Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Hebrews

A series on the book of Hebrews by our Pastoral Intern, Isaiah English.

Appointed by God

About this sermon

Christ did not exalt himself to be high priest; the Father appointed him, who said, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Appointed to represent his people, he offered prayers with loud cries and tears in the days of his flesh. Though he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, so he can sympathize with believers in their darkest seasons. Made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Holiness flows from his work, not from our efforts to make ourselves holy.

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Sermon transcript

Let’s turn now to our reading, tonight we’ll be looking at Hebrews chapter 5, so we’ll be reading verses 1 through 10 of chapter 5 of Hebrews this evening. Give your attention to God’s word. Hebrews chapter 5. But only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him and said to him, You are my son, today I have begotten you. As he says also in another place, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Being designated by God, a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Amen. You may be seated. Let’s ask God bless our time this evening. Father in heaven, we come before you asking that you would give us your spirit. We would open our hearts, open our eyes to see, hear, understand what is from your word. We would cherish it. We would be able to implement it into our lives, that we would hide this word in our hearts. Your spirit would be present this evening. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. The title of the message this evening, as you can see from the bulletin, is Appointed by God. Have you ever been to a coronation? Just a couple of years ago, England had their first new monarch in a very long time.

Queen Elizabeth II reigned for over 70 years before her death. Now I didn’t go to the recent King Charles’ coronation, although my brother lives over there. But based on the films and traditions, I know something that happened at that moment. At a certain point in the ceremony, the future king has a crown placed on his head by someone else, usually the Archbishop of Canterbury. And it happens so frequently and regularly that we can miss it, but it’s a demonstration of the ruler’s humility to be appointed by another, does not crown himself. Have you ever seen a king crown himself? There have been a few self-anointed kings, but beginning to reign with such a display of high-handed arrogance rarely goes well. It rarely goes well for that monarch. We sense that there’s something proper about the office being bestowed by another.

It represents humility and deference, as well as providing legitimacy to their rule. You will find that even many tyrants will go through the motions of being humbly anointed by another in order to help them bolster their own legitimacy. Even under false pretenses, this act of being appointed by another represents the humility that the leader ought to have, even if he doesn’t. But how much more if it is actually true? This evening we’re looking at another important aspect of Jesus’ priesthood, namely that he was appointed by God as high priest. All legitimate priests must be appointed by God. Jesus follows the pattern of the Aaronic priests who were appointed by God, while at the same time superseding them by his own exalted appointment. This evening we’re going to see three things. First, that Christ is appointed by God to honor, the honor of high priest.

Second, he is appointed by God to learn obedience through suffering. And third, he is appointed by God as the source of eternal salvation. Our passage divides up pretty neatly into verses five and six, seven and eight, and nine and ten. So, verses five and six, appointed by God to honor. We see here this phrase, no one takes this honor to himself. There are no self-ordained priests, including Jesus. This is one of the reasons that we take ordination so seriously in the OPC. We’ve been talking about the need for new deacons and elders at Grace OPC, and considering upcoming nominations for these offices. It involves a multi-step process of being nominated by the congregation, then approved by the elders, then ordained through the laying on of hands by other elders. No one is a self-appointed office bearer.

Now, an important qualification is willingness, even an aspiration to serve. But that doesn’t mean that we ask office bearers to anoint themselves or even nominate themselves. It never goes well for church leaders who are self-appointed or self-ordained. But if there ever were a person who had every right to appoint himself, it was, of course, the son of God himself. Yet even he declined to do so. We see in verse 5, so also Christ did not exalt himself. And one of the things that we see here is that this highlights an important aspect of the inner workings of the Trinity. We find, for instance, in John chapter 8, verse 54, Jesus explains, Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God.

There is a charge leveled against Christianity by thoughtful atheists that God is simply an egomaniac. He’s always seeking his own glory above everything. He just wants attention. And anyone else, we call it narcissism. So why not God? Now I think there are several good biblical responses to this. I’ll just mention two. One is from the infinite worth of God as God. God is absolutely unparalleled. He is the most infinitely pure, holy, beautiful, and glorious being to ever exist. So for him to seek anything less than his own glory would make him an idolater and undermine the moral fabric of reality. Now this is an excellent answer to that false charge of the atheist. But I think there’s also another way to answer that question as well. And two, so second, which comes from the Trinitarian nature of God.

While God is one in essence, there’s one God. He is three in persons. And we see this portrayed in Scripture. This seeking of his own glory that God does comes out in this Trinitarian dance of, we might call it, humility. The Father glorifies the Son. The Son glorifies the Father. And the Spirit glorifies them both. So when God is seeking his own glory, it is actually a selfless act within the Trinity itself. Thus we say that good biblical worship is to the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. And we catch a glimpse of this in our passage in Hebrews 5 this evening, of that dance within the Trinity in which the Son, instead of exalting himself to a self-appointed high priest, submits to the Father’s appointment. The centrality of Christ and his work in our salvation is by the design of the Father, who appointed him to that role as high priest.

Taking the spotlight off of Christ and attempting to put it on the Father or the Spirit instead would be to go against the design of the Trinity in salvation. Christ is the focal point on purpose. When we put our own spotlights on Christ, we are following the example of the Father and the Spirit, making him front and center. But the appointment by God doesn’t just show that Christ’s humility in not exalting himself. It further solidifies his legitimacy as priest. The prior priests from Aaron’s line were all appointed by God, and in solidarity with them, Christ is also appointed by God. This precludes any concerns that he does not have adequate credentials as high priest. As we see in our passage, the same one who calls Christ Son is the same one who appointed him to the priesthood.

The two quotes that we have in our passage are from Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, which is why we read them earlier in the evening. What’s interesting is that these two Psalms are also the two Psalms that are quoted in Hebrews, Chapter 1, that we looked at a few months ago. In Hebrews, Chapter 1, we have a series of quotes about the glory of the Son, and it begins with a quote from Psalm 2 and ends with a quote from Psalm 110. Now the quotes are from different parts of Psalm 110, but it’s the same Psalm. What’s interesting is that Psalm 110 is the single most quoted Psalm in the New Testament, but every other author stops by verse 3. It’s only Hebrews that draws out the significance of verse 4, which mentions the priesthood of the Messiah and his similarities to Melchizedek rather than Aaron.

The writer of Hebrews is absolutely fascinated with the implications that are packed into verse 4, and we’ll see him explore each part in the coming chapters. But right now in Hebrews, Chapter 5, his point is centered around Christ’s divine appointment as high priest. However, this appointment to the priesthood was not a cushy appointment. The honorary exaltation that comes is a reward for the humiliation which came before it. The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms find this to be a helpful way of dividing Christ’s ministry, his humiliation, and his exaltation. Consider, for instance, Philippians 2, familiar passage, Philippians 2, 5 through 11. Therefore, God has exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So we see Christ’s divine appointment to the priesthood. It would be immensely costly. This honor would require unimaginable suffering before resulting in that unparalleled glory and honor, which brings us to our second point in verses 7 and 8 that Christ was appointed by God to learn obedience through suffering. In Chapter 4, we looked at how Christ is a sympathetic high priest, and we contrasted that with his being an empathetic high priest who, like the human high priest, is a sinner just like the people. But in case we were thinking that Christ’s lack of sin in any way prevents him from understanding our pain, we have verses 7 and 8 of Chapter 5. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Christ was appointed to suffering. The picture we have here is embarrassingly pitiful. The writer of Hebrews piles up descriptors, prayers, and supplications with loud cries and tears. This is not cool, calm, collected, and in charge. This is a picture of desperation. It can be all too easy to gloss over the horror of the crucifixion in our minds. Crucifixion was meticulously designed by the most highly advanced civilization to maximize the shame and pain of its victims. Apart from what Jesus’ death on a cross means for our salvation, it would be repulsive to decorate with crosses as extensively as we do. It would be like decorating with stylized gas chambers, waterboarding instruments, or other weapons of torture used to destroy and humiliate their victims. And yet, as Christians, the cross is rightly precious to us because on it our dear Savior suffered for our sins.

