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MESSAGE FOR OCT 3, 2021
Given by Craig Minke
TITLE: THE PEASANT KING
The theme this week is humanity - the jewel of God's creation.
Our sermon looks at Hebrews 1 and 2, which tell of God's romance with the jewel of his creation - Jesus becoming one of us.
The 19th century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard told the parable of a king who fell in love with a maiden.
She was one of his servants and lived across a great distance of social class and wealth from him.
He couldn't imagine her life, but he couldn't stop thinking about her.
He had every privilege, but what he really wanted was her, not just with his body, but with his heart.
He was wise enough to know that he couldn't go to the village with his royal guard and simply take her back to the palace.
She could never resist his power, and she could never resist the opportunities for her and her family that his wealth would provide.
She'd have no choice, and the king knew in that scenario that she'd always keep her heart from him.
One day he finally left the castle in disguise.
He put on the rags of the peasants and let his beard grow.
He found the maiden and a place to stay near her.
Slowly, through stolen glances and kind words, he won her heart.
They lived alongside each other, sharing work and breaking bread.
He patiently showed her his heart and his true self.
Finally, after a while, he was able to tell her he was the king.
By then, she knew him, and her heart was his.
The author crowns the story with the line: "For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love."
Maybe in our day there is one TV show called "Undercover Boss" that helps illustrate this examples
* Has anyone ever watched the TV show "Undercover Boss"
* Show of hands (highly recommend the show)
* Usually a boss of a large corportation disquised himself as an employee that works with other employees in the company,
* As a result people are raised in position or given holidays or fired because of the type of employees they are.
* Why do you think Jesus chose to lay down his riches and glory rather than just come down and put everything right?
Hebrews tells this story, through the story of Israel and sometimes in details that sound strange to our modern ears, of God coming to us through Jesus.
He put on the shabby clothing of humanity to come and meet with us as one of our own, revealing himself at just the right time to be the King.
Our passage from the beginning of Hebrews today is a close look at this incarnation - the story of the peasant king who came among the people, whose name was called Immanuel, "God with us."
The Author became a character in the narrative, so let's look at him in three aspects today:
* The story of Israel
* The story of the world
* The story of us
Lets read today's passage found in
HEB 1:1-4 (ESV) Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
HEB 2:5-12 (ESV) 5 For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking.
6 It has been testified somewhere, "What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?
7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor,
8putting everything in subjection under his feet."
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.
At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.
9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.
That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,
12 saying, "I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise."
The Story of Israel
We'll start with the story of Jesus in a very local sense-Jesus as the Jewish kid who sometimes slowly but always intentionally tied himself into the narrative of Israel.
But first a step back to look at what we're reading.
We roughly know the author or authors of most books in Scripture-a person or a small school of scribes that they taught and who wrote in their name.
John wrote John, Matthew wrote Matthew, etc.
But Hebrews is the exception.
No one knows who wrote it.
There have been guesses throughout history, but none have really stuck.
The only reason it's called "The Letter to the Hebrews" is because it is so thoroughly Jewish.
It is full of Old Testament quotes and parallels and it is so obviously intended to connect Jesus with the Jewish story that ancient scholars have inferred it was meant for a Jewish audience and titled it that way.
I personally feel that Paul wrote the book but no scholars can actually agree as to who the writer was.
But who wrote it, why it was written and who it was sent to are mysteries, and in a sense that makes it even more the timeless theological discussion it is.
Jesus is being connected not just to one community and circumstance (like in one of Paul's letters), but to the whole story of all humanity.
That starts locally with the Israel story.
HEB 1:1-2 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.... (ESV)
* This is a powerful connection.
* Think of a king, especially in the ancient world, who started by sending messages and legislating laws from far away, and then got to the point of sending portraits of himself, and finally came to visit.
* This is the connection of Jesus to the story of Israel.
* The unfortunate theological mistake we often make in the modern world is to see the giving of the law and the coming of Jesus as disconnected.
* We think God gave us the law, then we couldn't keep it and we messed it all up and missed the mark, so Jesus had to come and set everything straight.
* This understanding misses the point of the story.
* The choosing of Israel, the giving of the law and even the consistent failure of humanity were all part of the narrative.
* God let nothing go to waste.
* He knew even before Eve reached for the fruit that the whole deal would cost him his Son.
* He chose one person, Abraham, then one nation, Israel.
* Then he chose out of that nation one lineage, one family and finally one unassuming teenage girl to bring himself into the story of Israel.
* So, instead of the law somehow failing, it only pointed forward to our need for a Savior.
* It clarified the story and made space in it to prepare the way for Jesus.
* And the author of Hebrews starts his letter with this discussion.
HEB 1:3-4 ... After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
(ESV)
* Notice the words "Much superior to the angels."
* This line may sound strange to our modern Christian ears.
* Angels are on the periphery, if anywhere, of our theology.
* But in the time this letter was written, there was a strong Jewish tradition that the law had been delivered by the angels (see Deuteronomy 33:2).
* They had delivered the law or somehow been involved in the process on Mount Sinai.
* The law was a kind of advance echo of God's redemptive plan in Christ.
* Like the king in Kierkegaard's story becoming a servant and winning a girl's heart as a servant, before bringing her to the castle and making her queen.
* Paul said the law was "our tutor to bring us to Christ" (Galatians 3:24).
So, we go from the local story of Jesus as a Hebrew fulfilling the Israelite story to the universal...
The story of the world
HEB 1:2-3 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, (ESV)
* The writer of Hebrews then uses this word to describe Jesus-the "exact imprint."
* This is a word from minting describing the exact imprint of a face on a coin.
* He is to God what sunlight is to the sun.
* Jesus is God himself among us.
* One commentator expressed the difference between us and Jesus' original audience:
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