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HOLY HELP FOR THE HOPELESSWHO PRAYHebrews 13:20-25INTRODUCTION Ten years ago, in the fall of 1997, I attended a “Church Planter’s Boot Camp” at a Christian camp just outside of Minneapolis, MN. I joined a group of other men who, like I, were in the process of starting new churches. There was information shared that was helpful to me at the time but I have only clearly remembered one sentence from the entire weeklong conference. Greg Bakke, who at that time was the national director of prayer for the EFCA spoke to us about prayer. The sentence he spoke that was seared into my mind that evening and has blazed there since then is this: “A prayerless pastor is a godless pastor and none of Christ’s sheep can hear his voice.” It is my highest ambition, as your pastor, to be the voice of Jesus to you. This is how I think of all that I do. I long for people to hear Christ speak through me so that they will trust and love him more than anyone and everything else. Therefore, this statement, which I believe is a biblical statement is a great challenge to me personally. I don’t think that the only person among us who should be concerned about his prayerfulness or lack of it is me. I do think that Scriptures teach that a prayerless Christian is a godless Christian. I agree with what JI Packer said about prayer, “I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face.” The famous 19th century Scottish preacher, Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more.” I think Dr. DA Carson describes us accurately in the introduction to his book on prayer, “A Call to Spiritual Reformation.” He says, “…by and large we are better at organizing than at agonizing. Better at administering than interceding. Better at fellowship than fasting. Better at entertainment than worship. Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration. Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying.” I want to pray better than I do. I want our congregation to pray better than we do. I trust that you join me in these desires. Therefore I am eager to examine our passage for this morning because the letter to the Hebrews ends with a prayer. My hope and prayer is that as we look at how the author of this letter prays we will discover reasons for why we should pray more and better. It is highly instructive that this author ends this letter, which sets forth the glory of Jesus Christ and commands that we let nothing deter us from having a robust faith in Christ, ends in prayer. In this prayer he gives the answer as to how it is that weak and faithless people like us will be able to do what he has commanded in his letter. How shall we pay more careful attention to the message of the gospel, so that we do not drift away? How shall we see to it that none of us has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God? How shall we encourage one another day after day? How shall we make every effort to enter God’s rest? How shall we not become lazy but imitate the faith and patience of those who inherit what is promised? How shall we hold unswervingly to the hope we profess? How shall we persevere in doing the will of God so that we will inherit what is promised? How shall we offer praise to God and do good to others and thus please God? The answer that this author gives by his example is this: we can only do these things by asking God to do them in us. We must pray. A praying Christian and a prayerful church will receive from God the motivation and the ability to do his will. It is by our prayers that we both express our faith and we obtain greater faith, as we will see. MAIN POINT The church is a praying community because…I. God gives his peace through Christ (v. 20) He begins his prayer by identifying the one to whom he prays and by establishing the grounds upon which he expects to be heard. Contrary to how our modern democratic, egalitarian, therapeutic culture thinks, this author does not assume that just because he prays God will listen. The modern idea of God and prayer is something akin to orders given to the household butler. Prayer is viewed as the way we ring the bell so God will come running to give us whatever we ask. This author knows that a human being approaching the God who exists has as much right to expect a favorable response as Osama bin Laden would if he walked up to George Bush to ask him if the U.S. would be willing to build him a new home, after we blew up his home in Afghanistan. Osama would be shot before he got anywhere near the President. So the author begins by first identifying the God to whom he prays as the “God of peace.” The God to whom we pray is the God who gives his peace to his people. Peace is not referring to a psychological state of calmness or harmonious relationships with other people. Rather this is referring to God’s making peace with us and bringing us to live with him in his kingdom of peace. This is the peace that Paul refers to in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is that big OT concept of the “shalom” of God where he brings his people to live with him in safety. Psalm 72 describes the rule of God’s King, his Messiah, the son of David and v. 7 describes Messiah’s rule this way, “In his days the righteous will flourish; peace will abound till the moon is no more.” In Psalm 85 God’s promise of peace is equated with his salvation, which includes forgiveness of sins and restoring the fortunes of his people in the land of blessing. In Micah 5, immediately following that great promise we read every Christmas declaring that the Savior is to be born in Bethlehem God says that the Messiah “will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord…they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace.” God makes his enemies into his friends and brings us to live with him in a new world of security and love and harmony that works as he intends because sin and the curse of sin is gone. How is it that sinners, those who have been his enemies, can approach God and find him not to be a God of war and violence and retribution but a God of peace? How can you and I who are terrorists in God's kingdom walk into his palace and not