Yom Kippur 2018
God Became One of Us to Fix what What was Broken • Sermon • Submitted
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· 16 viewsBecause God loves us, He became one of us to fix what was broken in our relationship to Him.
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Introduction
What do these three lines “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return”, “You make me want to be a better man” and “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone” have in common? That's right; they're in the pantheon of the most romantic film quotes of all time.
Truth is, all the world loves a good love story, because we love to be hypnotized by the transformational power of love.
Truth is, all the world loves a good love story, because we love to be hypnotised by the transformational power of love. After all, isn't it the greatest emotion in this world?
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that the entire world loves a lover. If he was right, then the best loved
In every love story there is always a problem. It is a problem that we all share. By all, I don’t mean just you and me, I also mean God above shares this problem with us. The problem that happens so many times when we extend our hand in love only to bring it back bruised and broken.
Several years ago there appeared on Broadway a political satire called Of Thee I Sing. The opening scene of that musical took place in a smoke-filled hotel room. A group of what we might call super delegates had gathered. They had chosen a man to represent them, and now they were looking for a platform on which he could campaign. They had all kinds of suggestions, and then one of the delegates looked at a chambermaid who was there to clean up the room and asked her, "What do you think the people of the country want?" She responded, "Love. Everybody wants love." And love became the major plank for the platform. It's not so outlandish in comparison to current political platforms based on words like "hope" or "change" or "integrity" or "truth." All of those words get thrown around in today's political campaigns, but they don't mean much. The politicians might was as well be shouting about "bear" or "hot dogs and baseball" or "shopping at the mall."
In some ways, the love story of God and the Jewish people is a story like any other story you would encounter in New York, or Sydney, or Tel-Aviv. It is the story of God extending his hand in love to Israel only to discover broken vows, broken homes, broken hearts and a broken covenant.
But in other ways, this story is very unique and it ranks among one of the most amazing love stories in all of literary history.
Now often times, we have ignored the importance of the early Jewish followers of Yeshua in this love story. We too often forget that first and second generation of Jews who had to wrestle with the truth of Yeshua and all that they knew before.
Probe the Problem
The New Chapter of the Love Story Begins (8:1-5)
The setting for the letter “to the Hebrews” is somewhere in Jerusalem around 63 C.E. the capital city of Israel and place where God’s Temple resided and where the Priest’s served him day-and-night. Rabbi Paul at this point is an aged man about 60 and seems to have made it as far West as Italy and had been doing some hard time in prison along with his fellow-coworker Timothy but they had both been recently released ().
Jerusalem was becoming increasingly more hostile to Jewish followers of Yeshua. Just the year before in 62 C.E., the High Priest called for Jacob - the brother of Yeshua - to be thrown from the roof the Temple. Josephus, the Jewish historian tells us, that Ananus gathered the Sanhedrin, accused Jacob of violating the Law by preaching Yeshua and so order him to be thrown from the Temple.
Just the year before in 62 C.E., the High Priest called for Jacob - the brother of Yeshua - to be thrown from the roof the Temple.
I imagine there must have been great mourning and great perplexity among the Jewish followers of Yeshua. There beloved leader, and brother of Yeshua, murdered by a leading religious authority, murdered at the House of the Living God. I imagine some people were enraged, others were scared, and others were questioning the validity of their faith in Yeshua.
After all, this was the High Priest acting, was he not God’s agent on planet earth. Wasn’t the priest-hood God’s front-line servants? Didn’t the priesthood represent the will of God to the people?
Now, a rabbi’s life, like any man’s I guess, is blessed or ruined by how he responds to a crises. And so I imagine when Rabbi Paul was told by God to write a letter to these Jewish believers in Jerusalem he decided to write one of the most brilliant letters in all the Brit Chadashah. A letter that strings together quote after quote from the Hebrew Bible so that his readers can be assured that they are part of God’s new love story with Israel.
Now here is the main point being said. We do have such a Kohen Gadol, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.
Paul is focusing all he just said about Yeshua. For seven chapters he has been comparing and contrasting Yeshua to key historical people and events from the Hebrew Bible to show them that they are not only part God’s new love story with Israel but its an even more amazing love story.
