“An Everlasting Love” (Jeremiah 31:2-6)

 

About a third of the way through the letter “J” in my dictionary you will come across the word “jeremiad”. And what, you ask, is a jeremiad? Well, a jeremiad is defined as (and I quote) “a long literary work, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall”.

With a long definition like that, it is clear to anyone who knows their Bible where the word “jeremiad” originates: from the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament—fifty-two chapters of almost uninterrupted gloom and doom. And if that weren’t enough, Jeremiah wrote an equally doleful sequel: the book of Lamentations—five more chapters of melancholy and woe!

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens, I remember coming across a book entitled, Are You Joking, Jeremiah? I don’t think it was the author’s intention to turn Jeremiah into a kind of seventh-century BC stand-up comedian. A humorist Jeremiah certainly was not. What the author was really trying to do was to ask the question, “Jeremiah, can things really be that bad? Are the circumstances really as dire as you want us to believe?” And I have no doubt that Jeremiah’s answer would have been an unequivocal “Yes”. Or maybe, “Worse!”

For the past few months I’ve been working my way through Jeremiah as a part of my daily quiet time. And it hasn’t been easy reading. Jeremiah lived in the late years of the seventh and the early years of the sixth century BC. He proclaimed the message that the Lord had entrusted to him over a period of forty years, spanning the reigns of the last four of Judah’s kings: Josiah (640-609 BC), Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), Jehoiachin (598-597 BC) and Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

As he wrote, all that was left of the once-great nation of Israel were just two of the original twelve tribes, Benjamin and Judah, clustered around the capital city of Jerusalem. Now their existence too was being threatened with the expansion of the Babylonian Empire to the north and the rapid advance of its seemingly invincible armies. What were the people of Judah to do?

Much of the leadership were urging that they form an alliance with the Egyptian Empire to the south—indeed, if worse came to worst, to abandon Judah altogether and flee to Egypt. Imagine the irony, though, of going back to the very place where their ancestors had escaped from slavery five hundred years before—to the land from which God himself had intervened to rescue them with miracles on a scale never witnessed before or since!

A Message of Warning

To Jeremiah the notion of turning to Egypt was unthinkable. God’s words through him to the people and their leaders were these: “If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up” (42:10). Again and again with words like these Jeremiah urged the people of Judah to remain in their land.

Yes, the Babylonian army would attack and enslave them. Yes, those who survived would be lucky to escape with their lives. And all of this, said Jeremiah, was not just that Judah happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, what was unfolding around them was the due punishment that they had brought upon themselves—retribution for the countless ways in which they had blithely abandoned God and his laws, to adopt pagan practices and to oppress the poor.

So it was that Jeremiah went through the streets of Jerusalem, confronting prophets and priests, generals, landowners, leaders, merchants and kings—anyone he could find—with his message of warning. And he didn’t fear to mince his words!

I have seen your abominations,
your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings,
on the hills in the field.
Woe to you, Jerusalem!
How long will it be before you are made clean? (13:27)

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
and his upper rooms by injustice,
who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing
and does not give him his wages… (22:13)

Behold, the storm of the Lord!
Wrath has gone forth,
a whirling tempest;
it will burst upon the head of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord will not turn back
 until he has executed and accomplished
 the intents of his heart. (23:19-20)

Needless to say, Jeremiah and his constant warnings of doom did not meet with a positive response. On one occasion his prophecies were cut up and torn to shreds by the king himself. On another he was arrested on charges of treachery and locked away in a dungeon. And on still another he was tossed into a cistern and would have died of starvation in the mud had he not been rescued. Yet none of this halted Jeremiah’s determination to issue the warnings that God had given him.

Their little kingdom was doomed. But the Lord would restore them—if only they would turn from evil and injustice, and be faithful to him once again.

The Message of God’s Love

Now it’s not as though Jeremiah was just an angry old man (or an angry young man for that matter!). Beneath all his words of woe and retribution and judgement (as with all the prophets) was the unquenchable conviction of God’s undying love for his people.

So it is that in today’s passage we come across some of the most beautiful and moving words in all of Scripture. There through Jeremiah God addresses his wayward people: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

Now this was not some new-fangled idea that Jeremiah had come up with. He was not inventing anything. The everlasting, undying love of God is a thread that weaves its way through the whole of the Bible, from beginning to end.

It takes us all the way back to that unforgettable scene in the Garden of Eden, where God takes the creature that he has created in his own image—that he has formed from the dust of the ground—and tenderly breathes into him the breath of life. We witness it as Adam and Eve are banished from the garden for their disobedience. Yet in his fatherly care for them the Lord will not see them go cold and naked, but caringly provides them with garments of animal skins.

