May 7 2023
Hebrews 3:1-6,12-19, 4:1-11
Well, it has been a month since we have celebrated Easter together with joyful shouts of, “He is Risen; He is Risen indeed!”. Such good news though just cannot be contained to one Sunday, can it? I mean doesn’t it seem right that we have this season of Easter to set our hearts and minds upon the risen Jesus, to consider our living Savior and how because he lives, this changes everything. The writer of this book that we find ourselves in, this book of Hebrews, begins the third chapter of his letter with this same idea that we should focus our thoughts upon Jesus. He writes, ‘Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus…”. The word translated as being, “consider”, is a very intense action meaning to concentrate by fixing ones thinking upon something in order to understand it more fully. In other words, it is the type of thinking that is to come decisively to an understanding. When I read this I really have to ask myself, have I really ever concentrated all of my thinking upon this man named Jesus all so that I might understand him as fully as I can? I mean, have any of us really given Jesus that much thought? The writer of Hebrews gives us some terms to help us focus our thoughts when he tells us that Jesus is the apostle and the high priest of our confession. Now, to call Jesus an apostle seems like a weird title, doesn’t it, but all that the term, “apostle”, means is one who is sent as a representative of someone else. Knowing this then, the title, Apostle, does seem fitting because he came from the Father’s side and as the writer of Hebrews told us in the first chapter, Jesus, the very Son of God was, first, the very radiance of the glory of God which means that he is the glory that radiates out from God. And the writer of Hebrews also tells us that Jesus, the Son of God was the exact imprint of the nature of God. So, yes, Jesus was an apostle who was sent out from heaven so that we might know the glory and nature of God. Yet, Jesus is more for the writer of Hebrews also explains that Jesus is our high priest, which again to us is a rather weird title yet it is a title, nonetheless, that has deep roots in the story of God’s people. In the story of God’s people, the Israelites, it was the High Priest, who on the day of Atonement, would represent the twelve tribes of Israel by wearing a vest which had on it twelve precious stones attached to it, one to represent each tribe. So, as the High Priest entered into the most holy presence of God, all of the people of Israel were right there with him to have their sins cleansed away and to once again have unity with God. Now, when you hear these two terms, apostle and high priest, did you make the connection between the two? Both of these two titles speak of representing someone else. In the case of the term, apostle, Jesus, the very Son of God, was sent from heaven to represent God. And, Jesus as our High Priest, represents us as people. We have certainty that Jesus represents God and humanity in these ways because the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was faithful to his Heavenly Father who appointed him to be his apostle and our high priest. So as we put on our thinking caps and concentrate on who Jesus is we can say that he is very much the one who represents God to all of humanity and, at the very same time, he is the one who represents all of humanity to God. That’s rather mind blowing, don’t you think?
Now, the reason that Jesus is the one who represents God to all of humanity and the one who represents all of humanity to God is that as the writer of Hebrews says in the second chapter, the one who heals, or makes holy and the ones being healed or being made holy are one. Jesus has made himself one with us by taking upon himself our flesh because this was the only way that we could be healed and made holy. So, it is because a holy Jesus has united himself with us this is why the writer of Hebrews declares us to be his holy brothers and sisters. Now, because Jesus has come from heaven and has united himself with us then this also means that we have become united with the heavenly existence of Jesus. The way that the writer of Hebrews describes what is now ours because of Jesus is that Jesus is the builder of our heavenly home, the very one who has established this place for us to reside forever. And here is what is key for us to understand about this promise that we can be part of the heavenly home that Jesus has established for us: we must hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. If we go back to the original language that this sentence was written in we are told that we must put under our control, our dominion or exerted power, this free, fearless, boldness, in our hope that is our home in glory. Do you begin to understand how vitally important the writer of Hebrews believes that we must make our heavenly home our top priority? We hear his urgency, again, in the fourteenth verse of this third chapter where he writes that, “we have become active partakers in this heavenly life of Christ if we grasp firmly and stand upon this guaranteed reality firmly all the way to the end.” This hanging tight to this heavenly reality which is ours through the grace of Jesus is a central theme of this book of Hebrews because to turn your back on such a great hope puts in jeopardy ones future in heaven but it also tragically affects how we live here in the present. This is what the writer of Hebrews tells us at the beginning of the fourth chapter, that, “while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it…”. This rest that the writer of Hebrews is speaking of here is to put to an end ones work and this gives us an important clue as to just what it is that destroys our confidence in this hope given to us by Jesus.
