When you fill out your income tax forms each year, you are asked to list your dependants. In IRS language, a dependant is someone who lives with you at least half the time and for whom you provide at least half that person’s support. That definition works okay for determining a tax deduction, but it wouldn’t work very well in determining our dependence on God, would it? We don’t get full credit for part time dependence. Part time dependence is really not dependence at all.
In part of today’s Scripture, the writer of Hebrews warns us to take care, to watch for an unbelieving heart, causing us to fall away from God, to watch out for the deceitfulness of sin and to look out for each other. He says we have come to share in Christ if… if we hold our original confidence to the end.
Well, that’s not so hard, is it? Just hold on to the end. Keep your confidence and don’t waver in the truth you have come to know. After all, we became convinced of the truth of it all some time ago. So all we have to do is hold the course. Of course, there are sometimes some life events that might test us a bit, like death of a loved one or foreclosure or loss of job or a car accident or illness or divorce. You get my drift. For some, holding to the end is short term. For others, it is decades. For most of us, holding firm to the end is a lifestyle, not a moment in time.
Hebrews says to exhort one another daily, “as long as it is called today.” Earlier in the passage (v.7), the writer says “Today, if you hear my voice…” William Barclay translates the meaning of “today” here as “while life lasts.” If we look back at the passage with that in mind, then we are called to exhort one another as long as we live. The process doesn’t stop until we are at the end of life. Then and only then are we safe from the considerable power and persuasiveness of sin.
Life seemed simpler when you were little, didn’t it? That’s because it was simpler. Your mother helped dress you, put you on the school bus or drove you to school, fixed your snack, put bows in your hair or handed you your ball glove. Sunday meant Sunday school and probably a trip to Grandma’s for fried chicken and trimmings. The big decision for the day was whether to wear a coat or a jacket. Your faith came in large measure from your home, but there was plenty of supplemental advice from church and school.
As you aged, the choices became wider, the risks bigger, the consequences more far-reaching. Now, you don’t always come to church. You may never come to Sunday school. You may travel thirty miles or more just to get to work. The decisions from which you were once sheltered now come at you daily with far reaching consequences. You know now that doing right has no shelf life. You have to do it over and over and over. You now realize that faith does not come with an answer book, only a loyalty oath.
Remember how your mother or father used to make you hold his or her hand when crossing the street? Remember being lifted up and carried across a creek or stream? Remember them standing between you and danger? Today, you do the same for your own children. But who looks after you? The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are not children and that we face tests that we can handle no better than could our little children trying to cross a busy street by themselves. He pleads with us to hold firm to that which we came to believe in the beginning of our faith.
It’s so easy to get side tracked. Life comes at us fast. We spend much of our time putting out the little fires of life, reacting rather than acting. We feel time constraints, but instead of dropping back and giving ourselves some room, we layer up. We are too busy to think and think too much about matters of little consequence to our faith. Even when we do stop and think about what we are doing, we are easily persuaded that we know more than others.
I counseled a woman a few days ago. Her husband no longer goes to church because he feels that he has better answers than the church provides. Life has let him down. People have let him down. Now he seeks his answers in the counsel of his own home, forsaking all those who would have fellowship with him. The course he has chosen has little to do with the shortcomings of the church and everything to do with the pride of a man “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin,” just as the writer of Hebrews describes.
James promises us that trials will come our way. We need never question whether as Christians we will face trials. Christians are promised that throughout God’s Word. Jesus himself guaranteed it more than once. It is the price of the cross and a great price it is. But the cross delivers us into glory for eternity. James also promises that a faith so tested makes for steadiness and later, completeness. We are not left alone to do this task. Far from it. Our God is here for us to walk every step of the way at our side.
We live in a society of individuals. We are bombarded by stimuli which would teach the value of individuals over community, the priority of individual rights over the protection of the society. We have half the guns in the world in this country, but only five percent of the world’s population, and yet we are no more safe in many ways than our third world counterparts who must fight hunger and pestilence to stay alive. We continue to see wholesale examples of self indulgence and violence that have no place in a civilized society. This is the way of the world, and this is precisely what James and the writer of Hebrews cautioned the early Christians about. They remind us as well that we are incapable of overcoming these worldly temptations with our own strength. We cannot hold firmly to God without his help.
A Presbyterian minister named John H. Sammis put the answers to music in 1887. He called the hymn Trust and Obey. He calls on us to “trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.” Do you want to hold firm to the end, as the writer of Hebrews admonishes us to do? You can’t do it by yourself. You are God’s creature, created in his likeness, but you also have a sinful nature that will create tension between you and the righteousness you seek. You need help to stay the course. You stand at the edge of a life that can be lived with beauty and promise and fulfillment with God that is far beyond the life that can be lived without him. The hymn from long ago sets that course for us. It tells us what we must do.
First, trust in God. In all the ways over all the days of your life, he is the only one to trust, the only way to find real, lasting security. Institutions will let us down. People will let us down. God never lets us down. And God teaches us that once we believe, we have to claim his promises. We have to live with him in charge.
Second, we have to obey God. Never mind that we sin. God knows our imperfections. That does not stand in our way. What does is our stubbornness to do things our way, our impatience not to wait on God. This is not obedience. Obedience is letting God have the reins and doing his will instead of our own.
These are the markers of the Christian, to trust and obey. Perhaps most importantly, we need to realize that the world we live in is not set up to accommodate that kind of thinking. We are called upon to be in the world, but not of it. In spite of what the world teaches us to the contrary, we are called to be dependent upon our Savior.
The path of God is narrow and less traveled, but it has room. God will walk beside you if you let him. He will lead the way when you follow him. He will carry you when you can’t walk. As you grow from the tests he brings to you, don’t rely on your newly found strength. It is an illusion. The real strength we possess comes from our Savior. Hold his hand and hold on to your faith more firmly as you grow. He never meant for you to walk alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment