Tabernacle – A Picture of Heaven - Hebrews 9

            

Last week we reflected on Jesus as our high priest, the greatest high priest. Priests worked in the area of sin; doing the rituals and sacrifices that pointed to how our sin is paid for and we’re cleansed. This week we’re looking at what Jesus does as our high priest. Talking to neighbours and friends about Jesus, I’ve learned that most of them are already aware of their sin and brokenness, what they’re looking for is forgiveness and healing.

The Jews see sin as being like walking down a road, looking at ahead to where God is, but then stumbling so that our eyes come off God and we fall. Or we might slip and fall and our eyes again come off God. Sometimes we slowly drift off the road; our eyes see something just off the path and we go investigate it. As we come closer, we look at what caught our eye and take our eyes off God. The role of the priest is to guide us back to the road; unfortunately, not until after we’ve stumbled around in the ditches. Think of the parable of the king throwing a banquet and sending his servants to gather in those who’re in the streets and alleys and ditches because the invited guests had rejected the invitations.

When we fall or slip or drift of the road, we get dirty. Now sin isn’t something physical, though it often gets acted out physically. Sin is about our souls getting broken and dirty. I come from North-western Ontario where there are hundreds of beautiful lakes and streams. Once they were all filled with fish, but about 40 years ago, the lakes began to die. You look into the water of these lakes and you can see clear to the bottom of many of them. They look pure, but they’re filled with pollution, pollution unseen, but deadly. That’s sin and our souls. Our outsides may look good, but our hearts and minds get dirty; our souls get polluted through allowing other things take the place of God in our hearts.

God wants to have a close intimate relationship with us, a relationship where we can be in his presence. This means that our hearts and souls must be made clean and pure. This is where the image of the tabernacle, and later the temple, becomes important. The Hebrews use word pictures to help us understand who we are, who God is, and what God does to save us. The tabernacle is a picture of coming close to God. You start off in the outer courts where the blood sacrifices were made to remind us that the penalty for sin is death. Their blood would be scattered over the altar and sometimes even over the people as a symbol of the cleansing nature of the life blood. These sin sacrifices were burnt offerings in fire; blood and fire are both symbols of cleansing. The animal’s blood was symbolically shed in place of our own, “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” The cost of the dirt and pollution we’ve allowed into our hearts is how far that’s taken us away from God; the sacrifices give us a glimpse of the path back to God.

Everyone’s allowed in the outer courts. Then we move into the first room of the tabernacle where other sacrifices are offered and the altar of incense was found. Here we find the table of show-bread meant for the priests. The 12 loaves represent the tribes of Israel. This is the bread David eats when he’s running from Saul. Normally only priests are allowed in this room. Then comes the Holy of Holies with the ark of the covenant. Only the High Priest is allowed inside and then only once a year. The ark contains items from Israel’s time in the wilderness: a jar of manna to show God provides, Aaron’s budded staff to show God chose him as his priest, and the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments on them to remind Israel of God’s covenant with them.

Even with all the sacrifices the priests offered, we still end up feeling that they’re still not enough, so how do we become clean again? It begins by confessing that there’s nothing we can do; it’s all God. The writer of Hebrews points to the Jewish sacrifices as only symbols of what needs to be done, and then to Jesus as the only one who could do, and be, the sacrifice needed to make us clean again. In church words, Jesus atones for our sins. To atone for something means that you do something to make up for a past wrong you’ve done, you work to make things right again between you and the person you’ve wronged or hurt. The problem is that when we wrong God, there’s not really anything we can do to take away the hurt, there’s no way to make up for what we’ve done because we’re just going to do something else to hurt God again, or even the same thing again.

The sacrifices and the blood sprinkled on the people made them ceremonially clean on the outside, but it did nothing for their hearts and souls. This is why Jesus comes, why the writer to the Hebrews stresses at the beginning of this letter that Jesus is completely divine and completely human and able to take our sin on himself and wash us clean. Jesus comes and offers himself to God as a blameless sacrifice on our behalf to wash our souls from the things that lead to death. Jesus never sins, though Satan tries his best in the desert after Jesus’ baptism to tempt him to sin. Jesus comes “to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.” Jesus’ purity washes away our sin because we have accepted him as our Lord and Saviour. Jesus dies because the penalty for sin is death because something unclean is not allowed into the presence of God.