But I think we can get sometimes in our head that since Jesus willingly submitted to this death, He laid down His life of His own accord, as He says in John 10. No one takes it from Him that He was serenely composed throughout His crucifixion ordeal. But if we pay attention, we see that even before that difficult night in Gethsemane, this was already upsetting for Him. John 12, verse 27, Jesus says, even before He is betrayed, now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose I have come to this hour. His resolution was clear. It didn’t make it any less painful. The crucifixion was not a tidy business. And the weakness and humiliation that Christ displayed in submitting to it left the disciples who watched in complete despair.

If it had appeared that Jesus was compositely in control of the whole situation, the disciples might have held onto a little more hope. Instead, what they observed left them devastated to the core. The man who had healed lepers with a touch, raised the dead, sent demons running at a word, commanded storms, walked on water, taught with authority, has been whipped within an inch of his life, and then nailed up naked like a rag doll to a wooden post. On top of that, in the midst of it all, he was agonizingly asking God why He had forsaken him. The fact that he didn’t deserve it and could put a stop to it at any point probably only made it harder. Rather than his suffering being tempered by his being the Son of God and his willingness to undergo it, if anything, those realities probably made it all the worse.

However, the point that the writer of Hebrews is making in our passage is not that you should feel sorry for Jesus, for going through so much. Instead, that you understand He can truly sympathize with you in your own dark night of the soul. Dark night of the soul refers to a time when you cannot feel God’s presence. We sometimes call it a crisis of faith. Instead of feeling sure about what you know about God, instead of feeling God’s presence with you, feeling that He loves you, you feel nothing, emptiness, or that He’s gone or hates you. Most, if not all of us, will go through this at one point or another. And the point is Jesus has been there too. He understands completely. He’s been to those depths feeling abandoned by God, not just feeling the weight of sin, which was not His, but even experiencing the full excruciating wrath, judgment of God against that sin.

He’s felt the abandonment of God and prayed in desperation Himself. In His atoning work as fully man, Christ cast Himself on God’s mercy, knowing it was His only hope. To Him who was able to save Him from death. And He was heard. Now at first glance, it seems like an odd thing for the writer to say. Sounds like Christ came to the very edge of death, but was kept from dying. The problem is this isn’t the case, of course. There’s no question that Christ really died. And the writer of Hebrews knew this. So how do we reconcile this? Well, if we take a closer look at the word from, we can see what He means. In the Greek, this word is more often literally translated out of. With this understanding, we can go back and see to Him who was able to save Him out of death.

Rather than keeping Him from death, we see that the resurrection that Jesus experienced afterwards was delivered out of death. His deliverance from death didn’t keep Him from entering it in the first place. Instead, it brought Him back from the dead, delivering Him from it. And then the next phrase, He was heard because of His reverence. This is not meant to be a contrast between flippant prayers versus reverent prayers. Praying with more elevated diction, greater trepidation, or awe of God’s majesty is not the secret sauce to getting God’s attention. Now this doesn’t mean that fear or reverence has no place in Jesus’ attitude in prayer. This Greek word is found only in the book of Hebrews, and it does mean caution or fear. But the broader teaching of scripture informs us that our prayers are heard or ignored based on our life, our relationship to God.

Two verses from Proverbs summarize it nicely. Proverbs 28-9, if one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Or Proverbs 15-29, the Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayers of the righteous. So we should think of this reverence which granted Jesus an audience as a reverence of life. You might think of the older phrase, God-fearing, which was often used to refer to Christians. If you took it literally, you might be able to lump lots of people into that group who were not Christians. I mean, the book of James even says that demons fear God. Instead, this phrase, God-fearer, was meant to capture the Old Testament moniker, those who fear the Lord. So this is a reference to believers, those whose lives are marked by heeding God’s commands, treating Him as holy, and as evidence that they have heard and they respect Him.

And Jesus, of course, was all that and more. When we read the Psalms, we find them filled with similar prayers of desperation, relying on God’s loving kindness or covenant loyalty or commitment to compassion in His dealings with His people. So it’s no wonder that the Gospels record Christ constantly reciting the Psalms throughout His time of suffering. Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. This verse has given more than a few people headaches, wondering what it might mean for God to have to learn something. We already remarked last time when we looked at chapter 4 that God possesses all knowledge and wisdom as God. And this includes all three members of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are perfect in wisdom and knowledge. So God as Christ was not learning something new here.

And nor should we take this verse to think that Jesus was being disciplined by His Father for disobedience. His obedience was perfect. Rather, Jesus, as a man, experienced obedience in practice. Like the difference between knowing the cost of something and paying the cost, He gained the human experience of this ordeal. He was given a positive command to suffer for the sins of the people. And Jesus continued obeying His Father all the way to the end through the entire ordeal. Our salvation is not based on philosophical ideas like some other religions, but upon a flesh and blood man who lived and died on a cross in Palestine about 2,000 years ago before rising again. Real obedience in real history to accomplish real salvation. He told His disciples why He went to the cross in John 14, 31.

I do as the Father has commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father. As the Son of God, He was the one being in the universe who had all ability and every right to avoid discomfort of any kind. Yet, so that the world would know that He loved His Father, He practiced obedience up to and beyond a most gruesome death. The writer of Hebrews is going to expand on this point later, but he intends for us not only to take comfort from the fact that Jesus suffered on our behalf, but also to take comfort in Jesus as an example, as God leads us, even as sons as well, through some difficult roads of suffering. Some of it is physical suffering. Some of it is mental, emotional suffering. Hebrews is going to address the issue of discipline in regards to sons in chapter 10.

So I think instead here we might consider how Paul’s sentiment in Philippians 3.10 relates. Paul says, his desire is that he may know Christ and the power of His resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. I can’t tell you the number of Christians who suffered horribly, especially in distant lands for their faith, who have found this to be so comforting, knowing that they are having fellowship with Christ in His sufferings by their own, considering the truth that their own sufferings were this participation, this fellowship of suffering with Christ in His. And thirdly, we see that Christ was appointed by God as the eternal source of salvation in verses 9 and 10, and being made perfect. Now don’t get confused by the wording in verse 9. The writer of Hebrews is not trying to say that Jesus was anything less than sinless.

He already explicitly stated in chapter 4 that Jesus never sinned. He’s saying that Jesus’ suffering completed His appointed ministry as priest. We often think of perfection as without fault, but it might be clearer to say without lack or lacking nothing. The Greek word for perfect here is related to the word that philosophers use, telos, which comes from the Greek meaning end or purpose or goal. So by perfection, we should think of Christ perfectly completing the purpose, fulfilling the entire goal of His priesthood, being made perfect. As a result of the humiliation and the suffering of the crucifixion, His experience as priest was completed. Remember Jesus’ words from the cross. It is finished. Jesus repeatedly told His disciples, it is necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things. Jesus’ ministry as priest does not require any more suffering.

His suffering is complete. It is perfect. He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. Verse 9. We have here the third significant divine appointment that Jesus receives. He’s designated by God as the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. The first thing that I observe is something that I constantly bring up in my evangelism. No matter the religious background of a person I’m talking to, Jesus is the only designated source for salvation. As Acts 4-12 says, there is salvation in no one else, for there’s no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. The suffering of the Son of God, the suffering that the Son of God was appointed to suffer was for sins that were not His. It was the righteous suffering on behalf of the unrighteous.

This was to satisfy the justice of God, to preserve the moral fabric of the universe, since God cannot let sin go unpunished. There are not a myriad of ways to God. All of us are cut off from Him. Because of sin, there’s only one way back into fellowship with God. Only one designated high priest who offered a sufficient sacrifice that could affect a real, or as Hebrews says, eternal, salvation. Whether it is a militant Muslim, or a militant atheist, arguing against Jesus’ divinity, or a kind, smiling woman telling me that all roads lead to heaven anyway, my answer is the same. There’s only one priest who offered a sacrifice that’s sufficient to expunge your record and give you that fellowship with God. Everything else is a fool’s hope, comes down to a binary for every individual.