(Chapters 1-2). He compares Yeshua to angels because in the Torah and Jewish tradition the Torah was given through Angelic beings. But Yeshua was not an angel but a Son with a message from the lips of his Father, therefore, Yeshua’s message of good news is better in every way. Then the writer warns us that if Israel was punished for not obeying the message given through angels how much more should we be careful about not obeying the message given by the Son of God. What is more even though Yeshua was superior to angels in every way, look at how he humbled himself on a cross for our salvation. We see God’s greatest glory and greatest humility.
(Chapters 3-4). Yeshua is superior to Moses. Moses was a leader of people, Yeshua is leading people. Moses built a tent, Yeshua built the universe. Joshua brought the people to the land and gave them temporary rest but Yeshua gives a greater, eternal rest. Then the writer warns us that if the people Israel rebelled against a temporary rest being offered by Moses and Joshua how much greater are the stakes for us if we reject the permanent eternal rest.
Chapter 5-7 Yeshua is superior to the priesthood. This was shown in the fact that the priests had to keep offering sacrifices for themselves. The priests were corrupted by nature know matter how perfect they did there job. Then Rabbi Paul points out that Yeshua was not from the levitical line of Priests but from the line of Melcizedek. That mysterious figure from who blesses Abraham. That priesthood David said would be true of the Messiah. Then he gives a third warning that if rejecting the sacrifices had consequences how much more so would the consequences be for rejecting Yeshua because then you would be rejecting God’s ultimate offer for reconciliation.
Chapter 8:1 he says here is the big take away, the big point of all this we have a High Priest who perfectly completed His work. He sat down at majestic throne of God. Not in the earthly Temple, but in the Heavenly Temple:
He is a priestly attendant of the Holies and the true Tent—which Adonai set up, not man.
He says here is the big take away, the big point of all this we have a High Priest who perfectly completed His work.
They offer service in a replica and foreshadower of the heavenlies—one that is just as Moses was instructed by God when he was about to complete the tabernacle. For He says, “See that you make everything according to the design that was shown to you on the mountain.”
I have heard people say that Rabbi Paul sounds more like a Greek Philosopher here than a Rabbi.
But, Jewish rabbis from before Paul and after Paul all agreed that Moses was producing only a copy and that if it was a copy the real one had ultimate significance for us.
He says here is the big take away, the big point of all this we have a High Priest who perfectly completed His work but He is not idle.
But now Yeshua has obtained a more excellent ministry, insofar as He is the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises.
This is a new chapter in God and Israel’s love story.
I have often wanted to start a new chapter in my love story with my bride. In my mind, it always begins with me hitting it big with a book, or hitting it big in some business venture or investment. In my new chapter, the new beginning requires a new place for my bride. Not that our current place is bad. But our home shows her age of 30 years. The air conditioning has to be constantly monitored. The pipes bringing water in the house are old and show signs of aging. We have had to replace the roof, replace flooring. It is an older home and needs constant maintenance. But the new home would be a palace for my family one like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof imagined for his bride. A place that in mind is flawless and perfect because I would want nothing but the best for my bride.
What God wanted to give Israel and by extension all people of the world was His absolute best.
He did not want people in a Satellite location but on the main campus right in His presence.
I am sure some of these persecuted Jewish believers thought, “Okay, but his Temple is up there and we are down here, where do I go to get close to God.” Rabbi Paul says wherever you go, God main campus is right there all you have to do is approach God with faith. There is an invisible but powerful Temple that surrounds you and you are invited to approach God with confidence and boldness.
Transition: I am sure for some who had read or heard this letter as a sermon were still wondering, “Why do we need a new chapter in this love story? Why can’t we just be in the old love story in a new kind of way?”
The New Love Story Anticipated (8:7-8a)
The old love story could not fix what was broken between God and man.
For if that first one had been faultless, there would not have been discourse seeking a second.
For finding fault with them, He says, “Behold, days are coming, says Adonai, when I will inaugurate a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
What the Law required man could not do without a radical renewal of the heart. God gave them so many convincing external proofs.
They saw miracles in Egypt but did not believe God at the Red Sea.
They saw God split the sea but did not believe He would give them food.
They saw given them food from heaven but thought he abandoned them in the desert and so they made a calf to worship.
They saw His glory on Sinai but refused to believe his Word to enter the land of promise.
I imagine there were people who just kept saying “but weren’t there faithful men and women?”
