Faithful in Blessing

 May 14 2023

Hebrews 6

         I don’t know about anyone else but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is the year 2023. This means that the 80’s were forty years ago and the 70’s were fifty years ago and I have to tell you, I struggle with that. I guess what also hit me upside my head this week is that when I thought about it being 2023, I figured out that I have been in pastoral ministry for nineteen years. Sometimes you just go about doing the work that you are called to do and never really stop to think that you have done so for almost twenty years. I am fortunate that I learned early on to never get up here on a Sunday morning and give my opinion. There is no one who wants to wake up and gather here in church to hear what I think about something, not even my wife. No, I learned early on to only preach what the Bible has to say and to especially tell people what Jesus has said because it is Jesus that people really want to hear from. 

         Now, I am a little naïve because I always thought most pastors would eventually figure out that, you know, its all about Jesus. So needless to say, it was a kind of gut punch when following the trouble that happened at the Capitol in January of 2020 the pastors in the East Ohio District of the Church of the Nazarene received an email from the Superintendent and he had to actually tell pastors that we are here to point people to Jesus. I thought to myself, do we as pastors really need to be reminded of such a thing? Let’s just say that this email has etched itself into my conscience. What made this focus on Jesus come to the forefront of my thoughts this week was an excerpt from an article I read which told of a father who took his teenagers down to Wilmore, Kentucky, to visit Asbury University during the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in their chapel that overwhelmed that place for almost a month. This Dad wanted his kids to experience what God was up to in a powerful way. On the way home, this Dad asked his kids what made this service so good. One of them simply said, “It was only about Jesus.” The father pushed for more, telling his kids to,”Wrap more words around that.” His kids responded saying, ‘Well, Dad, it feels like most churches are about Jesus and something else. You know, Jesus and a political thing, or Jesus and a social justice thing.You know, Jesus and something else. It’s like Jesus is sharing the stage in most churches. Today we had church and it was about Jesus.”  I just thought this was so beautifully put, that where the Holy Spirit was poured out in a mighty way was in the place where everything was all about Jesus.

         Now, this making our church life be all about Jesus really should come as no surprise because here in Scriptures we have wonderful works such as the book of Hebrews which tells us exactly this, that it is all about Jesus and nothing else. If we don’t make life all about Jesus, then, as the writer of Hebrews so aptly describes, there will be consequences. It is Jesus who has united his heavenly life with our flesh and blood existence and this has profound consequences for all of us. As Jesus has come and shared fully in our human experience, having been tempted just as we are tempted and having tasted death for all of us, we can say most assuredly that Jesus has shared fully in this life we live. But what is also true is that since Jesus has risen from the grave and has ascended to the right hand of God, in the flesh, we can have the hope that there in the heavens we who share in his flesh and blood existence can have a home with Jesus. The writer of Hebrews, in the second chapter, assures us that now our home is with Jesus and it is this hope that we must hold fast to with the utmost confidence. This home in glory is promised to us, it is a reality that should be the firm foundation under our feet upon which we stand, and it is this eternal home that we are called to believe in all the way to the end of our life here on earth. What we forfeit when we lose faith in this hope that Jesus has given to us is that we will be people who are not at rest, we will be people who will continually to try and discover the faithfulness of God through our circumstances instead of knowing that our God is faithful to deliver upon his promises, and these are two very different ways of going about our world. We get this sense of striving in the first chapter of the letter written by James where he says, “But ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” Paul says something similar in the fourth chapter of Ephesians where he implores his audience to no longer be “ children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” You see, we don’t have to live in such a restless existence as we hear described here, a life of uncertainty at the mercy of all kinds of false teaching which can lead us astray. No, instead we have been given the assurance in which we can hold fast to with bold confidence, this hope that our eternal home is with the risen and exalted Jesus.

