Hebrews

Hebrews: All About Faith - From Ray Steadman<-(click here for entire Bible summary)

Hebrews is one of the three New Testament commentaries on a single Old Testament verse:
"the just shall live by his faith" {Hab 2:4b KJV}
This verse struck a fire in the heart of Martin Luther, and opened the eyes of Augustine.

People are always saying to me, “If I only had enough faith, I could do so and so, and such and such,” as though faith were a commodity soldby the pound; as though all you have to do is buy another pound of faith and add it to the store you have now, and you could do great things for God.

It is not quantity that is important in faith; it is quality; it is what your faith is fastened to. What is the object of your faith?

Throughout this letter, Christ is compared with the basic thing that men trust in days of peril and trial. And every one of them is found insufficient – except him!

"whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his." {Heb 4:10 RSV}
That is, if you stop depending upon yourself and your self-effort, you have learned to enter into rest, because you start depending upon another – God’s work in you. That is the lost secret of humanity. That is the secret that Adam and Eve lost in the Garden of Eden, and which Jesus Christ came to restore to us. When we learn to operate on that, we learn to be perfectly peaceful, calm, undisturbed by circumstances, trusting, powerful, effective, accomplishing things for Christ’s sake. And that is rest.

If you trust too long in the untrue, the unreal, the phony, there will come a day of desperation, when you will look for the true, and you will not be able to find it.

All the Law does is demand; it never enables; but Jesus comes in and demands and enables.

God has provided for us at infinite cost a way of being righteous before him, strengthened within, kept strong and pure in the midst of all the adverse circumstances around us, and we set it aside and say, “No thank you, Lord, I’ll make it on my own.” Could anything be more insulting to God? And so he warns us not to presume on God’s grace.

Well, that eliminates buildings, and works, and there are no challengers left. So, in the last section of the letter, he comes to the means of obtaining all that God has, which is faith.

And as you read through that wonderful chapter of the heroes of faith, you find that faith anticipates the future, acts in the present, evaluates the past, dares to move out, and persists to the end – that is what faith is.

First, we are made strong by “looking unto Jesus” {Heb 12:2 KJV}; ... You can look at all these other men of faith – Abraham, David, Moses, Barak, Samson, and a whole host of others – Martin Luther, John Wesley, D. L. Moody – and all they will do is inspire you, but they cannot enable you. ...

we are exhorted to look away from these others unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of faith, who will make us strong in the time of weakness.

Second, our faith is increased by living constantly in trouble – the disciplines of life. God puts us into problems, because that gives us the opportunity to exercise faith. If you did not have any problems, how could you exercise faith? If you did not have any difficulties how could you ever learn to depend? That is why you can count on trouble. That is encouraging isn’t it? You can count on it!

And, finally, we exercise faith – we learn faith by encouraging one another in view of the resources God has given us.

The kingdom of God, the rule of God in our hearts; the right of Jesus Christ to be Lord within us can never be shaken. And that is what is being tested today so that all phoniness is being exposed.

"Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." {Heb
13:20-21 RSV}