This is why there were barriers placed between the people of God and God himself in the tabernacle, even though the tabernacle is the sign of God’s presence among his people. This is also why at Jesus’ death the curtain in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn in two so that the Holy of Holies becomes open to the world and the Holy Spirit pours out into the world. We see this in Matthew, “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” God no longer keeps himself separate from us because Jesus’ blood makes our souls and spirits clean in God’s eyes.

An important part of atonement is why Jesus comes and dies for our sin. It’s found at the end of verse 14, “so that we may serve the living God.” We aren’t saved so that we can sit back and pat ourselves on the back. We’re saved so that we can be Christ’s body here on earth showing and sharing with the world the gospel news of Jesus’ great love for all people. We’re Jesus’ bride, preparing herself for Jesus’ return. Atonement is a meaningless doctrine unless it’s applied to our daily lives. Having our consciences washed white as snow is only a pretty saying unless it changes our lives. Atonement is all about love, it’s about a father who loves his filthy children so much that he sends his pure clean son to come down here and take our filth on himself; offering his own blood in place of our own. Jesus does this so that we can experience this cleansing of the heart and healing of the soul. A teen in Allendale said in a Bible study, “When I shower after work, I feel clean, so that means I can feel the forgiveness in atonement.” What a great insight!

Francis Chan challenges us, “God wants to change us; he died so that we could change. The answer lies in letting him change you. Remember his counsel to the lukewarm church in Laodicea? “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” His counsel wasn’t to try harder, but rather to let him in. As James wrote, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” Jesus Christ didn’t die only to save us from hell; he also died to save us from our bondage to sin. In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Sin’s a spiritual problem. It’s not things outside us that make us sin; it’s our hearts that make us dirty. We can never blame sin because of the world around us; we look inside ourselves. The Holy Spirit slowly transforms us to be more like Christ when we follow the Spirit’s leading and guiding. The tabernacle points us to the promise of new life; our past doesn’t have to shape our present or future; Jesus and the Holy Spirit shape our present and future, washing away the dirt of our past through Jesus’ love for us. We come to Jesus instead of the tabernacle to be made clean from the dirt on our souls. Atonement frees us from living with guilt, allowing us to live forward instead of looking backwards. Atonement gives us the ability to live out grace with each other due to God’s grace expressed to us. Atonement also gives us the power to forgive others as the Holy Spirit shapes us into the image of Jesus.

Marvel at God’s love for us and let it flow over into the lives of those around us. When we come close to God, his love for us shapes us so that we can love our neighbours. It doesn’t happen all at once; we need to allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and attitudes so our neighbours and friends become so important to us that our hearts and souls won’t rest until they know Jesus and the new life they can have in him.

Jesus- Like Melchizedek - Hebrews 7:1-8:6

                             

Melchizedek’s the king of Jerusalem during the time of Abraham. We know about him through only three verses in Genesis, but he becomes an image pointing to Jesus. Abraham’s a powerful force in Canaan. He’s just beaten a coalition of four kings who had captured his nephew Lot and Lot’s family. He shows the people in the area that you don’t fool around with Abraham. He heads back to camp and meets Melchizedek, who offers Abraham bread, a sign of hospitality and friendship.

Then comes a strange act, Melchizedek blesses Abraham because he’s a priest of the Most-High God. Abraham gives him 10% of what he’s won. This is a king’s part of the spoils of war. This offering identifies Melchizedek as a king and as a priest of God. There’s an echo forward to Mount Sinai and Israel’s offering to the high priest after the Levites were chosen as the tribe of priests. In Numbers 18 we find the call to support the priesthood, especially Aaron, the first high priest, “In this way you also will present an offering to the Lord from all the tithes you receive from the Israelites. From these tithes you must give the Lord’s portion to Aaron the priest. You must present as the Lord’s portion the best and holiest part of everything given to you.”

The writer to the Hebrews sees this as very important. Priests come from the tribe of Levi, but Melchizedek doesn’t since he came before the Levites, He’s a priest appointed by God, not just through family line. Soon after the Lord saves Israel from slavery, the Israelites build a golden calf and worship it. The Levites are the only tribe who refuse to worship the calf. When Moses calls on those faithful to the Lord, Exodus tells us the Levites eagerly rally to him and take up their swords and kill many of those who worshipped the golden calf. God makes them priests to defend his honor through the rituals and sacrifices God gives Israel. In Numbers 3:12-13, God says, “The Levites are now to be mine. When I killed all the first-born of the Egyptians, I consecrated as my own the oldest son of each Israelite family and the first-born of every animal. Now, instead of having the first-born sons of Israel as my own, I have the Levites; they will belong to me. I am the Lord.”

