Hebrews 12:3-17 - Pain with a Purpose
Notes
Transcript
Pray
Pray
Father, thank you for the opportunity to hear from you this morning in your Word.
I pray that you would speak into each of our hearts and change us to be more and more like your Son, Jesus.
Lord, I confess that I am powerless to do that in my own heart much less the hearts of those listening to my preaching.
We all need you to do this miracle in our hearts.
Please, use my faithful, but feeble preaching of your powerful Word.
And help me as I preach to make much of your Son, Jesus, and very little of myself.
It’s in his glorious name I pray. Amen.
Intro
Intro
We’re working our way through the book of Hebrews, and today we’ve come to a passage that’s all about making sense of our suffering as Christians.
We’re in the application section of the letter.
The author has already made his main point, that Jesus is better than everything that came before him, a better messenger and a better minister in the new and better covenant.
He’s the fulfillment of all the promises of the Old Covenant, he’s the reality of all the pictures of the Old Covenant, he’s the substance of all the shadows of the Old Covenant.
And his sacrifice on the cross is the pinnacle of everything Jesus has done.
The primary application is to respond to Jesus as our better messenger and minister, to respond to his sacrifice and our salvation because of it in worship.
Our faith is very important to our right response of worship, and we have to make sure our faith endures in the midst of suffering like many of the Old Testament saints did.
Because our suffering can push us away from Jesus, it can make our faith waiver rather than endure if we don’t understand it’s purpose.
We tend to assume the worst of our suffering, don’t we…
Our knee-jerk reaction to suffering is usually thinking something like this.
“I must have done something to deserve this.”
Or “God must be angry with me.”
Or “God doesn’t care about me.”
We wrongly think that our suffering is either pointless or that God is out to destroy us with it.
And our response when we think that way is usually to try and avoid our suffering, or to blame God and run away from him.
The exact opposite of what we should do.
Now, because we tend to assume wrongly about our suffering, God has shown us the truth about our suffering, the purpose of our pain, through two examples in Hebrews 12:3-17.
Our suffering is both loving and healthy, rather than hateful and destructive.
It’s the loving discipline of our Heavenly Father, and it’s the healthy discipline of our Great Physician.
We’re going to look at each of these examples to make sense of our suffering, to see the purpose of our pain, and how we ought to respond to it.
So, let’s start with the example of pain in a loving family in verses 3-11.
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
So, this is the example of…
The Loving Discipline of our Heavenly Father (3-11)
The Loving Discipline of our Heavenly Father (3-11)
Remember, this is in the context of explaining how we can endure in our faith as the right response to Jesus’ sacrifice.
We can hold onto our faith in Jesus when our faith is focused on the right things, focused on God’s Word, character, and authority like those who had enduring faith in the Old Testament.
And we can hold onto our faith in Jesus when we look at Jesus and how he is the fulfillment of all God’s Word, character, and authority, and how he had perfect faith in God the Father and the plan of redemption.
He considered eternal life with us a joy, so he endured the cross, the most excruciating suffering anyone has ever gone through, both physically and spiritually.
Verse 3 of our passage this morning reiterates that point because the author is going to dive a bit deeper on the subject of suffering so that we will understand it and be able to endure it.
Consider Jesus’ suffering.
You may find some comfort in comparing Jesus’ suffering to your own.
But to me, that seems like cold comfort.
The conclusion we come to after comparing Jesus’ suffering with our own is that Jesus suffered more than us, so our suffering really isn’t that bad.
But that isn’t a comforting thought especially if your suffering tempts you to abandon Jesus.
In fact that kind of thinking makes light of something that’s very serious.
A more healthy way to consider Jesus’ suffering is to consider the reason combined with the extent.
He suffered all of that pain because that suffering was necessary for him to spend eternity with you.
And when you realize the suffering he endured because of how much he loves you, that gives you the strength and endurance to keep loving him, to not grow weary or fainthearted in your own suffering.
Verse 4 roots our struggle, our suffering, in our effort to resist sin.
Sometimes we experience suffering simply because we live in a fallen and sinful world.
But our suffering always has something to do with our struggle against sin.
Either we suffer because we’re struggling against sin, or we struggle against sin in our response to our suffering, or both.
Sometimes we resist sin and the world persecutes us and we suffer for it.
Sometimes, when we’re persecuted for resisting sin, we’re also tempted to respond to that persecution sinfully.
