Daily Meditations

Hebrews 5:12 Milk, not solid food For a Pastor, there is nothing more frustrating than to have members in your congregation who have never progressed, who stand still in their faith and show no inclination to move on! Some boast of a great experience in the past, of an encounter with God that changed their lives and use that moment as the major credential for their faith, but it seems impossible to help them to understand that every day can be an experience with the Lord! There are others, of course, who hear the teaching, listen to the pleadings of the Holy Spirit but somehow it passes them by, they do not make progress on the journey of faith. Others are hung up on particular doctrines or their allegiance to a way of thinking and cannot expand their horizons to embrace new truth or fresh encouragement from the Word of God.  It is impossible to argue with the writer of Hebrews who expresses similar frustrations, especially when he can identify those who, by now, should themselves ...

  Hebrews 5:11 You no longer try to understand There is a frustration voiced here that will be familiar to most Bible scholars and teachers.  Students of the Word of God who delve into its secrets for the blessing of others, constantly find themselves “banging their heads against a brick wall!” because there is so much truth, so much to be revealed. Every hour spent in digging deeper into the layers of revelation in the Word, only serves to uncover yet more mysteries and deeper strata of understanding and knowledge. This Book is infinite in its complexity and like the stars in the sky, its Creator just has more and more to reveal to us, we know we will never grasp it all in a single lifetime! Many of us look back and wonder how the attention we gave to Scripture in our younger years could have been so flippant and fleeting, now we can easily spend whole days uncovering its secrets. But the task is in some ways, thankless because we do not have the time or the ability to p...

Hebrews 5:10 The mystery of Melchizedek Melchizedek! We have already encountered this mysterious figure from Israel’s past, for he is mentioned in verse 6 of this chapter. As we have noted, a whole chapter of this Epistle to the Hebrews will be devoted to this enigmatic man, so it is time to become better acquainted! As we have seen, he was King of Salem (Jerusalem) and also priest of the Lord God Almighty. Melchizedek means “king of righteousness” and he met up with Abraham after Abraham’s defeat of Chedorlaomer and his allies. (See Genesis 14:18-20) You will remember that the two men shared bread and wine together as a symbol of friendship. Melchizedek revealed his credentials when he gave a blessing to Abraham in the name of God Most High (El Elyon). This prompted Abraham to give the Priest one tenth of his war spoils thus showing that he respected him and recognised his Godly office.  Psalm 110 is a Messianic Psalm that speaks of the roles of the King/Priest who is to come and ...

Hebrews 5:9 The call to obedience Perfect obedience is the key to perfect character! Most of us will have to hold our hands up and admit we are very far away from this kind of commitment to the cause; we are only too aware of our weaknesses and failings and of how far short of God’s standards we fall. Jesus might have been like us, He was human, He did have a choice about how He wanted to live out His time on earth. But He chose obedience, and in order to fulfil that choice to the ultimate degree, He also chose to allow His obedience to be tested to the very limits. The only way to achieve perfection was not by trying to be good, but by allowing every kind of trial and test to be thrown at Him and thus to prove that nothing could deflect Him from His commitment to obey the Father’s will. The ultimate tests were suffering and death. His suffering was not just the tip of the Roman soldier’s spear, or the jagged spikes of a crown of thorns, or even the lashes of the scourging whips. There...

Hebrews 5:8 A lesson in obedience Some of us may have had strict parents who believed in discipline and physical punishment. Some who are older may also remember the days when schoolteachers had canes and did not shrink from using them! Proverbs 13:24 says,  “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him, disciplines him diligently .” The word “diligently” is very important here! The thing is, our Bibles teach us that Yeshua was without sin, and yet His Father chose to teach Him obedience through suffering! To make sense of this we need to understand that true obedience means more than just “do as I say or you will face the consequences!” Jesus did not have a struggle trying to keep His rebellious nature under control and neither did He behave as if doing what His Father required was against His own will! He learned, as a child, to obey His parents and then as He grew up, He was taught the Law of God. When questioned by John about baptism, Jesus replied that He must ...