Draw near
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
We have started to make our way through the hall of faith. There’s good stuff in there. But! We missed a bit from where we left off in Hebrews 10 last year. Lets go back! I knew that these two passages required some time and attention, so I put it off till I could do a halfway-decent job of teaching this passage to you.
So, today is the day we look closely at Hebrews 10:19-25, and the rest of the chapter next week God Willing.
Now, our passage starts with a “therefore” and that usually signals to us that we need to go back and review what came before so that we can understand the context. Something that would be all the more important when you’re picking up 6 months after you left off...
...however...
To our great benefit, the start of the passage actually summarises the key things that we need to grasp. It helpfully gives us two conclusions, two statements, that tie together what has gone on before. Then, out of those two statements we will see three calls to action. Three implications and exhortations about how we are to live as Christians.
Get that?
Two statements that lead to three exhortations.
If you like logic and the breakdown in the flow of the text, you can visualise it like this:
A and B are true,
Therefore do 1, 2, & 3.
So lets get stuck into it!
A. Since We have Confidence
A. Since We have Confidence
So our first two statements are statements about what Christians have - what is our possession. The first is this confidence, this boldness to enter God’s presence - the Holy place.
Read with me:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,
Lets break it down
Brothers here is a collective term. Like the term mankind it is inclusive of men and women. The brothers are the church family that the author is addressing with this letter/sermon.
The brothers, the Christians, have confidence - not may have confidence, not possibly, but this is something that we can and do have - confidence.
To what? Enter the Holy Places
This is what the author was saying earlier. Under the OC there was a division between God and his people. Israel lived around the tabernacle/temple but the could not enter into the Holy place, or the Holy of Holies where God’s presence dwelt.
You needed to be holy, purified by atonement and given permission to enter. Well, in Christ we are made Holy and we are given permission to enter!
There was a curtain that hang down to create the barrier in the temple - and Jesus is that curtain. His flesh - his body was given as an atoning sacrifice for the brothers - for God’s people. Now through Jesus, as through the curtain in the temple, we can enter the holy places - the presence of God.
We should be terrified, because we are creatures, and we are sinners, yet while we still have reverent fear, we don’t fear rejection.
Jesus came as the perfect atonement, laying down his life as a sacrifice for sin to reconcile us to God - now we have boldness, confidence that was unheard of in the OT to go strait into God’s presence.
But he is not still dead - he resurrected. He rose from the dead. He is our living Lord and saviour who brings us to God. This is a living way, it is through the resurrected messiah that we come to God with a living faith.
The tabernacle was an earthly copy of the spiritual reality. There is a throne in heaven where we go straight in - figuratively now, but soon literally.
This is the first thing we have. But there is something more!
B. Since We have a Great High Priest
B. Since We have a Great High Priest
In the OT, there was a family of men selected to be the High Priests - the descendants of Aaron. These man would be those who had the solemn duty and privelidge to be the interface between God and man. To get to God, to worship him you had to go through the preists.
This was a dangerous calling, because even two of Aarons own sons show that you could loose your life for messing with God’s presence and worship.
But this too was a foreshadow of things to come.
Now the shadow has given way to a great reality - that Jesus is our High priest. Thats what Hebrews is talking about in v21:
and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
Jesus has become our high priest, not of the Aaronic linage, but of a greater order of priests who do not die.
Jesus intercedes for his people, Jesus made atonement for his people, Jesus is the way we get to God.
So not only has Jesus used his body to open the way into God’s presence, he now ever lives to bring us to God - Father Son & Spririt.
And as Christians we get to have both of these things. Both of these our yours!
You have a great High Priest, Jesus, over you!
You have confidence to enter God’s presence!
And because these things are yours, how the shall we live? How shall we respond?
1. Let Us Draw near
1. Let Us Draw near
All the way through the scriptures we see that there is the interchange between God and his people. He acts first, always, but then we are to respond.
He creates, he blesses, he saves - then we receive, we honour, we obey.
Here in our passage we’re given three implications, three actions that flow out of our position as Christians.
The first is in v22:
let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Draw near to God!
The way is open to you in Christ, you have the confidence!
So go in!
Go into the presence of God! Turn to him, seek him, find him!