Sometimes we suffer for no apparent reason, and we are still tempted to respond in sinful ways that we need to resist.
Any which way you look at it, our suffering is linked to our resistance, our struggle, against sin, our pursuit of holiness, righteousness, Christ-likeness.
Verse 4 also identifies the ultimate suffering as shedding your blood, a euphemism for death.
And the author says that the original audience hadn’t yet resisted to that point.
This part IS a comparison between Jesus’ suffering and ours, but in a way uses suffering as a measure of love.
Jesus suffered in his struggle against sin to the point of dying on the cross because he loves you THAT much.
He suffered all the way to shedding his blood on the cross in his struggle to free YOU from sin.
And we haven’t done that.
Our struggle against sin, our suffering, our love, will never be more than Jesus’ struggle, suffering, and love for us.
In fact, without Jesus’ struggle against sin, we would never struggle against sin.
Without Jesus’ suffering on the cross, we would never be justified before God.
Without Jesus’ supreme act of love, we would never love him.
We can only suffer and struggle against sin because he did.
We only love because he first loved us as John said in 1 John 4:19.
Well, Jesus went to the cross and showed his love for us through his suffering because of God the Father’s love for us.
That’s what Jesus himself said in John 3:16 ““For God (the Father) so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
It was because of God the Father’s love for us that he gave his Son on the cross in the first place.
And the author of Hebrews knows that, and he quotes Proverbs 3:11-12 to show how the suffering we endure in our struggle against sin is proof of our place in God’s family.
This Proverb is an exhortation, a clear command of how we ought to understand and respond to our suffering in light of our position in God’s family.
This Proverb is applied directly to the original audience of Hebrews as sons.
God is addressing them as sons, and he’s addressing each of us as sons through our faith in his Son, Jesus.
The exhortation is to avoid two wrong assumptions of suffering and embrace the one right understanding of suffering.
But before we dig into this proverb, I want to make something clear.
This proverb and the explanation of it in the following verses in our passage, refer to suffering as discipline.
Now, the Greek word for discipline comes from the same root as the Greek word for child, pie-DEE-uh, where we get the word pediatrics, medical health for children.
Disciplinary punishment is very different from judicial punishment in a few ways.
First of all, it’s different in its purpose.
The purpose of judicial punishment is for the offending party to pay for their offense or to serve as an example to deter others from the same offense.
But the purpose of disciplinary punishment is to help the offending party to learn from his own mistakes and make better choices moving forward.
Judicial punishment uses the offender’s suffering for the betterment of others.
Disciplinary punishment uses the offender’s suffering for his own betterment.
It’s also different in the relationship between the offending party and the one administering the punishment.
With judicial punishment, the one administering the punishment is indifferent or hateful of the one being punished.
But with disciplinary punishment, the one administering the punishment genuinely cares about the offender, often the discipline is an act of love.
So, this Proverb all has to do with what we think God’s feelings are toward us because of our suffering.
Don’t regard it lightly, don’t shrug it off, don’t ignore it, don’t think that it means God doesn’t care about you.
Also, don’t be wearied by it, don’t crumble under the weight of it, don’t let it fester, don’t think that it means God hates you.
The reality is the opposite of these things, the reality is that your suffering is not judicial punishment, it’s disciplinary.
God’s discipline, the suffering you experience in your struggle against sin, it’s God showing that he cares about you and he loves you and he accepts you as his child.
Because God disciplines those he loves and chastises every son whom he receives, even the adopted ones.
And just like this Proverb explains, we endure our own suffering because God is treating us as his sons.
And we ought to endure our suffering as the loving discipline from God that it is.
The author explains the opposite of this truth to drive it home.
What son is there whom his father does not discipline?
Proverbs 13:24 “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”
Proverbs 22:15 “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”
Proverbs 23:13–14 “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.”
The son who is not disciplined by his father is a son who is unloved, uncared for, and left in his foolishness to suffer needlessly.
So, if you are left without discipline from God, then you have no assurance of your acceptance into God’s family.
This doesn’t mean that those who don’t suffer aren’t saved.
This does mean that your perspective of your suffering may indicate whether or not you’ve been saved.
If you don’t have faith in Jesus, and you don’t view God as your loving Heavenly Father, then your suffering will likely appear arbitrary and unloving, and you may question why a good God would allow such horrible suffering and sin.