Either you pay for your own sins, your own wicked thoughts, words and actions in eternal torment, or you cast yourself on Jesus’ mercy, and He’ll deliver you by having suffered on your behalf. But as we know, justification, being declared righteous before God, is only part of our salvation. Jesus isn’t just the perfect sacrifice for sins. He’s the perfect and the perfect obeyer to provide His own righteousness for us. He’s also the source of sanctification. Sanctification means being made holy, to be holified, to make up a word. There are two senses of this. First, being consecrated or designated as separate. And second, thinking, speaking and acting in holy ways. Most people in the world think mainly about pure behavior as holiness. Many religions, philosophers, even going back to Aristotle, have thought that right behavior produces right character.

In other words, we become holy by obeying God. Even Christians can get confused about this sometimes, but the scriptures are clear. It’s the other way around. Christians are not told to become holy by obedience, but to obey because they’re already holy. We don’t obey to become holy. We obey because we are holy. Obedience is a result of holiness, not a means to obtain it. So when it says that Christ is the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, it doesn’t mean that we gain Christ by obeying Him, but that Christ is the source of our obedience. The word for here might be a better translation. To make this clearer, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him in verse 9. And in case you’re wondering, the Greek can go either way.

It’s simply a judgment call based on context. Although the obedience doesn’t make us holy, we should be careful to not miss the fact that this does not mean it’s dispensable to holiness. The scriptures describe being a Christian in many different ways, and here it describes them as those who obey Jesus. You could think of John 14, 15, where Jesus said, If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. Obedience to Jesus is the mark of someone who has had their sins forgiven, their heart replaced, and received the Holy Spirit, in short, been born again. We need to be reminded of this, because Satan, the world, and our own sinful flesh will lie to us and tell us otherwise. If Satan can’t get you to believe that you have to earn your own salvation, become holy by acting holy, he’ll lie to you in the other direction and tell you your obedience is irrelevant.

He might twist the truths of scripture and tell you that, since your obedience doesn’t merit your salvation, it’s meaningless. Have you ever tried to continue doing something that you think is meaningless? It’s pretty hard to keep up. Unfortunately, in an effort to combat this lie from Satan, some theologians throughout church history have resorted to contorting theology in order to suggest that maybe our works partially merit salvation, or earn a merit in a separate account somehow. That’s a mistake. Christ’s merit alone is what we rely on to be declared righteous and granted peace with God. But our obedience is not meaningless. It flows from Christ’s salvation, and it’s done in his power. Think of a plumber. A plumber doesn’t become a plumber because he fixes pipes. A plumber fixes pipes because he’s a plumber. His occupation, his identity, is what drives his conduct, rather than his conduct driving his identity.

His occupation and his actions are related. He wouldn’t be a plumber if he never did any plumbing. Being a plumber entails certain activities which are intrinsic to the occupation. But a plumber doesn’t become a plumber merely by fixing pipes. So a plumber and his work can be distinguished, but not fully separated. A similar being, holy, and obeying Christ go together. Christians obey Christ because they are holy, but obedience doesn’t make them holy. We might think of faith and works. The book of James famously puts the dispensability of obedience with belief, or the need of works to accompany faith. Works, or obedience, is the outflow and demonstration of having faith. We need faith. It’s the instrument, the channel by which we lay hold of God’s powerful promises. And obedience, even through difficulties, is the way that we too, though adopted sons of God, learn obedience in the footsteps of Christ.

Let’s wrap this up this evening. Christ did not appoint himself as high priest, but submitted to the role and position given to him by his father. The humiliating suffering he endured on his way to glory was both on our behalf in our place and as a comforting example in the midst of our own trials in this life. God didn’t promise Christ it would be easy, and he doesn’t promise us a life of ease either. But he does promise he’s with us, he’s got us, and he knows how hard it is. Because of Christ’s own suffering and prayers of desperation, we can have the same hope that he did. As Jesus told Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

With Christ as our example, we too can cry to the one who is able to save us from death, knowing that we too will be heard because of Christ’s priestly work. Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for sending your son, for appointing him to be a high priest, though it would cost so greatly. We thank you that he has suffered that desperation, that cry of dereliction. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So that we might never ultimately know that level of suffering ourselves. So that we might come to Christ and have eternal salvation, seeing him as our perfect source, being united to him. Lord, we thank you. We pray that you would make this dear to us. You would open our eyes to see it in our darkest days.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, let’s respond by singing hymn 469. Let’s stand and sing hymn 469. Who are these like stars appearing? Who are these like stars appearing?

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 19, 2025
Making the Most of our Mediator

About this sermon

Hebrews calls believers to make the most of their mediator. Jesus is a great high priest who has passed through the heavens into God’s presence, and he sympathizes with their weaknesses, having been tempted in every respect yet without sin. Earlier high priests could only deal gently with others because they shared the same weakness; Christ cares for his people without sharing their sin. Because of his work, God’s throne has become a throne of grace. Believers should hold fast their confession and draw near with confidence to receive mercy and grace to help in time of need.

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Sermon transcript

If you would turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 4. We’ll be looking at the last few verses of Chapter 4 and the first couple of Chapter 5. You can find that on page 1189 in your Pew Bibles. Hebrews, Chapter 4, starting in verse 14. Let’s pray. Amen. Let’s pray. We ask that you would do this for your glory and honor. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated. I’ve titled the message this morning, Making the Most of Our Mediator. I mean that in two senses. Of course, to make the most of something is to make use of it fully. And also, to make much of someone is to see their wonderfulness. And of course, we want to see Christ’s wonderfulness. Do you generally expect others to help you or not?

Callie and I discovered a difference between us shortly after we got married in terms of counting on others, even strangers, for help. Callie has always possessed an irrepressible expectation that others would be only too happy to offer assistance if and when she encountered any difficulty. I, on the other hand, always expected to have to rely on myself. Although Callie does not always get the help that she needs when she asks for it, it doesn’t stop her from asking. And she gets helped far more often than I do for not asking. While I would be stressed that I didn’t possess all the resources that I needed to solve a problem, Callie would be happily finding a stranger or family member or friend to get us the help that we needed. I’m thankful to have married her.

Over the years, I’ve attempted to adopt her expectant attitude of asking others for help, but I would say it’s still a work in progress. But I mention this because this is something of the way that our passage wants us to come to God in prayer. They say that confidence is key, and in terms of prayer, it’s more than key, it’s essential. James 1, 6-7 has strong words to say about confidence in prayer. James 1 says, But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. So this drawing near to the throne of grace with confidence is essential to prayer. But Hebrews doesn’t give us a bare command to be confident in prayer.

He prefaces it with three reasons why we can and should have confidence when we come to God in prayer. We might ask, what if we’re not? Have you ever been afraid to pray? Are you ever timid in your requests? Perhaps you stay away from prayer because you’re not sure that what you say will even make it all the way into heaven. Because you’re not very sure that God cares about what’s bothering you. Or maybe you feel that you aren’t good enough to pray. Well, it turns out these three concerns are exactly what the writer of Hebrews wants to allay for you in this passage. These will be our three main points this morning. We ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence because we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens.

We have a high priest who is sympathetic. And we have a high priest who is sinless. So first, we ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence because we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens. Now in order to understand why it’s significant that we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens, we need to recall a little bit about priests in general. The purpose of a priest. Why do we need one? Well, priests are mediators between God and man. Look at chapter five, verse one. For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Priests serve as mediators. They come between two parties. Even pagan religions recognize the need for priests.

They come in all shapes and sizes. There’s something within us that understands that we don’t have access to God. We need someone who can talk to God on our behalf. There’s a God consciousness within humans who are made in his image. And regardless of how distorted or wrong that image is at any given time, there’s a desire to be in touch with the greater being than ourselves. While at the same time, a recognition that we don’t have access, and we need someone who does. Priests come to offer sacrifices to purchase peace. Verse one says the main role of this mediator, a priest, is to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Despite the variety of religious conceptions about God and humanity, there’s a common sense among us that something is wrong. Our distance from God is due at least partly to something being wrong.