be shot on sight but be warmly welcomed and listened to? That is what the rest of the verse explains. First of all, this God who gives us his peace brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus by means of or because of the blood of the eternal covenant. To what does the “eternal covenant” refer? It is simply another term for the new covenant of which Christ is the mediator. Listen to how this phrase is used in Ezekiel 37:26, “ I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an eternal covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever.” Or listen to Jeremiah 32:40, “ I will make an eternal covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.” The eternal covenant is God’s promise to save his chosen people out of every nation of the world for the glory of his own name by giving to his people new hearts that trust him and delight to obey him. It is God’s commitment to glorify himself by completely saving, from beginning to end, his people. This new, eternal covenant, unlike the OC which God made with Israel on Mt. Sinai , does not depend in any way upon the performance of his people but depends entirely upon the performance of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus secures all the promises of this new, eternal covenant by his willing death on our behalf. The blood of the eternal covenant is the death of Jesus for us. This is the entire argument of chapter 9 of this letter. Jesus is the mediator of this eternal covenant because he shed his blood for us. Listen to how Isaiah 53:5 says it, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed.” We receive God’s peace because Christ bore our punishment. We find God to be a God of peace and not of war because Jesus died for God’s enemies. How do we know this is true? We know it is true because God led Jesus back from the dead. The resurrection and then the ascension and glorification of Jesus to God’s right hand is the evidence that indeed his blood did secure all the promises of God for us. If Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead then Christianity is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind. If Jesus did not rise then you are still at war with God. There is no forgiveness for sins. God is not a God of peace but of war. The resurrection is God’s “Amen” to the life and death of Jesus. It is also the reason this is an eternal covenant. Jesus is alive, forever. Death does not have the final word because Christ has conquered death. All who are united to him in faith will also be brought back from the dead by the God of peace to live with him in his kingdom of peace forever. Finally, notice that our Lord Jesus, whom God brought back from the dead because he shed his blood to guarantee all the promises of the eternal covenant is “the great shepherd of the sheep.” This author has not used this very common OT metaphor prior to this in his letter. The OT regularly calls God the shepherd of his people. The most famous Psalm, the 23rd, begins, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…" Psalm 100 says "we are his people, the sheep of his pasture." Why does the author use this metaphor now? In Isaiah 63:11 the prophet by inspiration is reflecting on one of the many periods in Israel ’s history when they rebelled against God and so God became their enemy and fought against them. Isaiah 63:11 says, “Then his people recalled the days of old, the days of Moses and his people—where is he who brought them out of the sea, with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he who set his Holy Spirit among them?” The same verb used to describe God’s bringing Jesus back from the dead is used here to describe God bringing the people back from the sea. Also, Moses is the “shepherd of the flock” that God brings with his people out of the sea. In other words, the author shows that the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt and through the Red Sea is a symbol of Christ's resurrection along with all his people. In addition, while Moses was the shepherd of the sheep, Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that Moses was and taught. The broader context of Isaiah 63 raises the question of how will God ever live with his people in peace? How can he ever love them and watch over them and care for them when they are a rebellious people? The answer is only when he brings back from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus of whom Moses was the symbol. Moses could not make peace between the people and God. It took a greater shepherd than he to do that. This is such an amazing picture of who Jesus is for us. We are a flock of sheep on our way up the mountain to the place of greener pastures and quiet water where we can lie down in safety. We are leaving behind the valley of death and going to the place of peace with God and with all of creation. We are being led on the way by our great shepherd who has gone before us and laid down his life to overcome all that opposes us on that journey. All has been done to prepare the place of rest for us and to secure all the resources we need for the journey. He defends us and provides for us along the way. All we have to do is to ask the God who has made all this possible through our Lord Jesus to give us what we need along the way. We are praying sheep who daily look to our great shepherd's Father to give us what we need because he has shed his blood for us. The church is a praying community because…
