Good-byes can be difficult sometimes. Knowing when to say farewell before you wear out your welcome is an art. Sometimes just the process of saying good-bye can take a long time if both parties don’t wish to leave. Sometimes good-byes have to be heaved upon a guest who has lingered too long. I read recently about two university professors who were visiting. At 2 AM the house guest said, “Jay, I hate to put you out like this but I do have an early class I must teach.” His professor friend replied, “I’m sorry for staying so long, I thought we were at my house.”
Over these last 63 messages from Hebrews, it may have seemed that the author labored too long on some points but I don’t think this is the case. Perhaps, without giving fault to the author, it may have been your pastor who labored too long on some points. But we have come very nearly to the end of this letter and the author gives his closing benediction upon this letter. The key idea of the passage is that the author’s benediction describes for us who God is how we need Him. He tells us, in his benediction, three aspects of the believer’s relationship with God.
I. Our Peace with God
The first aspect of the believer’s relationship with God the author mentions is our peace with God. He tells us in verse 20 that the Lord is the God of peace. He shows us two key ingredients of God’s peace. But before we look at these two key ingredients of God’s peace let us speak a little about this peace. What the author means by calling God, a God of peace, is that He both seeks and acts upon the task of reconciling people to Himself. There is a world war going on. It is a world at war with God. Every (and the Scripture clearly says EVERY) individual is born separated from God. They begin life at war with God as His enemy. And it is God who seeks and brings them to Himself. For Romans 3 says that there is none who seeks for God, not even one. So why then do people search for God? God is working in their lives to draw people to Himself. He is a God of peace, a God of reconciliation, but He will not compromise His holiness to be at peace with anyone who will not come in His way. So He is a God of peace not because He brings everyone to peace with Him but because He earnestly seeks to bring people to Himself in love.
A. The means of peace
This brings us to the first key ingredient of God’s peace. This is the means of peace. What is the means by which God brings peace? Through the death and resurrection of His Son. The author says that God “brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep.” The resurrection was an absolutely necessary part of reconciling us to God. It was essential to secure our righteousness because the resurrection proved that Jesus was who He claimed to be and that the Father accepted His once for all sacrifice on our behalf for the forgiveness of our sins. Both Christ’s death and His resurrection are the means of peace.
God ordained the means of this reconciliation. He carried it out in perfect detail, (or as Isaiah described it) “plans formed long ago with perfect faithfulness.” In Acts 2:23 Peter tells the Jewish people, “this Man (Jesus was) delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.” God planned every aspect of Christ’s life and the events leading up to His crucifixion. A friend would betray Him. He would be scourged for our wellbeing. He would be crucified with transgressors. He would pray for His accusers. This was orchestrated by the hand of God Almighty. So much so that the Scripture says Jesus was conscious of what it was He Himself needed to do at each point in the crucifixion event. God ordained the means of our reconciliation.
There is no other means of obtaining peace with God. He has provided it and unless one receives it he cannot experience reconciliation with God.
B. The mediator of peace
The next key ingredient of God’s peace is the mediator of peace. The author calls Jesus the “great Shepherd of the sheep.” He is referencing John 10 when Jesus tells us that He is the good shepherd and that it is the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. Why is He the great Shepherd of the sheep? He is the great Shepherd by the blood of the eternal covenant He shed for us. He laid down His life for us. It is Jesus, the mediator, the go-between, who intercedes to the Father for us. He has brought us life by giving up His life. He shed His blood, the blood of the eternal covenant.
If you remember it is this eternal covenant the author has emphasized throughout his letter. The eternal covenant, the New Covenant, Jesus has inaugurated through His blood. The covenant has been cut so that we may enter into the blessings of it. We may participate in its forgiveness because of our relationship to Christ. This covenant is permanent in its nature and scope (It is eternal). It is a national covenant in regard to its relationship to Israel (as we saw in 8:8). But it is also universal in relation to the world. Every tribe and nation will benefit because of this covenant. And it is through this mediator of peace, Jesus Christ, that we are reconciled with God the Father. And this is how we obtain peace with God. It is what Paul said in Romans 5:1. “Therefore, having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Who is this mediator of peace? Paul says just as the author of Hebrews says it. It is Jesus our Lord. He is Lord. He is our Master, the One we serve. God has provided the means of peace through a mediator of peace.
In conclusion to this, what does this mean that we serve a God of peace? It means, what Jesus said in the beatitudes, that we are to be peacemakers. Now this doesn’t mean we petition for war to cease or hold anti-war rallies but that we actively seek to bring people to have peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean we are to be at peace with all men. Even the apostle Paul recognized the impossibility of such a thing. He said in Romans 12:18, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.” But Paul knew that in our goal to bring people to experience peace with God we would not be at peace with everyone. As believers we are on a cosmic peace mission. The people of this world are at war with God. And they need to be told the good news of the Gospel that God has provided terms of peace by which they might become God’s friends. This is the application for us that our God is a God of peace. God’s desire for peace with mankind calls for us to seek people’s reconciliation with God. He hasn’t sent us to bring peace to the world through suicide bombing or forceful dominance of the church. Man’s peace with God does not come by physical force but by the free acceptance of the Gospel of grace. And this is the message we are to be about. This is the message we are to proclaim.