Atonement in some form or another must be offered. And this atonement takes many forms across various religions, from dietary restrictions, acts of service, animals of sacrifice, inflictions of pain, pledging of vows, all in the hope of rectifying a broken relationship and putting us back in the good graces of a higher being. Priests are appointed to be those that transact, that purchase that peace that we desire between us and our creator. Now from various religions, the price varies from religion to religion. But all of them leave the worshiper, the purchaser, with a nagging doubt as to its efficacy. So pagan worshippers purchase more and more sacrifices, constantly questioning whether lasting peace between God and man has truly been achieved. But in the Old Testament, God himself instituted priests and instituted the price for peace. He gave us sacrifices of bulls and goats, sheep and pigeons, and commissioned priests descended from Aaron himself to be the appointed proprietors of peace with God.

The priests mediated between God and the people. They were the appointed go-betweens, the ones who could offer acceptable sacrifices. They represented the people to God. The Israelites were forbidden from entering any further than the outer courts of the tabernacle or temple. Even the king himself was forbidden from entering. Only the priests. Yet God dwelt in the inner sanctuary. It was the priest alone who was authorized to get close to God by entering that tabernacle. And the high priest alone had access only once a year to the most holy place in the temple. And despite its glory, it was a far cry from God’s actual dwelling place, in heaven. Solomon, upon completion of the glorious temple, declared, heaven and earth cannot contain you, O Lord, much less this house that I have built. And sometimes you don’t know how far something falls short until you see the alternative.

The priests of Aaron’s line that God had appointed surely instilled great comfort and confidence in the people of Israel who knew they were being represented before God in the tabernacle. But those priests, utterly pale in comparison with a high priest who goes beyond anything available on earth, who actually ascends through the heavens. What if you had a high priest who wasn’t stuck on earth trying to convey your request to a God who is in heaven, but one who actually ascended? And in Jesus, we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens. He stands in the very presence, the throne room of God. If you want to get in touch with the president, would you choose someone who’s on the fringes, who used to know him in another life, an outer circle, or someone who goes with him everywhere, who’s regularly in the Oval Office?

I think the answer is obvious. So when Jesus, our high priest, has passed through the heavens, speaks of his ascension, Jesus ascended. Jesus’ ascension is not always talked about, but it was the climax of his work of salvation. It was not until after he ascended that he poured out the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. And this was no coincidence. His ascension meant the completion of his work, which is receiving all power and authority and his intimacy with God. So knowing that you have a high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, into the very presence of God, means that you can have confidence that God hears you. Your prayers won’t get garbled in translation by a priest who doesn’t have intimate access. Your prayers won’t get dismissed or overlooked, because they’re hand-delivered by the one with the most intimate access to God himself.

All the more reason to hold fast to your confession, as verse 14 says. Don’t be ashamed of Jesus. Be proud to associate with him. Of course, this is easy when he’s respected by those around us, but for many around the world throughout history, and even for the original audience of this letter, such an association could cost reputation, freedom, property, and life. For many of us, the risk is no greater than reputation or livelihood at most, yet we still face the temptation to downplay our association with our Lord. We ought to be willing to be open about our association with Christ. After all, he’s the high priest who passed through the heavens into the very presence of God. Who could be ashamed of a priest like that? But secondly, we ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence, because we have a high priest who is sympathetic.

High priest Jesus can sympathize with us. All this talk about Jesus as exalted, as passing through the heavens into the very presence of God, might give us the impression that while our high priest has the ear of God, perhaps he’s not as sensitive to our requests and our needs. So this is exactly where the writer goes next. Look at verse 15 of chapter 4. But one who in every respect has been tempted, as we are. Jesus can sympathize because he was tempted. Jesus’ role of high priest included him taking on a completely human nature. It was not his unnatural appearance that drove people to revere and worship him as God. He looked like a normal man. He was prophesied to be unremarkable, almost ugly in Isaiah 53. The Jews who grew up with him were offended at his assertion that he was divine.

Christ’s divinity was seen in his power over demons, nature, and sickness, as well as his astounding teachings and his own assertions about himself, that he was God. But as a human, he experienced the full range of human emotions. Human desires, human needs, disappointments, and temptations. One of the reasons we read Luke 4 earlier this morning is to remember Jesus’ temptations. You and I face temptations every day, even from evil spirits. We speak of Satan being behind temptations sometimes, which is true. However, Satan himself is a finite being, and he cannot be in all places at all times. And it is highly unlikely that you or I have been a direct target of the prince of demons himself. Not so with Jesus. Jesus was the number one target of Satan himself. He was public enemy number one for Satan and his horde.

Those three big temptations by Satan in the wilderness at the start of Jesus’ ministry were actually only the beginning of Satan’s efforts. In fact, arguably, you could see that he tried to use Herod to kill him before he was born. But in Luke 4, 13, at the end of that narrative, it says, Because the devil left, not for good, but until he could find a more opportune time. That means he was dogging Christ every step, attempting to bring him down. Jesus observed Satan’s infiltration of his own inner circle of twelve apostles. One he knew would betray him from the beginning. At one point, Jesus rebuked Peter, who was attempting to dissuade him from going to the cross, saying, Get behind me, Satan, who was even infiltrating his disciple Peter. Later, on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus told Peter plainly, Satan had requested to personally sift Peter with the hope of removing Peter’s faith.

Leading up to his death, in the days leading up, it says about Judas Iscariot that Satan entered into him. Jesus clearly experienced the full extent of temptation, being the number one target of Satan. But the main point in Hebrews 4 is not that this makes him extra tough, but that it makes him sympathetic to us and to our condition. Jesus understands us. In our passage at the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5, we see two different high priests contrasted. Chapter 4 is talking about Jesus, but chapter 5 is talking about the mere human high priest. Now there’s a popular discussion in culture today among psychology about sympathy versus empathy. Chapter 4 verse 15 says Jesus is sympathetic, while chapter 5 verse 2 says the previous high priest would be what we now call empathetic.

Sympathy versus empathy. Well, sympathy is an old English word that comes from the Greek, which sounds almost exactly the same in our passage. Supathasi. It refers to the act of sincere care for someone who’s suffering. For centuries, this was considered the appropriate and caring response to the suffering of others. However, in the 20th century, empathy has come on the scene and is now considered the preferred response to pain. Empathy finds its roots in German philosophical writings, conveying this idea of feeling into. Now the common distinction laid out in our culture today is that sympathy feels sorry for someone hurting, but empathy actually feels the pain of that person that’s suffering. Today it’s common for empathy to be touted as the superior response. You might even be told that you aren’t allowed to say anything to a suffering person unless you’ve experienced the exact same thing.

We’re told sympathy is inferior because it keeps its distance. It doesn’t fully get into another person’s skin and feel the pain. But is that correct biblically? We often say that misery loves company, but does that mean that it’s truly the best thing to just feel the pain of the suffering person beside them? Before we even ask whether empathy is ultimately the better response, we might ask whether it’s even possible. The fact is, truly feeling identical suffering with another person is impossible. The myriad of differences between you and another person in terms of background, experience, circumstances, physical and psychological makeup make it impossible for you to feel exactly the same as someone else, which means that to earnestly attempt it will result in projecting your own feelings onto someone else, which is exactly the opposite of what we would like to think we’re doing, but is true.

You can do no more than imagine how a person might be feeling based on some similar experiences of your own. Empathy is actually a reading of feelings onto others, assuming your own feelings are being felt by the one hurting. Not only this, but entering deeply into emotions can distort judgment. While others are hurting, they’re better served by a friend who’s clear-headed than one who’s as muddled as they are. Sympathy, on the other hand, is arguably the more honest and realistic approach to the suffering of others. You can’t fully enter another person’s pain, but you can still hurt for them. Instead of assuming it can fully enter into another person’s pain, Sympathy acknowledges that each experience of suffering is unique to the person suffering, yet it doesn’t walk away coldly. It inquires compassionately in order to understand.

It feels compassion for the one suffering without attempting to fully enter into all that they are feeling. Sympathy acknowledges the reality of the distance, but instead of seeing that as a problem, it uses the distance to offer comfort, wisdom, consolation that the hurting person might need. And our passage describes Jesus as a sympathetic high priest. While the contrasting term of empathy was not yet coined in English when our passage was written, and it never existed in Greek, I think that we have that contrast here with the priests that actually are suffering themselves from temptation. Jesus is sympathetic because he was tempted. He understands us and our struggles, but he’s not beset with the experience of falling into sin. In chapter 5, we see priests who are tempted as we are and fell to that temptation.

