Greater Than: Greater Invitation
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Sowe get to an important point of the long sermon that is Hebrews.
The author has been preparing us for this moment.
The moment that every congregation shoud ask during every sermon they hear.
So what?
So what?
Thank for the all the information, but wht does this mean for me today?
The authro of Hebrews has been explainin through the use of the OT, or OC of the Hebrew people, that Jesus is the better message to his peopl and to the world. Tha everythign promised and performoed i nt he old temstament was ultimately waiting for or pointin toward Jesus and that Jesus is God’s greatest revelation of himself.
Or as the Apostle Paul says in II Cor 1:20
20 For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.
So everything the OT, the priests, the sacrificial system, the tabernacle, the entire system of worship, finds its perfection in Christ, the great high priest (the ultimate mediator betwen God and man) who is also our final and forever sacrifice for sin, and who through his sacrifice and spilling of blood fullfilled all the the Old could not.
And so don’t go backwars, dont saty in the past, build your life around the temple, but around Jesus.
And then we get to the so what??
And he says in Heb 10:19
“and so”
19 And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus.
Any time you see “and so” or as some of you might have in your translation...”Therefore” we need to ask what i the therefore therefore.
It is there to say…Listen everything I have just said is to teach you this..
This is the backgrrond story to build up my next point whic is this list...
and so he lists everything he has just explained...
19 And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. 20 By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. 21 And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house,
since we can stand with confidence in the presence of God.... sins forgiven, loved, viewed by God as brothers and sisters of Jesus, with the same rights before God....
I. LET US APPROACH AND TRUST(v22)
It is the first of 3 lettuces.which deserves a bad joke about this scriputre being about spiritual salad, but being stuck in the house with my kids they made me promise to cut out the dad jokes,..
I. Let us approach and trust
22 let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
I love the language in the New Living Translation.. “go right in”
there is nothing holding you back,
go in with boldness, with confidence, as a chid of the living God, ad a brother or sister of Christ.
16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.
We are separated by culure and time from this understanding but walking boldly up to a throne is not the norm!!
It usually was something you did with bowed head, in many ancent cultures, you never came uninvited and you never came with confidence.
BUT our situation is different.
We approach with confidence.
And the reason also sounds strange to modern ears separated by geography and time from these kinds of practices.
In the books of Leviticus which explains the responsibilities in the religeous ritual for the ancient priest,
14 Then he must take some of the blood of the bull, dip his finger in it, and sprinkle it on the east side of the atonement cover. He must sprinkle blood seven times with his finger in front of the atonement cover.
It was a way of saying God was covering over sins and purifying. all the while reminding us of where sin leads.
referring to the practice of the priest in the temple sprinkling blood over everything to ceremonially cleanse it.
BUT what Jesus does is not ,religious ritual to make us ceremonial clean, it is to make us fundamentally and forever clean!
The church usd rto celebrate this kind of language....
PAUSE
William Cooper was a poet and hymn writer in the 1700s and friend of John Newton famous preacher of the Great Awakening. Cooper needed to remind himself daily of the enduring, powerful, love of Christ since he suffered from heavy heavy depresion But instead of running from this kind of imagery he found hope and strength in it.
He wrote these words:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains:
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away:
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed ones of God
Be saved, to sin no more:
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die
wow!
Why such a focus on blood, becasue his salvation, identity, valueand sustinence are all caught up in the cross and sacrifice of Christ.
So we approach boldly.
Christ’s blood was the price of admission to the throne room of God.
Let us approach.
and
II. LET US HOLD ON TIGHT(v23)
23 Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.
We are people of HOPE!
It is easy to say we are people of hope when we kind of have what we want.
In fact a living out of the biblical definaition of hope would be hard to come by today,
Becasue hope implies that we are waiting for something that is not here yet.
But that up until recent days has been a forieng concept.
We are used to getting what we want and getting it now.
Even information, used to take a trip to a book store ort a library. Today we can find the answer to a trivia question in a matter of seconds.
So now n a situation where things are not the way we want them. We are beginning to understand hope again!
To have to wait on something to come.
The author of Hebrews would ask, are you holding firmly to the hope that you affirm.
In light of COVID-19 are we hopeful people?
we shoud be.
It would be the evidence of the very things we sang about and talked about when we met together at our Campus
the evidence of our faith is played out in our hope.
15 Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it.
Would our neighbours say that in the midst of this you are a person of HOPE? Or a person of complaint? This is personal. I have been heard complaining and questioning current opinion on how we are dealing with things.
What does it mean not to waiver right now? Are we Feafful , angery, it will depend on where our hope is or was.
where is our hope. Vacation. The right to eat in a restaurant. Not being told what to do?
These are important questions--- aND they are questions for the church to ask its own community....
This is what I mean....notice that each of these invitation are …Let US.
Not each one of us/ as if this is an individual effort.
Unfotuanatily there is an ongoing misconception that you can grow in faith, hope, as idividuals separate from Christian community.
That is foreieng to the early church concept of what it means ot be the church.
