The Hero’s Journey/Jesus: The Hero of His People

Intro

This past month we have been looking at the Heroes of the Bible. The Bible characters who faced obstacles, challenges, villains, and insurmountable obstacles with faith in God. The Heroes of the faith are those who did it right, those who trusted and relied on God’s strength, and made breakthrough.

We have focused on them because they serve us as models, models of Believers who when they trust God, God shows up. We call these people the heroes, but the reality is: that God is the Ultimate Hero, He is the God of heroes, the capital H Hero who saves us out of sin and death through the Gospel.

My message this morning is on the character Moses, but before I go there, I want to do something with you guys first.

Give me your guy’s favorite heroes and tell me their stories. I don’t care if they're from Disney, the MCU or DCU, a video game—give me your guys favorite heroes: go, give me your favorite heroes:

[What is your hero, and what is their story?]

…

All of these heroes and their stories have these same elements.

Joseph Campbell was one of the first people to put these ideas together, he called these parts and commonalities in all the great hero stories the “Heroes Journey”

He theorized that every good hero story will have their hero, whether Hercules, Alexander the Great, King Arthur, Atticus Finch, or Superman, all memorable heroes go through the same journey:

A Call (or a call to the Journey)

Journey into the Unknown (out of normalcy)

Challenges and Temptations on the Journey (the road of trials)

The Low-Point (the low before the final…)

Transformation and Triumph (the climax)

Now why do I mention all this?

I believe the reason why humans over the past few thousands of years have gathered around fires to share and swap epics and hero legends, and the reason why we today gather and flock to movie theaters to see the next superhero story…

is because we know things aren’t the way they are supposed to be.

In all our dreaming and hoping, we innately look for and love these stories. We enjoy them, they inspire us, we even take lessons and imagine ourselves triumphing just like these heroes.

Maybe if telling stories and watching movies isn’t your cup of tea, do you look outside the window on the ride home from school, dreaming about what we could have said to that one jerk, or what we could have done in front of our crush to make them fall into love with us lol

Do you think about how you can maybe help your family or siblings when you guys argue, are you maybe a defender—ready to stand up for your friends or even a stranger when they are being bullied.

Do you dream about being the hero in your life? I think these are good things, that we desire to save people, but this desire to save others and be the heroes of our future families, jobs, and relationships, is the underlying feeling that

We all know we are in need of saving.

We try to be the heroes of our own stories, or we hope for saving from the difficulties of life for two reasons:

Human nature tells us:

Things are not the way they are supposed to be…

We know we are in need of saving; in other words, we know we need a hero.

Although these are just theories and ideas, the Bible tells us what is true and real about the world we live in.

And in the Bible tells us that we are in a fallen condition, and we know it.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

The Bible says that all of us, every person, on the inside knows and longs for meaning and purpose beyond our every day lives, and beyond the way the world is. We grab onto and eat up these stories about heroes, we all desire to be heroes in our lives—because we long to be able to fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts and to make right the things that are so wrong in our lives.

A sadder note is that we also know that the world is thoroughly broken:

Romans 1:19-2

Romans 1:19–23 ESV

19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The Bible says that we instinctively know there is a god or higher being out there, but we do not know God, neither do we worship him as God. Rather, we worship what we can see, idols and objects compared to the true and living God.

The Bible describes the failure to live in a way that honors, obeys, or reflects God as sin.

The Bible says our sinful condition is within every single person

Romans 3:10–11 ESV

10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.

Today, I want you to know that things are not the way they are supposed to be. We were made to worship, love, and live with God—but due to sin we do not all know God, neither do we follow him.

We are in need of saving: we are in need of saving from ourselves, we are in need of saving from sin, and we are in need of saving from death—our ultimate Enemy.

This is where the Bible comes in:

The ultimate story of the Bible is this:

Jeremiah 30:22 ESV

22 And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

The story of the Bible is not about a bunch of people who get their act together, it is a story of a bunch people who are lost and in need of a Savior, because Saviors save.

The only solution, the Bible says, to this mass systemic problem is the Gospel—that Jesus has saved us, He is the real-life Hero, who actually saves us from our real oppression and death under sin and Satan, who through His death pledges himself to us, He promises to be our God and we His people.

I will say that again:

Jesus wants to have a relationship with you, he doesn't just want to be your Creator—He wants to be your God, God over all of your life. He wants to you to be His, and He promises to be yours.

