The Lord Is My Helper

Hebrews 13:5-6

One of the most telling signs about what is going on inside of someone is where their love is focused. Loving is what we do. Just as people, we love. We were created to love, we cannot get away from love.

The result of the fall was not simply that we became unloving people, but we became something worse than that, our love was directed in a way it was not supposed to be. See the bible has an ordering to the way worship and the conduct of one’s life is structured.

We are designed to love God, which expresses itself in worship of him, and love of neighbor. Think about the way the 10 commandments are laid out, they are laid in in order of our relationship with God and our relationship with others. The first informs the second.

What happened in the fall is we decided that our love should primarily be directed toward ourselves, which in turn informed how we worship and who we worship… ourselves, and then how we treat others, by making things all about us.

See you cannot get to the heart of an issue with someone simply by discussing their issue with other people, it is a window into their soul and their relationship with God. One flows from the other.

So we’re always loving. We’re just often loving the wrong thing.

Now this is what happens in regeneration, God causes our hearts to love him once again, and our lives begin to be reordered.

Believer you know that your life needs reordering, don’t you? The bible word for this is “sanctification.” Growing in grace, growing in holiness, being made more like Jesus. It stems from the regenerating work that God has done in our hearts to make us alive.

So we’re here in Hebrews 13 having talked about all of the work that God has done in Jesus in bringing us near to him. And in this chapter, the Spirit has us do some self examination. How is the reordering work in your life going? Are you loving your brother, if not, why not?

Are you fighting for your marriages, husbands loving your wives, wives loving your husbands? If not why not?

And all of this is couched in the great promises of this book. Christ has fully and finally, by the sacrifice of himself made atonement for sin. Jesus, our advocate, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and calls believers to enter into this throne room for help, and mercy, and grace.

And so as we look at the loves in our lives, as the Spirit is working to put them in proper order. To cause us to love the right things, and put away the love of wrong things, we are to hear this as believers knowing that our help is from the Lord.

Don’t love money

There’s a reason he talks about money and marriage right next to each other. Without even asking I can pretty much guess than most of your marriage problems have something to do with money. One of you spends too much, one of you won’t spend when you need to, you probably both don’t communicate about money well.

Well the Lord has something important to say to you today about money. “Keep your life free of the love of it.”

Now perhaps we would skip over this quickly because we would look at the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous on TV and compare our love of money to their love of money. “I’m not like them, I don’t love money like that.” and move on to the next verses.

But I think if we hung out here for just a little while we might quickly find that we do often have a problem with loving money.

The Bible talks a lot about money, but typically the talk is about the motivating structures behind how we are thinking about money. Money has many good uses. Scripture speaks of money as a blessing many times in Proverbs and the Psalms.

Proverb 6 tells us that we should be diligently working and saving money for our future needs. It connects it to hard work and the ability to provide for yourself and your family. On the other side in that same passage it condemns the lazy person. Paul tells us that if a man is lazy and won’t work he doesn’t deserve to eat.

Scripture also warns us about the dangers of wealth. Proverbs 11:4 “4 Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.” Jesus tells us that it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.

Much of this has to do with our motivation for having money, and where our hope and trust is placed.

Money can very quickly cause us to forget that we are not the ones sovereignly in control of our lives. We spend money on things that make us happy. And those things are often used to satiate feelings we don’t want to feel. Insecurities, sadness.

Remember he is talking to a persecuted church in Hebrews. They probably just had their money taken away. What a time to tell someone to keep their life free from the love of money. What do you know! At least you have some!

What is he really driving at here? Contentment with the one who provides, sustains, and satisfies.

It’s a very interesting verse that he quotes here. Joshua 1:5 “ I will not leave you or forsake you.” This is God talking to Joshua before the conquest of Canaan. How exactly does that apply to our situation? It’s a universal principle for believers. God will never leave you or forsake you.

Tax season is coming up, rent’s due, medical bills are stacking, groceries are getting expensive, gas costs are rising… If money is your god, and you don’t have what you need to cover these expenses… this is what it feels like to be left and forsaken. Feel that.

Now hear God who provides, and sustains, and satisfies. I will never leave you or forsake you. Now this doesn’t mean that if you trust God you don’t need to clock into work anymore because your bills are going to get paid. Or if you have enough faith that money is going to start falling out of the sky. This is where the prosperity gospel always gets it wrong.

You may think they are reaching into the fantastic with statements like that. The problem is that they are settling for such a low and eternally useless fantasy when they preach that.

The point the preacher here is making is that God has provided for you eternally in his Son, and his kingdom endures forever. Come what may to you in this life, your life is secure in him.

And listen the Lord does provide. He has gifted us with the church, one another, he sustains us through his grace through his people. There is a temporal application now. If you need food, we will help you. But that help is one that is in light of eternity.

Now last here…

Because of this we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man to do me.

Now you may think he’s pulling this out of nowhere but this is the culmination of the book. Confidence in Christ has been a repeated phrase since chapter 3. We hold fast our confidence til the end, we confidently enter the throne of grace, we have confidence to enter the holy place, therefore don’t throw away your confidence.

Everything he has taught about the better ministry of Jesus is applied to us right here, believer. You can face life confidently, knowing that the Lord is your helper.

Because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to HELP those who are being tempted.

Believer you may be tempted not to love your brother, not to love the stranger, not to love your spouse, instead to place your confidence in your ability to work and provide for yourself… loving money instead… But even if those things were to fall apart, you still know that the Lord will never leave you or forsake you because his promises stand forever.

And so with confidence in the finished work of Christ, and his ongoing high priestly ministry toward you, say this: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me?