Be Still And Know

Hebrews 13.3 NLT 'Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.' I am so grateful that when I was at university I was encouraged to visit in the local prison once a week. We visited the young offenders’ wing and so I was meeting people of my own age and that was such a valuable experience. I had never met prisoners before and so I assumed that they would be completely different from me. They weren’t. They were intelligent, interesting and amusing and it was very easy to get alongside them and fascinating to hear the story of their lives. Ever since that time I have always been happy to have the opportunity to visit prisoners and have had some amazing conversations over the years. Prisons, in the days of the Early Church, would have been completely different from anything that I encountered. The Romans normally stripped prisoners naked and flogged them prior to their imprisonment. Their wounds would not have

Hebrews 13.2 NLT 'Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realising it!' In Genesis chapter 18 we read a remarkable account of hospitality when Abraham generously welcomed three mysterious visitors. It was the hottest part of the day and as soon as he saw them, Abraham ran to meet them and welcome them. He then encouraged them to rest in the shade of an oak tree whilst he brought water for them and then he went back to his tent to ask Sarah to prepare bread for them. Abraham had no idea who the visitors were but it soon became clear that God himself had sent them as they informed the couple of the miraculous news that they, old as they were, would have a son. They had welcomed angels without knowing it. In the early church, Christian travellers faced many challenges. Inns were notoriously filthy and expensive and were well known for being centres of immorality. In addition they had to face the hostility of the Jews. It was therefore essent

Hebrews 12.28-29 NLT 'Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.' It’s important that we never lose a sense of amazement that we are able to worship God at all. When Isaiah entered the Temple after the death of King Uzziah (recorded in Isaiah chapter 6) he was completely overwhelmed by the experience. As he saw the holiness of God he felt that he was in completely the wrong place, because he knew how unholy he was, and how unholy his society was. When we worship God, whether quietly by ourselves or in a church service, we should never rush into his presence or think that it is a small matter that we are worshipping the God of Creation. In our verses today the writer encourages his readers to worship God with holy fear and awe. Yes, God loves us more completely than we have ever been loved before, but he is also a devouring fire. He is absolutely holy and anything that is not holy is burnt

Hebrews 12.15 NLT 'Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.' Life can be incredibly hard, and many people experience terrible unkindness and injustice. It isn’t at all difficult to understand why this can lead to bitterness, but the fact is that that is the worst possible response. The only person who is damaged by bitterness is the bitter person. It does nothing to get back at the person who has caused the wrong and is incapable of bringing resolution to the situation. It just leads to more misery and suffering. Billy Graham wrote, “Bitterness is anger gone sour, an attitude of deep discontent that poisons our souls and destroys our peace.” But it’s even worse than that because bitterness grows roots and so it keeps on destroying the people and relationships in its path. Bitterness can therefore be incredibly destructive of the life of a church and the writer to the Hebrews is keen

Hebrews 12.14 NLT 'Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.' The United Kingdom is blessed with a huge number of amazing gardens. As we revel in the beauty of the flowers, shrubs and trees it is absolutely right for us to give thanks to God for the miracle of creation. But the fact is that, normally out of sight, there are large teams of gardeners who have worked incredibly hard to plant, cultivate, weed and water the gardens. The gardens are a partnership between God and the gardeners. Church life is exactly the same. Without God there would be no church but he looks to us to work hard to enable the church to flourish and here he points to two areas of hard work which are our own responsibility. We must work at living at peace and living holy lives. Living at peace is constantly demanding. When you look at a peaceful family or organisation it will give the impression that it all happened with ease and inevitability. But we al

Hebrews 12.1-2 NLT 'And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.' It is often and rightly observed that life is not a sprint but a marathon. If we are honest that is not what we want to hear because we would like life to have as few challenges and problems as possible, but the truth is that we all need to learn how to “hang in there” through thick and thin. Here the writer to the Hebrews reminds his readers that this is what the life of faith is all about. We have to endure and he clearly has in mind that the church to which he was writing was likely to experience considerable persecution and suffering. If they thought that living for Christ was going to be a leisurely walk in the park then they needed to change their thinking quickly. By itself that would be a rather bleak message. But the whole purpose of the writer is to bring encouragement and he knows that, as we focus our attention on Jesus,