But if you have faith in Jesus, and you do view God as your loving Heavenly Father, then your suffering ought to appear purposeful and loving, and you will likely wonder why our sinful world was saved at all by such a loving and good God.
Verses 9 and 10 give a comparison between the discipline typically given by an earthly father and the discipline we receive from our Heavenly Father.
The first comparison is in regards to the respect we give.
We ought to respect our earthly father’s because of their position in our family.
They are the head of the family, the one responsible to God for how they lead their family.
That’s a respected position that many earthly fathers fall short of.
But we’ve got to respect the position regardless of how well they do because God authoritatively established their position and put them in it.
To a greater degree we ought to respect our Heavenly Father for his position over everything.
He’s to sovereign creator and sustainer of everything.
And that’s a respected position that most people ignore even though he’s never fallen short of it or ever made a mistake because he’s perfectly good and righteous altogether.
So, we ought to be subject to him, to submit to his authority, and live.
Because resisting his authority is what our natural sinful response has been since the fall, and that prideful response to God is why all of us deserve eternal judicial punishment in hell.
The second comparison is in regards to the knowledge he has.
Our earthly father’s have limited knowledge, so they discipline us as best as they can with what they know.
It’s not perfect, in fact, many times an earthly father’s discipline comes at the wrong time, or it’s done in the wrong way, or even given to the wrong person.
The heart of love is there, but sometimes, often times, it’s not done well.
I’m not going to go into detail, but I personally have administered some pretty embarrassing and shameful discipline to my kids because of my wrong thinking or lack of knowledge.
But, in contrast, our Heavenly Father knows everything, he knows exactly what the right discipline is for you, exactly when the right time is for that discipline, and he knows exactly who his discipline is for.
He doesn’t make mistakes.
So, you can trust his discipline to be the best thing for you, even if it’s difficult and painful.
The third comparison is in regards to the outcome of our discipline.
Our passage doesn’t give a direct comparison here, but I think it’s implied because of the context of comparison.
The purpose of God’s discipline is so that we may share his holiness.
The implied purpose of discipline from our earthly fathers also has to do with morality, but often from a selfish motivation.
Earthly fathers want to feel respected by our kids, we want them to behave so that we don’t have to spend so much time and effort disciplining them, we want them to become functional and respectable members of society so that our reputation in society isn’t tarnished and so that when we are old, they can be competent to take care of us.
But our Heavenly Father, who made us in his image, just wants us to be like him instead of like the world because that’s what he made us to be.
In verse 11 we get a sort of summary of this right perspective of our suffering as the loving discipline of our Heavenly Father.
In the moment we experience pain because discipline is never pleasant.
We may be overwhelmed by that pain, but we can endure it when we know that it has a purpose.
And the purpose of our Heavenly Father’s discipline, what we can look forward to on the other side of it, is the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
We can look forward to peace as we live righteously in eternity with God all because we treated our suffering in our struggle against sin as God’s means of training us toward that righteousness, toward being holy like him.
As we read earlier in our worship service in 2 Corinthians 4:16–17 “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
So, we can see the purpose of our pain when we understand that it is the loving discipline of our Heavenly Father.
He wants us to grow in our righteousness to be holy as he is holy.
And he disciplines us through our suffering as we resist sin in order to grow us to be more and more like him, and like his Son and our Savior, Jesus.
It’s painful, but it has a purpose, and we can endure it when we understand it’s good purpose.
Next we’re going to see our proper response to our discipline from God through the example of exercise in verses 12-17.
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;
that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.
So, this is the example of…
The Healthy Discipline of our Great Physician (12-17)
The Healthy Discipline of our Great Physician (12-17)
The example is in verses 12 and 13, and the rest of the passage is about how exactly we go about responding to this.
So, in verse 12 we get a “therefore.”
Here we are told exactly how we are to respond in light of the discipline of our Heavenly Father.
But it’s explained using terminology more reminiscent of physical therapy.
Lift your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet.
Why?
So that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
Do these painful physical exercises so that you can be healed rather than harmed further.
Have any of you ever gone through physical therapy?
I haven’t, but I know people who have, and I know a few physical therapists.
When you get severely injured, your body compensates while it is healing in a way that makes you want to avoid moving or move wrongly as you seek to avoid that pain.
The problem is that very often the most comfortable ways to move or not move will only make your injury worse or create new injuries.
