I should have posted this early last week. However, I forgot to post this blog. Fortunately, I was reminded of my need to post this blog post when channel surfing during a commercial break of the Accenture World Match Play Championship, I saw this movie being broadcasted on the USA Network this afternoon.
Last Sunday, I was given the responsibility to lead the men’s group that I am a part of every other Sunday evening. With our theme this year being ‘Manhood In The Movies’ where we watch a movie and use the movie along with our bible study, I decided to show the group the movie ‘Apollo 13′ about the Apollo 13 mission that went haywire when a electrically leaky coil caused a spark exploding the oxygen tank off the spacecraft and causing the spaceship to breakdown.
We watched the two and a half hour movie and took a break before proceeding into the bible study where I taught from Hebrews 6:10-20 which states:
Heb 6:10 for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye showed toward his name, in that ye ministered unto the saints, and still do minister.
Heb 6:11 And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope even to the end:
Heb 6:12 that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Heb 6:13 For when God made promise to Abraham, since he could swear by none greater, he sware by himself,
Heb 6:14 saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
Heb 6:15 And thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
Heb 6:16 For men swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath is final for confirmation.
Heb 6:17 Wherein God, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed with an oath;
Heb 6:18 that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us:
Heb 6:19 which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and stedfast and entering into that which is within the veil;
Heb 6:20 whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
I wanted to focus on the word “hope” which is listed in verses 16, 18, and 19. The Greek word for hope is the word “elpis” (el-pece’) which means “(to anticipate, usually with pleasure); expectation (abstract or concrete) or confidence “.
In this movie, we heard the now famous words “Houston, we have a problem,”. In our life we constantly speak out the phraze “God, I have problems”.
Throughout the Bible, there have been men of God like Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Ezra, Jeremiah and Daniel who experienced a quest into the unknown and unexplored. As we saw in this movie, the three astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert walked a common road in the following ways:
(1): They were specifically chosen to fulfill the mission at hand.
(2): They experienced hardship during the mission that was life threatening.
(3): They overcame their obstacle through the help of outside assistance while having contact with the source of strength and encouragement.
Joseph was God’s chosen that was sold into slavery and placed into prison to eventually become a King. Elijah overcame the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel to have his death wanted and fled far away to where we next see him underneath a broom tree. The three astronauts were chosen to go to the moon and experienced a ‘problem’ of an oxygen tank exploding and carbon dioxide scrubbers maxed out until a rescue team led by astronaut Ken Mattingly (Sinise) and flight director Gene Kranz (Harris) and their heroic crew raced against time and odds to bring back the three astronauts alive to fulfill their destiny.
Hope requires a diligence (as shown in verse eleven), that when interrelated to verse 12 forces us to be sober and alert in order to have the strength, faith, and patience to overcome at the end of the trial.
There is a difference between faith and hope, where faith is the reliance on Christ to see us overcome, hope is the anticipation that the things we have faith in will come through in the hard times. The crew of Apollo 13 just hoped to come back to earth and see their families. The crew had faith built up when the procedures and technologies from mission control was activated and working in their lives to the point where the spacecraft made it through the Van Allen belts to plunge into the waters of the South Pacific Ocean. Hope is the belief that something will happen to and for you in the future. Faith is the belief that Christ has already done and is doing something for you right now.
As we read the rest of the verses, I would like to concentrate on something mentioned in verse 19 where it was stated “a hope both sure and stedfast and entering into that which is within the veil”
Paul in this section of scripture was referring to Jesus being the high priest and shedding his blood in order that the veil that surrounded the Holy of Holies was ripped for all who believed in him to experienced. The three Astronauts had a veil of a lack of oxygen, time, distance, and the barriers of the atmosphere that at one time prevented them from coming back to earth. However, it was the sacrifice of the rescue team that paid the price in order for the veil of a lack of oxygen, time, distance, and the barriers of the atmosphere to fall down in order for the astronauts to experience earth. Therefore, based on the study at hand, I now ask three questions:
(1): What is the mission that you have been called to do that composes your destiny?
(2): What is the veil that is in between you and your destiny?
(3): What will it take in your life for that veil to be ripped in order for you to reach their destiny.
We need to remember that the point of the journey, as detailed in this movie was originally to arrive to the moon. However, the point of the journey changed from not arriving, but overcoming and surviving. Why?
I think it is because in our Christian walk, like Elijah, David, and others before us enacted, and like Gene Kranz stated and Ken Mattingly obliged. “Failure is NOT an option!”