Hebrews 12.1 NLT 'Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.' Over the years I have played lots of different sports with a great deal of enthusiasm and, truth to tell, not much success. However, I have had a number of friends and acquaintances who have been enormously successful in their chosen sport and they have all deeply impressed me. My main reflection is that they were all incredibly disciplined. Their diets were carefully designed and they gave a huge amount of time to ensuring that they were constantly practising and improving. They had a determination to give their absolute best. In our verse today the writer pictures Christians as athletes who are running a race infinitely more important than any sport, and makes the obvious point that we need to get rid of anything that slows us down. It’s almost too obvious to say. You clearly wouldn’t enter an elite

Hebrews 11.31 NLT 'It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed with the people in her city who refused to obey God. For she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.' In this chapter the writer to the Hebrews introduces us to a number of Old Testament heroes of the faith. It isn’t anything like a complete list. Hundreds of important characters receive no mention at all. And so it is fascinating that he chooses to point the spotlight on the prostitute, Rahab. You might have thought that he would choose to skip over her in favour of people with a more respectable line of work. But no, Rahab is commended because of the hospitality that she gave to the Israelite spies when they went to explore the Promised Land. In fact she went further. She was also willing to lie to the King of Jericho’s messengers when they went looking for the spies. What impressed the writer was that Rahab was not swept along by the disobedience of the other residents of Jericho. She was willing to put herself in danger

Hebrews 11.17 -18 NLT It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, even though God had told him, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.” This is a really tough passage. The idea of God apparently asking a parent to kill their child is tough enough, but it is infinitely more difficult when you consider that on this occasion he was asking Abraham to murder the son who was going to be the start of the great and mighty nation which he had promised. It’s all very perplexing. But we are invited to focus our attention on Abraham, the man of faith, because he was willing to do whatever God called him to do, knowing that it would all work out wonderfully. The writer observes that Abraham had worked out that if Isaac had actually been killed then God would have been able to raise him from the dead so that his plans could be fulfilled. That is to say, Abraham was abso

Hebrews 11.12 NLT 'And so a whole nation came from this one man who was as good as dead—a nation with so many people that, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them.' The writer to the Hebrews doesn’t beat about the bush. He described Abraham as being as good as dead. That’s not flattering but he was describing a man of 99 years of age who was married to Sarah who was decades past child- bearing years. The whole situation looked hopeless. But God had promised that Sarah would have a baby and from whom a mighty nation would be born. In human terms this was laughable nonsense. It was completely ridiculous. But God was at work and so something which was humanly impossible was exactly what happened. Isaac was born and the nation came into being with descendants as uncountable as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore. We are continually tempted to domesticate God. That is to say, we try to make him fit into the world that we understand and make him l

Hebrews 11.8 NLT 'It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.' Everything about Abraham’s life is amazing but, for me, this is the most incredible moment. At the age of 75 he headed out from his home in Haran without having a clue where he was going! People, in my experience, just don’t do things like that. When they leave their house they have a clear idea where they are heading and if, as in Abraham’s case, they take their whole family and their cattle with them as well, it is unthinkable that they would head off without having some idea where the journey was taking them. But not Abraham. He was called by God and off he went. We have to conclude that Abraham was absolutely confident in God. In human terms he was taking the most enormous risk but in spiritual terms he was clearly completely convinced that he was doing the right thing. In our risk averse culture you can

Hebrews 11.7 NLT 'It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before.' The account of Noah building an ark and saving his family together with vast numbers of birds and animals is a wonderful story and I suspect that most of us were told it from our earliest years. It’s a story of enormous courage. The world had never seen a flood like this before so the idea of Noah building a vast boat would have seemed absurd to all those around him. And the idea of packing the boat with smelly wildlife would have appeared an even more incredible challenge. But Noah did these amazing things for one reason - he was a man of faith. In this chapter the writer to the Hebrews is seeking to unpack what it means to live by faith and Noah offers us an inspiring example. Most of us spend much of our lives conforming. We fit in with society and the people around us and just get on with life. I’m not criticising that approach bu

Hebrews 11.1 NLT 'Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.' Many people seem to think of faith as being a rather weak, sentimental way of thinking and are inclined to say that they would rather trust the facts. Some philosophers have compared faith with taking a leap in the dark. Personally, I would never encourage anyone to take a leap in the dark. That sounds extremely dangerous and is only likely to result in disaster. I firmly believe that God calls us all on a journey of faith and that amazing adventure is a leap in the light. First of all God reveals himself to us through creation. Just by opening our eyes to the amazing world around us we see constant evidence of how majestic and powerful God is. Looking at creation doesn’t force us to believe in God, but it is a powerful indicator of how great he is. God has also given us the 66 books of the Bible to show us how he has worked in the lives of men and women through thousands of years. We learn that

