Hebrews 13:5 - What is it about?

What is the message of Hebrews 13:5?

Hebrews is one of the most interesting books in the New Testament. There is a fair amount of mystery surrounding Hebrews primarily with who the author actually was. The Bible was written over the span of three thousand years and through that time, the rules of literature of the times were different not only because of the time elapsed from the writings, but also due to the fact that the writings were influenced by the ancient Near East cultures of the time. This resulted in a number of different rules which may not make any sense to us, who were educated in Western thought three millennia later. In this case, the actions of the time did not spend a whole lot of thought into identifying themselves as the author, whereas the message was the focal point. Furthermore, the recipients of the writings at the time had a working knowledge of who wrote their correspondence or other religious writings and made it no big deal that the author didn’t leave his mark. Thus the author of Hebrews did not consider it important to identify themselves leaving us all in a lurch. Scholars of today have a couple of theories who wrote Hebrews, but there has been nothing definitive. For what its worth, the two most common theories are that Paul himself or Barnabas found in the book of Acts. Moving on...

Recently my pastor completed his series on Hebrews and one verse really stood out to me and that is Hebrews 13:5. -

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 13

Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.

Initially, I focused on the second clause of the verse ( ‘for he Himself said, “I will never leave you or forsake you:) which made no sense in regards to the first half, (Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have…). This seemed like a non sequiter, a term for multiple parts of a sentence that don’t related to each other. But with a second look, I started to see what was in the verse. To get to the bottom you need to look at a larger passage, Heb 13:1-6 -

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 13

Let brotherly love continue. 2 Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it. 3 Remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them, and the mistreated, as though you yourselves were suffering bodily. 4 Marriage must be respected by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge immoral people and adulterers. 5 Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. n 6 Therefore, we may boldly say:

The Lord is my helper;

I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

Here Paul is exhorting all believers to follow the directions that are in this passage. In this way we are obeying and fulfilling the words spoken by Jesus and Moses to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here Paul asks us to continue supporting our brothers and sisters, showing them the consideration that is expected of us as followers of Christ Jesus. This acts like a reminder that we are to love even those who are viewed as undesirable, treating then with the sympathy that we would expect ourselves. Furthermore we are also to honor the marriage vows of others and step away from the temptations and sins of adultery and other immoralities.

As a final important point to be made, Paul reminds us that we are not to fall into love of money or tangible things, which combined with his mention of sexual immorality in verse four, are sin against God for his gifts to us. Furthermore, Paul also strongly advises that we are to be content with the things we have as these have been given to us from God for our purposes of glorifying Him in all things.

Something that is frequently lost is that God never shows disapproval for having things, it is his dissatisfaction in our handling of things at the sake of forgetting God and replacing him on the top rung of our ladder of priorities or our lack of faith in His providing for us in all things. It may not correspond with what you want, but as I have always said, ‘God doesn’t necessarily give you what you want, but he will always give you what you need. Case in point, whenever we were in a serious cash crunch, we always received money from sources that we never expected or predicted. It could vary from a Civil Action suit that my wife was part of at her work for something that happened five years previous, to an unexpected special dividend check from our investments. God always provided in the nick of time and our lights stayed on.

With these things in our minds, Paul reminds us that God has said many times in the past that God will always be there for us, never forgetting us or leaving us high and dry. God has pointed this out numorous times to many people:

Gods Promise to Never Leave or Forsake:

Jacob - Gen 28:15, “I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Moses - Deut 31:6, :” For it is the Lord your God who goes before you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”

Joshua - Josh 1:5, “I will be with you just as I was with Moses. I will not leave you or forsake you.”

God will never break his promise to watch over or protect you, for once you are on the team, it will be forever.