The Bible is to be read, studied, and treasured, because in it we find real help and understanding from God. We learn about how God worked, acted, and intervened in others’ lives, and that gives us wisdom as to how he wants to act in our lives.

And this is why we have this Heroes series, to talk about the character of the Bible: who they were, how they were used by God, and what God has to say to His people through them.

This morning we are talking about Moses in a message I have titled: Moses looks like Jesus: the Hero of His People

before we get into it, lets pray

[pray]

I. God was chosen by God to lead His chosen people Israel

Israel at the time of Moses was stuck in ruthless slavery at the hands of Egypt, who was the most powerful nation of the ancient near east—the entire world of the time.

Israel at the time of Moses had no home country, rather, they lived within a small region of the kingdom of Egypt.

In other words, they were a nation without any land and without any rights.

>>In order for us to understand how Israel got here, we have to go back 400 years. To a man named Joseph.

Joseph was the favorite of Jacob’s twelve sons, Jacob, like his father Isaac, and his father Abraham, they all had been appeared to by God.

Before God appeared to Joseph’s father Jacob, he appeared to Isaac, and before he appeared to Isaac, he appeared to Isaac’s father—Abraham

Genesis 17:7 ESV

7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

They each believed and passed this promise down, that God would be their God, and he would make a people out of them, that all of their descendants would serve and worship God as their God and their God alone

tracking?

God afterwards changed Jacob’s name to Israel (which means “wrestles with God” (why, we will get to that later)

Jacob/Israel had twelve sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel—the founding fathers of the entire nation of Israel.

except these founding fathers weren't cool and stoic like our founding fathers, rather than writing constitutions, they were kinda jerks.

(who remembers Pastor Westin’s message from two weeks ago on Joseph?)

In a spout of jealousy, the 11 sons of Jacob took their father’s favorite son—Joseph (who Westin spoke on a few weeks ago) and sold him into slavery

Joseph was 17 at the time.

While in slavery, God gave Joseph the supernatural ability to prophetically interpret dreams. He interpreted the dreams of the Pharoah, the king of Egypt—and predicted that there was to be a seven year famine in all the land of Egypt, meaning that everyone would die from a lack of food. He then came up with a plan to start saving food now, before the famine, so that during the famine the entire nation of Egypt would have food.

The king was so grateful and astounded by Joseph, that he put Joseph in charge of saving all of Egypt from the famine,

he Joseph the second most powerful man in the entire kingdom of Egypt, the first being Pharaoh.

Joseph saved all of Egypt literally saved all of Egypt, the same Egypt who later is killing and enslaving all of the descendants of Jacob/Israel.

Someway, somehow, Israel and his twelve sons hear of all this food in Egypt, meanwhile they are on the verge of starvation, they find out that it was God all along that sent Joseph ahead to Egypt to save not only Egypt, but also them.

This beautiful story is summarized in Genesis 50:20

Genesis 50:20 ESV

20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

God used Egypt aas the place where Israel would grow and become numerous, just as God promise they would to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Now we get to our story

Exodus 1:8–16 ESV

8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. 15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”

Exodus 1:22

Exodus 1:22 ESV

22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

This new king of Egypt, who did not know Joseph, arose and saw Israel (who was numbering anywhere between 30,000 and 2.4 million people) not as God’s chosen people, but as a threat to the Egypt, instead of seeing them as a blessing, the King of Egypt was selfish and just saw manual labor and people to do his bidding.

When that didn't work, he just made them all slaves.

When making them slaves didn’t stop Israel from growing and multiplying.

God’s promise to Abraham Isaac and Jacob was that he would bless the entire nation, and Egypt is trying to choke out this people, and stop God’s promise from coming true.

God is not going to have it.

Now, introduce Moses

Reading how this happened from Exodus 2:3-6

Exodus 2:3–6 (ESV)

3 When she could hide him no longer (FROM THE KING’S EDICT), she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. 4 And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”

Exodus 2:10 ESV

10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

God chose to save Moses’ life, he was there because God had a plan for him.

You have a journey and a purpose, like Moses, for being here on the Earth—Moses will discover why God chose and kept him alive.

Murder of the Egyptian

Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house, and in the NT, the book of Hebrews speaks of this time like this:

Moses, the prince of Egypt, is out one day and sees one of the Hebrew slaves being mistreated, and he ends up killing one of the Egyptians in favor of the Hebrew.