Hebrews 10.36 NLT 'Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.' There is a wonderful prayer which runs, “O God, grant me the courage to change what I can, the patience to endure what I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference.” In all our lives there are many things which we are powerless to change, and God wants to give us the patience to live with them. That’s far more easily said than done because, as we all know, patience is extremely hard work. We would all like to see an instant removal of the problems and difficulties of life, and the news that we need to live with them is the last thing we want to hear. But the writer to the Hebrews knew that his readers needed to learn the language of patience. We cannot be sure exactly what challenges they were facing although we know that they had to face recurring waves of persecution and they were living in a society that was fundamentally opposed to their Chris

Hebrews 10.24-25 NLT 'Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.' The New Testament has no understanding of a lone Christian, who heroically keeps going by themselves. Time and again we are reminded that we have responsibilities for one another, and here the writer uses very striking language. The Greek literally means that we should try to provoke one another to do acts of love and good works. That is to say, we should look for imaginative ways of stimulating one another to live for God. It won’t just happen. We need to love one another so much that we will take responsibility for encouraging one another to live out the Christian life. And that encouragement will only take place if we meet together and so he stresses the importance of not neglecting the times of meeting. When the Christians had gone through a time of suffer

Hebrews 9.27-28 NLT 'And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people.' The quotation, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes” is attributed to many different people but especially Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. However, it is such an obvious observation that it actually dates back long before them. The simple truth is that death is a fact of life. Unless the Lord returns we will all die. But our death stands in marked contrast to Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. When he died, he brought to an end the elaborate sacrificial system which was established in the Old Testament Law. The whole notion of sacrifices is very unfamiliar to us these days but God established it because of the desperate seriousness of sin and the need to find a way of making things right. The offering of sacrifices was a way of life for the Jews and every single day animals were slaughtered as an inte

Hebrews 6.18-19 NLT 'We who have fled to God for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.' I suspect that if you spoke with most people about the future they would be full of fears and uncertainties. We live with the continual threat of international terrorism and the wildfires, floods and hurricanes that batter our world remind us of the appalling challenge of climate change. Wherever you look, there are monumental problems to face in our own society and throughout the world and I think that most people would assume that there is no hope, and that anyone who speaks the language of hope has chosen to ignore the facts. The writer to the Hebrews, however, was full of hope and speaks of it on a number of occasions. He was confident as he looked to the future because he knew his God so well. He knew that God was a place of refuge amidst the storms of life, and that he provided an anchor that could be entirely relied up

Hebrews 6.1 NLT 'So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding.' If you saw a group of learned professors of mathematics earnestly talking about the fact that two and two make four, you might think it rather strange. You would imagine that they would have moved on to more complicated matters. That is not to say that the fact that two and two make four is unimportant. Far from it. Every day of their working life depends on it. But there comes a day when you need to move on, and that’s precisely what the writer is saying in our verse today. He wasn’t saying that the basic teachings about Christ were in any way unimportant. Everything depends on those truths, but he was eager that they should grow up in their faith and become more mature, applying the key principles of the Christian faith to every aspect of their life and society. So the question we all need to ask is, “How can we go on to become mature in our understan

Hebrews 5.11 NLT 'There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen.' Ouch! The writer of Hebrews doesn’t pull his punches. He is frustrated with the spiritual dullness of his readers and he let’s them know it. He had hoped that they would have developed much more in their faith so that they could, by this stage, have become teachers but clearly that isn’t the case. They are still needing to drink milk because they haven’t progressed on to solid food. It’s all very painful and disappointing. One of the big mistakes that people make is to think that when you have become a Christian that’s it. You have received the amazing gift of forgiveness and God’s promise of eternal salvation, and you can now sit back and enjoy them. There is nowhere in the New Testament that would support that view! New birth in Christ leads to a new life in which we need to be constantly growing and maturing. Sadly, all too often Chri

Hebrews 5.8-9 NLT 'Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.' The High Priest was the most important person in the Jewish faith. He traced his family line back to Aaron, the brother of Moses, and his life and ministry are described in huge detail in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). When he went into the Temple he had to wear specific clothing. In common with all priests, he had to wear priestly undergarments, tunic, sash and turban but in addition he wore a sleeveless blue robe, a richly embroidered apron, a breastplate with twelve gems representing the tribes and on his turban there was a golden plate inscribed with the words “Holiness unto Yahweh”. He would have nothing on his feet but had to have a ceremonial bath before going into the Temple. Just once a year, on the Day of Atonement, he was permitted to go into t