II. Our (presumption upon) Dependence on God
The second aspect of our relationship with God the author mentions is our dependence on God. He says in verse 21 that it is necessary for God to “equip us in every good thing.” If God doesn’t equip us for His service then we are helpless indeed. For what He calls us to do is impossible in human strength. If what we do for God is something we could have done without invoking God’s power then we are simply carrying out our own work and not God’s. If what we hope for are human results then we will simply serve and worship the greatness of our own effort. But if we look to God’s equipping and strength to do beyond what we could hope to accomplish then we will worship a mighty God upon whom we are completely dependent. In this verse the author lists two ways in which we must be equipped.
A. To do His will
The first way in which we must be equipped by God is to do His will. I think we can agree that understanding God’s will and doing God’s will are two different things. Understanding God’s will only requires intellectual assent. It only requires a nod of the head. But actually doing God’s will takes much more. It takes the work of God in both our will and our action. Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” If you are really accomplish God’s will (not just know it – but to desire it and do it) then you must seek God for the desire and strength to carry it out. You may see God’s will ahead of you. The Word of God may be clearly hitting you in the face but you might not like it. You might not see its purpose or its benefit in your life but you know it is God’s will nonetheless. Then you need to ask God for the desire to do His will as well as for the strength. There are things I know I need to do but I don’t necessarily want to. Well in that case, as I tell my children, “I need to get my “wanter” fixed.” And the only way I can do this is to ask God to let me see it from His point of view. I must ask Him to get me fired up to do His will.
It is a most dangerous thing when you know what God’s will is and then you talk yourself out of it. What you think is hard or dangerous or maybe even ludicrous when it comes to God’s will doesn’t demand more faith it demands that your desires be changed. Ask God to change your desires so that you would want to do His will.
I think a reason that many in our western Christianity are so complacent where they are in their Christian life is that they have not learned to cry out to God as Jesus did when He was struggling with temptation in the garden. The author of Hebrews says that Jesus “offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death.” We don’t seek to be equipped by God to do His will because we don’t take the time to humble ourselves on our faces before God and ask Him to give us the desire and strength to do His will. And so we go on our way and neglect to separate from worldliness, give up on missionary service, and refuse to forgive those who have wronged us because we would rather live a natural life than one in which we are God equipped to serve Him.
B. To be pleasing to Him
The second way we must be equipped by God is to be pleasing to Him. The author says, to “equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ.” Now this slams against any kind of self-movement there is. Understanding that it must be God working in us to please Him removes every stilt of pride that we may have set up. This doctrine of complete reliance upon God to even please Him causes us to fall on our faces in humility. It shows the pretense, the sham, of looking to anyone or anything else for comparison of our relative goodness. We don’t believe the Bible, we don’t believe it when Paul says, “In me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing.” We want to find something good in ourselves. This doctrine brings most people much too low to be comfortable; after all I’m not like that person. But if you are there you have missed the point. If you are still offering up comparisons with others then you are not ready to fully receive God’s equipping for you to be pleasing in His sight.
But this should not make us despondent or unresponsive to God, as if we are to wait until we feel some breath of God blowing through us. This is not the purpose of causing us to recognize our helplessness without God’s equipping. This is not it at all. It is to cause us, in our humility, to cast ourselves upon Jesus, our mediator of peace, through whom we have received reconciliation to God the Father. If He gave Himself for us when we were God’s enemies, do think that He will not now work in us for His glory?
And this is what the verse says. If we are seeking God to equip us for His service what is taking place? “He is working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ.” We can be assured that as we seek Him, He will work in us that which is pleasing. But when God is transforming your life don’t allow pride to cause you to look anywhere else, for the victory you experience, than to Jesus Christ.
What is it we can gain from recognizing our utter dependence upon God to carry out His work? First, we can see that what God started in you He will complete. He will not leave the work He started undone. If you walk away from what you say is God’s work in your life, then it’s not God’s work. God will not leave unfinished what He started. In Philippians 1:6, the apostle Paul said, “He who began a good work in you will complete it in the day of Jesus Christ.”
This should also cause us to have great confidence that we can have victory over sin and to live pleasing in God’s sight. The joy that is promised us when we walk in obedience to His Word is a great consolation to the trials we endure for His Name’s sake.
III. Our Praise to God
This brings us to the third aspect of our relationship with God the author mentions and this is our praise to God. At the end of verse 21 the author notes that God works out all these things through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” Because of God’s sure work in our lives through Jesus Christ it is fitting for us to give praise to Him. And the praise due His name is not temporary. The eternal life that Jesus Christ has provided us through His own sacrifice deserves eternal praise.
And eternal praise is what we have been saved for. We are being prepared as the people of God to give Him the praise forever and ever. In Ephesians 2:7 Paul told the Ephesians we have not yet begun to see all that God did for us in saving us but that, “in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Why has He done this? Why has He bestowed all His mercies upon us in His kindness? He has done it for the praise of His glory.
As those who have been rescued by His grace, our hearts should be filled with praise and honor to the One who has given us life. We should never fail to remember the full and complete salvation He has given to us. If we truly understand what we have been rescued from and what we have been rescued to, then we will praise God, as we should.
Since we have been saved through the God of peace and are equipped to do His will and be pleasing in His sight then let us serve our great God. Let us give Him the glory forever and ever.