Remember when...

Mission and Vision

Happy Mother’s Day

This is the day when we honor women especially mothers

In the church you can be a mother and not have any kids. There are women who give of their time and talent to pour into others, to mother… and they strengthen our body by living into that role

I want to also say that like most holidays, this can be a tough one for people who have lost thier moms or for moms that have lost children. For victims of abortion.

be kind to people today and show love and honor and respect to the women in your life who have helped you along your path.

Continuing to soak our sanctuary in scripture

We want to be serious about the word of God

The word of God changes the atmosphere

There’s history of the public reading of scripture

Paul calls us to

Today we find ourselves in the book of Hebrews

Open to

Context

We don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews

Had been attributed to Paul for a long time, but we understand based on the style it was written that it wasn’t Paul

Some believe it could have been Apollo and some believe that it may have been a woman

which is actually kind of cool to think about. The thought being that the reason the name of the author “coincidently” got lost in history is because when the church joined with the roman empire and the role of women were erased… they just so happened to forget that Hebrews was written by a women...

IDK if its true… but its an interesting theory

THe author is writing to Jews and Jewish Christians and spends the lenght of the letter explaining to them how Jesus is better

He is better than angels, he is better than the old covenant, he is better than the priesthood, he is better than the temple, he is better than moses

THe point of Hebrews is that Jesus is the fulfillment of all these things that the hebrew people, or the jews, relied on for years. The stuff that they fixed thier hope and thier faith on… Jesus is better

READ

PRAY

So the section leading into this was discussing How Jesus’s sacrafice is better than the old sacrificial system

The author was telling us how the sin offering was once for all

How the sacrifice of Christ is the greatest thing to happen and how we don’t need a high priest because we have Jesus and the author has just been setting us up, though very heady, to understand how great what Christ has done for us is

Then we come to this point where the text tells us to remember or to recall

I’m a firm believer that people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught

That’s why over and over in scripture we have the theme of remember

The OT is all about remember what God brought us from

the NT is all about remember what Jesus did for you and what he brought you from

When the apostles in the book of acts or here in Hebrews… whenever they would be talking to Jews or people that knew the law… they would take them all the way back to the beginning… remember the fall, remember the exodus, remember God calling a people to be his own

What this theme of remembering is doing is re-implanting in our heads this identity that we have

We need to be reminded because we forget who we are

We get so caught up in the everyday struggle of life that we forget the great things that God has done for us

We forget who we are in him, how we are more than conquerors, how we are free and redeemed, how we are forgiven and loved

We forget all this beautiful truth because we get so caught up in the non-essential parts of our identity

We get caught up identifying with the superficial

We find our primary identity in things that don’t matter as much

And Iknow this is going to be a weird thing to preach on mothers day but… Your identity as a mother is not your primary identity

You are first and foremost a child of God. A co-hier with Christ, you are first his!

Any other identity has to come after that

But let’s get back to the text

The author says recall the former days when you endured a hard struggle

The author is calling us to remember that time after we were saved

How many of you remember making that decision to accept the grace that GOd had been presenting you

That time when you were just filled with the spirit and on fire for the Lord

That time when you didn’t care what anyone said, you were rocking your WWJD bracelet and hoping someone would ask you what it meant

When you were ready to take whatever persecution that came for the Lord

Loosing friends, so what I got Jesus

Boss wants you to work on Sunday…nope! That’s my Jesus day

Family doesn’t want to pray before dinner… tough luck! We’re gonna thank Jesus for this food

Remember with that zeal came a willingness to risk it all. There was a willingness to take whatever hardships came because you were so high on loving Jesus that nothing else mattered.

The presence of the living God inside you was more than enough to sustain you through hardships, through loss, through hard moments....

What happend?

Why is it now that it is so easy to see Jesus as an add on… as something extra?

Why is it so easy to fret and to worry and to think… “yeah I got Jesus but I also got bills”

Why do we now harbor bitterness and are we now bonded to unforgiveness when we once felt so free to love in Christ?

The weight or the troubles of the world and the lies of the enemy started to creep in and over time we start to forget that Jesus is better

We get sad, or mad, or frustrated, or fearful because life is coming at us and in that moment we forget that Jesus is the greatest thing to ever happen to us

We forget that all that we have ever needed and all that we will ever need is found in his loving embrace

We loose sight of the fact that He is our all in all

We get sidetracked, we get off course… and we loose our endureance

WE shrink back

We begin to take fewer and fewer steps of faith. We begin to pray less and less… the time we spend in fellowship starts to become a formality because instead of living in the identity as God’s holy people and coming together to lift his name on high you are just here worrying about all the stuff that you have to deal with on monday

You’re not listening to God’s word and the Holy Spirit ministering to you because you are so focused on you and the world…

You are no longer living in the identity of who Christ died to make you, the identity that the Holy Spirit inhabiting your very being has made you, the identity that the father of all creation has created you to walk in...

So now waht?

Remember when...

when you first fell in love with Jesus

when the holy spirit filled you and you couldn’t understand the level of joy that you had in spite of your situation

when you longed for the scriptures and to know him

when you longed to be in the fellowship of believers just to talk about how good God is

When no troubles could shake your blessed assurance

You have to remember who you are in Christ

remember what he has already done for you

remember how good he has already been

Dwell on this… trust in who he is and who you are in him

You are not called to timidity, to fear, to frustrated living, to worry, to anger, to bitterness…

you are called to faith and to perseverence

You are called to live in the sight of this warped generation as an example of God’s eternal love and hope and joy found only in Christ

Time to rspond

Maybe I’ve been preaching and you have been listening and yet you have never felt that blessed assurance

Maybe you have never fully surrendered to the work of Christ

Maybe you have never prayed for the spirit to fill you and

I’m going to ask Rod, Shelly,