Better Together Through HebrewsSampel

Together Takes Us Home

It’s been said that the fear worse than death is the fear of dying alone. We all want to be in a warm bed surrounded by loved ones as they help us exit this world into the next. We want others to lead us home. Living a better life together is more than just a way to cope with the difficulties of life. Adding people allows us to get where we want to go. Home.

In the letter to the Hebrews, the book we keep returning to, the author is concerned that his church may stray from the course. They’ve endured hardship, they’ve faced difficulty, and their faith has been challenged in ways most of us will never understand. Most of us will never lose our job, our family, or our freedom because of our faith. They did. Yet the author is pushing them to something bigger.

Look at the words he uses: 

Persevere (10:36)

Don’t shrink back (10:38–39)

Hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first (3:14)

Enter in with confidence (10:19)

Make every effort (4:11)

Hold unswervingly to the hope we profess (10:23)

The goal is more than day-to-day. It is a lifetime. We understand this goal. We don’t want our loved ones to shrink back. We want our children to persevere. But how do we do that alone? How can we help others who are far from us? How do we make every effort?

Could it be that our clear-cut method preventing us from backsliding or from wavering from the faith is to do life together? Could it be that it’s not enough to say, “It’s just Jesus and me?”

One of the famous sections in the letter comes in Hebrews 11 as it highlights a long list of people who have gone on before us in the faith. These people had extraordinary faith, and that faith motivated the next generation to keep their faith. This ripple effect carried on and on. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph, faith was able to overcome even in the lives of the most imperfect individuals. We are reminded of Moses and his parents, and the faith that allowed them to brave the evil culture of their day, eventually enabling Mosis to lead God’s people out of slavery. On and on the author goes with the list of the faithful. He comes to this conclusion in the next chapter: 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Hebrews 12:1 NIV

I used to think that the great cloud of witnesses was the world. The witnesses were those watching to see if we were truly followers of Jesus or just hypocrites. Now I see it differently. I believe the author is calling our attention to the grandstands of faithful people in heaven who are cheering us on and, as we saw earlier, running the race with us.

When you feel alone, remember what David said when he was hiding from Saul: “I put my trust in you, God.” When you are betrayed, remember Joseph who languished in a prison cell for a crime he didn’t commit. When you feel like your best days are behind you, remember that old shepherd named Moses who went on to take down the great Egyptian Empire. Sometimes being “together” is remembering whose family you are in. We are all children of the same God. We all benefit from His presence. We all benefit from being a part of the same family of believers.

Toward the end of chapter 11, the author of Hebrews offers a somewhat strange observation. After listing names like Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets he makes this statement: “All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised” (Hebrews 11:39 NLT).

Why was God’s promise yet to be fulfilled for them? What’s He waiting for? Isn’t that what we all wonder as we wait for our heavenly home?

Maybe God isn’t waiting at all. Have you considered that time itself came into being at creation? God stands outside of time, but He put boundaries around our existence, calling them day and night. If He can see everything at once, He sees beyond us and behind us. From His perspective there is no past and no future, as there is for us. And together the entire story makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense to us in the chapter we are living in.

For the people mentioned in Hebrews, God had something in mind and it involved other faithful followers of God: “For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us” (Hebrews 11:40 NLT).

How did believers in the first century AD have anything to do with Moses, or Rahab, or Enoch? It was something they’d all been a part of—the coming of Jesus. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection the true fulfillment of all God’s promises had been provided. Abraham was now the father of many nations. Moses’ people could now be led out of spiritual slavery. And Rahab was now a relative of the King of Kings. Those who were martyred and tortured for their prophecies were now justified. What they had spoken of before it happened was now a reality.

Jesus and His kingdom “made sense” of all the directions God had been giving before He came. The strange twists and turns throughout the history of Israel and the world all led to Calvary. Jesus’ resurrection and the establishing of His kingdom now brought clarity to past events. 

Ultimately, God’s way to save the world involved people . . . lots of people. It began with Abraham hearing from God that he would be the father of many nations and “blessed to be a blessing.” (See Genesis 12:1–3.) As his nation grew they encountered slavery, exile, abandonment, genocide, and near extinction, but they remained a testimony to God’s faithfulness.

From that remnant came Jesus, who ushered in the kingdom of God. In salvation it was never God’s intention for us to see it as “just Jesus and me.” Instead, God’s intention was that His kingdom would be Jesus and His community of believers. His body, His church.

Just as the Son of God existed in community, we must live in community as well. Once the veil in the temple was torn in two, all of us were welcomed into this great rescue mission for the world called the kingdom of God. And we are all blessed—not just to pray for more blessing, not just to tweet pictures of ourselves on the beach and #blessed—but to be a blessing. As Paul said to the Ephesians: “God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10 NLT).

God is showing us that His kingdom will be made up of the most unique collection of ragamuffins and vagabonds imaginable. It will be led by the simple and upheld by the weak. It will be a band of misfits and broken vessels, but it will declare His wisdom and show off His genius and power.

Being better together will not only get us through the day-to-day challenges of life but it will also take us home. We are united with the patriarchs and the heroes of the past as well as the missionaries, teachers, and leaders of the future. We are part of the kingdom of God. And embracing that fact makes us better together.