who heard the message first hand attest to its validity. John is referring to the apostles when he begins his first epistle. He writes in 1 John 1:1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…” He’s expressing the validity of the testimony of the apostles about the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, their message has been validated by God with many signs and wonders. Allen helps us understand this validation. He writes, “The confirming testimony of God via the miracles was given to those who heard the Lord, not to the author and his readers.”[1] If God was still performing these signs and wonders at the time of this writing the author would surely have referred to them as evidence of the authenticity of the Gospel. If we focus on the continuation of these signs and wonders we miss the point. The beginning of the story of redemption in Exodus was validated by miracles. The ultimate conclusion of the story of redemption is also validated by miracles and confirmed by reliable witnesses. Prophets and angels did not have the final word. Only Jesus did! Do we focus on God’s law or do we focus on God’s love? As Hughes says, “It is more blameworthy to sin against love than against Law, to ignore God’s mercy than to break his Law.”[2]

[1] David L. Allen, Hebrews, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing Group, 2010), 198.

[2] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul, vol. 1, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), 52.

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Acts 7:53, Hebrews 2:2-3, Galatians 6:7, Isaiah 64:6, Matthew 11:28

The Law Only Condemns!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 7, 2019

The author of Hebrews is still talking about angels in Chapter 2. In Chapter 1, he clearly laid out the case for the superiority of Jesus to all the angels in that they simply do His bidding and when they’re not, they are worshipping Him. But now, the role that angels filled in the past is compared to their role regarding Jesus. The Jews believed that angels played a role in delivering the law to Moses at Sinai. The Jewish priest and historian, Josephus, makes this clear when he says, “We have learned the noblest of our doctrines and the holiest of our laws from the angels sent by God” (see Antiquities XV:136, or XV,5:3 in Whiston’s translation). Stephen includes this fact in his sermon before being stoned to death. In Acts 7:53 he says, “…who have received the Law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it.” The most interesting thing in Stephen’s quote is the fact that the law ministered through angels was not kept. This affirms the truths of the Old Testament regarding Israel’s failure under their own law.

Hebrews 2:2-3a says, “For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” Failure to keep Moses’ law resulted in the destruction of Israel, both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. In concluding the law in its second giving (Deuteronomy) there are blessings and curses: blessings for keeping the law and curses for violating the law. This is sowing and reaping. “Don’t be deceived,” Paul tells the Galatians, “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” The law establishes firmly the principles of sowing and reaping. We all live under that law and we’ve all sowed seeds to the flesh. Even our righteous deeds are not good in God’s eyes. Isaiah 64:6 tells us that even “our righteousness is as filthy rags.” The ESV puts it this way: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”

The author is saying “under the law, you cannot escape your judgment.” It is very reliable and every failure will have its consequences. But Jesus paid the consequences for our sins! Yes, we made our  bed but Jesus slept in it for us! It’s God’s pure demonstration of His love for us! “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” If you ignore, diminish, demean, or dismiss this truth in favor of works righteousness there is no remedy for your sin! As Hebrews 1:3 says, Jesus “made purification for our sins.” Focusing on the law, works, my own righteousness, and my own efforts will bring no peace. There is no rest in the law! But Jesus calls us out of the law to Himself. “Come to me,” He says, “and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

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Hebrews 2:1, Romans 5:8, Galatians 1:6

Drifting away from Jesus

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 2, 2019

After discussing at great lengths the importance of Jesus, His person and work, the author of Hebrews begins chapter 2 with a connection with what he’s already said in the first chapter. He’s demonstrating that Jesus is superior to prophets, to angels, and to all creation. Well, what should that mean to us? Hebrews 2:1 begins, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” What does it mean to pay “closer attention?” The BKC on Hebrews says, “The truth he had just enunciated has important implications. The therefore shows that this admonition arose directly from the preceding material. Since the Son is so supremely great and is destined for final triumph over His enemies, the readers would do well to pay more careful attention to these realities.”[1]

What is the content of “what we have heard?” It’s got to be the good news about Jesus Christ. The message that was spread by Paul and the other apostles!  It’s the good news about the appearance of the Messiah of the Old Testament in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who made purification for our sins (Hebrews 1:3).  Our focus should be on Jesus. Even the Old Testament prophets spoke about Jesus. Focus our attention on that. The Angels are all about Jesus. We should learn about Jesus from the conduct and activity of the Angels. The whole world was created, choreographed, and is being sustained by Jesus. It’s all about Him. The God of love is revealed to us through all creation and all the records of the law and the prophets. Ultimately, His love for all mankind is fully demonstrated on Calvary. Romans 5:8, says, “But God demonstrated His love for us in this; while we were yet sinner Christ died for us.” God’s love for us should get our more diligent attention.

Why should we keep our focus on Jesus? Because everything around us tries to distract us! Like Peter walking on the water, as long as he had his eyes on Jesus, he was fine. But when he took his eyes off of Jesus and put them on the situation around him, the waves and the wind, he began to sink. The Handbook for Translators says about this phrase “drift away”, “In secular Greek it is sometimes used to describe a ship drifting away.” It quotes Barkley who says, “Otherwise, we may well be like a ship which drifts past the harbor to shipwreck.”[2] In religious circles, it’s often easy to lose our focus on the gospel and the person of Jesus. Instead of focusing on Him, we look to religious rituals, regulations, and disciplines to save us. It’s not that we deny the truth of Christ, but we live as if it doesn’t matter. We are more concerned about what we do than what He did for us. Paul was disturbed by the Galatians who had drifted away from Jesus and slipped back into a life of religious obligations and observations. Some were preaching good works instead of faith in Jesus, as the basis for life. It’s in this passage that Paul brings up angels. He says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Don’t drift into a focus on good works rather than on Jesus!

[1] Zane C. Hodges, “Hebrews,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 783.

[2] Paul Ellingworth and Eugene Albert Nida, A Handbook on the Letter to the Hebrews, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 27.

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