What is Canaan?

Hebrews 4:11 Let us….strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Here we have one of the most important passages in Hebrews–one which many Christians misunderstand completely.

When we read about Israel’s deliverance from Egypt in the book of Exodus, we get the impression that if they had been ready, they could have taken a direct route to the Promised Land and could have been there a few days after leaving Egypt. But they were fearful and their faith in God was weak. They were afraid of having to fight the Canaanites, and they were rebellious; so God made them wander.

One interpretation of Israel’s forty years in the desert is that it typifies our earthly pilgrimage after which we pass through death and enter heaven. Not so. Canaan is a picture of “God’s rest,” the victorious and abundant life that belongs here and now to every child of God. There were enemies enough in Canaan when Israel finally arrived there; does that sound like heaven? In every battle, however, God gave His children victory. He gave each of them an inheritance.

Christians today should view Israel’s wilderness wandering as typical of Christians who, though saved, go ’round and ’round in a struggle with sin. This is exemplified in Romans 7, a wilderness where we, as Christians, don’t belong. If we would really trust in Christ, we wouldn’t have to wander; we could enter Canaan today.

Prayer O Jesus, you are our Joshua, our leader to the Promised Land. Lead us ever deeper into God’s rest, and keep us from looking back. In your name we pray. Amen.

Personalia

Editor’s Note: The next 28 posts are taken from the February 1985 “Today” publication released as a daily devotional. As such, each segment is preceded by a Bible verse and concluded with a prayer. Most of the meditations were edited by the publisher, but I will endeavor to post what was originally intended by the author who kept notes on where the published version differed from what was originally submitted.

Hebrews 13:22 “I appeal to you, brethren, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly.”

There are places in the Bible that refer to very ordinary matters–like stomachs and overcoats (see I Timothy 5:23, 2 Timothy 4:13). The Bible is like this because its writers were very ordinary people. God carefully supervised and inspired these writers in order to reveal Himself clearly to all humankind. All of us today, then, who are made of the same stuff as the first Bible writers, can benefit from this practical material also.

In beginning this study of Hebrews, I would like to share a personal testimony with you. I have found that the message of Hebrews, pressing on in faith, is thoroughly practical: Faith works! My wife and I have stared death in the face five times, and only the faith we have in Christ saw us through when we thought we might not make it physically.

Faith has seen us through what is sometimes harder than dying: dying daily to self. At one time, my own assurance of salvation resembled a yoyo or a rollercoaster. Despite my attempts to be more Christlike, I fell on my face again and again. Then I learned something from Hebrews as though I had never read it before. Through it, God said to me, “Quit trying to save yourself. Let my beloved Son, Jesus, live in you and through you.” With this message came peace and joy and more abundant life for me in Christ, what Watchman Nee would refer to as “the normal Christian life.”

Prayer: “Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, equip you with everything good that you may do his will.” In Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Faith

Many of us are puzzled by Jesus’ statement that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains. We would like to believe that we possess at least that minimum, and yet we have never presumed to ask for the performance of any such miracle.

Perhaps the answer lies in our very reluctance to ask God such a request. In other words, our faith is so sizable that we would not think of petitioning such a “trick.” Many of the people in Jesus’ day who did not have sufficient faith to recognize Christ as their Savior did have faith enough to ask for and receive miracles.

We often hold up for emulation a man like George Muller, founder of a famed orphanage. But it is highly dubious that orphanages generally ought to be operated in such fashion. [Editor’s note: This likely refers to the reported multiple incidents where there wasn’t any food to feed the orphans at meal-time, but as they were praying before the scheduled meal, a knock would sound on the door and it would be the baker dropping off a surplus of bread or the milk-man donating his milk supply as his cart broke down right outside.]. Isn’t it possible that such incidents are the exceptions that prove the rule of God’s ordinary way of operation? If faith performed “miracles” regularly they would soon lose all their unordinariness and we would become spiritually flabby in the process. It strikes this observer that institutions like Bethany Home and the Korean Adoption Program are in very fact real ventures of faith, not on the score that they look for God to make mountains disappear as though by magic, but that He will help his people to scale the mountains when they are reached.

