Hebrews 9 - 12
Because we are very interested in college sports at my house, ESPN is frequently on in the background. Tonight, while collecting my thoughts for this blog, there aired a clip from a press conference by the coach of the Kansas Jayhawks football team on their success this season. He said, “this is what the players that came to Kansas on faith had hoped for.” I thought, “that’s interesting…that’s exactly the topic of my blog!
In Hebrews 11:1, the author of Hebrews writes that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” and then goes on to list a number of famous scriptural figures who exhibited great faith by obeying God while longing for the promises He had given them. We may think that having faith is harder today than it was for people like Abraham and Moses, citing reasons like scientific evidence of something or that God spoke directly to those people. But I’m sure they had moments of skepticism—Noah must have wondered more than once about that flood over the 100 years he was building the ark. The point of the list of faithful is to give us confidence and hope.
The author urges us in 10: 19 and 23 to be confident of our salvation and to hold onto hope, because He who promises is faithful, and our confidence will be rewarded. You see, there’s two sides to chapter 11. There’s the faithful who were obedient, and there is the faithful God, who fulfilled his promises. This is the only way we can have faith. If God did not honor his promises, there is no basis for faith. So we have a list of ways God has been faithful to those who believed and obeyed Him. They are the “cloud of witnesses” mentioned in 12: 1 that enable us to throw off hindrances, obstacles, and sin, and instead focus on Jesus so that we will not “grow weary and lose heart.”
Stacey
No comments:
Post a Comment