II. Only God can give what he commands (v.21) What do you and I need as we follow our great shepherd along the way to Mt. Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem? How you answer this question determines everything about your prayer life. The number one reason I don't pray and I'm pretty sure the number one reason you don't pray is because you and I already have all we need without prayer. If your happiness is determined entirely by the condition of your life here, then as long you have enough money to pay the bills, adequate physical and mental health to do your work and enjoy life, harmonious relations with those you love, then your need for help is minimal and so your prayer is minimal. All of us know by experience that when our finances or health or relationships are threatened, then we are more earnest in our praying. But when there is little trouble in these areas, then our praying is nominal. What v. 21 tells us is that the earnestness of our prayers is directly related to how much we want what God wants. What does God want for us? He wants us to do his will, to be people who are pleasing to him. If your ambition is to be pleasing to God and to do his will then you will need to pray all the time. If the thing you want for your friends and family is that they do God's will and please him then you will not be able to not pray. I want us to think first of all about what it means to please God and to do his will. I'm going to concentrate on what we know about these things just from this letter to the Hebrews. We will see that doing God's will and pleasing him are not two different things but the same thing. Look back at 10:5-9. Read it. What is not God's will? What is not pleasing to him? It is not God's will for people to come to him on the basis of the OT law. The sacrifices and offerings commanded by Moses on Mt. Sinai, never pleased God in the sense that they are what made people right with God. Always they were a symbol of Christ and his sacrifice. So the first thing to be said about God's will, about pleasing him is that it is not God's will to come to him on the basis of the performance of any religious rituals or on the basis of your obedience to God's law. It is a great sin, an act of rebellion and wickedness to approach God on the basis of your obedience to the rules and commands of the law or your performance of any religious ritual. Listen to me. Everyone who believes that God will accept him or her on the basis of their performance is displeasing to God and not doing his will. It is the will of God the Father that God the Son obey his law in our place and then suffer and die as a sacrifice for our sins. It is the will of the Son to obey the Father and die for our sins. It is the will of God that sinners be made holy and fit for heaven by Christ's once for all sacrifice of himself. Turn your attention to the idea of pleasing God as it is expressed in Hebrews. First, as we've noted God was not pleased with the sacrifices and offerings that were made for thousands of years by Israel. Notice also in a quotation from Habakkuk 2 in 10:37-38 that God is not pleased with those who "shrink back", which, in the context at that point means, God is not pleased with those who do not have faith. Look at 11:5 & 6. Enoch was identified as a person who pleased God. It was because he pleased God that God took him, that is, he did not die a natural death but God took him from this life to the next without his dying. Verse 6 then tells us that what pleases God is faith in him and his promises. God is pleased with those who believe he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Let's put this all together. To do the will of God, to be a person who pleases him is to be a person who depends entirely upon what Jesus Christ has done instead of upon what you have done. It pleases God when sinners do not trust in anything they have done or might do but depend upon what Jesus did for them in his obedient life, willing death and ongoing intercession for all who trust him. God is happy when you trust Jesus and not yourself. In addition, this faith in Christ is not only trusting that Jesus made you fit for God's presence but also believing that living with God forever is the highest and best thing in the universe. It pleases God when you believe that his reward is better than life itself. Faith clings to Christ not only as the one who delivers me from sin and death but also as the treasure of my life. He is my life, my peace, my salvation, my everything. It is this faith alone that pleases God and is the doing of his will. But also notice that this faith then produces a certain kind of life. We saw this last week in vv. 15-16. The person who is trusting in Jesus has a heart that is full of gratitude towards God for his mercy and thus has lips that are full of thanksgiving and praise. In addition those who are trusting Jesus do good and are generous with their time and possessions. In other words, true faith in Christ produces lives of joyful gratitude and loving service and this also is pleasing to God, a doing of God's will. Why is it God's will is that we live by faith in Christ? Why is it pleasing to God that people trust in his Son and out of that faith live lives of praise and love for others? The answer is in the prayer. The author asks God to give to the Hebrews everything good for doing his will and to work in us what is pleasing to him. In essence the author is asking God to give to the people what God has commanded them to do. This whole letter is full of commands to have faith in Christ and thus do the will of God. So the author asks God to give what he commands. The author believes, because this is what the Bible teaches, that the only way that people do the will of God, that is, live by faith in Jesus, is if God himself gives everything necessary to us so that we have faith. He must work faith in us or we will not have it. If a person has faith in Jesus and lives to the end of his life by faith in Jesus it is a miracle. There is no greater evidence of the power of God in the universe than when a sinner trusts in Jesus Christ and trusts that having him is a greater treasure than having the whole world. You cannot and you will not trust in Jesus Christ even for one moment without God exercising the same power that raised Christ from the dead to give you faith. It takes greater power than required to make a universe to give you and I faith in Christ. You will never keep trusting Jesus if God does not give you every good thing and work in you faith. God's power is revealed in the incarnation of the Son of God and in the miracles of Jesus and in his obedient life and in his staying on the cross for our sins and in his resurrection and in his glorification but it is also manifested in the fact that you and I believe in Christ. Every day you need to ask God to give you everything good so that you will continue to live by