They have compassion for others based on empathy, but it comes with drawbacks. They are empathetic sinners who are distant from God themselves. They have to start out offering sacrifices first for their own sins. They can’t even think about offerings for other sins before addressing their own needs. This means that their own mediation is impeded. There’s a greater distance between them and God. They can’t make it up. They can’t pass through the heavens. And they also don’t know what it’s like to fully pass the test of temptation. There’s a false idea floating around these days that unless you have fully entered into another person’s experience, you have no knowledge of them or what they’re going through. And additionally, you can have nothing to say to them. We don’t fundamentally need someone to identify with us. We need someone who understands us.

Jesus is fully human, but he didn’t go through every possibility of human identity and experience. He wasn’t a woman. He wasn’t physically or mentally disabled or challenged. He didn’t go through the pains of old age. He didn’t go through marriage or parenting, just to name a few. This was because he came on a mission. He came to die for sins as a complete human. But he didn’t have to go through every human experience to understand us. He didn’t have to be a woman to understand women. God didn’t need to become human to understand humanity or the human experience. His knowledge transcends all contexts. He knows objective and subjective realities. He knows what’s going on the outside. He knows what we’re thinking and what we’re feeling. But it is especially comforting and emboldening to remember that Jesus is a person who was tempted, a human who was tempted like us.

The reason we want people to identify with us is because we think that that means they can truly understand us. But our craving is not ultimately to be commiserated with, but to be known, to be understood and cared for. And this is what Jesus does. He knows what we’re going through, and he cares about all of it. This passage is encouraging us to go to the high priest who can sympathize with us, rather than the ones who are only able to empathize from their own pain. We have a high priest who fully understands what we’re going through, but is never overwhelmed with it like we are, and doesn’t have his own issues that get in the way of understanding us and powerfully helping us. Which brings us to our third observation, that we ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence because we have a high priest who is sinless.

High priest Jesus never sinned. As comforting as it can be to find commonality and shared weaknesses with your hero, it’s actually not that comforting when the person you were relying on lets you down because they have their own issues to deal with. It’s important to remember that Jesus was sinless for a number of reasons, but here we’re reminded of how that is meant to bolster our confidence in prayer. He wasn’t just tempted like us. He was tempted in our place, and he succeeded where we failed. Jesus’ test in the wilderness with the devil was completing Israel’s test, his previous test in the wilderness. In chapters three and four of Hebrews, the writer has been focusing on how the Israelites failed in the wilderness when they were tested. Jesus’ own temptation in the wilderness was meant to echo the Israelites’ temptation.

The 40 days that Jesus fasted in the wilderness was no coincidence. It was meant to represent the 40 years that Israel spent wandering. If you’ve ever looked at the quotations that Jesus used to refute Satan in that passage, they all come from Deuteronomy, which was the context of those wilderness wanderings. Jesus could have quoted many other places to refute Satan, but he confined himself to Deuteronomy in order to overcome the temptations of Satan with the same resources that Israel had access to. The writer of Hebrews has been urging his readers in chapters three and four to be careful not to fall to the same temptation that threatens us as it did the first Israelites in the wilderness. In our passage now, he is calling on us to look up at the only one who perfectly passed the test.

We don’t merely need a compassionate Savior, we need a victorious Savior. There’s undeniable solace to be found in a compassionate Savior who can sympathize with us, but sympathy without victory doesn’t go very far. We need more than someone to feel sorry for us. We need more than a companion who feels our pain. We need victory. Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. But this is more than inspiration, while it is undoubtedly inspiring that Jesus was able to succeed where Israel failed. Looking at Jesus is very inspiring. It reminds us that success over temptation is possible. But the truth is we need more than pep talk or inspiration. We need transformative power from the inside out. And this is what Jesus alone can give. Christians aren’t just those who are inspired by Jesus, who was able to do great things.

Our path to victory is to become united to Christ. His victory can become ours so that we’re not only cleansed from sin, but empowered to resist temptation ourselves. The key is continually relying on his power rather than foolishly attempting to do things in our own strength. This is the heart of the exhortation in verse 16. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Maybe, unlike me, you always remember to pray whenever you feel tempted. Or maybe you’re like me and one of your big struggles is to even remember your need for prayer. Sometimes prayer can feel like something else to do on our to-do list, which is sitting there usually failing to get checked off very often.

We sometimes talk about how it’s our duty to pray. We really ought to pray more. God commands prayer. We ask people for prayer. Sometimes, though, it’s just a way of talking about things that concern us. It’s not bad to let other people know what’s going on in our lives to alert them to it. But prayer is far more powerful than a way to get things off our chests. Notice what Hebrews, our passage, calls the very throne of the king of kings and the lord of all lords, the throne of grace. Remember, as we saw a few weeks ago, that grace means favor and power. The throne of the almighty ruler, because of what Christ has done, has become a throne of grace for those who come in the name of Christ. Our main two reasons for lack of prayer boil down to a conviction that either we don’t need God’s help or that he’s not eager to give it.

We tend to think that we can handle most things on our own. The reality is you won’t take another breath unless God gives it to you. But God doesn’t want us living in terror of not receiving our next breath and constantly groveling in a desperate effort to ensure we’re sustained for another moment. In fact, Jesus told us in Matthew 6, he doesn’t want us to even worry about whether we’ll have enough to eat or clothes to wear since our father knows what we need. Instead, he told us to shift our focus to seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness. We’ve got far more important things to concern ourselves with than simply getting enough to eat or staying clothed. But the alternative to worry is not to simply try not to think about our needs, but to take them to God without hesitation.

Jesus says, don’t worry about what you’re going to eat, but do pray. When you’re approaching the throne of grace, you know that it is imbued with the favor and the power that you need. Hebrews 4.16 says that you’ll receive mercy and find grace in the perfect time. The ESV translates it here in time of need. That makes smoother English. In the Greek, it’s one word, eukyron, which is just the word for time, kyron, and the U in front of it, which means good at the front. So eukyron means good time, or perfectly timed, or exactly when you need it, help. Perfectly timed help, distributed on an as-needed basis. What more could you ask for? Good timing help. It’s important to remember that God is delighted to respond to our prayers. Despite what it might feel like in the moment, He’s got the perfect timing in His mind.

God’s word says, come near with confidence. One reason is that we see from James earlier, we can’t expect answers to prayers that are without faith. At the same time, Jesus sets the threshold for the amount of faith as incredibly small, the size of a mustard seed. I’m not sure how you would compare something like faith with a grain of mustard in your cabinet, but the point is that even the teensiest amount of genuine faith will receive help from the throne of grace. Don’t stay away from the throne of grace hoping to improve your faith. Approaching the throne is the only way to increase it. How bold are your prayers? When’s the last time you prayed for something that seemed too big? We can easily get stuck in the rut with our heads down only thinking about the next few weeks or months and not considering the bigger picture of God’s kingdom in the world.

Make 2025 the year that you challenge yourself to pray bigger, bolder prayers. Great men are honored by great requests, especially a great God. You might recall the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life in which George Bailey, his youngest child, is following him all over the house while he’s stressed about different things. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. He finally stops to acknowledge the child in frustration. Excuse you for what? I burped as a response. The humor arises from the expectation that had been building that the request must be significant, yet instead it is a most inconsequential ask. How many times are we like that with God? I’m not saying don’t bring your small requests to God. I’m asking if you’ve been limiting your request to exclusively small potatoes when you could be asking for kingdoms.

Let us then draw near to the throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. The throne of grace is the place where we find both compassion, mercy, and power, grace, exactly when we need it. Our sympathetic, sinless high priest has passed through the heavens, having been tempted like us, but powerfully triumphing over the temptations that often take us out. So as we continue to face those temptations, we can be confident that we have a kind and powerful, friendly face encouraging us to approach the throne of grace, excited to hear our prayers and to answer them. Dear saints, brothers and sisters, let’s make 2025 the year that we approach the throne of grace with greater boldness than ever before, knowing that we’ll get everything we need from God in His perfect timing.

Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we would come boldly to your throne of grace with expectation that you both hear us and are eager to answer our prayers. We would ask that you would increase our faith, that you would open our eyes, that we would expect greater things. As William Carey once said, that missionary to India, expect great things from God, attempt great things for God. So Lord, we would ask that you would increase our faith, you would give us greater boldness, that we would come to your throne of grace and find all the resources that we need, ready to help us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, let’s respond by singing Hymn 522. Behold the throne of grace in your red psalter hymnals, and let’s stand as we sing Hymn 522.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 5, 2025
The Last Sabbath

About this sermon

The fourth commandment appears in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, with telling differences. Exodus says “remember” the Sabbath and grounds it in God’s rest at creation; Deuteronomy says “observe” it and grounds it in Israel’s redemption from slavery in Egypt. God gives rest, and his people need it because they are prone to forget what he has done and how much they need him. God calls them to sanctify the day, setting it apart from ordinary things. Every Sabbath points ahead to the final rest God has prepared in Christ, the true and last Sabbath.

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Sermon transcript

Well, if you would remain standing for our reading of our sermon text this evening, which is taken from Hebrews chapter 4, Hebrews chapter 4, verses 9 and 10. We looked at this whole chapter last time, and we’re going to focus in this evening on two verses here, Hebrews chapter 4, 9 and 10. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Amen. You may be seated. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we would ask that you would come and give us your presence. Lord, we are gathered here as your people. We would ask that you would feed your people from your word. We need you. We need your word. We need your spirit to give us life.

We ask that you would do that this evening. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right. Well, if you want, you can start now by placing a finger in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5. We’ll look at those in a few minutes. But in the meantime, titled this message, The Last Sabbath, that could have all kinds of meanings. But one of the meanings will become clear with this story from when I was growing up. But to start off, what makes something holy? What if it’s about what you don’t do as much as what you do? Now, when I was in high school, my dad took a job delivering bread as an independent distributor for a large baking company. Some of the perks were that he was an independent contractor and he could hire whoever he wanted.

Since we were homeschooled, I started driving a big bread truck as soon as I got my license at 16. The advantage to having us kids help him was that we got to see my dad all day if we went to work, and that he got home three to four hours earlier than without our help. The disadvantage of the job was that as long as the grocery stores and restaurants that we delivered to were open, there was a significant possibility they might unexpectedly need more bread than my dad had ordered, which was two weeks before he delivered it, making it my dad’s responsibility to remedy the situation. Since most grocery stores and restaurants he serviced stayed open on Sunday, there were numerous times when he would get a call and have to try to deliver bread before or after church, or sometimes miss it altogether.

While holidays meant extra work like most retail jobs, we found Christmas to be especially enjoyable because even Walmart was closed, so there was no possibility that anyone could call needing extra bread. Christmas is one of those few remaining Sabbaths that is nearly universally celebrated in our culture. Not that they honor the birth of Jesus, but that they actually stop for a moment. Closing everything down for a day takes preparation, it takes planning, but it creates unexpected freedom. I sometimes refer to Christmas as the last Sabbath in our culture. For most other holidays we expect retail to remain open, even extend their hours to facilitate our celebration. But on Christmas, retail too catches its breath and leaves our ADHD culture to figure out how to cope with its own boredom. Christmas time feels magical for a whole host of reasons, but everything closing down even for just a day is part of what makes it feel special.

When everything normal stops, it opens up opportunities to celebrate things that we don’t normally get to celebrate. We’ve come to call time off holidays, which of course comes from the two words, holy day. When God instituted the Israelite calendar of holy days and festivals, they all included a stopping of their regular work. The word Sabbath is simply the common Hebrew word for stopping, ceasing, ending, resting, and it’s used all over the place, as well as to refer to that special day of resting. In Hebrews 4, verse 9, the phrase Sabbath rest that we see is actually a single Greek word, which doesn’t show up anywhere else in the whole New Testament or Old. And it’s a special word saying kind of like Sabbath-ing. There remains a Sabbath-ing for the people of God. And he means it to be a resting and a rejoicing in that.

So tonight we’re going to consider three things. We’re going to consider, first, God’s promise of rest, second, our need for rest, and third, the fulfillment of God’s rest. So first, we’ll look at the promise of God’s rest, God’s promise of rest. As we saw last time, verse 1 of chapter 4 in Hebrews tells us to fear missing out, since the promise of entering God’s rest still stands. Registration is still open. The window of opportunity is not closed. And then in verses 3 and 4, the writer grounds his argument from the second chapter of the entire Bible. He takes us all the way back to Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. Genesis 2, verses 1 through 3 says, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested from the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. The creation of the Sabbath or the Sabbath of creation. Here God creates by stopping. Earlier, God had distinguished light from darkness, day from night, sky from sea, dry land from water. Now his final act, he distinguishes work from rest. Our weekly structure. Have you ever thought about why we have seven day increments called weeks? Why not eight or nine or ten? Why not more? Why not fewer? It’s rooted in God’s creation of the world. Did you know that during the French Revolution, when the secular atheists wanted to remove all traces of Christianity from their culture and society, they implemented a ten day week. In 1793, the revolutionary leaders declared it to be year one, and imposed a logical week according to their prized metric system.

Unsurprisingly, it only lasted twelve years, and in 1805 people couldn’t take it anymore. It kind of reminds me of the current efforts in scholarship to move from dating things as B.C. before Christ, or A.D. Anno Domini, which stands for year of our Lord, and they changed it to B.C.E. before Common Era, or Common Era, in order to avoid referencing Christ. But guess where they still divide the line at the birth of Christ? They still can’t get away from God’s imprint on history. Remember that next time that you’re talking to someone who doesn’t believe in God. Ask them if they’ve ever thought about where we get a seven day week. If they try to say it’s arbitrary, ask them why no one has successfully changed it, and why there is such universal agreement. It’s not based on astronomy, as the year, month, and days are, yet it’s ingrained in nature.

God created in six days and rested on the seventh day. Atheistic evolution argues for a never-ending process of creation, but the seven day week of the world that we live in comes from a God who ended his creation because he had finished, he had completed it. The very structure of our week is a proclamation of God to the world, of his authority as creator, and ultimately that the promise of entering his rest still stands. But second, we see the Sabbath as God’s covenant sign. When we look at Exodus chapter 31, verses 12 through 17, we see God laying out something about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a creation ordinance rooted in God’s design for the world. Its purpose is deepened by God’s redemptive work. We see in Exodus 31, 12, and 13, it says this, and the Lord said to Moses, You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, Above all, you shall keep my Sabbath, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I the Lord sanctify you.

We jump down to verse 16, Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. God says that this weekly resting is meant to be a sign of God’s covenant with Israel. It’s one of the things that will set them apart from the world as God’s people. The Old Testament festivals included stopping. It wasn’t just the regular weekly Sabbath, If you read through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you will find numerous references to the special celebrations that they were called to celebrate, and they always say, It shall be to you a Sabbath. God commanded Israel to regularly stop and celebrate. Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which can simply mean stop, but it’s also used to refer to the weekly day of stopping, as well as the annual Israelite festivals, even the Sabbath years.

Each festival had the requirement that work simply not go on as usual. Negatively, God uses the Sabbath as a synecdoche for his covenant. Now, of course, a synecdoche, that just means using a part of something to refer to the whole. So he refers to the Sabbath as his covenant, when the Sabbath is only part of that covenant. Negatively, God says that Israel broke his covenant. It says he profaned my Sabbaths over and over again in the prophets. We see this. Positively, he promises blessing and salvation to foreigners who keep my Sabbaths. Isaiah 56, for instance. God says in verses six through seven of Isaiah 56, And the foreigners shall join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath, and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant.

These I will bring to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The Sabbath is spoken of positively keep my Sabbaths, and negatively profaned my Sabbaths. Keep makes sense, because mundane work has to be kept out. The day has to be defended from mundaneness, from commonness. We have to fence off the Sabbath from intrusions. And profane shows us that God’s rest is related to his holiness. To profane is to regard something holy as common. When the day set apart for rest is treated as any other day, something holy is treated as common. God’s promised rest is represented in the weekly Sabbath, which finds its roots in both God’s example in creation, and his prescription in his law.