Now we do not do that as a one person show!
III. LET US MOTIVATE EACH OTHER TO HOLINESS(v24-25)
24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.
One of the ways we can starve a church of life and keep it from persevering during a time like this, is if we forget that we are part of a community meant to motivate, encourage, … and challenge each other.
one of the ways that we can aim our hearts away from complaint and toward hope, is to help others aim that way as well. To take advantage of the time allotted right now to make the call we’ve meant to make. To converse with the person we’ve needed to for a long time. To check in with those in our community who are in need. Singles who are alone at this time. Those who suffer with depression and anxiety.
25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
This text has been used at times to convict anf shame people into evey meeting...dont miss services on Sunday but also.... , prayer meetings Wednesday night, Bible study Friday noon, community groups;but the point is not to make sure you fantically be a part of every ministry offered but be a part of the life of the church, and the life of those who make up the church,
And here is why....
to encourage- on its face that seems really warm and comforting. And it should be, but there is more to the Greek words translated encourage than just someone saying...”you can do it” like family encourageing runners of a marathon along the marathon route.
the word encourage is not just about patting on the back and about telling us we are doing a good job and not giving up.
The word parakaleō holds in its meaning … an unwillingness, out of Christian love and concern, to let you stray from the faith.
To have such a conviction and concern for you that they will have the hard conversations in order to keep you from walking away.
There are many who would like church to only be
So the idea here of encouragement is....
Christian encouragement is to say well done, keep going, don’t stray from Christ.
See in the day of this letter, it was common for some to say Christianity is too hard, the looks I get, the persecution I receive, the call to a holy life is difficult.
And here we see the entire point of the letter,
to “encourage” say well done, keep going, don’t stray.
Nothing else can deliver what Jesus can.
The author his on this earlier in the letter in...
13 You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.
it could be so easy right now to excuse ourselves from a holy life. to hold off on spiritual concerns in what we watch and how much we drink. Why because we can live a life separated from the body in a way.
We will just wait until real church is happening.
I have two hopes right now....
We would develop
During Isolation let’s grow in...
A. Spiritual Maturity
My hope is tht this will not be a time of spiritual stagnancy-
right?
When water is stagnant and nothing is feeding it, it goas stagnant and begins to smell and is a poison to those who drink it.
I hope that it will mean there will be growth in each of us. That those of us who have left it to professionals in the church will have taken this time to move from consumers to providers of spiritual food, that thoss of us who have been content to have Sunday school teacher sand preachers do the heavy spiritual lifting for our families and ourselves, would become self feeders am distributors of gospel hope in our families and our neighbourhoods.
My second hope is this
That during isolation we would grow in
B. Desire for Christian Community
I would say this.....I don’t think any of us should get comfortable right now. I hope and pray that no one is saying....finally church in my Pajama’s.. (or worse).
I know some are happy with Sunday morning as we now experience. It is more on our terms.
Hey I like it becsue I get to sing in 3 part harmony wth my family. I never get to worship with my family on Sunday mornings normally.
And I know that some of us like church to be more accomidating to us.
I mean I’ve seen people lose it because they can’t bring coffee in to a church sanctuary, and so skip out on giving the all sustaining God worship, so they can stand in the lobby and get their caffeine fix. ( too close)
So hey church in the comfort of my own home on my schedule, that’s ok.
But I will say this...
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of what church is meant to be, if we are finding ourselves comfortable with the current version.
I want to say..I am blown away by how the media team at our church jumped into gear and made worship and teaching available to this church community, but I sure hope that a hunger is growing in each of us for actual church, the gathering together of the saints, to worship together. To take the Lord’s Supper (communion) while in communion!!!
COVID should be growing a hunger and thirst for Christian community.
and it is my hope that’s this will work to enhance what it will look like when we gather together again.
I am excited by the prospect of spritually mature, self-feeding, hungry for church community Christians get together to corprorately declare God’s goodness.
Where we will echo the words of the psalmist in Psalm 122:1
1 I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
because that i where the life of the people of God is celebrated and bolstered.
PAUSE
But while we wait, while we under a COVID imposed persecution we need to ask oiurselves the same questions a small persecuted house church was asking 2000 years ago in Rome.
Questions we need to ask ourselves:
Am I drawing near to God?
Have I just put it on pause, or has this new advernture meant a practice of morning prayers and devotion to God. As pastor Jon Hawes mentioned in a blog last week, we are all talking about binge watching but how about some binge Bible reading!
Am I displaying and living out my hope in Christ?
Am I seeking ways to encourage and call other to live out their hope in Christ?
or are we ruled by fear and frustration.
What are we doing (even though it looks different) to spur on, encourage others to live out their faith and hope during COVID.
Therefore, as I begin to seek to apply todays text....we might want to ask ourselves “To whom in the body of Christ am I giving encouragement this day or this week by my presence, my actions, and my words? Am I receiving encouragement by remaining faithful to my association with the body of Christ?” Such reflection, when followed with action, serves as a foundation stone for healthy Christian living.