The Levites become God’s specially chosen children and Israel’s spiritual leaders. Hebrews identifies Jesus as the priest who engages the battle against the idols and gods of our day that lead us into idolatry. Jesus doesn’t take the blood of his enemies, but offers his life blood to defeat Satan and wash us clean of our sin guilt in worshipping the idols of our time. Jesus brings salvation. Priests call us to confession and to repentance, to change our way and to walk God’s way; this is the core of Jesus’ message, to repent and believe in him. Priests call the people back to right living according to God’s way; it’s the same today as Jesus calls us to follow him, to walk in his way.

Melchizedek appears out of nowhere and yet knows God in a place where no one else seems to. Melchizedek means king of righteousness and he’s king of Salem, which means peace. Abraham, a man of war, humbles himself before Melchizedek and receives a blessing from him. This foreshadows Jesus as our king of righteousness and peace who comes into the violence of our sin to bring peace with God and call us to walk his path, the way of righteousness. God reveals himself to Melchizedek about the time he chooses Abraham; working through various people, not just Abraham. Jesus comes from the line of kings, and he’s a priest forever. At the time of Hebrews, Psalm 110 was read as a vision of the kingdom of God, and foreshadows Jesus is the ultimate spiritual leader of God’s people. The emphasis here again is how Jesus is superior to Melchizedek, as he’s superior to angels, Moses, and all others. Jesus is superior because he faces all temptation and remains true to God. Jesus suffered and remained committed to following God’s will, Jesus understands the people as he appears in the presence of God, holy and pure.

Priests play a key role in the life of Israel. Louis Berkhof, a Reformed theologian, writes, “while a prophet represented God among the people, a priest represented the people before God. Both were teachers, but while the former taught the moral, the later taught the ceremonial law. Moreover, the priests had the special privilege of approach to God, and of speaking and acting in behalf of the people…. a priest is taken from among men to be their representative, is appointed by God, is active before God in the interests of men, and offers gifts and sacrifices for sins. He also makes intercession for the people.”

The Heidelberg Catechism, in question and answer 31 teaches, “Jesus has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be… our only high priest who has delivered us by the one sacrifice of his body, and who continually pleads our cause with the Father….” Jesus is different from all other priests. Jesus stands in the place between us and God; he’s the guarantee of the better covenant because he’s the sacrifice, the perfect and last sacrifice. “Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”

The language of this section of the letter points us to how Israel was shaped by the laws and rituals God gave Israel at Mount Sinai after he saved them from slavery. God shows his desire for a relationship with his people through making different covenants with them. There were many covenants in the Old Testament; one with Noah to never flood the earth again, one with Abraham to bless Abraham and the nations of the world through Abraham, one with Moses to be Israel’s God and they his people; this one was a conditional covenant; we read in Exodus 19:5–6, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” This covenant would only be in effect if Israel obeys God; if they do, they will be priests, interceding for the nations of the world before God, revealing God to the nations! There’s the covenant with David that a king would come from his line to rule over his kingdom forever, pointing ahead to Jesus. This is why Melchizedek is so fascinating because he’s both king and priest, pointing straight to Jesus.

Today, it’s not through the old covenants and law that we come to God; it’s through Jesus and a new covenant, with Jesus the priest of this covenant. The new covenant was already promised in Jeremiah, “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.” This covenant moves inside of us, into our hearts, the place where Jesus’ Spirit makes his home. The Spirit reveals himself to us and helps us to see Jesus and who he is as our saviour and redeemer. The law written on the heart is the law as Jesus taught us, the law of loving God and each other. God is our God and we are his people. This is the great promise and the great comfort. Hebrews tells us we come close to God through Jesus because, as our priest, he’s always there to intercede for us. Jesus is standing right beside his Father, pleading our case for us, admitting that we’re messed up people who don’t deserve to be forgiven by God, but Jesus covers us with his purity; his blood on the cross removes our offences in God’s eyes. When you feel like God isn’t hearing your prayers, our comfort comes from knowing Jesus is right there on our behalf!