Rest is an important part of God’s law to Israel, as seen in the numerous festivals which all contain the requirement for resting. But is that all we can say about rest? Is rest simply arbitrary? And what we want to look at next is our need for rest. So secondly, our need for rest. When we understand who God is from the rest of the scriptures, for instance, Isaiah 40, 28, it says, Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. When we understand who God is from that, we see that when God rested on the seventh day of history, it wasn’t because he was tired. He rested because he was finished. He also rested to give us an example.

And we see this in Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20, 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. If you’ve grown up in church or you have some familiarity with the Bible, you know that the all-important Ten Commandments can be found in Exodus chapter 20. But did you know that those core Ten Commandments show up in Deuteronomy chapter 5 as well? The list is almost identical, which is why there are a couple of differences which stick out like sore thumbs, and they mainly have to do with the fourth commandment. If you put your finger in Exodus 20 and turn over to Deuteronomy 5, when you look at verse 12, first we notice a difference in the first word, observe.

If you flip back to Exodus you see that it says remember the Sabbath. In Deuteronomy it says observe. Now these are two different words in Hebrew also. Now the word remember just means remember. But the word observe is a generic word for doing or making. So literalistically you might say do the Sabbath. But this isn’t the real big difference. The biggest difference from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 is the reason for the Sabbath command. In Exodus, as we read in verse 11, it’s based on God’s example in creation. But in Deuteronomy 5.15 we find something else. Deuteronomy 5.15 says, You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

What’s going on here? How does slavery in Egypt relate to a seven-day week? By mentioning Egypt, God is rooting the Sabbath rest in salvation, his act of redeeming Israel from Egypt. So this means that the fourth commandment, the Sabbath, is rooted in creation and redemption. First, let’s consider creation. Exodus 20, verse 8, where God roots the fourth commandment in creation. Physically, mentally, emotionally, God created us to need sleep. Unlike the God who created us and created all things, we do grow weary. While there are certain muscles and systems and processes in our bodies, which never stop as long as we live, like our heart or brain activity or breathing, there are plenty of other aspects which require rest. You won’t just get physically tired, you’ll get cranky, you’ll make bad decisions. Sleep is required for your mental and emotional health.

Scientists have been trying for centuries to pinpoint exactly why we need sleep. But the more they find out about the brain, the more it remains a mystery. The brain doesn’t turn off during sleep, and many of the functions that happen during sleep are also able to happen while we’re awake. Yet it remains an unshakable biological reality that sleep is not only necessary for sanity, but for life. You will die without sleep. They don’t know exactly why, but they know you will. And they say you’ll spend roughly a third more of your life asleep, unconscious to the world around you. God created us to need space between tasks. We don’t just need sleep to segment up our days, but we need periods of rest interspersed in our work days, and especially our work weeks. Burnout is a real issue that we’ll face if we don’t step back, spend some time relaxing, just doing something different.

Now it might be equally taxing physically or mentally, but the fact that it’s different sometimes makes it refreshing. Our God created need for rest physically forces us to remember that we’re dependent on God. We’re forced to remember that the world will keep spinning without us. God created the world in six days, and he can govern it without us just fine. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In Mark 2, 27, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees who are upset that his disciples are eating grain on the Sabbath. But Jesus reminds the Pharisees who were upset at his disciples and tells them that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. God made the Sabbath for mankind who needs regular rest. Mankind is not meant to work, 24-7. The Sabbath is God’s gift to mankind who desperately need rest.

But second, let’s consider the grounding of redemption, as it says in Deuteronomy 5. Spiritually, we need rest. Augustine, as we saw last week, says, Our hearts are restless, O God, until they find their rest in you. We are spiritual beings who need more than sleep, vacation, or a sabbatical. Our restlessness goes down to the soul level. Deep down, we know that we’re not on good terms with our Creator. We’re rebels living for ourselves with the stain of sin on our souls and the unsettling knowledge that God is not pleased with us. This problem cannot be solved by positive aphorisms, by doing good things to make up for it, or by forgiving ourselves, because the problem is not just in our heads. The wrath that we sense that is due to us for sinning against God is real.

We need a real solution to this real problem, a real solution outside ourselves that can give us real rest. And ultimate rest comes from salvation. Two thousand years ago, a baby was born. There was heralded by angels who said, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, Peace for those with whom he is pleased. The baby was named Jesus because the angel said, He will save his people from their sins. Christmas isn’t just about good feelings of goodwill. It’s rooted in a baby who came on a mission. He was born to die. Die because all of us have two options to deal with our sin problem. Either we pay for it ourselves in hell for eternity, or replace our trust in Jesus to take it in our place. Peace with God is available to those who are connected to Jesus by putting their trust in him.

You can have once for all peace with God. An ongoing daily gospel centered rest comes from two places. It comes from Jesus’ work and Jesus’ person. Jesus’ work in his death and resurrection. Jesus was born because he was on a mission to die and rise again according to the scriptures. What he did can apply to you by the Holy Spirit. You need his death to kill your old heart, wash your filth and neutralize your destructive life. You need his resurrection for a new heart, righteousness and holiness. And what Jesus did, when what Jesus did gets applied to you, you can finally have peace with God and have fine rest for your soul. Jesus’ final words before dying on the cross were, it is finished. Just as God rested only after he had finished in creation, Jesus also rested when he had finished paying for sins.

You can rest on that. But also, we find daily rest in Jesus’ person. Union with Christ. We all need daily rest. Christ didn’t do what he did to make you a new person and send you on your way. He secured peace with God in order to establish fellowship with God. Jesus says in Matthew 11, 28 through 30, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Daily, hourly rest for your soul comes from a person, comes from fellowship and intimacy with Jesus. We’ve looked at God’s promise of the availability of rest in creation and redemption.

Then we looked at how God’s promise of rest fulfills our need for rest, both physically and spiritually. Then next, we’ll look at the fulfillment of God’s rest. So third, the fulfillment of God’s rest. God’s design in the Sabbath is to make us both holy and happy. Isaiah 58 that we read before, verses 13 and 14, If you turn your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own way or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, then you will take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Consider the consecration of the Sabbath. When we looked at Genesis 2, we saw that God not only blessed it, but made it holy, the seventh day. This is actually the first thing that God makes holy. God has been blessing things all throughout the creation week in chapter 1, so it’s not surprising to see that God is blessing on the seventh day, but what’s different is that he made it holy. Things in the temple were consecrated, utensils, special recipe for incense, the furniture. They were not to be used for any other purpose, only for the temple purpose. Consecration is not just what things are used for, but also what they’re not used for, and you can see this in the holy days, the Jewish feasts. They were times of stopping, ceasing work, special because it was not normal to stop work, but normal work was to stop, because special work was to commence.

You ever come back from a vacation feeling like you need rest? Certainly possible you ever did it, but it’s partly because vacation is a time not for doing nothing, but for a time of doing something different. How do you make an occasion holy? Well, there’s things that you do. Maybe you get out the fine china. You have a fancy menu. Maybe you dress up in nicer clothes, etc. But there’s also things you don’t do. You don’t bring out the regular dishes. You don’t have the ordinary food. You don’t wear the ordinary clothes. We’re called to consecrate the Sabbath. Or another word is sanctification of the Sabbath. We are called to sanctify the Sabbath, which just means to make it holy. Remember the Sabbath in Exodus 20. The Sabbath is for remembering what God has done for us, how much we need him.

We’re told to remember because we’re prone to forget. Prone to forget the day, prone to forget our need for it, prone to forget our need for God. Prone to forget our need for God. We have to remember to stop from everyday activities, but also to observe the Sabbath, to do the Sabbath in Deuteronomy 5. The Sabbath is not just passive, it’s active. It takes effort. It takes intentionality to rest. It’s not just something we don’t do, but something we do. We gather for worship. The Sabbath sanctifies us. The Sabbath sanctifies us physically. We need to rest. John Piper likes to say that sometimes the most sanctifying thing you can do is take a nap. Callie and I have found that there are arguments to which the only solution is sleep. We’ve become more adept over the years at spotting those arguments earlier and putting them on hold sooner until we’ve had some sleep.

