Hebrews 4:11-5:14

Intro on disruption

this morning we’re gonna look at the idea of disruption. What do we do when we are disrupted? What do we do and turn when we are disrupted? And is disruption necessarily a bad thing?

Whether the source of disruption, what is doing the disrupting is good or bad there is an And it’s in that specific place that we need to look. What does disruption do to us because it will matter how we find our way through it outcome that disruption always brings with it. Life change is a disruption

Moving, new jobs, new kids.

Death is a disruption. Loss and grief

Going away to college is a disruption

Having your kids go to college is a disruption 

All seasonal changes (leaves falling, leaves growing) are disruptive. Allergy season is disruptive!

There are good things that disrupt us there are difficult things that disrupt us

disruption is revealing. It shows what is really there. It shows what is really strong, what is crumbling. 

we often avoid disruption, we want to maintain the status quo. But what I want us to consider this morning, is that

disruption should really be a welcome experience because it will ultimately show us what something is. 

Disruption will show us what we are made of

Disruption will show us what we truly believe. 

Disruption will show us what kind of ground we are standing on

If you wanna know how strong something is, you have to stress test it. We are being stress, tested all the time through our Disruptions

Disruptions shows us what doesn’t shake. If you experience something disruptive in your life. Good! Let it disrupt but when it does, look at what is not moving

Hebrews 12:28–29 ESV

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

We can welcome disruption because we can see what something truly is.

So when we see this morning that the Word of God disrupts us, we want to approach it with the truth that we can trust the Scripture to disrupt us to show us what can actually last.  The word of God is disruptive and we’re going to let it do its work. Because it’s not unnecessarily disruptive. It’s disruptive to an end. It’s disruptive to a place in a point in a person. It’s disruptive so that it can re-create.

The Word of God is Disruptive

Hebrews 4:12–13 ESV

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

The word of God intends to disrupt. It intends to shake us up.. it intends to wake us up. The Word of God will wake us up but sometimes it feels like cold water to the face. Sometimes it feels like a disruption. 

The Word reminds us that we are not hidden from God. And you may think that we have just entered dangerous territory. Well according to this verse, we have. We are “naked and exposed” 

This is not about forming shame or increasing guilt. It is about understanding something for “what it is.” That we are seen by God for who we are. And that can be a scary thing. 

But this is the case with all surgery. Anyone going under surgery wants a skilled hand and a sure blade. Everyone going into surgery knows the risks, because they are told them. We forget that healing often comes with dividing parts of our lives in order for the surgeon to get a better look. 

We often lose sight of the risk because the hope of healing is so much greater. We carry the risk because we know we can recuperate with health again. 

The Word of God disrupts. It comes with warnings. It separates, convicts. It enters in so that God can ultimately heal.  

All surgery (telos in healing) is disruptive

The right disruption is a means and door toward healing. The right disruption will move us toward healing.

God’s disruption in your life is always a means toward life

Let the Word Disrupt

The Scripture is an alive word, a disruptive word. A word that speaks into our daily and modern lives 

2 Timothy 3:16 ESV

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

The Scripture as a disruptive agent will continually ask us if we are focused on the right things. It will ask us if we are focused on the right kinds of life. It will ask us if we are looking at life or death.

The Word as a sharp two edged sword will ask us pointed questions. It will challenge and will shake. And we don’t like being challenged and we don’t like shaking but the only way we find life is when our lives are challenged.

WE ultimately have to see any faulty means we are using to support our lives. We don’t want to see them but any faulty foundations.

That’s why they shut down the Washington bridge in providence. All of your urban traffic woes are due to faulty foundations

But once we face those foundations through disruption in our lives we need someone who is firm who doesn’t shake. and Christ is shown immediately as that

Christ is the reliable High Priest

Let’s briefly look at the passage:

Hebrews 4:14 ESV

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Here’s what is happening in these verses. We are left by the Scriptures, after all is disrupted and shaken, we are “naked and exposed” to God. Meaning simply that everything that can be shaken has and we are left open to what is truthful. This is the surgeon’s knife. Opening up our body in order to find what is not working right.

What do we do? We are left vulnerable and wide open after being disrupted. We need to trust the One who holds the knife. We have to trust the surgeon. That he knows what he’s doing.

And in the verses that follow we get the resume of why the One who stands over us. We get a sense of His experience and His background. We see what kind of Surgeon He is based on where He has come from.

Then we will see what Kind of character He is based on His experience and values.

Christ has the role of the Son. He is the second person of the Trinity, God incarnate. He is given the inheritence of a Son, all the benefits of being connected to the Father. It is His role and identity.

His function, or His role is the High Priest. We can kind of think of this like the way He operates in the world. He identifies as the Son, He functions as the High Priest.