As followers of Jesus, we’re also called to be priests, standing between the people and God, interceding for them, calling God to act and send his Spirit to work in their hearts. We’re called to live as his people wherever he places us, revealing Jesus to our communities, working to bring the peace of Jesus, offering sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, offering ourselves to God. We call people to follow Jesus who calls us to repent and believe, to live his way and follow his commands. In Peter’s first letter, he writes “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Peter likely had God’s call to Israel at Mount Sinai in mind when God said, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” a reminder to Israel that in following God’s way, they will be a blessing to the nations by showing the nations who God is through their obedience. We reveal who Jesus is to our community through following his commands to be a people of blessing and love.

Rene Padilla, talking about biblical ethics, calls us to engage the world as followers of Jesus. He writes, “without ethics, biblical ethics, there is no real repentance,” and that “biblical ethics includes social engagement in the world we live in.” We’re called to approach God to pray for our communities; for the Spirit to work in their hearts and draw them to Jesus so they can know forgiveness and grace. We pray for the Spirit to move them to believe in Jesus as we share the gospel news with them. John Calvin reminds us that “doing good and sharing are called sacrifices that are pleasing to God. Thus the generosity of the Philippians in relieving Paul’s poverty is a fragrant sacrifice; and thus all good works of believers are spiritual sacrifices.” We’re called to defend God’s honour through working to create places of peace that reflects our priest-king of peace and righteousness, being, as Jesus calls us to, salt and light to the community.

Maturing Our Souls - Hebrews 5:11-6:3

            

This letter to the Hebrews is meant to get us thinking more deeply about who Jesus is and how he shapes our faith and lives. Faith is not just believing the right things; faith needs to be active and practiced in our daily lives and how we interact with the world. He’s echoing James, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

The writer to the Hebrews is concerned about people in the church who’ve been passionate and serious about their faith but who’ve lost that passion and began to take their faith and God for granted. C.S Lewis warns of this dullness of the soul in The Screwtape Letters, a series of letters from a senior to a junior demon advising him on how to draw people away from God. The senior demon writes, “Your job is to make the person acquiesce in the present low temperature of his spirit and gradually become content with it, persuading himself that it is not so low after all. In a week or so you will be making him doubt whether the first days of his Christianity were not, perhaps, a little excessive…A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.” I’ve had parents tell me that the excitement of their teens after service projects and mission trips is all fine and well, but that it’s good it wears off so that they can concentrate on getting a real job in the real world.

As you read this part of the letter, there’s a sense of frustration creeping in here. He’s got so much to share with them yet, but he’s starting to wonder if he should even bother; he’s wondering if they’ll even understand what he’s about to share with them. Our Bible is very polite in how it translates this verse, “it’s hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand,” a more literal translation is, “it’s hard to make it clear to you because you’re lazy or sluggish.” There’s a lack of effort among them in continuing to learn more about Jesus and growing deeper in their relationship and faith in Jesus. It’s sad that the letter writer needs to challenge them on their attitude to Jesus. Yet, if we’re honest, Hebrews is just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. Faith is rooted in a trust relationship with Jesus marked by obedience to walking Jesus’ way, and this takes effort.

“By this time you ought to be teachers, yet you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food.” Ouch! John Stott, talking about the lack of people sharing their faith writes, “Nothing hinders evangelism today more than the widespread loss of confidence in the truth, relevance, and power of the gospel.” We may have accepted the gospel, but we’ve accepted it only as a promise of a future in heaven for ourselves, confident we’re saved because we believe in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sin, his resurrection, and the forgiveness of our sin, but then we set it aside so we can live in the world according to the world’s way.

We often don’t make the effort to do the hard work of reflecting on how the gospel story empowers us to engage our culture and community and why. Too many followers of Jesus don’t work at seeing the world at a deeper level. The gospel is given to us to help us understand God’s universe, the foundation from where we interpret history, the present, and the future. As Christopher Wright says, “Basically, they (many followers of Jesus today) have “added Jesus” to provide a happy ending to an otherwise unaltered personal and cultural story.” Jesus is only part of a chapter in many Christians’ story.