It thunders from Mount Sinai as the mighty God proclaims to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” (Exodus 34:6-7). Later on, as they near the Promised Land, Moses proclaims once again the Lord’s message to the people of Israel, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession… It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you…” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8a)

As we move farther through the Bible, the chorus of God’s love rings through the psalms as well. Psalm 33, for example, reminds us that, “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (5b). But most notably it is in Psalm 136, where we are invited to sing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his love endures forever.” But not just once! In each of the twenty-five verses that follow, the psalmist calls upon us to repeat the chorus, “for his steadfast love endures forever.”

But one of the most moving pictures of God’s inexhaustible love comes to us in the book of Hosea. I suspect many of you are familiar with Hosea’s unrelenting devotion to his wife Gomer. Perhaps we could blame Hosea for making a poor choice of a wife in the first place, since Gomer already had a reputation for promiscuity long before he took her in marriage. Yet God had a plan in it all. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Gomer has not given up her adulterous lifestyle. Although forced to divorce her, Hosea continues to love Gomer in spite of her unfaithfulness, to the point where later he finds her living as a slave and purchases her freedom, giving us in the process a profound, real-life parable of God’s love for his people.

The Message Made Flesh

So it is that God could instruct Jeremiah to write, even to a people who had rejected him, “I have loved you with an everlasting love…” That love is a theme that weaves its way through the whole of Scripture (as I’ve attempted to point out) from the beginning to the end. And so it is on this fourth Sunday in Advent, with Christmas just around the corner, that we focus on God’s love.

The poet Christina Rossetti put it to rhyme in a little poem that later became a Christmas carol:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.

The only problem is that, with all the charming pictures of sheep and oxen and shepherds, we run the risk of romanticizing that love—turning it into something that is cute and cuddly like the little baby gazing innocently up from the manger. (Let’s not forget the smell of the sheep and the oxen! And let’s not forget that those crusty shepherds were terrified—scared out of their wits—at the sight of the angels!)

No, the love that entered the world at Christmas was a fierce love, a costly love. And it would be forty days after that first Christmas that old Simeon would draw attention to that truth, when Mary and Joseph brought their newborn son to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem. As he stared down on the little infant, Simeon’s words to Mary were bone-chilling: “This child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also...” (Luke 2:34-35)

Simeon could not have been aware of it. But with the advantage of hindsight we know that what he was pointing to would ultimately lead to the cross. And looking back on it years later from the other side, the apostle John could write, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) If we want to catch a vision of the love of God in all its fullness, it is not to the manger that we must look, but past the manger, to Calvary, to the one who, in the Apostle Paul’s words, loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

And so today you and I come together on this final Sunday in Advent, this Sunday of love. In a few minutes that fourth candle, the love candle, will be extinguished. But let us never lose sight of the fact that the love that you and I celebrate this Christmas season is a love that will never falter or fail. For we come together in the presence of the God who says to us, as he said to Jeremiah centuries ago, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

“A Better Covenant” (Hebrews 7:20-28)

 

The other day I was going through some old DVDs in our basement, when I came across one of my favourites: The Princess Bride. I find it difficult to believe that it goes back thirty-five years, so I’ll excuse you if many of you are not familiar with it.

I won’t recount the whole story for you. (I’m not sure I remember it all that well myself!) But there was one character in it called Vizzini who stood out for me. It seemed that in almost every scene where he appeared, he would find a reason to utter the word, “Inconceivable!” In fact it gets to the point where another character ends up saying to him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Well, I suppose we may all have our favourite words. That certainly seems to have been the case with the author of Hebrews. I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his favourite words is “better”. In all he uses it eleven times: We have a Saviour who is better than the angels (1:4), we are heirs of a better hope (7:19), we are recipients of better promises (8:6), we desire a better homeland (11:16), we are purified by a better sacrifice (9:23), we will rise again to a better life (11:35) … And in verse 22 of this morning’s passage we find that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant.

Which brings us to a second favourite word in Hebrews: “covenant”. It occurs for the first time in verse 22 this morning. And by my count we will come across it a total of nineteen times before we arrive at the conclusion of the final chapter. So if we’re going to understand the message of Hebrews, we need to understand what its author means by the word “covenant”.

So let me ask you: What comes to your mind when you hear the word “covenant”? Personally, I can think of covenant being used in a couple of settings. The first is in the realm of legal contracts, where two parties agree to certain conditions that must be met in order for a deal to be settled. The second is in the realm of marriage, where bride and groom swear to love, honour and cherish each other to the exclusion of all others “till death do us part”.