So again, the High Priest stands as a mediator. He represents God to people and represents the people to God.

Imagine that you fall asleep tonight and you wake up the next morning in a country you have never been before. You suddenly wake up in a strange bed and you make your way down to the street and you don’t have any sense of where you are. You can’t understand the signs, can’t understand the language. Cant communicate to the people. You come up to the first person you see and they ignore you. Another one tries to speak to you but you can’t understand them and they can’t understand you. You don’t know how you got there and you don’t know how to get out. You begin to grow anxious and you slink back to a wall near the sidewalk. Finally someone walks up to you and greets you in your language. And asks how you arrived. And asks if you are hungry.

You have been disrupted, you are vulnerable. Everything has been shaken. You have nothing left, nowhere to go. You’re not sure what to do. So someone, in response comes up to you to help. In your language. But they also fluently speaks the language of the country you are in.

He helps you up and walks you around, sharing where you are and helping you to get what you need in the moment to orient

He is representing you in that moment in the way He represents the country He is in. He is a mediator, making sense of the country to you. Without him all is chaos, nothing truly makes sense.

This is Christ the High Priest.

The High Priest is an incredibly important part of the Old testament. The High Priest was the means through which God set up ways for Him to be known and for us to know God. The High priest in the Old Testament was the means through which people would be forgiven. We see Abraham and Moses acting in that way, providing a means toward connection with God and freedom. And they provided a role, a function, but were imperfect.

But Jesus takes on that role and does so perfectly. He becomes the fulfillment of the very thing that people need to find their way back to God. He stands in the middle and in His sacrifice, offers us a way back.

1 Timothy 2:5 ESV

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

But here is the incredible thing. It is not just that He can do the job. He is not an impersonal High Priest who functions well in His role but One who does so with compassion.

Hebrews 4:15 ESV

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Christ can not only represent us before God and free us for relationship with Him, but He understands us!

Christ understands us. Christ Himself not only can do the job of mediating and representing us to God and God to us. Not only is He perfect in that way. He also does it through understanding that we are often disrupted.

When we are disrupted, the mediator, the high priest in our lives, steps in. He can suffice whatever it is that you cannot quench.

He is enough and has done enough to remove enough.

Christ is enough and because because He is the Son and High priest HE is enough

He has done enough Because He is the perfect sacrifice and and can do the job of mediating between you and God.

And He removes enough. There is nothing in our lives that has not or will not be laid bare. The word is surgical. And we need someone who, when they see it, does not shy away. Does not have a gag reflex. Who knows what to do.

Christ can remove enough because the Word from His mouth, is surgical and sees all. And the work of His hands is secure and firm and capable. And the work of His heart is compassionate and sympathetic to our condition.

Because of this He is a God who draws near.

What does that do to us? What does that do for us?

We can have confidence in Him 

Hebrews 4:16 ESV

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

This is how we approach God as One who shows us our sin and removes it in a foul swoop.

Think about the last thing you had confidence in. How did you treat it? What did you think about it?

I often think about when my kids were little. When my oldest two kids we young we went away for a weekend to a hotel. We were new in ministry and didn’t have a lot of extra money so we drove an hour away and spent 24 hours in a hotel. There was a pool and there was breakfast. It was incredible.

We spent a lot of time swimming. My kids were young enough that they hadn’t spent a lot of time in the pool and so we were working on swimming and jumping into the pool. They would stand on the edge and I would stand in the water and they would jump in. I remember that when they first started when we got there they were more tenuous. They would kind of practice first, test the water, practice again and finally jumped in. I would take turns as they jumped into the pool.

Well after a couple of sessions of that they grew confident that I would catch them. So at one point I was working with my oldest jumping in the pool and my daughter who is three years younger than him didn’t seem to care what I was doing. She saw me in the pool and had experienced me catching her before so without me looking she just jumped right into the pool onto me expecting I would catch her. Was I anticipating it? Nope. Did I catch her? Absolutely.

She had complete confidence that if she jumped in I would catch her. If I, at that point an aloof young father with sub par reflexes can catch my daughter when she jumps, then God, who anticipates all things, and who is close and does not only see but can do something about it, can catch us and offer us mercy and grace in our time of need.

You need to jump this morning. Jump in confidence in our mediator and High Priest Jesus. Maybe you need to jump into repairing a relationship. Or jump into forgiving someone. Maybe you need to jump out of a habit or sin practice and instead of trying to solve your humanity your way,. you look to God through Christ to find mercy and need.

We are going to transition into communion this morning. May it be an act of confidence, an act of jumping into Christ this morning. Whatever you jump from, receive His grace and mercy. I promise it is enough and is fully sufficient.