The entire Biblical story is the gospel story; creation is rooted in God creating order out of chaos, humanity is created to be in relationship with God, created in his image to develop the potential in creation according to God’s design. Sin ruptures our relationship with God, so Jesus comes to bring salvation and healing and set us on his way, using us to bring order out of the chaos sin creates, bringing healing and hope, and being the blessing to the world God called Abraham to be. The gospel is not about escaping this world to get to heaven, it’s about this world and life here; it’s about sharing the gospel story of forgiveness, hope, and renewal found in Jesus and his way; it’s about living out the hope and healing that comes through Jesus so the places the Spirit leads us into begin to experience the gospel.

Why do you come on Sunday mornings? Most of us come to worship God, a good thing! Many of you come to be fed. Nothing wrong with that, and we get fed in many ways, from the worship, the fellowship, being able to encourage and build each other up, and from the sermon. While we’re blessed with much biblical knowledge and have so much knowledge at our fingertips, still the church is struggling in Canada, so more knowledge doesn’t seem to be the answer. At some point we need to mature and feed themselves into maturity. If you’re only getting fed once a week, that’s not nearly enough to become mature followers of Jesus. The writer of Hebrews challenges the people, “You ought to be teachers.” Do you come on Sunday and go to Bible study with the goal of learning in order to teach someone else, or is it just about learning more, never passing on what you’re learning? Who are you teaching the gospel to, who are you mentoring in the faith?

The writer talks about solid food for the mature, those who by constant use, have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. They have basic knowledge of Jesus; the knowledge of repentance and faith, baptism and laying on of hands, of resurrection and eternal life, but those who are mature do something with it. It’s the “by constant use” part that gives us a hint to what being mature is. Bible study, praying, meditation, and learning more help us learn about Jesus, but they don’t make us mature. We learn so we can teach others, we learn so we can recognize good from evil and mentor others to also recognize good from evil and how to live out the good while challenging the evil. Mature comes from the word “teleion” which means perfection as our end goal; meaning that we’re growing into the people God has created us to be. Mature looks like living the fruit of the Spirit, Paul’s definition of love as found in 1 Corinthians 13, and the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and shaping our values and lives by them.

Maturing our souls happens as we take the foundational truths to interpret our culture and apply them to engage our culture as followers of Jesus; engaging the world through gospel lens. The word practice is the word “gymnazo” where we get our word gymnasium from, a place to practice and train. Training is about doing something repeatedly, guided by coaches so that we can become skilful at whatever we’re training to accomplish. Practicing studying our culture with gospel lens takes training: Sunday worship together, studying Scripture, prayer, seriously inviting the Holy Spirit to take charge of our hearts and minds and studying our culture and community in order to engage it. This week at our worship meeting, it was wondered if we should address Pride month here in Lacombe, and I will admit that my first reaction was to resist as it creates so much conflict, but as I reflected and prayed, I recognized we fall into identifying the LGBTQ+ community the same way our culture does; that their gender and sexuality is their primary identity.

Gospel shaped engagement with the LGBTQ+ community begins with recognizing that each person is created in the image of God, the primary way we should see them. They’re among the people Jesus calls us to go out into the world to share the gospel with. Peter writes in his second letter, ^“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” He also calls us to gentleness and respect as we share the gospel. When we look at how Jesus interacted with those who sinned, such as the woman caught in adultery, we see Jesus first protecting her, challenging her accusers, and then lifting her up, telling her he’s not going to judge her, but he also commands her to go and sin no more. We also need the world to call us out on our sins, which we often find hard to see in ourselves.

Mature looks like doing hard things, entering the messiness and hardness of life with a soul shaped by deep love and commitment to God and love for our neighbours. It means studying our culture through the lens of Scripture, being with our neighbours to hear their stories, often hard stories of brokenness, feeling their hurt; listening to their stories of loneliness, seeking love and acceptance. As you listen, you’ll begin to recognize opportunities to speak Jesus’ invitation to come to him and rest, to share his love for them, shown in Jesus’ willingness to die for us so we can have new life; sharing with them Jesus’ way, inviting them to journey with us into holiness, turning together from our sin and trusting in him and his way.

God uses real life challenges and struggles to deepen our faith in him. Maturity recognises that everything God has created is potentially redeemable, that all of life is about faith. Learning and challenging each other to live our faith in Jesus out together is how we gain a mature faith.

 

The Sabbath Rest - Hebrews 3:7-4:16

                       

We’ve journeyed with the writer to the Hebrews in remembering who Jesus is as the Son of God and as human and why both sides of Jesus are important to us and part of God’s plan of salvation for us. Now the writer begins to challenge his readers on how our faith shapes and impacts our lives and relationships, beginning with the invitation to enter God’s rest. We’re reminded what Sabbath rest is all about.