Rabbi Paul would say “yes” and we should follow their examples. They discovered that the only thing powerful enough to change the heart was faith.
By Faith Abraham recieved Isaac as back from the death. Sara a baby in a womb considered dead. Moses by faith looked to a greater kingdom than Egypt.
I am sure there were some who kept saying, “But if they had a love story with God based on faith and Torah why can’t we do the same.”
Rabbi Paul would say because it was only a few and not many, it was only key people and not nations.
The power of sin was strong in men’s hearts that something had to change. That is why Jeremiah cried out
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurable—who can know it?
“We are in truth complicated creatures whose goodness is never pure and whose evil is never complete” - Eugene L. Lowry
Excerpt From: Eugene L. Lowry
God kept extending His hand in love to Israel only to bring it back bruised and beaten. The Law was holy, good and righteous but it was not designed to radically renew the heart. So like a good Father, God kept making a way for he and his people to be in relationship. But there was never any permanent security.
The Law was holy, good and righteous but it was not designed to radically renew the heart. So like a good Father, God kept making a way for he and his people to be in relationship. But there was never any permanent security.
This new love story was not just to keep doing what had always been done. No, the old had to make way for the new. The New had to break in and take over.
Any first-century Jewish Believer reading this letter would certainly be aware of the striking similarities between Jeremiah’s time and his own. Centuries before, this tenderhearted prophet peered into a dark and gloomy future for Judah. The Babylonian armies would certainly come as he predicted, marching through Judean territory and capturing its leading cities. Eventually Jerusalem’s strong walls would be broken down and its beautiful temple left a heap of charred ruins. But Jeremiah looked beyond all that to a time of restoration and renewal when a new covenant would be made with the house of Israel. Likewise, first-century Judaism had recently encountered a series of horrors quite as terrible as their nation had suffered in the sixth century bc. The Roman armies had fulfilled a role similar to that which the Babylonians had exercised in Jeremiah’s day. Jerusalem had been devastated and its temple would soon be surrounded and destroyed. IN Jeremiah’s day and Rabbi Paul’s people were relying on outward things, on their sacrificial system, on the presence of the temple, on the ark of the covenant and cultic regulations. But Jeremiah looked to a time when things would be different. He portrayed a new covenant. The law will not be concerned solely about external features; it will be written on the heart.
Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 149–150.
The New Love Story Gets Even Better (8:8b-12)
God loved Israel and he would not stop until he found away to make this relationship work. This had to be done in a completely new way, a new start totally and completely. Not just something new but also the old would start vanishing away.
In saying “new,” He has treated the first as old; but what is being made old and aging is close to vanishing.
Rabbi Paul has picked up that if the prophets predicted a new covenant then the other must be “old.” That is not complicated but people seem to get hung up on it.
What is tricky is that it almost sounds like we needed something “new” and shiny because the other was “getting old” like it was growing gray hairs.
The last term recalls technical legal language for something that has become antiquated and fallen out of use. Like at a wedding most of us Rabbis no longer say, “Does anyone have a reason why this bride or groom should not be wed?” That phrase comes from old world America. From a time when it was very possible to have multiple spouses or have committed some heinous crime that the local people were not aware of. Then perhaps someone with some information could let you in on some fresh news. In today’s digital world, it is very hard to get away with this kind of stuff so we don’t use that phrase anymore because it is now antiquated.
He is saying the old way that God and Israel use to be in relationship, that is called covenant, is now antiquated because of the coming of the Messiah.
But let me tell you what is not passing away, let me tell you what is not antiquated, it might just shock you
For finding fault with them, He says, “Behold, days are coming, says Adonai, when I will inaugurate a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not remain in My covenant, and I did not care for them, says Adonai.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Adonai. I will put My Torah into their mind, and upon their hearts I will write it. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
And no more will they teach, each one his fellow citizen and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know Adonai,’ because all will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no more.”
For finding fault with them, He says, “Behold, days are coming, says Adonai, when I will inaugurate a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
First, I will statement is that “I will bring the covenant to pass by myself.” This is different than the Mosaic Covenant where Moses was involved in bringing the covenant to pass as were the people. Everyone was involved at some level with the blood.
This is like the Abrahamic Covenant where God alone is the actor. He will bring this covenant to pass.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not remain in My covenant, and I did not care for them, says Adonai.
