The Second Chance for God’s People. Timothy W. Seid
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without some things, scrimp and save, so that they have what they’ll need when they retire. People are health-conscious so they’ll be in good shape to live it up during retirement.
A few years ago I put all of our finances into a software program for budgeting and keeping financial records. I spent a week entering a year’s worth of check registers so that I could have a pattern of income and expenses. After I had it all set up, I was playing around with its different functions for long-range planning. I had just started a retirement plan, but we had no savings toward retirement. I pressed a button asking the program to show me what retirement would be for us. The message came back that after just a few months I would run out of money. I was so depressed by that I quit the program and never looked at it again.
We devote so much attention to weekends and to our retirement years. There’s something far more important that should guide our lives. How are we living each day as a preparation for the final retirement? What are we doing to get ready for the eternal rest. Are we taking care of our spiritual health, so that we are fit to experience the best that life has to offer, eternal life in the presence of God?
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We have learned in these verses that the heavenly rest area is still open and still ahead for us. It’s a rest from the labors of life. To enter we must remain faithful and obedient to God.
I was officiating at a funeral this past year when something happened that made me suddenly aware of which state I was living in. Children had been walking—and sometimes running—around the funeral home. I heard a man talking to one of the boys. I assume he was trying to settle him down. There we were in the presence of death and the occasion for reflecting on the meaning of life. The question I heard was, “So who’s your favorite NASCAR driver?” I was reminded how close we live to Indianapolis. I suppose the conversation had some relevance in the funeral home. In some ways, NASCAR racing is the symbol of life, the circle of life. Maybe heaven for some Hoosiers is turning into the final pit stop.
However we look at it, we must realize—even fear—that our participation in God’s rest is dependent on how we live life. Faith is not a one time exercise of belief in Jesus. Christian life is not just a matter of attending church, saying some prayers, and reading the Bible. It’s about living in faithfulness to God and being obedient to the voice of God. God rested from the work of creation and waits for you and me to join with God in our rest.
Traveling Together on the Journey (4:11–13)
If you were to win a group trip to visit a far off country, whom would you choose to go with you? Your first choice would probably be your family members. Maybe you would choose some friends, friends you’ve known from school or people you’ve worked with. How many church-going people would say their first choice would be to take their church group with them? Yet, this is the group we have chosen to go through life with, the group that is to make sure we not only get through life but that we also make it to heaven.
There are countless TV shows, movies, and computer games in which the hero is given a mission and he or she has to choose a team to help achieve the goals of the mission. People are chosen for their personal qualities of loyalty, sense of responsibility, ability to work as a team; their courage, strength, and endurance. One person is gifted with the wisdom of strategy, another with technical skills, someone else knows transportation and logistics, yet another has strength and agility. The hand-picked team is confident they can trust each other, that they have what it takes to go the distance, and that in spite of their personal quirks and eccentricities they have a bond that means they stick together, accomplish the mission, and everyone gets home safe.
The author of Hebrews pictures the group of believers to whom he writes as fellow-travelers in life. The great example from their religious history is the exodus group, living a nomadic existence, slowly making their way to the promised resting place. That’s the way of life for the followers of Jesus: they are traveling together, working their way through the obstacles and pitfalls, helping each other along the journey, so that in the end they all get the rest they deserve—the spiritual rest God provides, the same rest when God rested from God’s creative work.
The Israelites became disobedient to God and rebelled against God’s appointed leaders. They did not trust the God who revealed God’s nature to them through the signs displayed to Pharaoh, the dividing of the Red Sea, and the provision of food and water in the wilderness. They did not trust the God who gave them God’s word in commandment and instruction on Mt. Sinai, who promised in God’s covenant with Abraham to be their God. Consequently, that generation did not enter their place of rest but wandered and fell in the wilderness.
The author of Hebrews uses that negative example to encourage, exhort, and warn his fellow-travelers that they must not make the same mistakes if they want to get to their heavenly place of rest together. The message is as important now as it was then.
The church in many ways has separated itself from the task of living life as a community of faith. Instead, the church has settled for being a place outside of regular living, to meet with people for an hour or two once a week. It has settled for those people to have nothing to do with the rest of how the members live life. Instead, church people want to simply go through motions of religiosity on Sunday mornings in hopes of feeling better about themselves and of warding off some divine retribution for how they act the rest of their week.
This portion of Hebrews talks of our work of achieving rest (4:11), of God’s word that analyzes who we really are (4:12), and of our own word of accountability (4:13).
Our Work of Achieving Rest (4:11)
Pop Christian culture says just accept Jesus and you’ve got it made. Just walk the aisle, have a salvation experience, then go to church, attend bible study, and witness to your friends until Jesus comes. That’s not bad, but it misses so much of what the New Testament teaches about the Christian life. Here the author of Hebrews says, “Make every effort to get to heaven!” Strive for it, work hard for it, be diligent to get there! Notice that WE are to work at it together, so that “not a single one of us” should fail. It’s not me being concerned about me so that I achieve something. It’s all of us together making sure that we don’t lose anyone along the way.
How many times have we heard stories of a group traveling through the forest or jungle. Single-file they make their way through the underbrush. The slowest, weakest person is a straggler at the end of the line. Sure enough, one by one, silently and swiftly, the last one is picked off. The group continues on, oblivious to their loss.
The Church is filled with stragglers and continues to be depleted of those stragglers who fade away little by little. Along the way of life, one by one, people have lost their way. They’ve been picked off by worldly cares and concerns. Someone becomes more concerned with career and doesn’t have time for faith and spiritual disciplines. Another becomes disillusioned and no longer considers it reasonable to trust in God or rely on the church. Yet another chooses a different lifestyle, what they think is fun, exciting, and pleasurable. For whatever the reason, the church has barely noticed that one by one their fellow-travelers have been lost along the way, lost and forgotten. If we are susceptible to being stragglers, God is able to detect our inner motives, even though others can’t tell who we really are.
God’s Word That Analyzes the Core of Who We Are (4:12)
The phrase “word of God” is complex. It refers collectively to the being of God who is characterized by speaking truth with authority, of knowing all things, of cutting right to the heart of the matter with a prophetic voice through God’s chosen messengers. It’s contained in the Bible, but it’s more than the Bible itself. It’s the message brought by God’s messengers, a message of command and precept, of prophetic exhortation and warning, of wisdom and philosophy for life. It’s not a dusty Bible on a shelf, but a vital and vibrant message incarnated in the lives of people. It penetrates and separates like a laser beam. The division becomes apparent, the division between good and evil, wise and foolish, right and wrong, virtue and vice, godliness and sin, justice and inequity, peace and violence. What something looks like on the outside is cut through to get at the core motives and commitments.
What would we find