         Well, in our scripture for today, we begin to discover just why we must have a faith that remains ours all the way until we reach our home in glory and the reason in a word, is Jesus. Prior to this sixth chapter, the writer of Hebrews has focused his energy on the fact that in the risen and exalted Jesus we have a faithful and merciful high priest who is there for us, willing to come to our aid when we feel our faith slipping. You see, a faith response to Jesus is not just about us holding fast to him with confidence but also is knowing that Jesus is there, interceding for us, grasping ahold of us. Yet as the writer of Hebrews goes along speaking to his audience about Jesus being our high priest, the one appointed by our Heavenly Father to intercede on our behalf, he suddenly stops and he begins to wonder aloud why those he is writing to just don’t seem to get what is at stake with their situation of them wavering in their faith and confidence in Jesus. Yes, to not take hold with confidence to this hope that Jesus offers to us is most certainly going to mean that one is going to live a life of constant uncertainty especially in knowing the faithfulness of God. Yet there is a greater tragedy that happens if those that the writer of Hebrews addresses decides to just up and walk away from Jesus when life with Jesus gets difficult and they have to suffer on account of being associated with him. This tragedy is that their failure of faith directly implies the failure of the one that all are called to place their faith in, namely, Jesus. The writer of Hebrews wants the people he writes to to understand that their walking away from their faith in Jesus says something very profound about the work that Jesus has done upon the cross which is that his work there has not accomplished what it was supposed to do. You see, what the writer of Hebrews wants to be completely clear about is that to make our life all about Jesus we must remember that how we live has a direct bearing upon the very reputation of Jesus as being the one who can really save us from our sin.

         The writer of Hebrews begins this sixth chapter urging his audience that it is time for them to grow up. I mean do they really need to go over the basic teachings of the church, again? For goodness sake, there comes a time when all babies have to grow up and become mature adults. What it means for these followers of Christ to be mature is that they would have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Stop and think about what the writer of Hebrews has just told us in this description of what it means to be mature, that by constantly working at figuring out just what is good and what is evil, over time we become trained in knowing just what is the good that we are supposed to do and the evil that we must be done with. Now, what we also know is that the writer of Hebrews defines evil in the third chapter as being an unbelieving heart. So, this tells us that he wants us to understand good and evil from a standpoint of faith. To trust in the promises of God obviously is good and if we refuse to trust in these promises then it just makes sense that this is evil. So this is the mindset that the writer of Hebrews says that his audience does not seem to have as of yet and it is important to keep this in mind as we continue on with what he has to say to them. 

         The writer of Hebrews then comes to one of the most difficult passages in all of his address so we must go slow, and listen carefully to figure out just what he is trying to communicate. He begins by stating that “it is impossible..”, and this impossibility is going to be revealed after a series of statements about what the writer’s audience have already experienced. They are people who have been enlightened, they have seen the light of the new reality which has dawned upon our dark world through the life of Jesus. They have also tasted the heavenly gift which could possibly mean that in Jesus, the gift of heaven, they have found the bread of heaven, and have tasted the sweetness of the life that only he can provide. They have become partakers in the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, the divine life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been opened up so that now through the Holy Spirit we too can experience this life, knowing the Father of Jesus as our Father and knowing Jesus as our brother. So, to partake in the Holy Spirit is to have experienced the ocean depths of holy love which have always existed between the Father and the Son. And this audience of the writer of Hebrews also says to those he writes, that they have tasted the beauty and wonder of the word of God. This means that they have experienced the profound faithfulness found only in the promises that God speaks forth. Finally, we also learn that these who are listening to what the writer says have also tasted the powers of the age to come. They have experienced the coming kingdom through the healings that they have experienced, and they have known the love, and the joy and the peace that are beyond all understanding. Now, in this description of what the writer of Hebrews has said his audience has been given, what he is speaking about is a life of Sabbath rest which comes through all of the combined experiences which have been given to them. They can say that this really is a Sabbath rest because their lives have been so united with the life of God that the rest which has been his from the seventh day of creation is now theirs to experience.