In short, Jesus was telling his disciples that it takes next to no faith at all–a mere mustard seed’s worth–to get a miracle done. Miracles are often performed for the small-faithed for the very purpose of encouraging them to greater strength, or because God’s people somewhere are not up to the heights of self-help that strong faith inspires. Jesus wants all his followers to strive for faith of such proportions that it doesn’t need miracles.

Monopoly

Many readers will promptly deny it but one great explanation for our lack of evangelism is not the conviction that God does not love the people “out there,” but our fear that perhaps He really does. Predestination tells us plainly that God does have some sheep “out there” whom we must urge inside (John 10:16), and it is that thought which disturbs us. It was not fear of the Ninevites the caused Jonah to go AWOL, but the fear that God had some love for these Assyrians.

Such an attitude is altogether understandable; nobody likes to buy an “exclusive” garment and find countless others wearing the same thing. Especially liable to this desire for distinction are those of us who do not have much other claim to exclusiveness or specialness; unconsciously we salve our souls by saying to ourselves that we may not be smart or rich, but after all, everybody isn’t saved! And sharing our faith with others, especially if they already have brains and money, means that they continue to have an earthly advantage over us and can look forward to heaven too. That thought is just too much.

What we forget is that when it comes to salvation the more you “give it away” the more you get. It is by sharing our faith that it grows. This is the whole point of such a statement as Luke 17:33. The person who tries to preserve what he has by keeping it all to himself will find that even what he thought he had is slipping from between his fingers. In short, the person who is not eager that everybody should have what he has, may well begin to wonder whether he ever had it himself.

The Faith that Saves

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.         John 17:3

What is true faith?  It is the faith that saves a man in this life.  It is the faith that gives him perspective.  It enables him to stand firm in the midst of disappointments and trials. It saves him not only in this life but it saves him in the life to come, because everyone will come before the judgment seat of Christ.  Do you, or do you not have the faith that releases you from sin?  It is related to the way we will live some day in eternity.  This may be the last moment that we may ever listen to the gospel.  What is this faith that will finally save us?  The answer which the Heidelberg Catechism gives us is “True faith is simply the God given ability of saying that ‘God loves me.’ ”  That is what true faith is.  It is the belief and understanding that God love me.

The first word of the sentence is a very sacred one and yet it has become very common in this day. “God.”  When men say “God”, the men and women who say it are men and women who are incurable idol makers.  When men say “God” they must understand clearly whether the God of whom they speak is the right God.  All other gods are excluded.  None of them save.  The only God who saves is the one who revealed himself in the Bible.  True faith is not only a sure knowledge of all that God has revealed in his word, but it is that too.  It is a knowledge of God that we gain from the Bible.  When we say “God loves me”, we are not saying anything that will ever save us unless it is the only truth that is revealed on the pages of scripture.  It means that if we have a true faith it means that we have to be constantly working with his book all the time.  It is not simply a collection of beautiful sayings that we can use.  This book is the only way we can learn to know God.  We see Him in the beauty of creation and in beautiful weather, but we still do not know Him when we only see His power and divinity.  It is in the scripture that we begin to realize that this God is a person.  How do you come to know your children, for instance?  When they reach the age of 16, 17 or 21 you say you have lived with this person and you have come to know him.  God in his grace has revealed his personality and his being to us in the Bible.  Through faith we are able to say, “God loves me.”  Why is our faith so often weak?  Because we as a people have lost the love of the word of God.

The word “love” is a simple word.  God loves me.  The God who reveals Himself in scripture is a God of love. Many people today are willing to talk about the love of God because they feel that this is the only attribute of God that is worth discussing.  They do not want to talk about the wrath of God.  I John 4:8 says “He that loves not, knows not God; for God is love.”  Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.  The love of God and the name Jesus Christ are synonymous.  They mean the same thing.  You cannot think about the love of God without Jesus.  He is the expression of the love of God.  When we say “God loves me,” we look at the cross of Calvary.  We remember that he took all the sin on the cross and he has paid the price of sin for us.