Exodus 2:11–12 ESV

11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

Moses kills the man and flees to Midian.

Biblical characters are like us, broken and complex.

Bodie’s story 1 in 400 Trillion (400,000,000,000,000)

I have hurt and even burned people in the past. God does not like that, and God’s goodness cannot be an excuse for us to mistreat people.

However, if this is you, and you feel like a mess up—look at Moses.

Like Paul, God can even use murderers who come to him—nothing is impossible for God, not even overcoming our sin.

Call of Moses at the Burning Bush

Another thing that we can learn from Moses is that God can use us no matter how unsure and insecure we are.

God calls from the burning bush and commands Moses

Exodus 3:10 ESV

10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Moses sees this is such a huge task, and he asks in verse 11

Exodus 3:11 ESV

11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

Moses understands, that he is just a normal dude, he isn’t prideful to think he can take on an entire nation, but he also starting to doubt God, failing to realize it is God who makes him strong

Exodus 3:12 ESV

12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

2. Moses, however, says “God, I really don’t think I can do this. If I actually did go and journey back to Egypt with this message in my hand, what would I even say to the rest of my fellow Israelites when I get to Egypt, what if they ask “what is God’s name, how do we really know God appeared to you?”

God says to him in Exodus 3:14-15

Exodus 3:14–15 ESV

14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

This back and forth continues Exodus 4:1-9

Exodus 4:1–9 ESV

1 Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’ ” 2 The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”

Moses then says, okay, wow, thats crazy and all, but like—I just cant talk right, I am not eloquent, I don’t know my words, God I really think you have the wrong guy.

God tells him Exodus 4:11-12

Exodus 4:11–12 ESV

11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

Moses still doubts God and begs in Exodus 4:13

Exodus 4:13 ESV

13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”

Exodus 4:14-17

Exodus 4:14–17 ESV

14 Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. 15 You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. 16 He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. 17 And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”

God meets Moses in obscurity, in the middle of nowhere, and convinces him to go on a journey of a lifetime.

I don’t know about you, but if this was me—I would be all in. If God called me to battle against the forces of Egypt, to face down the evil and wicked Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and his court of false-magicians, I would be all in, that sounds like the premise to an epic movie or an anime—I would be ready for that hero’s journey.

So what’s crazy is that when God calls Moses, and tells Him that I will be with you—Moses is reluctant. He resists God’s call and gives multiple reasons as to why God got the wrong guy

It is crazy to think what keeps us from the epic journey of faith is our own faithlessness, fear, and insecurity

Our insecurities are exactly that in-securities, areas where we may doubt God what He has said to be true.

Moses doubted that God made him and makes all mouths, and that God would help him speak.

What do you doubt God in?

What ability do you think God can’t supply and bless you in? Especially if that would help you better serve Him?

What area of your life are you doubting God and failing to love others.

PREACH

However, God is so gracious and patient with us, and he is gracious and patient with you

He knows that you doubt “God cant really use me in my school?”

God really cant use me in my friend group, there is no use trying to not make inappropriate jokes or calling my friends to follow God

God really can’t free me from this sin, or these thoughts, or these temptations

Do not doubt what God can do in you, do not let your uncertainty and insecurity stop you from believing that God has called you, God has called you to the journey of faith. This is the call to the journey, entering into your journey of faith with God, the journey of a lifetime.

II. Moses Was Obedient in the Face of Disobedience

There comes a point where in our journey with God, that we shush the doubts and take the step into the unknown.

When we take these steps of faith, there will be trials.

The Plagues of the Exodus are examples of how the world and its disobedience will stand against God’s people and their obedience walking by faith.

Moses then goes before both Pharaoh and Israel and tells them what God had said.

Remember, God’s purpose for all his people

Exodus 6:7 ESV

7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

Pharaoh repeats the same disobedience as the Pharaoh before him

God unleashes the ten plagues against Egypt to show them all that Yahweh is not only the Creator God, who created the cosmos in 7 days and controls everything with a word of his breath, but also that He is the intimate and loving God, who desires to free and love on His people.

multiple times, Moses tells Pharaoh to let God’s people go, that they may take a three days journey into the wilderness to MT. SINAI, where God first met Moses at the burning bush.

>>>God pursues and fights for his people, that is the message of the Exodus.

Even when Israel doubts at the Red Sea, having somehow forgotten that God showed up miraculously for them ten times over at the hands of Moses.