         So the writer of Hebrews has established that those he writes to should be at rest, confident in their hope of their home in glory because of all of the experiences that they have been given to them by God. Yet, the writer has said all this to explain that something is impossible and what he is saying is this : for those who have experienced all of these heavenly blessing and then decide that they are going to walk away from their faith in Jesus it is impossible to restore them to this same richness of experience if they decide at some point to repent, to change their minds and turn around and come back. Do you hear how harsh this sounds? This verse has been a great disturbance to a lot of people who has read it but we have to understand just where the writer of Hebrews is coming from. The reason why the writer believes that it is impossible for a person who has experienced the fullness of God’s blessing, the seeing of the light, the tasting of the heavenly gift, the partaking of the Holy Spirit, the tasting of the beauty and wonder of the promise of God, why all of this can not be given a second time is that in failing to follow through when one has been blessed by God says something about Jesus and the cross. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way, that a failure to be a person who bears God’s blessings out into the world once one has experienced the rich blessing of God themselves is to “crucify once again the Son of God and hold him up to contempt.” Wow, such a statement hits like a hammer and we are left wondering just what is meant by it? The answer is found, I believe in understanding the cross of Jesus in terms of curses and blessings which is not normally how we think of the cross yet in the third chapter of Galatians, Paul considers the cross of Jesus in just such terms as curses and blessings. There he says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us-for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”-so that in Christ Jesus the blessings of Abraham might come to the nations.” This verse proves so helpful in figuring out what the writer of Hebrews is getting at when he speaks of crucifying the Son of God again and holding him in contempt. You see, Jesus was willing to take upon himself the curse that was upon the people of Israel, the curse which prevented them from being a blessing, so that through his death the curse might be destroyed and at last the blessings might flow, as Paul said, out to the nations. So, if these people that the writer of Hebrews addresses refuse to allow the blessing they have received to transform them into people who will faithfully bear the blessings of God out into the world, then the message they are communicating is that Jesus has not, through his death, defeated the curse that keeps the blessings of God from flowing out to the nations. If the death of Jesus had not defeated the curse then all that could be said when we look at the cross was here was a cursed man only worth of our contempt. So, what is really impossible is our desire to receive the rich blessing of God and then just let the world remain under the curse as if the cross of Christ had accomplished nothing at all. Do you see how difficult it would be for someone who had such a mindset to be set right through repentance? We might say it would be impossible.

         You see, it is this necessity of being a bearer of blessing, this is the concern of the writer of Hebrews through these harsh words and we know this to be true through his story of two fields. Both of these fields had experienced rain but one field produced thorns and thistles, symbolizing curses, and the other field produced a crop that was useful to those who had planted it so that it was indeed a field of blessing. The rain in both of these stories is the blessings which flow down upon our lives from on high and what is expected is that from those blessings is that our lives might bear a crop of blessing to others.The reason why it is imperative that those of us who have experienced this rich, abundant, full, wondrous, life overflowing with heavenly goodness live in such away that others know that there is a God who desires to bless them in this same way is that the reputation of Jesus is on the line. Has what Jesus endured upon the cross really defeated the curse which kept us from drawing near to the blessing of God? The answer can only be found in the way that we live, if we live as people willing to bear the blessing of God out to all people even those who cause us harm, even those who seek to persecute us, even those who consider themselves to be our enemies, all of these are people God still considers worthy of his blessing and we are called on to live out this truth.

         Even so, the writer of Hebrews understands just how difficult it is to be people who bear the blessing of God out to a world that seeks our suffering this is why he calls us to be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherited what God had promised to them. It comes as no surprise then, that the one whom the writer calls us to imitate is Abraham, the one God swore to, telling Abraham, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you”. We are the ones who have inherited this promise that God made to Abraham, we are the ones who have been blessed through his offspring, Jesus. We are the ones who know of another impossibility, the impossibility of God to lie. The character of God’s purpose is unchanging and it is the promises of God which are always true. What God has promised to do is to bless and it is this purpose of God to bless, this is our strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope of glory which he has set before us. Again, we have certainty of this all because of Jesus, the one we know has been victorious on the cross because he now has gone before us into the holy presence of the Father, a forerunner on our behalf. So, as he has most assuredly defeated the curse let us now go and in his victory bear the blessing of God to everyone. Amen!