So, you need to follow the instructions, the discipline, of your physical therapist to endure the pain of the therapy so that you can actually be healed from your injury rather than making it worse.
Your injury is your sinful nature you inherited at conception.
And as you struggle against that sin, you will be tempted to avoid the pain, to move wrongly or not move at all.
But you’ve got to follow the instructions, the discipline, of your Great Physician so that you can be healed of your sinful nature.
Now, you won’t be healed of it in this life because it’s a terminal illness, but you will be healed of it in eternity.
But the more you follow the instructions of your Great Physician in this life, the more you will experience ongoing healing from sin even though it’s painful.
These verses are actually an indirect quote from two Old Testament passages.
Isaiah 35:3 “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.”
Proverbs 4:26–27 “Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”
But the interesting thing about the Isaiah quote in particular is the lack of second person personal pronouns.
Why is that interesting?
Because it’s a command for all of us to strengthen weak hands and knees whether they are our own or someone else’s.
Whoever has weak hands and knees in regard to their struggle against sin.
This is not a call for us individually to do better in our struggle against sin.
It’s a call for all of us corporately to help each other in our struggle against sin.
If your brother or sister in Christ is struggling with a particular sin that you aren’t struggling with…
Lend them your strength, help them, lift them up in prayer, give them suggestions for how to fight it, lovingly hold them accountable.
That’s how we do this, together, not in isolation.
Now, verses 14-17 are a short list of examples of how we are to do this together, how we are to help each other in our struggle against sin, strengthening our hands and knees, enduring suffering as we struggle against sin together in our enduring right response to Jesus’ sacrifice.
The way the Greek sentence here is structured presents the main command in verse 14, and the rest of the verses are ways to do that main command.
The main thing we are told to do in order to help each other to strengthen our weak hands and knees in our struggle against sin, is to strive for two things, peace with everyone, and holiness before God.
This is the basic division of the ten commandments and the two greatest commandments.
Love God, and love others.
We love others by striving for peace with them as much as it depends on us.
Peace between individuals is a two way street.
Sometimes we seek peace, but they don’t want peace.
But even then, as much as it depends on us, we should seek peace.
And we love God by striving to be holy before him.
None of us will be perfect in this pursuit, but we still need to pursue it.
This holiness is not the source of our justification before God, it’s not the reason we are able to stand before his presence and see him.
Jesus is the reason we can see the Lord, but our holiness, our pursuit of righteousness comes as a result of our justification because of our faith in Jesus.
And our pursuit of holiness is not distinct from our pursuit of Jesus.
In fact, our pursuit of holiness is our pursuit of Jesus.
So, pursue Jesus, your great high priest who opened the way for you to enter God’s throne room in heaven and see him.
Pursue him by being like him in holiness.
Well, let’s look at some of the ways that we are to strive for peace with everyone and strive for holiness in Jesus.
Make sure no one fails to obtain God’s grace.
What does that mean?
It means, remind each other about the gospel so none of us will forget, and just in case any of us haven’t really believed.
Remind each other about the unmerited gift of salvation and eternal life through faith in Jesus, God’s Son who became a man, died in our place, and rose from the dead all to afford us our salvation and eternal life in him.
Make sure no one fails to obtain that truth because it’s the most important truth, period.
Also, make sure that no root of bitterness springs up.
This is a reference to Deuteronomy 29:18 “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit,”
This root of bitterness is not being upset about something that makes life difficult between two people.
It’s not a bitter feeling toward another person or even a bitter feeling toward God.
This is describing idolatry which starts as a hard heart taking root among the people to abandon God and bearing bitter poisonous fruit that draws others away from God as well.
This is sin motivated by being repelled by God and his holiness.
Also, make sure no one is sexually immoral or unholy.
I don’t think the point is to call out sexual immorality in particular since the author uses the story of Esau’s birthright and blessing to explain it.
In Genesis 25:29-34, Esau was living in the moment and not thinking of the future.
He considered the pleasure of a delicious meal more valuable in the moment than his future birthright.
He despised his birthright, considering it worth less than a single bowl of soup.
His birthright was his inheritance.
We talked about this a few weeks ago.
The inheritance of the land promised to Abraham, and to Isaac, and by birthright, it should have been Esau’s.
But he didn’t have faith, he didn’t think God would sustain him in his hunger that day, and he abandoned God because he didn’t really believe that God would make sure he inherited the land.