The old covenant and the new covenant are different. The covenant made with Israel on Mount Sinai had gracious elements. It would be a mistake to identify it as a legalistic covenant. God by his grace liberated Israel from Egyptian bondage. The Lord carried them “on eagles’ wings” (). He tenderly “took them by their hands to lead them out of the land of Egypt” (). The summons to keep the law was given after the Lord had saved them from slavery to Egypt (). The call to keep the Lord’s commands was to be in response to the Lord’s gracious intervention on their behalf.
Even though the Sinai covenant wasn’t legalistic, it was still defective and is inferior to the new covenant. Israel had to keep the stipulations of the covenant to be blessed. If Israel obeyed, they would receive the blessings of the covenant; but if they disobeyed, they would experience the cursings of the covenant (; ). By the time Jeremiah wrote, it was apparent that Israel “did not continue in My covenant.” The northern kingdom of Israel had already been exiled by Assyria in 722 BC, and the southern kingdom of Judah experienced the final hammer of exile to Babylon in 586 BC. The claim that Israel and Judah did not keep the covenant was not an abstract theological proposition. Both kingdoms faced exile because of their disobedience; the curses of the covenant had become a reality.
The consequence of Israel’s disobedience is that the Lord “turned away from them” (NIV). God’s “not caring” (ἠμέλησα) for them is another way of saying they experienced the curses of the covenant. Israel and Judah were responsible for their disobedience, and at the same time their disobedience reflected the inadequacy and limitations of the old covenant. Israel, of course, returned from exile. Still the fundamental problem with Israel remained, for the people didn’t obey the Lord and the covenant promises weren’t realized. When the NT opens, Israel is under the dominion of Rome and is not experiencing the freedom and joy promised by the Lord, and their dismal state is due to their sin.
Schreiner, Thomas R.. Commentary on Hebrews (Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation) (pp. 250-251). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Schreiner, Thomas R.. Commentary on Hebrews (Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation) (p. 251). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Adonai. I will put My Torah into their mind, and upon their hearts I will write it. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Here is the next “I will statement” He says, “I will make the covenant relationship unconditionally will of Israel.” While the new covenant will also be offered to the nations it can’t not, not be offered to all Israel.
The third statement is I will put my Torah on their heart. The Torah becomes internalized. We want to want to do God’s will. The Torah of God does not go away, it is not erased, it is re-written on our hearts.
If someone were to do an autopsy on you they should be able to find a writing not made with human hands but by the finger of God. There on your heart should be written God’s laws. If they could read your mind your thoughts would be full of His Word.
Not just the abstract or theoretical or facts of His Torah but the application of it. Like a Law like about just scales and balances would be written on a business owners heart. That he did not price gouge his clients or that maybe you did not show partiality in judgment. Are a law like that calls you to love the outsider like yourself has moved you to protest crimes against immigrants here in our country.
There should be layers and layers of written on heart skin that tells countless stories of your new desire to service God faithfully.
It should say somewhere in there real large, “Obeying because I am a child not to become a child. Or, “Obeying because I love not to get love.” Or, “Obeying because I want to not because I have to.”
The fourth statement flows out of it. He says, “They will true know who they are because they will know to whom they belong to.”
And no more will they teach, each one his fellow citizen and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know Adonai,’ because all will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest.
The fifth statement is that They will not have to check family records.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and their sins I will remember no more.”
The sixth statement is deliver on mercy towards your darkest thoughts.
the seventh statement is to not remember their sins no more.
God’s New Love Story Will Keep Growing but will never change.
Rabbi Paul, the genius behind this letter, knew full well his deep need for this new covenant. He said in that even when the Torah is being lived out to its fullest finest detail that it is nothing in comparison to the new relationship God gives through the Messiah’s new covenant.
Rabbi Paul knew very well that some of these Jewish believers were wondering why they should stick this thing out. Why not just go back to the old way of doing things.
For Rabbi Paul, he says this is the most gracious offer ever given in the Hebrew Bible. This is not some new better way to do old things, this is a total transformation of a person’s being. It is the hope of all prophets including Moses who looked forward to the day of a new covenant that would circumcise the hearts of Israel.
The Messiah’s death was the
But before you write yourself a slip of permission to judge Israel harshly. We must all look in the mirror.