The Living Bible (385 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
Although God’s promise still stands—his promise that all may enter his place of rest—we ought to tremble with fear because some of you may be on the verge of failing to get there after all.
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For this wonderful news—the message that God wants to save us—has been given to us just as it was to those who lived in the time of Moses. But it didn’t do them any good because they didn’t believe it. They didn’t mix it with faith.
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For only we who believe God can enter into his place of rest. He has said, “I have sworn in my anger that those who don’t believe me will never get in,” even though he has been ready and waiting for them since the world began.
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We know he is ready and waiting because it is written that God rested on the seventh day of creation, having finished all that he had planned to make.
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Even so they didn’t get in, for God finally said, “They shall never enter my rest.”
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Yet the promise remains and some get in—but not those who had the first chance, for they disobeyed God and failed to enter.
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But he has set another time for coming in, and that time is now. He announced this through King David long years after man’s first failure to enter, saying in the words already quoted, “Today when you hear him calling, do not harden your hearts against him.”
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This new place of rest he is talking about does not mean the land of Israel that Joshua led them into. If that were what God meant, he would not have spoken long afterwards about “today” being the time to get in.
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So there is a full complete rest
still waiting
for the people of God.
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Christ has already entered there. He is resting from his work, just as God did after the creation.
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Let us do our best to go into that place of rest, too, being careful not to disobey God as the children of Israel did, thus failing to get in.
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For whatever God says to us is full of living power: it is sharper than the sharpest dagger, cutting swift and deep into our innermost thoughts and desires with all their parts, exposing us for what we really are.
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He knows about everyone, everywhere. Everything about us is bare and wide open to the all-seeing eyes of our living God; nothing can be hidden from him to whom we must explain all that we have done.
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But Jesus the Son of God is our great High Priest who has gone to heaven itself to help us; therefore let us never stop trusting him.
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This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses since he had the same temptations we do, though he never once gave way to them and sinned.
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So let us come boldly to the very throne of God and stay there to receive his mercy and to find grace to help us in our times of need.
The Jewish high priest is merely a man like anyone else, but he is chosen to speak for all other men in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers to him the blood of animals that are sacrificed to cover the sins of the people and his own sins too. And because he is a man, he can deal gently with other men, though they are foolish and ignorant, for he, too, is surrounded with the same temptations and understands their problems very well.
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Another thing to remember is that no one can be a high priest just because he wants to be. He has to be called by God for this work in the same way God chose Aaron.
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That is why Christ did not elect himself to the honor of being High Priest; no, he was chosen by God. God said to him, “My Son, today I have honored you.”
*
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And another time God said to him, “You have been chosen to be a priest forever, with the same rank as Melchizedek.”
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Yet while Christ was here on earth he pleaded with God, praying with tears and agony of soul to the only one who would save him from premature
*
death. And God heard his prayers because of his strong desire to obey God at all times.
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And even though Jesus was God’s Son, he had to learn from experience what it was like to obey when obeying meant suffering.
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It was after he had proved himself perfect in this experience that Jesus became the Giver of eternal salvation to all those who obey him.
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For remember that God has chosen him to be a High Priest with the same rank as Melchizedek.
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There is much more I would like to say along these lines, but you don’t seem to listen, so it’s hard to make you understand.
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You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you have dropped back to the place where you need someone to teach you all over again the very first principles in God’s Word. You are like babies who can drink only milk, not old enough for solid food. And when a person is still living on milk it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life, and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian!
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You will never be able to eat solid spiritual food and understand the deeper things of God’s Word until you become better Christians and learn right from wrong by practicing doing right.
Let us stop going over the same old ground again and again, always teaching those first lessons about Christ. Let us go on instead to other things and become mature in our understanding, as strong Christians ought to be. Surely we don’t need to speak further about the foolishness of trying to be saved by being good, or about the necessity of faith in God;
2
you don’t need further instruction about baptism and spiritual gifts
*
and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
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The Lord willing, we will go on now to other things.
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There is no use trying to bring you back to the Lord again if you have once understood the Good News and tasted for yourself the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit,
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and know how good the Word of God is, and felt the mighty powers of the world to come,
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and then have turned against God. You cannot bring yourself to repent again if you have nailed the Son of God to the cross again by rejecting him, holding him up to mocking and to public shame.
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When a farmer’s land has had many showers upon it and good crops come up, that land has experienced God’s blessing upon it.
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But if it keeps on having crops of thistles and thorns, the land is considered no good and is ready for condemnation and burning off.
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Dear friends, even though I am talking like this I really don’t believe that what I am saying applies to you. I am confident you are producing the good fruit that comes along with your salvation.
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For God is not unfair. How can he forget your hard work for him, or forget the way you used to show your love for him—and still do—by helping his children?