But do not come doubting. And by that I do not mean you won’t have questions or uncertainties, what I mean by that is that Christians don’t come with a bad attitude, they come assured that the historical facts of God’s acts in history give that full assurance that he will deliver.
We come with true faith that trusts God. That trusts that he will receive those who come to him in humility through Jesus.
When you become a Christian, your conscience is cleaned - no longer do you live in dread of hell and punishment. No longer do you live with the cloud of nihilism hanging over your head.
No longer do you live in a perpetual game of hiding from the guilt and the shame you feel. Instead you have your heart cleaned, purified like the temple implements of old. They were consecrated to God’s glorious service and washed of all impurities.
Becoming a Christian means being cleansed of all unrighteousness, and that is externally signified with the sacrament of Baptism. As God cleanses us from all uncleanness in our hearts, we wash the body in Baptisms.
The as clean people, we can come into God’s presence.
So how can I draw near to God?
Seek him in prayer (& fasting)
Hear his word - read it and be taught it.
In faith live as he commands - repentance and righteousness
God lives in his temple, his Church - so if you want to be where God is, you need to live as part of the Church.
So, since we have confidence to enter, and a high priest - come to God through Jesus’ washing!
If you desire to come to God, come talk to me about faith in Jesus and baptism!
But there’s more to do...
2. Let Us Hold fast
2. Let Us Hold fast
Coming to God and being cleansed begins a journey of faith that continues over a lifetime. It is all of grace, but it’s not easy.
And one of the things that we need to keep doing along our faith journey is to hold fast, hold on tight to the Gospel. Read v23:
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
The confession of our hope is the Gospel, the good news that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That he died to pay our sins and rose in triumph over death and now sists at the right hand of the Father from where he will come to judge the world.
This Gospel, we have to hold onto it, not wander off and get distracted by other things. There are warnings in the Bible about those who will set out caliming Christ, but who will then wander off and eventaully deny him.
This is a huge deal!
I have seen it a bunch of times.
The man who baptised me apostatised. I have seen many claim Christ, get baptised and then fade away.
I have seen some who have been Christians for many years, even pastors reject the faith and go astray.
You, brothers, you MUST HOLD FAST THE CONFESSION OF YOUR HOPE WITHOUT WAVERING!
Jesus will come through, he is faithful, he will deliver on Salvation, eternal life, eternal joy in the presence of God in a new world where every tear is wiped away. He will complete the good work begun in you! And he will do it as you cling to him like a raft in the stormy seas.
If you reject Christ, he will reject you! So grab him with both hands! HOLD FAST!
Do not waver! Never ever let go!
Your brothers and sisters who are wavering in their faith - encourage them.
So, since we have confidence to enter, and a high priest - come to God through Jesus’ washing, hold onto the Gospel hope, and....
3. Let Us Stir Up One Another
3. Let Us Stir Up One Another
When we are in Christ, and holding on, then we live out the life God has called us to live. Yet is is not done in isolation. I don’t get my Jesus and then pull back into my own personal faith separated from everyone else.
Yes your faith is yours, yes we each have a personal relationship with God, but our faith is not individualistic. We are a church - an assembly, a gathering, a group of people. Christ came to save a bride and that bride is a collective of people through time and space - not individual atoms off spinning about but a structure where all the atoms come together to form something - a temple.
And that temple that structure does not work when we isolate oursleves from each other and pull away from one another.
Instead the people of God come together and build one another up, we egg each other on.
You show me a Christian who intentionally remains apart from church and I will show you dead faith in a couple years time. It is essential for believers to be actively involved with one another, and that is very clear in our third exhortation:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
Consider it!
Examples the scriptures give:
Prayer for one another
personal and corporate encouragement
addressing one another in song
being an example to others
and more...
Church is not a spectator sport. Consider, how will you stir up one another to love and good works?
The author works out this principle: How may we stir one another up to love and good works? Application in v25: Not neglecting to meet together...
not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Meeting together as Christians is a key element of living the Christian life. Sure there are strange exceptions, Christians on the space station, being the only Christian in a Saudi Arabian Family etc. but we’re not talking about the outlyers, we’re talking about what the normal Christian life will look like.