faith in Christ. This means that when you have faith and when you act on the basis of your faith you should thank God because you only have it and you only live it by his grace. This past week I was in a meeting where a friend of mine was talking about his successfully reading the Bible, something he struggles to do. At the end of our meeting we prayed and he thanked God for enabling him to read the Bible. That is exactly the right thing to do. We ask God to give us faith and to cause us to live by faith. Then we believe what God says and act. Afterwards we thank God that he did it, not us. This pleases God because your faith in Christ is evidence of his power. God's greatest pleasure is in the glory of his own name that is why this prayer ends with, "to him be the glory forever." These are not just pretty words to adorn the end of a prayer. They are the goal of the prayer because they are the goal of God. God rejoices in his power and love being manifest in the world and he rejoices in our finding our joy in him. It is in the nature of God to delight in loving sinners and so when sinners know they are loved by him, he is happy. His joy is in our joy in him because he loves us and he loves his love being enjoyed. Also, his joy is in his goodness and love being made visible in the universe because he delights in himself above all other things for he is the most delightful being in the universe. By our faith in Christ we are joining in the joy of God in being God and this pleases him. Let me show you how prayer ties into this by using an illustration I got from John Piper. Imagine that you were a paraplegic. You cannot move any part of your body from your neck down. You have a dear friend who takes care of you. If I came to visit you and you wanted me to see the greatness of your dear friend, how would you do that? Would you show the love of your friend by your trying to do everything for yourself? Would you show the greatness of your friend by trying to do things for your friend? No, the way you would show me the glory of your friend is by asking her to do things for you. As you depended upon her, I would see the greatness of her love and kindness. When it comes to having faith in Jesus Christ and persevering in faith in Jesus you are a paraplegic. You cannot give yourself faith, only God can do that. So, what is the best way to show off the glory of God? Is it by you working hard for God or your trying to meet your own needs? No, we show off the glory of our Father by asking him to give us faith so that we trust him to the end of our days and live a life that shows he is the source and end of our lives. God is glorified when we rely upon him to give us every good thing for doing his will, when we ask him to work in us what is pleasing to him. The church is a praying community because…
III. God does his work in and through the church (vv. 22-25) The last three verses remind us that the context within which God does his work of giving us faith is the local church living in submission to the word of God as it is taught by called servants of God. The author prays that God work faith in them and then he immediately tells them to pay attention to his letter. The language he uses is not accidental. Verse 22 literally says, "I encourage you, brothers to bear with this word of encouragement." Twice in this letter he commands that every member of the church is to be engaged in the work of encouraging every other member of the church to hold fast to Christ. God is giving the good things they need for doing his will through the encouragement of called leaders like him and through the mutual encouragement of every member of the church. It does no good to ask God to give you faith and then to ignore the means through which he intends to give you that faith, the church living under the word of God. You can see this as well in v. 23 in the author's mentioning of Timothy and of his desire to come with Timothy as soon as possible to them. Why is he so eager to come to them and to bring Timothy along? He knows that while his letter is aimed at strengthening faith, that his immediate presence along with another respected teacher in the church will do even more good. Hearing the word of God and seeing the word of God lived out by leaders is the primary means God has ordained for the strengthening of faith. He reinforces this point by his asking them to be sure to greet their leaders along with the rest of God's people in their city. He calls attention to their leaders to remind them of what he just said in v. 17 that they are to be persuaded by these leaders and not the false teachers. Finally, he passes on the greetings of a group of Italian believers who are with him. Because of this reference to Italians, most believe that the local church to whom this letter is addressed is in Rome, which would fit well with the experience of persecution they have already experienced and that they are currently threatened by. So the author reinforces his connection with them by acknowledging that there are people they know with him. The whole ending of the letter supports one of the main themes of this letter, that we are a community of faith and it is only by being a part of that community that we can know Jesus and live the life he wants us to live. We are part of this community that has been made holy by the sacrifice of Jesus and who share a common faith in Jesus and who daily pray that God will give us everything good we need for doing his will and that he will work in each one of us what is pleasing to him. We are a community that daily reminds one another that Jesus is better and more trustworthy than everything and everyone else. Let me encourage you, as an application to this sermon, to take that tear off portion of your program home with you and to pray for the members of the congregation who are listed there and the missionaries. Pray v. 21 for each person. Pray that God would enable each person to trust Christ and to live by faith in Christ this week. Then be sure to come to our week of prayer, January 7-11. The church is a praying community because…
© Copyright 2007 John Swanson.
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