Afterwords -- lest we drift away
"Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." (Hebrews 2:1-4)
August 5, 2023
Dear friends,
Boats which are not secured or anchored tend to drift away. Likewise, people without clarity or purpose tend to lose their mooring in life and drift off. The letter of Hebrews, which I have begun reading, is addressed to Christians, many of whom were of Jewish background and culture, who were in danger of drifting away from their wholehearted trust in Christ as presented in the biblical gospel.
CULTURAL CURRENTS. One thing we learn right away is that the cultural currents which threaten to take us away from Christ are those often-popular opinions which devalue the person and work of our Lord Jesus. We forget how world-and-life-changing it is to know Jesus! We begin to drift by slowly being conformed to prevailing opinions about Jesus Christ. We compromise, we minimize, we water down what it means to believe in Christ. We see this...
-- When we come to believe that Jesus is merely one way among others.
-- When we do not recognize the lordship of Christ over all things, even the secular world.
-- When we minimize our true needs before God, and the sufficiency of Jesus to meet those needs.
-- When we prioritize humanitarian issues over God's moral principles.
-- When we have false views of Christ, leaving out his more difficult teachings.
-- When we downgrade the danger of divine judgment facing the human race.
MODERN SCHOLARS frequently say that a high view of Christ, and specifically his Deity, only came to pass much later in church history. Yet, here in this first century letter (written at a time when there were people still alive who had seen Jesus), even in the first three verses, there is an exceedingly high view of Christ. See my chart at the bottom of this newsletter, illustrating what Hebrews teaches in the very first three verses alone. Are you presently aware of the reality of these truths? Or are you being more influenced by what other people think?
As I read Hebrews, I'm reading also A Merciful and Faithful High Priest: Studies in the Book of Hebrews, by Martyn Lloyd Jones (Crossway, 2019). Btw, here's Lloyd-Jones preaching on Heb 2:1-4, "How Shall We Escape?"
LOVING GOD WITH OUR MIND. What does that mean? Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment." (Matt 22:37-38) Abraham Kuyper, in his work To Be Near Unto God, writes of that "unspeakable greatness of the gift of consciousness" given to us from God. He shows how our thinking -- whether in science, art, or religion -- can be filled with God-honoring thoughts. Here's that chapter online.
OLD BOOKS, ANCIENT PATHS, GREAT TRADITIONS. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful" (God in the Dock). Each new generation discovers fresh applications of truth. But regarding truth, relevance is only one factor. A truth, or truths, that seem obvious to one generation, yet going unrepeated, becomes unknown to the next generation. This is why even the gospel itself can be lost in a very short time. We assume that things that we know now do not need to be repeated to succeeding generations, because, well, they are so obvious or "old hat." You may have noticed that this is a recurring theme of mine: "Thus says the LORD: 'Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.'"(Jer 6:16). Michael Horton writes, "We need our brothers and sisters down through the ages. We need the whole church for this task of explaining God's word."
SOME LITTLE BOOKS. Please note that not all Christian classics are long! Here are some shorter works:
-- A Little Book on the Christian Life, by John Calvin. A new translation (Ligonier, 2017). Small volume, 130 pages, begins, "The goal of God's work in us is to bring our lives into harmony and agreement with His own righteousness, and so to manifest to ourselves and others our identity as His adopted children."
-- All Of Grace: An Earnest Word with Those Seeking Salvation, by C. H. Spurgeon: “It is not great faith but true faith that saves. And the salvation lies not in the faith but in the Christ in whom faith trusts.”
-- Other short classics: On Loving God (Bernard of Clairvaux); The Imitation of Christ (Thomas á Kempis); The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence); The Life of God in the Soul of Man (Henry Scougal); and Prayer (O. Hallesby). And if you haven't read J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, here is a new 100th anniversary edition. It's a little longer, but certainly worth your time!
MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.
-- Fifty Vietnam vets receive Bronze Stars 50 years later. (This week I officiated a graveside service for a Vietnam veteran. Generally, these vets never got the credit they deserved.)
-- A Wheaton professor claims native American religion is fulfilled by Christianity. (He tells about a Mohawk Indian, asked if his ancestors were of "the traditional religion", said, "Yes, they’re Anglican, and so am I.") Two interesting essays by Matthew Milliner here and here.
-- Read about magnificent but misunderstood pigeons. (We have a pair of friendly ring-necked doves living nearby.)
FINALLY, A WORD ABOUT DOG DAYS. So, what are the "dog days" of summer? I used to think that it was when dogs would spend the day lying in the shade because it was so hot outside. Richard Binder (of richardspens.com) explains,
"It all started with the ancient Greeks. They were passable astronomers, their lack of telescopes notwithstanding, and they named a few stars here and there. More than a few, actually; they created the constellations we know today. One of those constellations is Orion the Hunter, which you will see at the upper center of the image above. He’s sort of lying on his back, but those three stars in a row that make up his belt are a can’t-miss identifier. Now look toward the bottom center of the image. There’s a bright star right at the horizon. That star is Sirius, the principal star in Canis Major, the Greater Dog, and it’s often called the Dog Star. (There’s also a Canis Minor, the Lesser Dog, but we don’t care about him right now.) The image shows Sirius at its heliacal rising, which is a combination of when the star is closest to the sun and when it is first visible above the eastern horizon without binoculars or a telescope. The time of this event depends on your latitude; if you live at 30° north latitude, it happened this morning. Where I live, it will happen on August 13. Those clever Greeks invented the Dog Days, and the Dog Days are now officially defined as being the 40-day period from 20 days before the heliacal rising of Sirius to 20 days after."
So, there you have it. And that's all for this week!
Sandy
Image credit: photo above by Cereja Ris on Unsplash. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