He didn’t really believe God’s promise, so he considered his birthright worthless, and traded it for something he considered valuable in the moment.
But God’s promise is of infinite worth and lasts for eternity, and his meal that he valued higher than God’s promise only gave him a tiny bit of comfort for a single evening, and then it was gone.
This is the nature of sin.
It promises instant gratification, and then it’s gone, and it only leaves you wanting more.
But the nature of God’s grace is that it provides eternal gratification and it never leaves you wanting more because it’s perpetual satisfaction, it lasts forever.
What happened after Esau gave away his birthright?
Along with the birthright came the blessing at the end of Isaac’s life.
In Genesis chapter 27, when Jacob and Esau’s father was about to die, he intended to give the blessing of the inheritance to Esau, but Esau had given away his birthright.
Through a rather subversive tactic, Jacob and his mom made Isaac think that Jacob was Esau, and he gave the blessing to Jacob instead.
And when Esau found out about it he wept, and he wanted to repent, but it was too late.
He wanted to repent, not because he saw his birthright as valuable now, but because he saw that his brother was prospering because of his faith in God, and he wanted to prosper, too.
His repentance was not genuine, it was selfish, but Jacob had already been blessed and named lord over his brothers, including Esau.
He couldn’t go back.
And it’s the same with many of our sins that entice us away from God.
We may want to repent, but for the wrong reasons.
Our repentance may be motivated more by our selfishness than by our faith.
I think the point here in Hebrews is that we need to beware of the enticing pleasures of the world as the motivation to sin.
This is sin motivated by being enticed by pleasure rather than the previous point which was sin motivated by being repelled by God.
Sin is always, to one degree or another, both being pushed away from God’s holiness and pulled toward the world’s fleeting pleasures.
And we’ve got to fight against both together, as a community.
So, when you see people abandoning God in sin, pushed away from God’s holiness or pulled away toward the pleasures of the world, call them to repent, and if they refuse and keep refusing, cut out the root so others don’t follow, and so they might see their sin and actually repent and come back.
Cut out the root of bitterness, cut out the cancer of idolatry and worldliness, as painful as it may be to cut it out of the church.
Jesus knew this would be painful but necessary.
That’s why immediately after giving the formula for church discipline in Matthew 18:15-17, he assured us of his authority and special comforting presence in that painful process in verses 18-20.
Matthew 18:18–20 “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.””
Conclusion
Conclusion
So, we’ve seen a couple of different examples of enduring suffering when we understand that it has a good purpose.
We can endure suffering in our struggle against sin when we understand that it’s loving discipline from our Heavenly Father, proving that he loves us and accepts us as his legitimate children, and using our suffering to make us more holy like him.
And we can endure suffering in our struggle against sin when we understand that it’s healthy discipline from our Great Physician.
And we need to do what he’s told us to do, and help each other to obey in order for us as a community to be spiritually healthy and work through the pain to heal how we’ve been spiritually broken by the fall.
Sometimes pain is a good thing, especially when it comes from our struggle against sin, because it means that we are loved and accepted by God, and it means that we are becoming more like him, and healing from our sinful nature.
So, when you experience pain in your struggle against sin, don’t try to avoid it, don’t try to alleviate it, and don’t run away from God because of it.
Your suffering for righteousness’ sake does not mean that God is angry with you, or that he doesn’t care about you.
It means just the opposite.
Your pain in your struggle against sin is the best evidence of your salvation.
It means that God loves you, that your his child.
It means that God is healing you from your sin nature.
It means that God specifically cares about you and he wants you to be like him.
Sometimes, a lot of times, we might think that God has given us more than we can handle.
And you know what?
He does give us more than we can handle all the time because he wants us to rely on him and rely on other believers as a loving community.
God frequently gives us more than we can handle, but he never gives us more than HE can handle.
So, when you struggle against sin and you suffer because of it, cry out to God in prayer, and let your brothers and sisters in Christ know how you are struggling and suffering so that we can help.
This is how we’re able to love and serve each other, how we bear each other’s burdens, how we help each other become more and more like our Heavenly Father, more and more like Jesus.
Now, the purpose of our pain as true believers is to prove our salvation and to make us more like God…
But the purpose of pain for people who haven’t put their faith in Jesus yet, for those who haven’t been saved yet, is different.
Because those who haven’t been saved don’t really struggle against sin, so the context of the suffering is different.
And the purpose of suffering for them is also different.