Moses obeys God’s instructions to strike the Red Sea.

Moses was obedient and faithful to God. While he struggled with faith, he answered God’s call, he fought against Pharaoh the king of Egypt and her false gods, and he gave to Israel the law, the Hebrew Torah/Tanakh. However, he was not perfect, doubting an clashing with God, he sinned and was disqualified from inheriting the Promised Land.

Hebrews 3:1–6 ESV

1 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

This verse points to Jesus, who is greater than Moses. While Moses was faithful in serving God as a servant, Jesus the son of God—perfectly obeyed God—he did not doubt nor waver, nor disobey, but he obeyed God and delivered us out of bondage and sin and captivity in the Egypt of our sin and death.

Obedience and Faith

After the Red Sea, Moses led Israel to Sinai, just as God promised Moses and the people he would.

III. Moses Was Friends with God

The High Point of Moses’ life was receiving the law of God.

While Moses was up there on the mountain of Sinai, he received God’s law to give to Israel, much of which would become our OT

What I want us to see here is the closeness Moses had with God

Exodus 33:11–23 (ESV)

11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

Moses had this closeness, because he was obedient to God.

Exodus 34:1–9 ESV

1 The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 2 Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. 3 No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” 4 So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. 9 And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

It is important that we think of our Faith as an Obeying Relationship

God chose Moses to lead his chosen people—Israel. God chose Israel to demonstrate God’s greatness to the entire world, that they would be a people unlike everyone else in goodness, justice, and holiness. They were to be different than everyone else, and that required their own land, the Promised Land, which God promises to Abraham 400 years prior.

Moses was the leader of Israel, and he was privileged to experience a deep and intimate relationship with God, because He believed and had faith in God, and that faith led Him to trust God, and that trust led him to obey God.

Our relationship leads us to Trust God, which means Obeying God.

(but there is no long-lasting victory)

Moses was the mediator of the old Covenant, Closeness, but this failed because Israel did not change, in leading Israel he sinned, and he did not enter the promised land after knowing Israel would never obey.

OUT: IV. Jesus. Hero of Moses, Savior of the World.

In closing, although the story of Moses has all the good elements of a Hero Story, it does not have the happy ending we would expect.

- Moses is called out of obscurity into a life-altering journey by God

- He journeys into the unknown of Egypt,

- He squares off the evil forces of Pharoah,

- and the climax is when he travels to the Mountain of God—Sinai, where he recieved the 10 commandments and takes the first step in redeeming the entire human race—through the giving of the Law to Israel.

Although Moses successful in getting Israel out of Egypt, Moses was unsuccessful in getting Egypt out of Israel

Although they saw God move and deliver them with cataclysmic and powerful signs, destroying the most powerful army of the time without the people lifting a finger, they still wanted to go back to Egypt, they still distrusted God’s good plan, as if they forgot about what God had done entirely for them—just like Pharoah.

The enemy of Moses and Israel was not Egypt, but it was their own sinful hearts, which kept them from experiencing all the good that God has for them.

After Moses, the Old Testament continues. Israel continues to fail in their mission, and fails to obey God through the Mosaic Law.

They do not obey God’s orders to Joshua (the guy who came after Moses) to get rid of all of the influence,

they ask for ungodly kings who further lead ISrael in disobedience to God.

They persist in sin, until they finally get ejected from the land God first promised and cleared out for them, and they were taken by a pagan nation.

Here is the thing: Israel needed new hearts

While Moses was their hero out of Egypt, they needed a greater and more sufficient Hero who would take them out of sin.

Israel kept on sinning, their hearts remained hard, even Moses fell. The solution was not the Law, because it only gave them more ways and opportunities to break God’s Law.

They needed new hearts, and this is exactly what Jesus did on the cross.

Hebrews 8:1–12 ESV

1 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2 a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. 3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. 4 Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. 5 They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” 6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 8 For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

What is the better promises? The promise of Romans 8:1

Romans 8:1 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

One part of the greater promise, Jesus comes and dies in our place, stopping the sin issue from separating us from God, and from our purpose in being His people.

Now, through Jesus, we are all able to be His people, and He is new our God.

Is Jesus your Hero? Yes, of course you know Jesus is a Hero for what He did—but is He your hero? Yes you know Jesus came to die for our sins, but do you know Jesus died for your sins, is Jesus YOUR Savior?

There is no greater journey than being on the one with Jesus.