David Pawson - Unlocking the Bible - Hebrews Pt2

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Thoughtful Thoughts 17.2.23 by John Dunning.?

Hebrews, Part 2. ‘Keep on keeping on’.

Catch up…

Last week we left off at the point where we were talking about not giving up.? A New Zealand evangelist in America, Ray Comfort, quoted figures from an inter-church survey that found that 80% of those who make commitments to follow Jesus stopped attending any church in America within 12 months of making that commitment.

Of course, this may not always mean that they stop following Jesus Christ, but compare the early church where we are told: “the church grew and spread”.?

Introduction…

So why are so many giving up now so quickly, when we are not being put into the arena to be fed to lions, or burned alive as they were, or crucified like Peter?

Well, the reasons given often seem to be a variation on a theme. A Singaporean professor took 17 years to write a Ph.D. on what we now call “church”. In a blog like this, I can only touch lightly on any point, but he found that the same word “church”, is being used to do the opposite of what Jesus meant when He coined the use of that word. The New Testament church was taught to copy His example by the Apostles. The word church was created to describe a community of Jesus’ disciples who put God first, and where any “giving” being done was to meet each other’s needs. The Word of God (which at that time was solely the “Old Testament”), was being applied to their daily lives, with Paul’s letters explaining their New Covenant context.?

Content…

Hebrews shows believers that what they were going back to, was only a mere shadow. It was not the real thing. They needed to ‘keep on keeping on’ with discipleship, to gain the promised reward. The list of the faithful in Hebrews 11 is provided to encourage believers to keep going on. Notice that they all followed through on their faith, by their actions. Rahab the prostitute is listed amongst those of faith, and yet Solomon is missing from the list, and we are told that his disobedience led him away from the Lord by having many wives. He is an example of someone who started so well that God praised him for his faith, and yet even Solomon backslid and was led astray by the cares of this world, according to the Bible.

What all this means is that the book of Hebrews is relevant today. When the writer says; ‘don’t go back but do go on’, they were writing to people who were still going back to what was socially acceptable – which was the opposite of what God required.

Application…

Hebrews is as relevant today because believers are still giving up. Today it is a new kind of pressure. It is a pressure on Christians to conform. Some go back on their faith once the pressure becomes uncomfortable. New laws forcing Christians to go against their conscience have been coming in, where Christians will be criminalised for applying New Testament teaching to their lives. By way of illustration…

— “The Christian Institute” website has had a story about a Christian doctor, David Mackereth, who simply stated that the gender of a person is determined by biology.

“Well, that’s just obvious”, you might think, “so where’s the story in that?.”

Well, the story was that he LOST HIS JOB in the NHS just for stating that he would be sticking to biology. (You can google the story on “The Christian Institute” website). There’s yet one more thing to add. What country do you think that doctor lives in? Well, believe it or not, it’s England - the country that is no longer the “mother of the free”, as the famous song goes, sung every year at the ‘Last Night of the Proms’! Only the Christian Legal Centre spoke out in support of this Christian Doctor!

John Bercow, the retired speaker of the House of Commons, said on July 5th, 2018 that LGBT rights “must trump” religious freedom. (The Christian Institute’s report). Christians will be required by law to go along with putting LGBT rights before practicing New Testament teaching, so it will be illegal to practice Christian beliefs if it conflicts with LGBT beliefs.

What a huge inter-church survey in New Zealand found was that now there are hundreds of “house-church” communities that have started up, returning to New Testament principles. In China when they developed house churches, the church became the fastest-growing church in the world, and now outnumbers communist party members.?

Therefore many Christians who are leaving the established churches are still disciples of Jesus;- it’s just that they are no longer disciples of church employees who have what the Chinese call a golden bowl job. Most Christians now are choosing to be disciples of Jesus Christ rather than of establishment church leaders because people know when the emperor has no clothes, where the church provides a golden bowl job for their staff, usually with company houses, pensions, and a job for life.?

In the church at Ephesus, Paul told Timothy to replace the leaders who were the wrong kind of people to lead a church, (which we can read about in Timothy). That is still relevant today as a senior Anglican leader told the late David Pawson that you don’t apply the scriptures of Acts 2.38 today about getting immersed in water after repenting, and then receive the Holy Spirit. That Anglican theology is something I can attest to as well. Result? Now, you can believe pretty much anything without being removed from office, and even do what Paul tells us God forbids, as long as you never apply Acts 2.38. Well, the result now is that in England 1000 people every week have been leaving the Church of England ‘empire’ for decades, which is the right response. After my father (a vicar) died, I found the courage to leave the Anglicans as well.?

Summary…

Hebrews shows us the link between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The New is rooted in the Old Covenant.? The New shows the fulfillment of the Old.?

Repentance is just the beginning of the journey with Jesus. As Paul would say, “Go on to the meat, don’t stay just with the milk”. We should become like a tree planted by the water, as David puts it in Psalm 1, with deep roots withstanding pressure and which becomes a strength to others. The message of Hebrews in a nutshell is for us to ‘make progress:- “don’t go back – but do go on”.

Note:- International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church:- Friday, March 3rd, 2023

This is John Dunning signing off from “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.

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