Tuesday 13th
Hebrews 13:4-6
NIV (v6) – ‘So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”’
ESV (v6) – ‘So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”’
Before we get to the text above (v6) the author of this letter continues from the verses we looked at yesterday with reminding the readers. and of course it is an instruction to each succeeding generation of followers of the Lord Jesus Christ on the importance of sexual ethics, if there is any area which is being challenged today in society it is in this area, where sexual morality is becoming undermined in every way possible. And it us the Church, who should be living examples in this world of what God’s standards are in this area. The author also covers the subject of money, and he is not saying that having money is wrong but it is any love for money that consumes us that is the problem, that is when gaining wealth becomes our priority or focus, this is where the teaching of the prosperity movement is so wrong, in its pursuit for being healthy and wealthy, for we are not promised wealth or health rather as we read here we are promised that if we learn to be content with what we have we will know the assurance of the verses ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ (quoted from Joshua 1:5) And so, we will confidently be able to say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’ (quoted from Psalm 118:6) There is nothing wrong with having wealth, but depending on how we handle it, it could be either a blessing or a curse, and of course we would all love to be healthy, and we have our own part to play in this in that we do all we can to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but remembering at the same time that the outward man will perish, we will all have bits and pieces that will wear out, stop working and today even have removed, or parts not functioning as they should, but we have the blessed assurance that the ‘inner man’ is being renewed daily, and that the glorious day is coming when this immortal shall put on immortality, that which has faced corruption and decay will be raised to be imperishable, what a glorious hope we have in this gospel we have come to believe.
Verse 6 takes me to Psalm 121, ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.’
Is it not great to know that as we navigate through this world with its ever shifting moods, and especially today with the rise against Christian morality and the standards that we are taught in God’s word that we have one who is there to be our helper, we can turn to his word, we can turn to him in prayer and we can, as this psalm says lift our eyes towards him, that to me speaks of keeping focused on him, it is similar to what we saw in the previous chapter about being focused upon Jesus, it would be so easy to let the world distract us, maybe if we were not too careful, to divert us and cause us to begin to question the standards of God’s word and then to slip into the same kind of lifestyle that the world follows, but as we keep focused on Jesus and looking toward our Helper he will come to our aid and enable us to live godly lives in this ungodly world. And yes, we may get ridiculed, we may be rejected by certain groups in society, but God will be faithful, he will never leave us nor forsake us. When we need to stand up for what is right, we need to do it with a right attitude, a loving attitude, and a caring attitude, showing not anger, but love toward the sinner.
May God help us to live as such that our lives will become living examples of what it truly means to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we will be light in the darkness and salt that can savour.