are countless TV shows, movies, and computer games in which the hero is given a mission and he or she has to choose a team to help achieve the goals of the mission. People are chosen for their personal qualities of loyalty, sense of responsibility, ability to work as a team; their courage, strength, and endurance. One person is gifted with the wisdom of strategy, another with technical skills, someone else knows transportation and logistics, yet another has strength and agility. The hand-picked team is confident they can trust each other, that they have what it takes to go the distance, and that in spite of their personal quirks and eccentricities they have a bond that means they stick together, accomplish the mission, and everyone gets home safe.
The author of Hebrews pictures the group of believers to whom he writes as fellow-travelers in life. The great example from their religious history is the exodus group, living a nomadic existence, slowly making their way to the promised resting place. That’s the way of life for the followers of Jesus: they are traveling together, working their way through the obstacles and pitfalls, helping each other along the journey, so that in the end they all get the rest they deserve—the spiritual rest God provides, the same rest when God rested from God’s creative work.
The Israelites became disobedient to God and rebelled against God’s appointed leaders. They did not trust the God who revealed God’s nature to them through the signs displayed to Pharaoh, the dividing of the Red Sea, and the provision of food and water in the wilderness. They did not trust the God who gave them God’s word in commandment and instruction on Mt. Sinai, who promised in God’s covenant with Abraham to be their God. Consequently, that generation did not enter their place of rest but wandered and fell in the wilderness.
The author of Hebrews uses that negative example to encourage, exhort, and warn his fellow-travelers that they must not make the same mistakes if they want to get to their heavenly place of rest together. The message is as important now as it was then.
The church in many ways has separated itself from the task of living life as a community of faith. Instead, the church has settled for being a place outside of regular living, to meet with people for an hour or two once a week. It has settled for those people to have nothing to do with the rest of how the members live life. Instead, church people want to simply go through motions of religiosity on Sunday mornings in hopes of feeling better about themselves and of warding off some divine retribution for how they act the rest of their week.
This portion of Hebrews talks of our work of achieving rest (4:11), of God’s word that analyzes who we really are (4:12), and of our own word of accountability (4:13).
Our Work of Achieving Rest (4:11)
Pop Christian culture says just accept Jesus and you’ve got it made. Just walk the aisle, have a salvation experience, then go to church, attend bible study, and witness to your friends until Jesus comes. That’s not bad, but it misses so much of what the New Testament teaches about the Christian life. Here the author of Hebrews says, “Make every effort to get to heaven!” Strive for it, work hard for it, be diligent to get there! Notice that WE are to work at it together, so that “not a single one of us” should fail. It’s not me being concerned about me so that I achieve something. It’s all of us together making sure that we don’t lose anyone along the way.
How many times have we heard stories of a group traveling through the forest or jungle. Single-file they make their way through the underbrush. The slowest, weakest person is a straggler at the end of the line. Sure enough, one by one, silently and swiftly, the last one is picked off. The group continues on, oblivious to their loss.
The Church is filled with stragglers and continues to be depleted of those stragglers who fade away little by little. Along the way of life, one by one, people have lost their way. They’ve been picked off by worldly cares and concerns. Someone becomes more concerned with career and doesn’t have time for faith and spiritual disciplines. Another becomes disillusioned and no longer considers it reasonable to trust in God or rely on the church. Yet another chooses a different lifestyle, what they think is fun, exciting, and pleasurable. For whatever the reason, the church has barely noticed that one by one their fellow-travelers have been lost along the way, lost and forgotten. If we are susceptible to being stragglers, God is able to detect our inner motives, even though others can’t tell who we really are.
God’s Word That Analyzes the Core of Who We Are (4:12)
The phrase “word of God” is complex. It refers collectively to the being of God who is characterized by speaking truth with authority, of knowing all things, of cutting right to the heart of the matter with a prophetic voice through God’s chosen messengers. It’s contained in the Bible, but it’s more than the Bible itself. It’s the message brought by God’s messengers, a message of command and precept, of prophetic exhortation and warning, of wisdom and philosophy for life. It’s not a dusty Bible on a shelf, but a vital and vibrant message incarnated in the lives of people. It penetrates and separates like a laser beam. The division becomes apparent, the division between good and evil, wise and foolish, right and wrong, virtue and vice, godliness and sin, justice and inequity, peace and violence. What something looks like on the outside is cut through to get at the core motives and commitments.
What would we find if we did soul surgery? What if we could dissect the one person you are into its constituent parts? Imagine a diagnostic machine connected to the brain and heart, which could display on a monitor your core being, the essence of who you are? The soul doctor turns the dial and the machine displays your ambitions and motives. Your deepest passions show up in a contrasting color. Compare it to what you say it is you want in life, the way you act, the way you appear to people. Turn the dial again and you see what motivates your choices and behaviors, what makes the difference for you, how you judge what to do and what not to do. Perhaps we could detach your ethereal self from the material, the spiritual from the carnal. To what extent is your character and behavior controlled by the physical nature of your body; biology and psychology ruling over theology, philosophy, and spirituality? We are all affected by the biological makeup of our bodies due to thousands and thousands of years of human adaptation to environments. We are the products of years of psychological and mental development through stages of life that go into who we are and who we will become. God knows all of what makes us who we are—nature and nurture—and judges that for which we are morally responsible.
Our Word of Accounting Responsibility (4:13)
From other people we can hide who we are and dress up our particular natures. We cannot hide from God. God sees all and through all. God does not judge a book by its cover, let alone its pretty dust jacket; we are all an open book before God. The last phrase of verse 13 could be put this way, “to God a word (Gk. logos) must be given for us.” The logos of God discerns what we should be and who we are and it is through our logos that we explain why.
We place a great deal of importance on judges and the legal system. We may not be able to know the truth about people, but we’ve developed a justice system to determine what we’ll accept as fair and reasonable. A person comes before a judge and claims he is innocent. As best it can, the judicial system analyzes all of the relevant information. The defendant is caught in inconsistencies to his story. He is not what he appears to be. The evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that he did the deed and is the kind of person who could do such a thing.
The only judge who is 100% accurate and knows all the facts is God. But just as a leopard can’t hide his spots, who we are comes out in ways that cause us to fall behind in the spiritual journey of life. The baggage of materialism and selfishness weighs us down and we become stragglers. More important than being left behind in some future rapture is being left behind, having fallen by the wayside, wasting away in a lifeless desert, never making it to the spiritual place of rest, that culmination of a life lived well.
w
There
