March 29, 2020 Week 3 of church, not-in-person, due to COVID-19 Hebrews 4:14-5:10
“Give heed”, “Take care”, “While it is still Today”, and lots of “Therefores…” We see all kinds of words of warning and ‘you better do this or else this is going to happen…’ type of exhortations. There are many things to which we need to pay much closer attention.
And in the midst of hearing of an extended quarantine time, more limitations is not the most uplifting news. But we must believe the sequestering is for the betterment of the most people. We would do well to heed the warnings. We must believe them and act as such. If we’re patient we will persevere even if it, dare I say it, must go on longer.
Much of Hebrews is written with this somber tone. The faithful life requires much endurance, patience and standing firm when things are not going as you planned. And in the midst of whatever the circumstances, it is the Lord shaping and molding us.
But take heart! {spoiler alert for the near the end of Hebrews} Every warning heeded bears the distinctive fruit of the discipline of the Lord – this training yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. {12:11}
And you’ve also heard that, “Cleanliness is next to godliness”, right?
It certainly does have its benefits today. I have washed my hands more in the last three weeks than I had in my entire life to this point… well, not really, but it feels like it. A recent Wall St. Journal article tells us that hand washing is a relatively recent discovery in the history of medicine. A physician in the 1840’s was first to promote the idea of hand washing. John Wesley was who coined the ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ phrase in a 1778 sermon, but no, the actual phrase is not found in the bible, but the idea behind it is. Today we wash to avoid COVID-19 because our hands get polluted with germs. Air gets polluted. Water gets polluted. So washing and cleansing it turns out, is a pretty smart goal. Likewise, it is true that our souls get polluted. Peter tells us that sin wages war with our souls (1 Peter 2:11) to contaminate them. So we must therefore be diligent to allow Jesus to cleanse us, “by the washing of water with the word” (Eph. 5:26). And where and when does this take place? When we come confidently come before His throne of grace talked about in Hebrews 4. By Jesus’ word we are clean (John 15:3). We have this promise: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
His grace is the only cleaning agent that can kill the sin germ, and we can only get it at His throne of grace.