Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ in unity with the Holy Spirit.
“But encourage each other daily, while it is still called Today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception.” Hebrews 3:13 HCSB The author of Hebrews uses the word ‘Today’ in a curious manner in this passage. When would a day not be called ‘today’? Is he simply saying that we should encourage each other in our faith every day? That would just be repetitive as he has already said “Encourage each other daily.” And tomorrow will be called today when it becomes tomorrow. The author quotes from Psalm 95, a song of praise which also reminds the people of Israel of the failure of their forefathers to trust in the Lord. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” What is meant by the word ‘Today’?
The author is applying the term Today to the time between Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven and His triumphant return. Today is the day of salvation for those whose hearts are not hardened to the call of the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, God sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to pay the price for our sins. Jesus died on the Christ as the sinless sacrifice so that we can made righteous before our Holy God. Yesterday, Christ rose from the grave to win our victory over sin and death. Yesterday, Christ ascended into heaven to rule over all creation. Yesterday, God made His grace and mercy clear to all who will hear His glorious message of redemption that He does love you and that He wants you to spend eternity with Him in endless joy. Yesterday was the day that God’s plan of salvation was made possible. Tomorrow, Christ will return in glory with power to make all things new. Tomorrow, Christ will right the wrongs and bring the fullness of His justice to a broken world.
And so we live in Today - a time between Yesterday and Tomorrow. Yesterday when God’s plan of salvation was made known and Tomorrow when all of creation will be re-made complete and whole. We live in Today, between the act of salvation and its completion. Today is the time when those who believe in Christ as their salvation anxiously await His return and seek to make known the Good News to everyone. God wants everyone to know Him. God wants everyone to be saved and live for eternity. God does not want anyone to be condemned and so He is patient. When it comes to faith, Today is the day to answer the Lord’s call. Today is the day to listen to the call of the Holy Spirit. Tomorrow may be too late. Tomorrow, Christ will return in glory to gather up His sheep, those who have answered the call of the Holy Spirit and believe in the One and Only Son of the Most High God. Today is the day of your salvation.
God will bring Tomorrow when the time is perfect. And God wants us to live in Today by faith that Tomorrow will come. He wants us to use the time that we have been given Today to seek Him with ever more desire, to worship Him ever more thoroughly, to love Him with the love He has for us. But we can be discouraged while we wait. We can begin to doubt. Today has been a long time. Today has stretched from days to months to years to centuries. And still we wait for Tomorrow, still we wait for Christ’s return.
That long wait for Tomorrow can be discouraging, especially in a day like ours in a culture like ours in which hearts are hardened towards our Lord and King. We are anticipating the fulfillment of God’s promise just as the Hebrew people who wandered in the desert anticipated the fulfillment of God’s promise for them in their version of Today. Yesterday, the Hebrews had seen the wonders of God as He freed them from bondage in Egypt. Tomorrow, they would enter the Promised Land. But in their Today, they wandered in the dry land; they became discouraged and their hearts began to be hardened. When Moses went up on Mount Sinai to hear the voice of God and receive the Ten Commandments, they wondered if he would ever return. They thought that they had been forsaken by God and by Moses. And so they rebelled, forging a golden calf to worship in place of the One true God. In just 40 days, they lost heart and turned away because their leader was not physically present with them. They were discouraged and we also can become discouraged in the physical absence of Jesus Christ. We have waited nearly 2000 years. We can begin to doubt that He will keep His promise to return. We need encouragement to keep the faith. We need encouragement to hold on to the promises of God. The long day of Today can be discouraging, so we need to encourage one another as the author of Hebrews urges us to do. “But encourage each other daily, while it is still called Today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception.”
What does it mean to encourage one another and how can we do this? Encourage means to inspire, to give hope, to lift up, to give courage to. We encourage one another in our faith when we help others to see the hope of Jesus Christ. All of us can become discouraged in this day that is called Today and all of us need others to inspire us to deepen our relationship with God. We encourage one another in our shared faith through words, through actions, and by our attitude.