The writer connects Sabbath rest to 2 key moments in history, using Moses’ writings to guide us. He begins with the Holy Spirit’s warning to not harden their heart to God like the people of Israel did after God lead them out of slavery into freedom and their response was to whine and complain. Moses makes the connection between Sabbath rest and freedom in Deuteronomy where he gives us God’s command to keep the Sabbath, “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” If you’re looking for true freedom from whatever’s holding you as a slave, whether it’s sin, habits, or patterns of life you can’t seem to change, addiction, or ways of thinking and behaving, freedom begins by accepting Jesus’ invitation to believe in him and come to him to find rest.

You can experience the beginnings of freedom by spending time with God and others; Sabbath is a community thing, not an individual thing in the Bible. When we come together, we remember who God is and his acts in the past to help us find hope and strength. Jesus’ sacrifice reminds us we have forgiveness, a step towards freedom from our slavery to sin and guilt. This doesn’t mean that God does everything for us, along with practicing Sabbath rest, we also seek out healing and counselling, we work to change our habits, we find mentors who will challenge us in our life choices, we work at connecting with the Holy Spirit to begin the process of transforming our ways of thinking and acting by pointing us to Jesus and his way. Jesus came for those who are sick and admit that they need him, he invites us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” We all need Jesus, we all need his rest, but we don’t all realise it.

The reality is that even in Canada and our own communities, there’s still physical slavery, often sexual. There are people quietly aching to be free but live in fear and despair as others control them. If any of you know of someone in this situation, if you yourself are in a destructive relationship, trust that Jesus is with you, that he weeps tears over your suffering, and I encourage you to quietly reach out to myself or others here at Bethel and we will walk with you as best we can to help you find freedom and rest in Jesus and connect you to resources to help you.

We seek God’s rest, knowing that he understands how much we need his rest because of who Jesus is, “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

In Exodus, when giving the 10 Commandments, Moses roots Sabbath rest in creation, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” After creating the universe and everything in it, culminating with humanity and seeing that it’s all “very good,” God rests the seventh day, humanity’s first day. The setting is the Garden of Eden and the pleasure of being with God. God’s first day with us is not spent showing us what work we’re supposed to do, instead he rests with us, enjoying together the beauty and wonder of creation and life. Here the Sabbath focus is time spent with God; and it’s for the entire creation! Resting from our work is a sign of trust in God that he provides for us, that work is not the center of our life: God is.

The urgency here is to make sure that we don’t fall short of entering onto God’s rest. Verse 2 is interesting in how it’s constructed and translated, “For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.” A literal and expanded translation is, “But the Word preached, the gospel, did not benefit those who were not uniting by faith with those who have listened to or obeyed the message.” Either way, there’s something about being together every 7 days that helps refresh us spiritually, emotionally, and physically. God’s rest is part of the rhythm of creation. God’s rest is about God’s people spending time together with God, taking our minds off work and achieving more, and just being God’s people together. This is a time to encourage and build each other up and part of our faithfulness to God and Jesus. We unite weekly with others who are listening to, and walking the way of Jesus. Hebrews keeps pointing to the importance of community, of coming close to God and entering his rest through the community of the body of Christ. Later, the writer urges the believers to “not give up meeting with each other.”

We’re cautioned that we can find ourselves not entering God’s rest, “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” There’s a warning here to not turn our back on God, to make God less important, to not make God’s gifts more important than him, or make our desires and goals more important than God. It fascinates me, it’s not about whether the people believe in God and Jesus, it’s about the lack of their relationship with God and Jesus; they don’t believe they need God. We can get so caught up in our own stuff, making everything more important than God and being part of his family, that we end up turning our back on God.

Sin’s deceitful, we might think that we’re fine with God because we believe the right things about Jesus, that Jesus is both God and human and died for our sins and was raised from the dead and assures us of our salvation, but even Satan believes this, yet he turns away because his wants are more important than a relationship of trust and obedience with Jesus. We’re often willing to be deceived so we can be like everyone else and focus on our wants, this is why the warning is repeated in different ways, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart,” an echo again to Israel’s time in the wilderness.

