Joshua and Judges: Crossing the Jordan - Obeying God's delegated authority, part 22. Jos 1:16-18; survey of Heb.

Title: Joshua and Judges: Crossing the Jordan - Obeying God's delegated authority, part 22. Jos 1:16-18; survey of Heb.   

 

Announcements / opening prayer:

 

 

Heb 10:32 But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings,

 

Heb 10:33 partly, by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.

 

Heb 10:34 For you showed sympathy to the prisoners, and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one.

 

Heb 10:35 Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

 

Heb 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

 

Heb 10:37 For yet in a very little while,

He who is coming [the Coming One] will come, and will not delay.

 

Heb 10:38 But My righteous one shall live by faith;

And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.

 

Every believer is fully justified by faith. So then how should he walk in this life? He should live by continued confidence and calm trust in God, and not in doubt, fear, or apprehension.

 

Faith at salvation is to become faith in God's word and with enough of instruction that faith grows into faith towards the future which is hope.

 

In our justification faith our position is secure forever. This is a forward looking faith after salvation which becomes "hope."

 

As we saw in Rom 5, hope is realized through tribulation, where we are forced to apply faith or to return to our old ways of non-faith. God wisely allows us to enter situations where faith must be exercised if we are to maintain our walk with Him in peace.

 

Hope is confidence in God. It is confidence in His future deliverance that is accompanied by joy. This becomes a test for the ages when under persecution.

 

Heb 10:39 But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

 

In verse 39, if the professing Christian, who is an unbelieving Jew simply professing to be a part of the Christian community, goes back to the Law, never to return, his destruction is ultimate. He has shrunk back from the gospel in disbelief.

 

If he is a believer, shrinking back is the destruction of the Christian life. For the duration of their lives in rejecting the church and the worship of God in study, prayer, and service to the people of God they have restricted themselves to cosmic living and so have forfeited the life that is Christ.

 

But if like the author, part of the "we" who refuse to shrink back, they will walk in the life of Christ, experiencing and realizing the fulfillment of their inheritance, which is their election in Christ, and their souls come into conformity with that of Christ. They obtain or find their souls because they have lost their old ones (conscience) for Christ's sake.

 

"preserving" - peripoi,hsij[peripoiesis - peri = around; poieo = to do or to make] = to obtain, acquire, possess, or deliver. He who acquires the soullife of Christ.

 

This means that shrinking back forfeits the obtaining of such a soul. The one who shrinks back will only fall back on his old life which has been crucified with Christ. He maintains the same conscience as before. He is not transformed by the renewing of his mind so that he may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, and acceptable, and perfect. His life does not please God. He fails to experience the life of Christ in time. No amount of persecution is worth forfeiting this.

 

The writer of Hebrews in chapter eleven uses the examples of several OT saints whose faith was put under extreme pressure, and by means of their faith in the truth of God's word, especially His promises, they overcame the pressure.

 

Then after them he writes of the ultimate example - Christ during the first advent. The OT saints serve as tremendous examples of sinners put in the pressure cooker and applying faith in the truth to overcome as they waited for deliverance, but we do not remain with them under the system of the Law, but we move on to the Lord Jesus Christ and the law of the Spirit of life in Him. While learning from the example of the OT heroes we thirst and hunger to be conformed into the image of Christ, and we can do so, in the plan graciously given by the Father to every church age believer.

 

Remember, the issue is the Jewish Christian or the Jewish professing Christian who is an unbeliever, returning to his old way of Judaism in order to avoid persecution. He was also tempted to return to his old system because he was more comfortable with it. He had been brought up in the old way. His brain was hard wired for the old way. To associate with Gentiles, to leave behind the ways of the Law, especially food laws, rituals, feast, and circumcision and to pursue the new mystery way of the church was all a new frontier, and we know how the human race is with new ways of life.

 

In order to encourage them to forge on in the new frontier, the writer uses their hero Abraham as an example. He didn't even know where he was going.

 

Heb 11:8 By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.

 

Heb 11:9 By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;

 

Heb 11:10 for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

 

Abraham's faith is specifically attested in the Genesis narrative.

 

Gen 15:6

Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

 

Our author has already referred to Abraham's faith in the promise of God and his patient waiting for its fulfillment. He walked by faith and not by sight and made good the claim, father of our faith.

 

Heb 6:13 For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,

 

Heb 6:14 saying, "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply you."

 

This promise was made by God to Abraham after he had offered up his son Isaac.

 

Gen 22:16-17

"By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.

 

Yet this promise was a recapitulation and elaboration of God's earlier promise to Abraham that He would bless him and make him a great nation, in Gen 12. At the time of the earlier promise, Abraham was childless, yet he believed God. As time went on and the disastrous decision to foster a child by Sarah's maid showed itself as just that, it was made clear to him that the promise would be fulfilled through the birth of a son to Sarah and himself when, at their age, by all natural reckoning, such a prospect would have been dismissed as impossible. Yet Abraham believed God, and in due course the promised child was born. On Isaac now hung every hope that the further promises of God regarding Abraham's descendants would be fulfilled; yet it was Isaac whom Abraham was commanded offer up to God. When Abraham's faith and obedience were shown in his readiness to do even this, he received a reaffirmation of the promises of God, reinforced here in Heb 6:15.

 

Heb 6:15 And thus, having patiently waited [patiently endured], he obtained the promise.

 

The promise of Gen 12, 15, and here in 22 are unconditional. Abraham had faith as to be the recipient of it, and in the return of Isaac to him, he obtained the promise.

 

After the offering of Isaac the Lord repeated His promise to Abraham and confirmed it by an oath. When men swear an oath in order to underline the certainty and solemnity of their words, they swear by someone or something greater than themselves. "As the Lord lives" was the supreme oath in Israel. Abraham swore by God. But God has no one greater than Himself by whom to swear, so when He confirms a promise, He swears by Himself.