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And we are anxious that you keep right on loving others as long as life lasts, so that you will get your full reward.
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Then, knowing what lies ahead for you, you won’t become bored with being a Christian nor become spiritually dull and indifferent, but you will be anxious to follow the example of those who receive all that God has promised them because of their strong faith and patience.
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For instance, there was God’s promise to Abraham: God took an oath in his own name, since there was no one greater to swear by,
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that he would bless Abraham again and again, and give him a son and make him the father of a great nation of people.
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Then Abraham waited patiently until finally God gave him a son, Isaac, just as he had promised.
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When a man takes an oath, he is calling upon someone greater than himself to force him to do what he has promised or to punish him if he later refuses to do it; the oath ends all argument about it.
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God also bound himself with an oath, so that those he promised to help would be perfectly sure and never need to wonder whether he might change his plans.
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He has given us both his promise and his oath, two things we can completely count on, for it is impossible for God to tell a lie. Now all those who flee to him to save them can take new courage when they hear such assurances from God; now they can know without doubt that he will give them the salvation he has promised them.
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This certain hope of being saved is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls, connecting us with God himself behind the sacred curtains of heaven,
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where Christ has gone ahead to plead for us from his position as our High Priest,
*
with the honor and rank of Melchizedek.
This Melchizedek was king of the city of Salem and also a priest of the Most High God. When Abraham was returning home after winning a great battle against many kings, Melchizedek met him and blessed him;
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then Abraham took a tenth of all he had won in the battle and gave it to Melchizedek.
Melchizedek’s name means “Justice,” so he is the King of Justice; and he is also the King of Peace because of the name of his city, Salem, which means “Peace.”
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Melchizedek had no father or mother
*
and there is no record of any of his ancestors. He was never born and he never died but his life is like that of the Son of God—a priest forever.
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See then how great this Melchizedek is:
(a)
Even Abraham, the first and most honored of all God’s chosen people, gave Melchizedek a tenth of the spoils he took from the kings he had been fighting.
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One could understand why Abraham would do this if Melchizedek had been a Jewish priest, for later on God’s people were required by law to give gifts to help their priests because the priests were their relatives.
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But Melchizedek was not a relative, and yet Abraham paid him.
(b)
Melchizedek placed a blessing upon mighty Abraham,
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and as everyone knows, a person who has the power to bless is always greater than the person he blesses.
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(c)
The Jewish priests, though mortal, received tithes; but we are told that Melchizedek lives on.
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(d)
One might even say that Levi himself (the ancestor of all Jewish priests, of all who receive tithes), paid tithes to Melchizedek through Abraham.
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For although Levi wasn’t born yet, the seed from which he came was in Abraham when Abraham paid the tithes to Melchizedek.
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(e)
If the Jewish priests and their laws had been able to save us, why then did God need to send Christ as a priest with the rank of Melchizedek, instead of sending someone with the rank of Aaron—the same rank all other priests had?
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And when God sends a new kind of priest, his law must be changed to permit it. As we all know, Christ did not belong to the priest-tribe of Levi, but came from the tribe of Judah, which had not been chosen for priesthood; Moses had never given them that work.
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So we can plainly see that God’s method changed, for Christ, the new High Priest who came with the rank of Melchizedek,
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did not become a priest by meeting the old requirement of belonging to the tribe of Levi, but on the basis of power flowing from a life that cannot end.
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And the psalmist points this out when he says of Christ, “You are a priest forever with the rank of Melchizedek.”
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Yes, the old system of priesthood based on family lines was canceled because it didn’t work. It was weak and useless for saving people.
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It never made anyone really right with God. But now we have a far better hope, for Christ makes us acceptable to God, and now we may draw near to him.
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God took an oath that Christ would always be a Priest,
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although he never said that of other priests. Only to Christ he said, “The Lord has sworn and will never change his mind: You are a Priest forever, with the rank of Melchizedek.”
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Because of God’s oath, Christ can guarantee forever the success of this new and better arrangement.
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Under the old arrangement there had to be many priests so that when the older ones died off, the system could still be carried on by others who took their places.
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But Jesus lives forever and continues to be a Priest so that no one else is needed.
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He is able to save completely all who come to God through him. Since he will live forever, he will always be there to remind God that he has paid for their sins with his blood.
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He is, therefore, exactly the kind of High Priest we need; for he is holy and blameless, unstained by sin, undefiled by sinners, and to him has been given the place of honor in heaven.
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He never needs the daily blood of animal sacrifices, as other priests did, to cover over first their own sins and then the sins of the people; for he finished all sacrifices, once and for all, when he sacrificed himself on the cross.
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Under the old system, even the high priests were weak and sinful men who could not keep from doing wrong, but later God appointed by his oath his Son who is perfect forever.