Episode 8: Faithfulness: Grounded in Christ
Todays passage is from: Hebrews 3:1-14
God's faithfulness is a phrase that will often roll off our tonuges, and yet we're also called to display this fruit in our lives. Join us in our conversation today as we open our Bibles and talk through what it means to both ground our minds and hearts in Christ's faithfulness, and overflow with it ourselves.
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How is God's and our faithfulness contrasted in this passage?
What does it look like to be faithful?
How can you encourage others in your everyday life?
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This episode is sponsored by Moody Publishers.
A Christian publisher, they aim to resource the church’s work of discipling all people, with titles spanning from Bible commentary and reference to spiritual and relational growth.
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The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Felicity: You're listening to the Two Sisters on a Cup of Tea podcast, the Bible Study podcast for everyday life. We're here for a 20 minute burst of Bible chat over a cup of tea and an English style biscuit as we open up the Bible and drive it to our hearts. This season we're diving deep into the fruit of the spirit together. Whether you've been listening for a while or have just found us, we are so pleased you're here. We're so thankful for Moody Publishers sponsoring us this season. And this book, By Life or Death by Andrew Montanara is a missionary biography and this is a good one. I do love a good missionary biography. It's the story of John and Betty Stam, who went to China for the Gospel and ultimately lost their lives for the sake of Jesus. It's written by a distant relative and as a result has some sweet insight along with photos and other writings. It's challenging but also heart-warming as we read of the way in which this young couple lived out a Philippians-like mindset, poured themselves out for Jesus and impacted those around them back in the early 20th century. Grab a copy wherever you get your books.
Sarah: Welcome to Two Sisters and a Cup of Tea. My name is Sarah and I'm in the UK. Wonderfully, I'm here again with my sister, Felicity. For our next round, deep into the fruit of the spirit, we are jumping into faithfulness today. Cups of tea in hand, we are ready to go, Felicity. And just off the back of what you were saying about that missionary biography that you've been reading, how do missionary biographies inspire you to faithfulness?
Felicity: That is great question isn't it? Like that is exactly... yeah!
Sarah: I so, I thought that was good cup of tea kind of question.
Felicity: Yes, because I'm always going on about how I like missionary biographies but that is a big aspect of it that I think through the lens of a missionary biography we see the God to whom they are being faithful, the God that they're serving and it kind of elevates the Lord, like we hear their story and the heartbeat behind it is just a desire to walk with Jesus faithfully and proclaim him. That's obviously a big outworking of their faithfulness there. So I think as you see their obedience, as you see their keeping going, their perseverance. A lot of these missionary biographies have a lot of perseverance in them. But also the mess as well, is it? It's just messy. Just because they're missionaries doesn't mean that they're not sinful. And so the way in which they come back to the Lord, even when they've really messed up, and yeah, it's really all in all, it's encouraging. I can think of the numerous biographies that have helped me to take the next step as I seek to be faithful.
Sarah: That's so great isn't it? So great. I think yeah, for me when I read biographies I'm particularly struck by the counting the cost that's described in their stories and what faithfulness looks like both in the ordinary moments and also in the massive moments where they're really kind of standing up for Christ in a very visible and audible way. And also God's faithfulness to his people in the very ordinary moments of these missionaries' lives and how he sustains them, how he keeps them going, and actually ultimately how he keeps them fixed on heaven when death is around the corner as well. I think it's just, it's so good, isn't it? To steep yourselves in other people's stories, it's just so valuable for the heart. And yeah, it does stir the heart to faithfulness, which is what we want, isn't it? Because we want to be growing in the fruit of faithfulness. That's what we're going to be talking about today. We are in Hebrews chapter three today.
So if you've got a Bible, grab your Bible and turn to Hebrews chapter three and Felicity is going to read for us verses one to 14 as we think about faithfulness.
Felicity: Therefore, holy brothers and sisters who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. But Christ is faithful as the Son over God's house, and we are his house if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory. So, as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice, do not harden youras you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation. I said, their hearts are always going astray and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.
Sarah: Thank you, Felicity. It's just wonderful, isn't it, to read that passage and the first kind of chunk, yeah, faithful, faithful, faithful, there's a clear repetition there of the word, isn't it? And it's, the command is to fix your thoughts on Jesus because he was faithful. And he's contrasted with Moses, wasn't he? Can you kind of talk us through that contrast a little bit, Felicity?
Felicity: Well, so Moses, if we go back to Exodus, Moses is the guy who was to lead God's people out of slavery through the Exodus, literally exodusing Egypt to the promised land. And so he was faithful in following God's commands and taking the people to the edge of the promised land and so when the, sort of in the kind of the ancestry of God's people, when we talk about faithfulness, Moses would crop up as a faithful guy.
Sarah: He's the guy.
Felicity: He's the guy, absolutely, he's the guy. And the Hebrews' writer, which is a big Hebrews theme all the way through, he's kind of saying, yeah, yeah, he's a guy, but the guy is Jesus. Jesus is the better, the more faithful. He is the example of faithfulness. So we have here in verse two, he was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. they're kind of like equally, they're being compared there as being faithful to God. But then it kind of like ramps up as we get Jesus is of greater honour because he's actually the builder of the house. Moses was just kind of in the house. He was just in amongst the people. This Jesus is faithful beyond that because he is actually God himself bringing about.