Our words are too often used to discourage rather than to encourage. This is what happened when the Hebrews approached the Promised Land. In the book of Numbers, God had Moses send out twelve men, a chief of each tribe, to scout out the Promised Land. They came back with an encouraging report that the land was one with great natural resources. They came back with figs and grapes and said that it was a land that flowed with milk and honey, but most of the scouts were scared of the inhabitants. Their words were discouraging to the Hebrew people saying that the inhabitants had large fortified cities and that the people were large and strong, calling themselves grasshoppers in comparison. The discouraging word was that the Hebrews had no chance to take over the land. Only Joshua and Caleb trusted that the Lord was with them. They encouraged the Hebrews that God would deliver the land to them. Joshua and Caleb believed and trusted the Lord’s promises and their words were meant to encourage their people.
We also can encourage one another with words that lift up rather than bring down. It’s much easier to speak with discouraging words but we are called to be encouraging. Jesus Christ has promised to be with us always to the end of the age, to the end of Today, and that is an encouraging promise. Even though we cannot see Him, He is with us, and we need to encourage others to believe this promise and take it to heart. There is nothing that we cannot overcome with the help of the One who overcame sin and death. We can help others to strengthen their trust in Lord by encouraging them to take part in Bible studies to more fully understand God’s promises to us. We can encourage others by inviting them to worship.
We can encourage one another with actions. Words are powerful, but actions are more meaningful. One of the great encouragers of the Bible is Barnabas whose very name given to him by the Apostles means son of encouragement. In the very early days of the Christian Church when it was little more than a small band of brothers and sisters in Christ at Jerusalem, the people of the church lived communally, sharing everything that they had in order to advance the kingdom of God. Barnabas took the encouraging action of selling a field that he owned and bring the money to the Apostles. (Acts 4:36-37) This action showed that Barnabas was willing to give up all that he had for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Have you had a Barnabas in your life? Someone who by their actions showed that their faith in Christ was more than an intellectual decision? Someone who proves their faith by their actions? Possibly the most encouragement I had in my walk of faith was by seeing the people around me at Messiah in Charlotte who did live their faith by sacrificing their time and their money for the advancement of God’s kingdom on earth. This was a time in my life when my faith was weak and I questioned the reality of the Christian faith because I had rarely seen anyone live as if their faith was the most important part of their life. But then as I looked around me in my church, I saw people who gave up their careers to enter the mission field. I saw men and women who spent endless hours to bring the Gospel to our community. I saw people who were learned in the Scriptures and taught the Word of God. Their actions encouraged me to take a deeper look at the Christian faith and I found truth and I found an intimate relationship with our Savior. They were my Barnabas.
Can you be a Barnabas in someone else’s life? Do your actions encourage others to seek a deeper relationship with Christ and to live out their Christian faith? We set an example for others with our actions more so than with our words. We can strive to encourage others around us with the sacrifices that we make to further the kingdom of God in our homes, in our church, and in our community. My hope is that our church will early next year begin having in-home Bible studies. This is a wonderful way to fellowship with other believers and encourage each other in our faith. But it requires a sacrifice of time that is always hard to come by. Will you be the Barnabas that opens your home for the advancement of God’s kingdom?
We can also encourage others with a positive attitude. Attitude is infectious, whether it’s positive or negative. It’s easy to be brought down when others around us convey a sense of doom and gloom. Because of our sinful nature, people have a natural tendency to accentuate the negative instead of the positive. We take our blessings for granted and focus on that which goes wrong. We rely on our own plans that so often go awry instead of allowing God to work. Paul tells us “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13) Our work in advancing the kingdom of God is not entirely on our own shoulders. We have responsibility to do the work that God lays before us, but He doesn’t leave us on our own. Christ strengthens us, Christ encourages us. And with Him we are renewed. We will soar on wings like eagles. We will run and not be weary. By relying on Christ, we can’t help but have a positive attitude that infects those around us. Christ is our encourager so that we can encourage others.
We live in Today, between the accomplishment of God’s plan of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God and the completion of God’s plan when Christ returns. These can be discouraging days as we wait and wait hoping that Christ comes soon, but we can be encouraged to know that God has promised that He will return and God always keeps His promises. We can encourage one another in this age, Today, to keep our hope alive, to strengthen our faith, through words, actions, and attitudes.
May the grace of God, the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.