Perhaps you can think of other examples. But whatever the case, I think we all can agree that a covenant of any kind involves solemnity, permanence and commitment.

The Four Covenants of the Old Testament

Outside of marriage, covenants may not be a regular feature of life today. But they were not uncommon in the world of the ancient Near East. There were covenants between kings, covenants between cities, and covenants between rulers and their subjects. And some of them can be traced back to more than four thousand years ago. However, common though covenants may have been in the ancient world, the Old Testament is the only place where you will find a covenant in which one of the parties is God. So let’s take a few moments to look at some of the covenants we find there.

The first time the word “covenant” appears in the Bible is in the account of Noah. No doubt you are familiar with the scene, as after what seemed an endless time in the ark, Noah at last stood on dry ground once again. As he gazed into the sky, there was a rainbow and God spoke to him: “I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature … that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:9-11)

Turn another half dozen or so chapters through Genesis and you will come to a second covenant, this time with Abraham. God promises that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Added to that, they will no longer be wanderers but will be possessors of a land that they can call their own. Unlike the covenant with Noah, however, this time there was an obligation on the part of Abraham and his descendants: that every male should be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.

We come to a third covenant when we turn to the book of Exodus and stand with the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. There the Lord lays down the conditions that his newly rescued people are to uphold if they are to remain in relationship with him. We think of them as the Ten Commandments. But rabbis would tell you that there were in fact no fewer than 613!

The fourth covenant comes two centuries later, when the nation of Israel was entering its golden age under King David. God’s promise to David is summarized for us in Psalm 89: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your offspring for ever, and build your throne for all generations.”

Now these are all amazing promises. The people of Israel stood in immense privilege. No other nation was so favoured. But the problem was that they never upheld their side of the covenant. They failed to recognize that circumcision did not involve just a surgical procedure, but that that outward act was intended as a sign of an inward commitment to serve the Lord God and him alone. Instead, they found themselves being attracted to the false deities and pagan practices of the nations that surrounded them. They bowed before images made of wood and precious metals and some even sacrificed their children to them. Their priests and their leaders from the king down became corrupt and the people were not far behind in following them. The poor were trodden under foot and widows were forced to beg to keep themselves and their children alive.

The Promise of a New Covenant

It was into the midst of this ongoing scene that God sent his prophets. Their task was to warn the people, including the king and the royal family, the priests and all the religious officials, of their rampant corruption and infidelity.

But the prophets came not just to alert the people to their waywardness. They also brought a message of hope and redemption, of forgiveness and restoration, of new life and a whole new relationship with God. Among those prophets was Jeremiah, who came with these words:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

It was a remarkable promise—and we don’t have the time to go into it in any great detail right now. Suffice it to say, though, that this new covenant would not be a matter of outward obedience to laws and regulations. Rather, it would be centred in a relationship—knowing God, not as a distant being out there, but as a living presence, God himself coming to dwell within us. And we know that those promises were fulfilled in a person—in Jesus.

I love the way the apostle Paul put it when he wrote to the believers in Corinth: “All the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ in Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 1:20) Jesus has come to usher in a better covenant than the covenant with Noah or Abraham or Moses or David—a covenant that is sealed not with the sacrifice of bulls and sheep and goats, but with his own life’s blood; a covenant that involves not an outward obedience but his daily presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit. All of that is wrapped up in the words from Hebrews we have heard this morning, where we read that Jesus , “the Son who has been made perfect forever”, “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him”.

Four Promises of Jesus

So it is that “Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant”—a covenant that was sealed by his blood shed for you and for me on the cross and ratified by his resurrection from the grave on the third day. But what does that mean in practical terms? How does it work out for you and me today? Part of the answer at least can be found in four promises that Jesus makes in the gospels.

The first is found in John’s gospel, where Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37) So we have the assurance that when we put our faith in Jesus, he will never let go of us. We may fail him. Indeed we most certainly will. I know I have time and time again. But he will never turn his back on us. Peter found that out after he denied knowing Jesus not once but three times. It was not many days later that Jesus was coming to him once again and saying to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:19)

A second promise of Jesus comes to us from the week before his crucifixion, when he assured his followers, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)

Yesterday was the anniversary of my ordination. Back then there were theologians who were claiming that God was dead. Now those theologians are the ones who are dead—and the good news of Jesus continues to be proclaimed with power and to prove itself true in people’s lives all over the world.