Sarah: And that, yeah, so Moses is described as the servant, isn't he? Jesus is God's son, what we read here. So the kind of, the elevation kind of continues there, doesn't it? So we've got that contrast between Jesus and Moses' faithfulness, but then as we go on through the chapter, we see a different contrast, don't we? We see the contrast between Jesus and our own hearts and what it what it looks like for us to be faithful and actually what it is, the temptation for us to be faithless.
Felicity: Yeah, takes us but this takes us straight back to Numbers and Exodus again where we have this picture of what it is to be unfaithful and that is fundamentally the problem for the people is this unbelieving heart that meant that they doubted God that they actually just asked to go back to Egypt I’m just not sure I can trust what God is doing and that is unfaithfulness and so the contrast is really stark so we have God, Christ in his perfect faithfulness and then we have the reality of our unfaithfulness or unbelief these hard hearts it's quite sobering actually I think to have that contrast because I don't know whether I previously have associated being faithful with whether I've got a hard or a soft heart like it's quite that's quite distinct
Sarah: Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it, that that would be the marker of faithfulness, the hardness of your heart. So the language here is going astray, it's of unbelieving hearts, it's turning away from the living God, yeah, being hardened by sin's deceitfulness. And what strikes me about that is that it's not a kind of one, just one kind of moment of turning the other way. Like that is a kind of, that. The way that that kind of picture builds up, it's a kind of gradual process where your heart hardens, where sins deceitfulness kind of grabs hold of you, where gradually you're turning away from the living God to other things. And I find that quite scary that that's, yeah, that that is a very real temptation. That is a very real danger. And it's the opposite of faithfulness. But the antidote here is back in verse seven, isn't it? If you hear his voice today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. And then in verse 13, encourage one another daily as long as it's called today so that you may not be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.
Felicity: And even going further back to chapter 3 verse 1, fix your thoughts on Jesus. That's the kind of the urging from the writer, isn't it? in order that we would hear his voice, how are we going to hear his voice? We're going to fix our eyes on Jesus who is really the manifestation of God's Word, but is the means by which we hear his Word. And as we then do that, we encourage one another to fix our eyes on Jesus I love the and I think we’ve seen this throughout as we've explored all the different fruit of the Spirit with interpersonal nature of how this plays out. We're not called to bear the fruit of the Spirit on our own, we're not called to be faithful on our own, but actually the Lord has given us big means of grace as other people. So as we look to the left and the right and we hear others encouraging us in this, when we read those missionary biographies, that is a means of encouragement isn't it? And as we see others fixing their eyes on Jesus.
Sarah: Yeah. Definitely, and I guess the big means of that is the fact that coming back to Natalie's conversation right at beginning of our season, we're fused to Jesus, we're united to Christ, we're united to the one who actually was the perfect Israel. He was wholly faithful in every part of life and he was faithful unto his death. He ultimately went to the cross for us. He was faithful through every temptation, through every challenge, right to the end, so that as we are joined to him, we have a chance. We can be faithful. We can display the fruit of faithfulness because by ourselves, we cannot do that, can we? By ourselves, we are not able to, but in the power of the Spirit, we are, which is just a wonderful thing, isn't it?
Felicity: Yeah, it's that thing, isn't it? We're in Christ. It's that cooperative term that Natalie used again, though, that together that we would keep in step with the Spirit, but the Spirit itself is at work in us. And as we then look to Christ and we see him going to Calvary for us and we see the way in which he took every step for the sake of, well, as he says in the Garden of Gethsemane, your will and that is the heart of faithfulness isn't it? It's actually being faithful to God which really looks like obedience to God. And there's that big picture of obediently walking on and on until we get to the end. Whether that be Jesus' return or we go to heaven, a new creation. But also obedience in the smaller picture as well. And so what does it mean to be faithful to God, to bear this fruit? Well it means to be obedient to him and seeking to honour him whatever the circumstance. think this fruit is not dependent upon circumstances, it's dependent upon Jesus. So we fix our eyes on Jesus, and we don't harden our hearts, and we listen to his voice, and we obey, and we keep walking.
Sarah: Yeah. And in our obedience, it's not just obedient to a random command, it? It's obedience to God, the one who's wholly faithful to us, who will never let us go, who will lead us to the very end. I love this quote from Menikoff, one of the books I'll be reading on it. The world cares about plaques and popularity, real estate and revenue, glamour and glitz. God cares about faithfulness, the steadfast commitment to honour the Lord in a thousand simple ways. And just that reality that actually the Bible is littered with commands to faithfulness, isn't it? Faithfulness to the Lord, faithfulness to our neighbour. And what does it look like? Well, I don't think it doesn't look like pursuing worldly kind of worth in this sense, doesn't it? Faithfulness is the very ordinary reality of pressing on in the Christian life when there's no one to see what's going on, when you can't kind of, you know, it's not something to shout about, it's just pressing on, trusting the Lord, keeping coming back to His word in the unseen hours when no one's looking because actually that's His means of helping us not to harden our hearts. And then with what we hear from His voice, we seek to encourage someone else that day with that word. It might fall on their soft heart, their heart might be hard, we don't know, but actually we have an opportunity to be faithful in taking that word and encouraging someone else with it, don't we? And I find that a big challenge, both in my family, but also in the way I seek to kind of encourage those around me and our church family and others. Actually, we have a real opportunity to display this kind of faithfulness and it doesn't actually cost that much to kind of go out of our way to do that, does it?
