Year 6, Day 107: Hebrews 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

In this chapter, the author of Hebrews talks an awful lot about the character of human beings after he talks about the nature of Christ.  He starts with the Hebrew people at the time of the exodus.  We’ll extrapolate that information and put it back upon us.

The people of the exodus were the ones who were told that they were not worthy of entering the Promised Land.  Let that sink in.  How much had the people of the Exodus seen?  They got to see all of the plagues – terrifying and amazing as they must have been.  They got to see Egypt absolutely plundered just to get rid of the Hebrew people.  They got to see the Egyptian army come after them, only to experience the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea.  They got to see Moses get the Law atop of Sinai.  They got to experience the manna from heaven.  They got to experience the water from the rock – twice even!  They got to experience the budding of Aaron’s staff.  They got to experience the pillar of smoke leading them around.  They had incredible experience after incredible experience to guide them in faith.  But they were rebellious.  They didn’t have it in them to believe.

What can we take from this?  First of all, faith is not based on the things we experience.  So often we think that if we would just see more of God’s miraculous power that we would believe more easily or more fervently.  That’s just not true.  Faith is a result of our character’s response to God’s action, not our experiences.  Faith is a gift from God coming through who we are; not something we make within ourselves based on what we see and do.

The second thing that we can pull from this is that our character is incredibly important.  It is important to build that character so that we are reliable regardless of our circumstances.  We will all experience discouragement.  If our character is weak, discouragement will turn us away just as the rebellious nation in the desert rebelled.  All of us will experience temptation.  If our character is weak, discouragement will turn us away just as the rebellious nation in the desert rebelled.

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