It will look like not neglecting to meet. The word behind “meet” is “episynagogen”. Now if that sounds familiar its because it shares a root with the word “synagogue” - the greek word for gathering or assembly.
This has a history in Jewish life: the Synagogue.
You often had to go up to the Temple for worship, however with the diaspora and the fact that those living around the nation couldn’t go up to the temple all the time, local community religious centres naturally sprang up.
These became the place where they would meet, where local religious leaders would lead God’s people, they would sing psalms and read the scriptures and so on. They would meet at least weekly on the Sabbath.
In the early church, they continued on with this model, and it is basically assumed that something like the synagogue would be part of the life of the local church.
There were changes of course because Christianity fulfilled Judaism. Changes included practising the Lord’s Supper, and over time it became the norm to meet on the First day of the week - Sunday. Why? Because it is the Lord’s Day, the day when our Lord Jesus rose from the dead!
Now the scriptures don’t say that 10am on a Sunday is the required time for the assembly but usually through 2 thousand years Sunday morning has become the standard time for Christians to gather.
Lets talk about our gatherings for a moment:
Now even though the synagogue model was the historical background to the early church, and we have the witness of christian practice down through the ages, we live in a spiritual moment where there are lots of people who think they know better. There are those whose pride knwos no bounds and they will take it upon themselves to refuse to hear the wisdom of their ancestors in Christ, refuse to hear their Spiritual leadership and refuse to hear the Word of God. We live in a moment where we have to make the case for the regular gathering of the church.
Weird I know, but they are out there. You may have met them. You may have heard them online.
Nevertheless, let me lay it out for you so that you can have confidence in our practice.
God’s people have always gathered for worship. It is natural, it is built in to humanity to gather and worship.
God commanded special worship gatherings under the OT
In the NT, it was natural for Christians to gather day by day and house to house.
Eventually this coalesced into weekly meetings like the synagogue model.
The NT writers gave a whole bunch of instructions about how Christains are to live together, how we worship, how we serve, and how we are to meet.
Thins includes things like
singing together
reading scripture together
Praying together
Sharing the Lords Supper as a whole group
Teaching & preaching,
fellowship and encouragement.
Having leadership to oversee and guide the gatherings
Once you start putting all the peices together you end up with all the peices that you’re likley to find in a good church gathering.
There’s differences about how exactly different churches go about doing these different elements, what things are prioritised, how formal or informal it is etc, but all faithful Christians diligently following God’s word will end up with meetings that are broadly similar.
Now because we aren’t commanded to meet on a certain day or time or place, we could ask the question: can we meet at 3am on Thursdays by the creek. Well, we could… but should we?
We could meet 5 nights a week, but should we?
We could have super chaotic informal meetings, but should we?
The local leadership in the church, appointed by Jesus, has the responsibility to organise how church life is shaped and with Christians down through the ages we follow the pattern of prioritising one main weekly meeting where we pack in a bunch of good and important stuff that Jesus tells us to do.
We could do more meeting or less, but a few hours a week seems a wise move. if you can get to other gatherings, like discipleship group or training or other fellowship, that’s great, but the main gathering, church, is the key synagogue of our local church life.
This gathering is the key meeting of our local church, and it is the most important thing we do all week.
So lets go back to the text for a moment. As a result of what Jesus has done, we are exhorted to stir one another up to Love and good works. What is a direct implication of this? It is gathering with the local church “Not neglecting to synagogue together as is the habit of some”.
Ok, so, the follow up questin then is, when does my local church synangogue? Sunday Mornings, 10 am? We then I will be there as often as I can.
We know there are times of sickness and times of travel etc. But it is super important that we don’t neglect the gatherings. It should be your priority, and not just because of this verse, but because you should desire it! If you don;t desire it then you need to cultivate a love for the Birde of Christ that makes you want to be here every week stirring each other up to love and good works!
“All the more as you see the day approaching...”
Meet more, encourage more and more!
So What?
So What?
A and B are true,
Therefore do 1, 2, & 3.
A. Since We have Confidence, and
B. Since We have a Great High Priest
Then,
1. Let Us Draw near
2. Let Us Hold fast
3. Let Us Stir Up one Another
