On a student foreign exchange trip, I made a good friend who had made a strange decision. In order to get back to a ‘pure and authentic’ prayer life with God, he decided not to read the Bible for a year. I lost touch with him, but heard that by the time the year was out, he was no longer following Christ. Sad, but no surprise! 

The writer to the Hebrews makes it clear there is a real danger that any of those who hear God’s promise (v 2) and begin to live like believers can fall away. Be careful that’s not you (v 1). God has given us a powerful weapon to make sure it’s not us: the Bible (v 12)! Our hearts deceive us (Jeremiah 17:9). But God has given his Word to show us what’s really going on inside us (vs 12,13). And when it reveals to us what we’re really like – our weaknesses, our sin – it leads us to a God who is not aloof and disapproving, but everything we need. He understands utterly, because in Jesus, he too experienced temptation in every way that we do (v 15). The one who uncovers our sickness can heal our soul. The convicted can approach the holy God with confidence, and find compassion (v 16).

‘In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.’¹ Come to your time with God today in full confidence of his acceptance.

We tend to see verses 12 and 13 as a source of comfort; after all they speak of the stability, permanence and effectiveness of God’s Word, which we take to be equivalent to the Bible. Taken in context, however, they are more challenging. The connecting ‘for’ links the statement with what has gone before. We make every effort not to lose out, because God, to whom we have to give account, sees in such a way that our motives and desires are laid bare. There is no fooling him with empty claims to believe when the heart is not right. His Word is one which will always achieve what he intends.² For those who doubt and are in danger of going back, there is challenge, but for those who continue in faith there is comfort. We can have every confidence that God will see us through to the end.

We have already met the idea of Jesus as high priest,³ but it now becomes the theme for the next six chapters, the central idea of the sermon-letter. Here Jesus’ example provides further motivation to stay faithful. Though tempted, he remained firm. Although the whole of Jesus’ life is in view, perhaps especially in mind are the temptations, where the devil offers him an easy route to glory,⁴ and the struggle in Gethsemane, where Jesus faced the temptation to give up but did not.⁵ He is therefore perfectly equipped to support those who face the same temptation.

When other things seem more attractive, when friends and relatives do not understand why we believe, we remember that God sees and knows and that we have to give account to him, not others, and that Jesus knows exactly how we feel. We can come confidently, expecting to receive God’s grace in times of weakness and temptation (v 16).

What difference will it make to the way that you live today to remember that Jesus has travelled the same road?

¹ Eph 3:12  ² Isa 55:11  ³ Heb 2:17; 3:1  ⁴ Matt 4:1–10  ⁵ Mark 14:32–42