If you haven’t put your faith in Jesus to be saved from sin and death, then God’s purpose for your suffering is to show you your need for a savior.
Your own sin and the sinfulness of the whole world is the source of your suffering in various ways and various contexts, and the punishment for sin is eternal suffering in hell.
But if you put your faith in Jesus, then he’s already paid your punishment, and your suffering in this life shifts to a struggle against sin rather than a struggle in the midst of sin, and you’ll get to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus completely free of suffering.
The truth is that Jesus is God’s Son, God himself, who became a man, lived a perfectly sinless life, died on the cross, and rose from the dead, all to pay the punishment for all who put our faith in him.
He did all of that, and all you have to do is put your faith in him and submit to him as Lord of your life.
So, I beg you to do that right now.
Pray
Pray
Father, thank you for saving us, for adopting us into your family.
Thank you for the assurance we have that we are truly your children and that you love us and you want us to be like you, holy, like you.
I pray that you would help us keep this perspective when we suffer in our struggle against sin.
Help us remember the truth of your love and the good and glorious purpose of our pain.
Help us remember and help us remind each other of this truth.
And as we remind each other, I pray that you would give us the strength and the ability to help each other to endure our suffering as we struggle against sin.
Lord, comfort us in our suffering, and allow us to comfort others with that same comfort we’ve received from you.
Help us push through the pain to be healed from our sinful nature.
And Lord, if there are any here who haven’t put their faith in your Son, Jesus, I pray that you would use their suffering in the midst of their sin to draw them to yourself, to reveal to them their need for a savior, to compel them to put their faith in Jesus and be saved from sin and death.
I pray all of this in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.
Communion
Communion
Well, we get to celebrate communion together now.
We do this every month on the first Sunday of the month.
And if you are visiting with us and you are a baptized believer not under church discipline, then you are welcome to join us in our celebration.
If you’re a regular attender here at GBC, and you’ve been saved by putting your faith in Jesus, but you haven’t been baptized, then you are still welcome to participate in communion, but I would love to talk with you about baptism: what it’s for and why it’s so important.
As the bread and the cup are passed around, I’d like to connect what we’ve been talking about from Hebrews chapter 12 to this communion celebration.
And there’s two connections I want to draw your attention to.
The first connection is the reminder of God’s grace.
Back in Hebrews 12:15 we read that we should see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.
And we do this by reminding each other about the grace of God.
Well, the grace of God is the gospel, the unmerited gift of God as he gave his only Son so that we could be saved.
That is the very thing that we remember with this communion celebration.
Paul explained this in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
So, celebrating communion together is a very good way to see to it that none of us fails to obtain the grace of God.
The second connection I want to make is the suffering that Jesus encountered just like our suffering.
This communion celebration is not only a remembrance of the gracious gift of salvation, it’s also a reminder of Jesus’ suffering as one of us, as a human being struggling against sin.
Remember the beginning of our passage in Hebrews, Hebrews 12:3 “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”
This celebration is a very good way to consider Jesus’ suffering to not grow weary or fainthearted.
Jesus loved you so much that he stepped down from heaven and joined you in your suffering, to sympathize with you, and give you encouragement to keep going.
This makes me think of Psalm 23:4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Jesus, our Great Shepherd, is with us, walking right beside us, leading the way through the pain and suffering of this world, the pain and suffering of sin and our struggle against sin.
He’s right there with us struggling and overcoming sin, and suffering until he returns to make all things new.
I’ll pray, and then we’ll take the bread and the cup together.
Pray
Pray
Father, thank you for giving us your Son.
Thank you for this gracious gift of salvation and eternal life in him.
Thank you for paying the penalty for our sin.
Thank you for sending your Son to take the punishment for our sin.
Thank you for adopting us into your family because of Jesus.
And Lord, thank you for giving us such great encouragement to keep going in our faith even though we suffer so much for it.
Jesus is such a great encouragement because he’s given up his body to be killed on the cross, and he’s shed his blood in the ultimate act of suffering as the perfect sacrifice for our sin.
He’s endured so much hatred and violence and pain and suffering, and all because of his and your great love for us.
Lord, that is so encouraging, and I pray that you would help us remember it when we go through our own suffering in our struggle against sin.
Help us remember Jesus’ body broken and blood shed so that we can keep going in our faith and keep growing to live and love more and more like Jesus.
It’s in his precious name we pray. Amen.