“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword.” There’s something about God’s word that gets deep inside of us when we’re exposed to it regularly. God knows what’s going on in our hearts, even when we’re not completely aware of what’s happening. His word’s able to penetrate through all the hurtful things we fill our thoughts and hearts with, and it draws us to him and helps us stop fooling ourselves. This can sometimes be a very painful process, which is why cutting and piercing imagery is used.

Again, one powerful defense against unfaith is mutual encouragement; this requires being part of a community of faith. Mutual encouragement is a vital part of being part of the family of God. Obedience to Jesus, “if you love me, you will keep my commands” helps us enter his rest and strengthens our faith. “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience” is not an encouragement, it’s a command. We ache for rest, we live in a culture that’s tired, exhausted; mentally, emotionally, spiritually tired, we need rest and Jesus offers it to us.

So, what is Sabbath rest? Sabbath rest is about connecting with God and finding freedom from the things that make us slaves. We look to Jesus who became like us; a high priest who enters God’s presence and prepares the way for us. Sabbath rest is about meeting God and finding freedom, and the way to Sabbath rest is through Jesus. Jesus knows the temptations we face, to skip the Sabbath rest, to believe in someone other than God, and gave us the Holy Spirit to keep connected to him. Jesus teaches us that Sabbath rest is about freedom from our driven daily lives, and being encouragers to others. Jesus himself regularly set time aside to be with God. Jesus knows our need to be in community with each other; he gives us an example by spending time with people and responding to their needs on Sabbath days. Sabbath rest connects us weekly with God, freeing our hearts and minds so we can focus on being like Jesus. It’s about time with God and the family of God, encouraging and building each other up; a foretaste of heaven.

The Son - One of Us - Hebrews 2

                            

Last week we reflected on how Jesus is God. Now the writer focuses on Jesus’ humanity and why he became human like us. The writer warns us to pay careful attention to what we’ve heard so we don’t drift away from the truth. He uses the picture of a ship that is carelessly allowed to drift past a safe haven because the sailor forgot to allow for the wind, current or tide. Faith in Jesus is not something you just drift along with or into. Faith in Jesus is all about making a daily commitment to say “yes” to him, otherwise we’ll find ourselves drifting away on currents we have no control of and no idea of where we’re heading.

It’s like being on a life raft in sea currents, but the currents are taking you away from life instead of leading you towards life. For those who don’t know Jesus yet, even if they might have heard his name, our culture tells us that salvation is something we do for ourselves: we take care of our own, we earn our salvation by doing more good than bad, and when life gets hard or boring, we turn to other things to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, whether it’s booze, drugs, sex, work, or something else. At some point we realize that there isn’t anything out there that can save us from who we are and what goes on inside our minds, hearts, and souls. At some point, hopefully, someone introduces us to Jesus. Here’s that urgency we find in Hebrews; we’re strongly urged to not ignore our salvation, which has been boldly, loudly, and repeatedly announced through various signs, wonders, miracles, and the gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit; something to reflect on this Pentecost and Lord’s Supper Sunday.

G.K. Chesterton writes, “Man is not what he should be, frustrated by circumstances, defeated by temptations, surrounded by his own weaknesses.” We’re now shown the human side of Jesus. Jesus has been made a little lower than the angels for a time, he’s become human, a person just like us, but given all power and authority. The creator has become one of the created so that he can taste death for everyone. Into the mess of our world comes Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man to taste death for everyone.

God has made humanity different than angels. Psalm 8 points to who Jesus becomes, “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.” Humanity has been created to be stewards over creation in God’s name, the creation mandate we find in the beginning of Genesis at the creation of Adam and Eve. We’re being trusted to take care of creation and discover and develop the potential, the wonder, the beauty that God has placed within creation, created through Jesus.

Yet God can’t die, only humans and creatures die. God’s eternal, always was, and always will be. So how can this be? It’s a frightening thought, the thought that our God can die. Yet, it shows us how much God loves us and what he’s willing to do and become, so that we might be saved. Jesus comes to make humanity into who we’re meant to be: the image of, and presence of God as his representatives here on earth. Jesus does this is by taking the punishment of our sin on himself. This means becoming one of his creatures, becoming human so that he can die. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, God’s grace isn’t cheap; even as it comes as a gift. Grace comes at a huge price paid by Jesus.