The church in Nigeria grows by more than a million new disciples a year. At last count the largest church in Europe was where? In Kyiv, with more than thirty thousand adherents.[1] And where are the world’s largest Christian congregations? Not in North America, but in Korea and India.

A third promise that Jesus made to his followers came as they gathered for the Passover supper on the evening before his crucifixion. It was on that occasion that he told them, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1-3) And so Jesus gives us the assurance that not only will he be with us in every circumstance of life, but that when life ends, we will be gathering among that joyful throng to sing his everlasting praise:

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:13)

And the fourth promise that Jesus has left with us comes in his very last words before he ascended to be with his Father: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

John Baillie was a Scottish theologian of the early twentieth century. He was fond of telling the story of going for a walk one day with his young grandson, who was just a toddler. At one point along their way the little boy began to stumble. He might have fallen down altogether, had his little hand not been held in the firm grasp of his grandfather’s. And that, said Baillie, is how it is with Jesus. We may stumble and fall, but Jesus is with us and he will never let us go.

With all that in mind, maybe you can see now why covenant is one of the favourite words of the author of Hebrews. May it be one of your favourite words too. And by the power of the Holy Spirit may you seek to live out that covenant in your daily walk with the one who sealed it with his blood.

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[1]     Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent, 88

“The Assurance of Better Things” (Hebrews 6:9-12)

 

Last Sunday those of you who were here or were watching on YouTube will recall that Pastor Doug Mott led us through the first eight verses of Hebrews 6. Early on in his sermon he quoted one biblical scholar who described those verses as “perhaps the most severe warning that occurs anywhere in the pages of the New Testament”.

The words that he was referring to were in verses 4 through 6 and they were these:

It is impossible, in the case of those who have been once enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God…

“It is impossible to restore them.” “They are crucifying once again the Son of God.” Can you imagine a more telling condemnation? Imagine if you were among those hearing those words for the first time. I can almost hear the stunned silence and see the faces of the congregation turn grey as the dreadful meaning of what they were hearing began to sink in. Could it really be true? Might it be possible for someone who is a believer to put themselves in a place where they are outside the reach of God’s grace?

A few weeks ago I told you that my introduction to Hebrews came when I was part of a group Bible study as a student at university. To this day I clearly remember both the puzzlement, the fear and the fierce debate that erupted when we came to these verses. “You mean it’s possible to lose your salvation?” Very quickly the discussion spilled out of our little group and into the wider campus fellowship. Some members began to worry that they might one day find themselves that God had rejected them. Fortunately our very wise and patient staff member got wind of what had now become a full-fledged debate. “Yes,” he said, “those are stern words. But take a moment to look at what the author says just two verses later…” So we opened our Bibles, and what did we find but these words:

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things…

“We feel sure of better things…” You may not have noticed it, because the Greek term is translated in several different ways into English, but this is the second time the author uses that word “better”. I draw your attention to it because he will use it again on another nine occasions before we come to the end of the letter, for a total of eleven times. In fact, it is one of his favourite words. Outside of Hebrews it’s found only four times in the rest of the New Testament.

The first time we find it in Hebrews is in chapter 1, verse 4, where we see that Jesus is infinitely superior to the angels. The final time will be in chapter 12, verse 24, where the author tells us that Jesus’ blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you’ll know that Abel’s blood cried out for the guilt and condemnation of his murderous brother Cain. Jesus’ blood cries out for the forgiveness and restoration of sinners like you and me.

Thus, when our author writes, “In your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things,” he means stronger, higher, superior… And so the letter moves swiftly from warning to encouragement, from condemnation to hope. So let’s take the next few moments to see for ourselves what reasons the first readers of this letter had, even in the midst of their weariness and despondency, to take courage and to regain their hope.

Work and love

Those reasons come in three pairs: work and love (in verse 10), earnestness and hope (in verse 11), and faith and patience (in verse 12). Let’s look at each of them in order—so first: work and love. Turning to verse 10: “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints.”

In our day and age, we think of love as an emotion, a feeling. It’s when you’re attracted towards another person. It could be romantically. It could be because you have shared a common experience or have a common interest, or any other of a whole host of reasons.

Our English language is poor in that we have only one word for love. In the Greek of the New Testament there were three. There was one that described the bond that unites friends to each other. There are people who have been my friends for decades. In some cases, we may not have seen one another for years. But when we get together that bond of friendship still remains and it is as though the passage of time means nothing. I suspect that most of you have had that experience as well.