Felicity: I I agree it's a big challenge but it's also hugely encouraging because that's not grand gestures, that's not like die on a hill now in order to make this happen, this is in the ordinary small moments and so I think there's also space to just kind of take a quick catalogue, what ordinary moments do I have in my day, like where are my ordinary encounters and how can I then just shift that? It might not be that you have to make some grand changes but actually how can I shift this so that our conversation turns to our faithful God? How can I shift this conversation so we fix our eyes on Jesus together? And I think that's massively encouraging because that is something as we're more persuaded that God is faithful, that Christ is faithful as the Hebrew writer describes him, I'm more inclined anyway to be talking about that. It's a desirable thing isn't it? As we've been seeing throughout this whole deep dive into the fruit of the spirits. It's just so fundamental to it.
Sarah: Yeah, the more that we see how dependent we are on his faithfulness and how we are the recipients of this beautiful faithfulness to the end, the more you do want to share that with others, don't you? But I think also, as we were talking about the other day, I can't remember what it was, it was with patience, wasn't it? And just thinking about the kind of training ground, the kind of ordinary faithfulness in the everyday, actually we don't we don't know at what point we may be called to make some extraordinary acts of faithfulness. Like, you know, the missionaries we read of, they don't know what's around the corner, but actually at some point, they all stand up in some way and count the cost for following Jesus in significant ways. That's why there's books written about them, isn't it? And actually the kind of training ground of ordinary faithfulness and the kind of proving ground enables us to to be ready to stand up and be counted when we need to be. But also it's that kind of the long view, isn't it? Actually faithfully persevering right to the end as we see in verse 14.
Felicity: I think that's right and I think kind of to take a step back the reason why we want to be faithful is because of God's faithfulness to his promises. That we are more and more convinced as we're in his word, as we behold Christ, as we see God's faithfulness outworked in Jesus, that these promises that he's made to his people, that he will carry them through to the new creation, to this hope of eternal life, in that faithfulness, we then are persuaded that we want to be faithful. And not only that we want to be faithful, but we want others to be faithful so as I'm seeking to shift these ordinary moments into a conversation where we we just dwell on Jesus together where I encourage others in faithfulness that is a huge value because I know God is faithful so it kind of comes back round to you the more persuaded I am that God is faithful and Christ is my ultimate persuasion in that the more to keep walking myself and I really want others to keep walking in that same way. I love that, I think that's just, that means it's not actually on me is it? The more I behold him, the more I'm inclined that way.
Sarah: And that's what Mr Hebrews is getting at, it? Fix your thoughts on Jesus. That's the big aim, isn't it? And that is what we've been seeking to do through the course of this season, because the more that we're fixing our thoughts on him, the more we're seeing the value of therefore displaying the fruit and praying for that fruit in our lives and in the lives of those around us. And the more that we're kind of, as we've been saying as well, we're just so aware, we're much more aware, aren't we, of God's character through the Bible, as I'm doing my Bible read through I'm so attuned at the moment to the different fruits of the Spirit in God's character and so I'm picking up on his faithfulness at the moment and it's stirring my heart and it's wonderful and therefore as you say, as I do that, I'm fixing my thoughts on him and I'm more fired up to be faithful in the everyday.
Felicity: really good isn't it? mean it's really... yes love this! Why don't I pray for us as we wrap up? Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you so much for your faithfulness. Thank you that we see it peppered throughout all of scripture and ultimately we see it in Christ. And we pray that we would be those who fix our eyes on Jesus. And as we do, please will you give us soft hearts. Please would be those who hear your voice. Please would we be those who are faithful and encourage others in faithfulness. Help us Lord to see how we might bear the fruit of the spirit in this, in our everyday lives. We pray this Lord for your glory and for your namesake. Amen.
Sarah: Amen. Well, we are so thankful for God's faithfulness to us on this podcasting journey. We are so faithful. Well, we are so thankful to God for his faithfulness to us on this podcasting journey over the last four years. And at the moment, we are busy behind the scenes preparing to launch this year's partnership pack, a chance to partner with us in exchange for a delightful box of goodies. So do sign up for our newsletter to keep connected with what we're doing and to hear the latest updates from us about when the partnership pack will launch. We're really looking forward to sharing more details very soon. But until then we look forward to seeing you next Friday as we get into gentleness together. We can't wait and we'll see you then.
Felicity: See you then, bye bye. This season is sponsored by Moody Publishers.
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