Paul puts it this way in his letter to Philippi, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Life can be hard and suffering hits us all. No one’s free from getting hurt, we’re all sinners and affected by other people’s sins against us. Jesus experiences the same kinds of suffering we do, and so much more. “God makes the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” This thought is a hard one, that God makes Jesus perfect through suffering. Isn’t Jesus already perfect, how can Jesus be made perfect?

The word perfect in Greek comes from “teleioo” which means “to consecrate, finish, fulfil, make perfect.” The verb is in an aorist form, meaning it’s something already accomplished, a past action. Jesus, in becoming human, fulfills God’s plan of salvation, he fulfills the prophecies from the Old Testament of a Messiah coming to save his people, pointing to the temple image of consecration. Jesus makes his people holy and dedicated to God the Father. This is the temple image of salvation; an invitation to be made holy and perfect through Jesus; this is how we can be holy as God is holy as God commands in Leviticus, or be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect as Jesus calls us to be in Mathew 5.

We’re now given four images of who Jesus is. The first image is that of Jesus as the pioneer, or perhaps more accurately, the originator of our salvation. After humanity made the choice to listen to other voices instead of God’s, and chose their own path instead of God’s, God chooses a path forward for our salvation and it all originates in Jesus becoming human like us. There’s no other salvation from our sin except through Jesus becoming one of us, dying for our sin as the perfect sinless person, and confirmed in his resurrection from death, defeating death’s power, rescuing us from its grip of fear. As Tim Keller wrote about dying, “All death can do to Christians is make their lives infinitely better.” Death is now the doorway into the presence of God, all because when we die, we die in Jesus, the author and originator of our salvation, taking us home to the Father’s mansion.

The second image is that of Jesus as our older brother, “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.” When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father who is in heaven,” he’s shows us that God is more than our creator and giver of life, he’s more than our king and master, he desires a more personal relationship with us where he’s our father and we’re his children and Jesus is our older brother who comes after us to bring us home again.   

Jesus as our liberator is the third image. Through his becoming human like us, his death becomes powerful, powerful enough to defeat Satan who holds the power of death over all those who have sinned. In an unexpected twist in the universe, Jesus becomes our liberator by embracing weakness in becoming human like us, making him vulnerable to suffering, all the human emotions and struggles such as fear, temptation, and even doubt; think Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus’ cry to do things a different way than the cross, and yet in his humanity Jesus remains sinless, completely walking in God’s will, leading to Satan’s defeat. Jesus takes away the punishment and the fear of death from us, transforming death into the last doorway bringing us into the presence of God our Father. 1 Peter 2:24 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

As the son of immigrants from the Netherlands, my parents and grandparents shared with us their feelings of amazing joy when the Canadian tanks rolled into their village and they knew they were finally free. I’ve heard the stories of prisoners in the concentration camps and how many of them broke down; uncontrollably weeping when they were freed knowing that they could finally return home to their families and didn’t have to live in fear any longer. Most of us are so comfortable today, that we’ve no real idea of what liberation means, we don’t really have an emotional or spiritual understanding of what Jesus has done as our liberator from Satan and death. This often leads to a lack of appreciation for Jesus’ sacrifice and its cost. Today, for many people, salvation comes from believing the right things, and we underappreciate the importance of our relationship with Jesus as our older brother and God as our Father. We miss out on the strength and joy this relationship brings us.

The fourth image of Jesus is our “merciful and faithful high priest.” Jesus becomes human, just like us in every way so that he might “make atonement for the sins of the people.” He gives his life so that his adopted brothers and sisters might have eternal life. The writer writes of being tempted, reassuring us that there’s no temptation that Jesus didn’t face. Jesus gives us his Spirit to help us face any temptation Satan uses to try to lure us away from Jesus. Jesus knows hurt and suffering, temptation, loss and weeping; he knows loneliness and despair, sitting at the right hand of his Father, reminding the Father that we’re God’s children and Jesus has taken our place and purified us from our sin as the high priest by becoming the sacrifice to end sacrifices.

Jesus’ sacrifice brings healing to our souls. Out of gratefulness and a desire to live the way God created us to, the Spirit begins to transform us in how we live with God, and with each other, shaping our lives to be more and more like Christ. Because of who Jesus is, because of what he endured for us and what he’s done for us, the Spirit calls us to make Jesus the center of who we are. The one who saves us, our older brother, our liberator, and high priest can transform you and your life in ways you could never imagine because he’s become one of us and truly knows us!