If we understand Jesus, if we do not exalt Him as we should, then our churches become nothing and our religion becomes vain and empty.  He is the one through whom you and I get to know the God who saves us.  The God who saves us approaches us in the person of Jesus Christ.  The second word focuses our attention upon Jesus.  It is so important that each one of us sustain a personal relationship to Jesus Christ.  You must know the only true God, even Jesus Christ.  To know means to enter into a personal relationship.  We walk with Jesus that way.  We have to know Him.  In the morning when you get up we have to live our life for Him and when we close our day in prayer we have to do it with Him.  If you only know a lot about Him, you are missing this relationship.  Jesus must become your companion, your older brother.

The final word in the sentence is “me.”  There are people who say, “But I believe in God and I believe in Jesus Christ, and I believe He died for all his own, but I do not believe that He died for me.”  If you speak that way you must never feel that you are pious because the promises of the scripture.  God has given Jesus for the salvation of the world.  “All that the Father has given me are mine.” “He that comes unto me I will in no wise cast out.”  All you have to do is to come to Jesus and that is all.  “Seek and you will find.”  “Come unto me all that are weak and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”  To say God hates me represents sacrilege of the highest order.  We say that in spite of our sins.  There is nothing in us that would recommend us toward God.  We seek our righteousness apart from ourselves.  We are a people undeserving of the love of God.  We say “God be merciful to me a sinner.”  We say it in spite of our sins, we say it in spite of our sorrow and despair.  If we have faith in Jesus our path will be straight.  All the disappointments and the sorrows that come to us, even in these I believe that God is dealing with me in love and is making me ready for the day that I will be with Him forever.  The faith that saves enables us to persevere and He will lead us in triumph.  God loves me.  Faith is God’s miracle so we must ask Him to give us this faith so that we may go forward with utter confidence that God will be our Savior for this life and for the life that is to come.

Faith

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”    Hebrews 11:1

The word believe is used in two radically different ways.  Often we think of it as implying uncertainty.  For example, we say such things as, I’m not sure he went down town, but I believe so.  But belief can refer to something even more certain than knowledge.  Think of such expressions as, I believe in freedom as a way of life; I believe in democracy.  When a man says emphatically, I believe in looking out for myself, there is no uncertainty in his feelings.  That is his philosophy of life, the basis on which he operates.  It is something that determines his whole conduct, even his thinking.

In this sense everybody believes in something.  In childhood a person believes in his parents.  We go to school at great expense because we believe in the importance of education.  We work hard at a business because we believe it pays to get ahead, and we obey certain rules of ethics in doing so because we believe it pays to be honest.  If a man believes in nothing, not even himself, he cannot exist; people commit suicide when they no longer believe in themselves.

And so, faith gives certainty.  The more faith a person has, the more certainty he possesses.  The person who says, I believe only what I know; I have faith only in what I can see, does not have very much certainty, for the only thing that is sure in this world is uncertainty.

The Christian is not in a class by himself when we speak of him as a man of faith.  He is different only on the score of having faith in something certain.  He doesn’t believe in something that is here today and gone tomorrow, like life insurance, social security, friends, or even himself.  His faith is in Him whose very name is Certainty.

 

Neglect

“Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good words, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some….”           Hebrews 10:24, 25

The Christian life is such like riding a bicycle or flying an airplane; unless a person keeps going forward he will fall.  There is no standing still.  Many think of salvation as a kind of gift that a person possesses, like a package or a ticket.  But salvation is a living, growing thing; it must be kept alive.  A plant will not last long without care; much less a human body.

The same thing is even more true of eternal life, the new life in Christ Jesus.  A man may say:  I have been born again; I have faith in Jesus Christ.  But unless that faith is fed and taken care of, it dies.  That is why Hebrews is so full of warning about falling away from the faith.  And Peter adds that it were better not to have known the way of righteousness at all than, having started out on it, to turn back.

A devout Scottish minister quietly began his sermon one Sunday by saying, “There is a question in the Bible that I cannot answer; the angels cannot answer it; even God Himself has no answer.  That question is found in Hebrews 2:3, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”

This warning is not addressed to people who reject the gospel, but to professing Christians.  It is addressed to people who neglect church-going, who are irregular in their Bible-reading.  “Neglect not the gift that is within you.”  That gift is more costly than anything you own, even the most luxurious limousine.  It is far more fragile than your body.  It is more important than your own children.  Take care of it.