The second kind of love in the Greek-speaking world of the New Testament was the one that gets all the attention. It is romantic love—the kind of love that makes our hearts go pitter-patter, the love that so many of our hit songs are about and so many of our movies focus on—the love between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

But it is neither of these loves that is the focus of our passage this morning. It is the love that that apostle Paul wrote about in his famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13: the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, the love that never ends.

It is the love that Ruth expressed when she refused to abandon her mother-in-law, Naomi. It is the love that the good Samaritan showed to that hapless traveller who lay naked and beaten by the side of the road. It is the love that Jesus showed for you and for me when he hung dying on the cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” “Jesus…, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 3:16; 13:1)

That kind of love is more than a feeling. It calls for practical engagement. So it is that work and love go together in our passage this morning, because genuine love invariably shows itself in hands-on, concrete action and self-giving service. And this was the kind of love that was being demonstrated daily in the everyday lives of the congregation of the Hebrews in Rome.

Earnestness and hope

So there we have it: work and love. The second pairing that the author puts together (in verse 11) is earnestness and hope. And once again, hope, like love, needs some defining.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think for most people today hope is little more than some nebulous kind of wish. “I hope that the weather will improve soon.” “I’m hoping for a bigger bonus next Christmas.” “Let’s hope that covid will soon be in the past.”

For the early Christians, however, hope was not just that vague “pie in the sky when I die” but a driving force that motivated and transformed them in the present.

Jeremiah in the Old Testament has sometimes been called the weeping prophet or the prophet of doom. Over a span of forty years he tirelessly warned the people of Judah that their disregard for God and his laws would bring destruction upon them. Yet some of the most stirring pictures of hope can also be found in Jeremiah’s writings. One of them came to him one day when he was visiting a potter’s workshop. It happened that one of the vessels the potter was forming on his wheel began to be misshapen. Did the potter give up and toss it away? No, he simply continued at his wheel and skilfully reworked it.

That was an “Aha!” moment for Jeremiah. “Then,” he wrote, “the word of the Lord came to me: O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.” The point is that, amid all the mess and injustice of this world, God is still at work. Even when things seem to be going terribly wrong, we are still in the Potter’s hands. They may even seem to have gone beyond the point of no return. Yet God is sovereign and he will surely work his good purposes out.[1]

We may think today of the grim situation facing the people of Ukraine, as the seemingly unstoppable Russian army, more than 150,000 of them, mercilessly pound their cities with bombs and missiles. Yet they refuse to surrender. They will not give up hope, as the rest of the world watches and waits and prays. And we have to believe that somehow, in the midst of this evil and injustice, God is still at work.

It was the same kind of hope that sustained the believers in the struggling Hebrew church in Rome. Christians were held in contempt. And all the signs were that their circumstances were only going to become worse. Yet they continued to cling to their hope, to sing their joyful hymns, to pray with conviction, to show acts of mercy—and all with what the author commends as earnestness.

The word in Greek means eagerness, effort, never letting things get in the way. And they could do it because deep in their hearts they had the conviction that, in the end and spite of all outward appearances, “all things [do indeed] work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Patience and faith

The hearers of these words were to be commended, then, for their work and love, for their earnestness and hope. And now in verse 12 the writer prays that they would not be sluggish—that is, that they might never grow weary or lose energy in running this race—but that through faith and patience they might push through to the finish line.

The author will have more to say about that in due course. But for the moment his concern is that they continue in faith and patience. When you think of it, those two qualities are really the two sides of the same coin.

Faith in God and in his good purposes for us enables us to be patient in the face of setbacks, disappointments and pain. If God is really to be trusted, then we can be sure, even in spite of the direst of circumstances, that in the end he will not let us down—even if that end is death. For we know that then we shall see him face to face. And as we gather and with the faithful from down through the ages, including those Hebrew believers of the first century we will be greeted with those welcoming words, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23).

Centuries before the Letter to the Hebrews, the people of Israel faced even more discouraging circumstances. Their city of Jerusalem had been crushed, its glorious Temple reduced to rubble, and they themselves had been held in captivity for a generation. It was no wonder that many of them were beginning to question God’s purposes. Yet in the midst of their despondency God inspired the prophet Isaiah to write these words:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
     the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
          his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
         and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
         and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
         they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
         they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

“So we do not lose heart” wrote the apostle Paul. “Though our outer self  is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18a)

If you’re like those Hebrew believers who were the first to hear these words, if you find yourself at times struggling just to keep your head above water, I hope that you will take heart from these verses this morning—and that by God’s grace and in his power, you may show forth in your life God’s priceless gifts of love and hope and faith.

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[1]     I owe this insight to Bill Hockin, The Habit of Hope, pp 13, ff