We get a better understanding of what is meant by this rest that we will forfeit if we let go of this hope we have of having a heavenly home with Jesus by considering the wilderness wanderings of those who had been set free from their slavery down in Egypt. The writer of Hebrews tells us to listen to the Holy Spirit as he speaks through the ninety-fifth Psalm instructing us in the ways of faith. There in that Psalm we read, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” Here we have put in a few, short sentences, the tragic tale of those that God had rescued out of slavery in Egypt. These were the people who watched as God brought the plagues against the Egyptian pharaoh and they were there on the fateful night of the Passover as God shielded them from death that came upon all the firstborn of Egypt. They watched in wonder as the waters parted so that there was a way through the sea, the same sea which closed over the Egyptian army which pursued God’s people. Surely it would be these people, of all people, who would be forever in awe of God and his mighty power to save yet as the ninety-fifth Psalm recounts the legacy of these people, they tragically failed to have confidence and faith in the very God who was responsible for rescuing them from slavery. We have to wonder just why did they again and again rebel against God? We are told in the twelfth chapter of the book of Numbers that these former slaves rejected God ten different times as they traveled through the wilderness on their way through to the Promised Land. They finally even refused to have anything to do with the land God had promised to them so God in his wrath decided that they would remain in the wilderness forty more years, long enough for the unfaithful generation to perish and a new generation was able to be raised up to believe in God. And again when we hear this, how can we not wonder, why? The answer perhaps lays in the fact that these people of Israel had lived for four hundred years in the land of Egypt. They most assuredly had picked up the mindset that surrounds the worship of false gods. The way that one could be certain of where one stood with a false god was determined solely by the circumstances that they had found themselves in. If the harvest was plentiful then, of course, it makes sense that the gods were in your favor. If, on the other hand, the floods washed your harvest away then it just made sense that these same gods had become upset. Now, into this group of people comes a God who is the one, true, living God and the first thing that this God does is that he speaks. You see, the false gods had no voice but in a world of human voices came the voice of one who was and is not human, the voice of the one, true living God. It is because our God speaks, this is why our God is known through his promises and not our circumstances. This is the lesson that God kept going over and over again there in the wilderness with these people whose mindset was that it was their circumstances which determined where they stood with God. So, there they were in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat but God promised them that he would provide enough for them to eat everyday, what did they focus on, the promise of food everyday? No, of course not, they focused on the fact that they were being fed weird bread from heaven not the tasty food that the gods down in Egypt had provided. God then brought them to a place where there was no water and promised to make water came gushing out of a solid piece of rock. What did the people focus their attention on, the promise of God or their circumstances? Again, they focused their attention of their circumstances which told them that this God who had led them out there to the wilderness was not a very great god because he was trying to kill them by bringing them to a drought parched land. So, this same scenario kept playing itself out as they journeyed through the wilderness, God promising and making good on his promises and the people of Israel focusing on their circumstances and judging just who this God was through that lens. When these same people finally arrive at the very land God had promised to give to them, they had failed to learn the lesson that he had tried to teach them over and over again, that he would speak his promise to them and make good on that promise so that they would come to know him as a God of utmost faithfulness regardless of what their circumstances might say to the contrary. Instead of knowing God as being a God who always makes good on his promises these people of Israel kept asking, “Is God with us or not?”, directly calling into question the character of the God who had set them free from slavery. It comes as no surprise then that when these same people went to look over this land that God had promised to them all they could focus on was the circumstances, that there were giants who dwelled in this land who needed to be defeated instead of focusing on the very fact that this was a land which God promised he would give to them. It is not difficult to understand why God would have been provoked with people such as these who continually tried to determine what kind of God he was from the circumstances that they had found themselves in instead of knowing that he is and always would be a God of utter faithfulness. Our God is a God who keeps all of his promises that he tells us will be fulfilled.
The problem with trying to figure out if God is with us by looking through the lens of our circumstances is that we will come to know God as only being our fair weather friend. When life is good then, of course, God is most assuredly with us. When life hits the skids and everything comes crashing down upon our heads, we are going to be left in a panic, wondering just where is God now, why has God abandoned me just when I needed him the most? With such a mindset, it’s inevitable that we will begin to wonder if there is something we woulda, coulda, shoulda done, to make sure our life is found more and more on the sunny side of the street. Are you beginning to see just what are those works that we need to stop doing? You see, trying to determine the faithfulness of God by our circumstances is a restless business, one where there is never any certainty if God is with you or not, which eventually creates fear and doubt, what the writer of Hebrews rightly calls an unbelieving heart.
The reason that the writer of Hebrews uses the story of the Israelites in the wilderness as a prime example of those who did not rest in the promise of God is that those that the writer of Hebrews is addressing are those who, like us, are called on to suffer for the sake of Jesus. In the second chapter of this letter, the writer of Hebrews makes it clear that the way for us as humanity to become those who are crowned with glory and honor is for us to follow the path of suffering. As the writer continues in the eighteenth verse of this second chapter, it was that Jesus himself had suffered when he was tested this is why he is able to help those who are being tested. You see, it is when our circumstances involve the necessity of our suffering, this is when we will either know God through his promises and rest that he is indeed faithful to be right there with us in those times of hurt and pain or if we somehow believe we can know that God is with us by the circumstances we are going through then when hardship comes we will begin to wonder just where has God gone and why has he left us there to tough it out on our own.
Jesus is able to help us when we are being tested by our suffering by being the one who has gone before us, the one who has suffered on the cross and has been resurrected from the dead and now resides in glory. There in glory is a home which Jesus tells us that we can call our home because just as he has come here to earth to experience our existence as a person, we now our given the hope that we can go and experience his existence in his home in heaven. This is our Promised Land, our promised home that we are called to take a firm grasp of, to have a bold resolve in our belief of it, to make the reality of such a hope the firm foundation upon which we stand. When we do so then when we face suffering and hardship on account of Jesus we know that beyond this affliction is the joy that we have always longed for. It is not surprising that this is the same hope expressed by Paul who, in his second letter to the church at Corinth, beginning at the sixteenth verse in the fourth chapter through the first verse in the fifth chapter, writes, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away our inner self is being renewed day by day, For this light, momentary, affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent of our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”. It is this promise of God, that we have a place in the heavens which is our eternal home, this is what we must hold on to no matter what for this is our hope for tomorrow which provides us a rest to live in today. We can stop being restless, concerning ourselves with questions of God’s faithfulness for in the living Jesus, the one who has established our eternal home, we experience the faithfulness of God in one who is just like us, yet without sin. It is that we know this about Jesus this is why the suffering and hardship that we must endure as we follow Jesus can be seen as momentary and light because he has promised us an eternal, and more glorious future to set our sights on. This is why we must not let our circumstances ever determine the faithfulness of our God but instead we must consider, think long and hard about this one we know as Jesus, the one who faithfully brought to us the glory and nature of our God and the one who, as one of us, holds us next to our Father’s heart until at last we arrive safely home. Amen!
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