The Antichrist

Children, it is the last hour, and as you hear that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour.      I John 2:18

There is one term that is intimately associated with the world’s end and that is the name “antichrist.”  The very expression conjures the idea of final judgment.

As a matter of fact, every generation has had its antichrists.  The Lord Jesus predicted that they would make their appearance in the disciples’ day, as indeed they did.  The sorry situation today is that the number of antichrists is multiplying, plus their persuasiveness and increased popularity.  There was a time when a man of power would scoff at Christianity and say, “Mine is the true religion; follow me.”  (This is the tactic of Communism even today.)  But such antichristianity is painfully apparent.  Far more dangerous are people, particularly in positions of power, right within the Christian church, who profess to be followers of Christ and yet are nothing of the sort.  There are innumerable men in prominent pulpits and renowned theological seminaries, writers of popular religious books and periodicals, even missionaries on foreign fields who do a deal of superficial good but who simply are not citizens of the kingdom. Such talk is stern, to be sure, but Jesus used even stronger terms when He warned of wolves in sheep’s clothing, blind leaders of the blind, capable of doing mighty works in Christ’s name, mouthing His praises repeatedly, and yet completely foreign to Him.

What make the situation so dangerous is that these counterfeit Christians use all the time-hallowed terminology to which we are so used, but pour new meanings into them or intend no meaning at all.  Oh, be on your guard against such deceit.  Don’t you be fooled by such false faith.

Christian Hebrews

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…                    Hebrews 10:24, 25

Some of the most lovely passages in the Bible are found in the book of Hebrews, written to Jewish Christians.  The most famous chapter, of course, is the well-known roll call of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, listing some of the Old Testament believers who trusted in Christ, “Seeing we are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecto of our faith.”  (12:1)

The unknown author of this beautiful book constantly emphasizes how much better off we are in the New Testament than even such outstanding saints as Moses, Abraham, and others.  They lived in the shadows, and we have the full light of God that shines in the face of Jesus Christ.  Their worship consisted of sacrifices of dumb animals, but Christ, the true Passover Lamb, has been once sacrificed for us.  They could approach God only through the priesthood, and even the high priest was admitted into the symbolic presence of God only once in a whole year, but we can come boldly unto the throne of grace at any time, knowing we shall receive mercy and find grace for every need.

One thing that Hebrews repeatedly warns us New Testament believers against is slipping back into the formalism of the Old Testament.  It is something all of us have to beware of.  We like to have something between us and the holy God.  We are fond of things.  And so our worship gradually becomes more elaborate, liturgical, and with pictures of Jesus in church, thoughtlessly sung doxologies, etc.  Be careful that your service of God today is sincere.

Practical Religion

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.          James 1:27

If there is any book of the Bible that almost everybody ought to be able to understand, it is the practical Epistle of James.  It talks straight from the shoulder.  It is a book for the work week as well as for proper deportment in church.  It talks about money and travel, elders and sickness, rich people and poor, horses and tongues, swearing and praying.

It is a stimulating thought to remember that James was a half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, and must have heard many things that Jesus said in the thirty years they lived together.  An interesting exercise is to check all the verses in James’ little letter that sound like something which Jesus said in such places as the sermon on the mount.  “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no” is an exact duplication of one of Jesus’ teachings.

At one time James did not believe in Jesus as the Son of God, and it was not until after Christ’s resurrection that he was converted.  How he must have blushed, in looking back upon his boyhood, to remember how often he had sinned against his Savior-brother by means of word and act!

James was talking from personal experience when he wrote that we are not to envy riches and rich people, since he came from a poor family  himself; and that we must not neglect widows and orphans, for he came from that kind of a home.

James’ Epistle is the kind of a book that we ought to read by ourselves repeatedly many times a year.  Religion is not going to save any of us.  James makes it even stronger than that when he says, “If a man says he has faith, but has no deeds, can that faith save him?”  (2:14)