It is pretty amazing that parents that will recognize the lack of sleep in their kids, which makes things hard, but fail to recognize it in themselves when they’re having arguments with each other. But we also need rest spiritually. We need spiritual rest. Coming to worship forces us to take our eyes off of ourselves and put them on God. This reminds us that our salvation is not accomplished by our efforts. We don’t work to bring about our salvation. We work as a result of our salvation. It’s an utterly crucial difference, distinction that must not be missed. We don’t work to bring about our salvation, but as a result of our salvation. The Sabbath is meant to put our eyes on heaven. There is a final Sabbath coming, a rest from fighting sin, from guilt, from sorrow, from pain.

Revelation 21, familiar passage, verses one through four. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. The heart of heavenly rest is fellowship with God. God himself will be with them as their God, it says.

To have God as your God means resting in his salvation from your sins and his daily provision of your needs. So when the writer of Hebrews says there remains a Sabbath rest, he doesn’t just mean in the future. He says forever, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. The promise of entering God’s rest is for right now, especially on the Lord’s day. Hebrews 12 portrays it this way when you come to worship. Hebrews 12, 22 and 24. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gatherings, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Abel was murdered. His blood cried out to God, saying, give the killer no rest. But Jesus’ blood says, forgive them. I paid the price. For we who have believed have entered that rest. And it says, whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. We follow God’s example when we rest in the finished work of Christ on our behalf for our salvation. Don’t wait for some day to enter God’s rest. Enter now. Stop trying to make it up to God for what you’ve done or for what he’s done for you. He doesn’t want to be repaid. He wants you to rest in what he’s done for you, to enter into his joy and invite others to do the same. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have appointed that rest.

You have opened your rest up to unworthy sinners. By sending your son as a baby, as a man, destined to die, and putting him to death for our sakes, that you have opened up the way to enter your rest. Lord, we ask that you would cause us to enter that rest now, that by faith we would stop trusting in our own strength or our own works, and rest in what you have done for us. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, in response, let’s turn to Hymn 479. Jesus, I am resting, resting. Hymn 479. If you would please stand.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 22, 2024
The Rest of the Faithful

About this sermon

Hebrews 4 says the promise of entering God’s rest still stands, for Israel heard the good news but did not combine it with faith. Believers should therefore fear falling short; mere exposure to the gospel does not guarantee entrance, and disobedience bars it. Faith comes from hearing the word of Christ. Believers should also strive to enter that rest, relying on God’s grace instead of their own strength. A Sabbath rest remains for the people of God, and those who believe enter it.

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Sermon transcript

If you would, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 4, we’ll be reading verses 1 through verse 13 this evening. Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1 through 13, Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

And again in this passage he said, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, today, saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. Amen. You may be seated. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we’ve come to hear your word this evening. Lord, you are the shepherd of your people, you are our God, you are the one whose word we have come to hear. We ask, Lord, that you would be gracious, kind, you would feed your people with your word, and that you would open their hearts to hear, and that your word would be opened and faithfully proclaimed this evening. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, have you ever experienced FOMO? Perhaps I should say who hasn’t had a case or two of FOMO in their lives? What’s FOMO? Fear of missing out.

People often speak of it like it’s a mild disease or a bad habit that’s difficult to break. I had really bad FOMO the other day. Your smartphone is filled with applications that will attempt to play on this built-in desire to not miss out. Notifications constantly bombard you from the screen, telling you how urgent it is that you spend your attention and time on this app or the other. Red numbers pop up beside your applications, begging you to check them and avoid missing out on what’s going on. Pages of junk mail arrive in your mailbox with deals featuring won’t last long in order to leverage a quick decision to purchase. You don’t want to miss out. Fear of missing out can easily become a problem when we lose our ability to prioritize or make intentional choices about the way our yes in one area becomes a no in another area.

But the reason FOMO is so effective on us is because there are legitimate things for us to be concerned not to miss out on. And in our passage this evening, the author of Hebrews is leveraging godly FOMO for our ultimate good. We ought to fear missing out on eternal rest because the alternative is a lot worse than missing a good sale. Now our passage this evening has two explicit exhortations. The first is in verse 1, exhorts us not to fear, not to, exhorts us to fear. So verse 1 says, let us fear while the promise still stands. Verse 2 through 10 set out to prove these two assertions, one that we should not fear and two that the promise still stands. Verse 11 gives us another exhortation, let us strive, and grounds that in the previous argument as well as verses 12 and 13 because our hearts are exposed to God.

So this evening we’re going to see three points. Let us fear in order to let us strive, in order to let us enter. So we’ll organize our time with let us fear, let us strive, and let us enter. Now if you came to our passage, if you were reading this passage in Greek, the very first word of this entire chapter would be a single word in Greek which is translated let us fear. It’s normal, now it’s normal in Greek to put the verb like this at the beginning of a sentence, so we can’t say that it’s necessarily being emphasized. It’s kind of emphasized, it’s kind of normal Greek word order, but it would be the first thing that you would read in this sentence, the therefore that we have comes as a second word. And so I think we need to pay attention to this exhortation that begins the first part of our chapter.

Now for some this exhortation might seem strange. Isn’t Christianity supposed to be about taking away fear? Around our house in North Carolina there’s a popular billboard that we drive by all the time, faith over fear. Think about 1st John 4 18. There’s no fear in perfect love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. I’ve had numerous people quote that to me. John is making an important point there about love. But that’s not the only thing that the Bible has to say about fear. In other places like Proverbs and the Psalms, the Bible says that the fear of the Lord is wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is essential. The fear of the Lord gives life, among other things.

So not all fear is a problem. There is a bad fear, but there’s also a good fear. Now before we get into the specifics on fear, let’s take a few minutes to figure out what is going on in this passage. How is the logic and the argument playing out? Verse 1 is an exhortation to fear entering, fear failing to enter because the promise is still standing. Then verses 2 through 10 are arguing that there’s two groups of people. There’s those who enter God’s rest and those who don’t. Now as common in the book of Hebrews, we sometimes have to jump a little bit ahead and look at the end to start to figure out our author’s logic. He makes an assertion and then adds grounds for his argument. So start looking at verse 8. Verse 8 says, for if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

This is bottom line logically. Look closely. This is first an argument from the historical timeline of scripture. When was scripture written? The quote that Hebrews 3 and 4 have been quoting from, that we saw mainly in chapter 3. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice, this is all a quote from Psalm 95. Now when was Psalm 95 written? Before or after Israel had entered the promised land under Joshua. Under Joshua. Well, obviously after. David wrote it. Now if you look over, look at verse 7. Again he points a certain day, today saying through David so long afterwards, and the words are already quoted, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes, today do not harden your hearts. David gives an exhortation to his present audience based on the threat of missing God’s rest as the first generation of Israel did in the wilderness.

So we have to pay attention. We’ve got several layers of meaning going on here. First, the writer of Hebrews argues like this, First, the writer of Hebrews argues like this, the threat of missing God’s rest existed in David’s time because David wrote it. The time of David’s writing was after Israel had entered Canaan. Therefore, the author concludes, God’s rest must mean something bigger than simply entering Canaan. Otherwise, David would not warn his hearers that they might miss it, that they might not enter it, because they’re already in Canaan. Additionally, he gets this from the quote, do not harden your hearts today, and they shall, which we could say will not enter. Since Canaan was apparently not God’s rest, at least in an ultimate sense, that means it must be something in the future as well.

The words shall not enter imply that the rest is still future, even after Israel had entered the land of Canaan. But the writer of Hebrews sees a warning embedded, he sees a warning explicit, but embedded in that warning he sees an implied hope. If God through David is still warning people that they might miss his rest, it also means it’s still possible for some to enter it. Look at verse one and verses six through seven. While the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. And therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formally received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, today, saying through David so long afterwards, and the words already quoted.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. The writer of Hebrews is saying the window of opportunity is open. So, godly proper concern, godly fear that you don’t become a statistic. This is not something that you want to miss out on. That’s why he wants his readers to fear. Now, why fear? Well, fear because life is serious. There’s so much about this life that can make us forget that this life is not all there is. We should take life seriously, and we should take eternity seriously. Ecclesiastes says it’s better to go into the house of mourning than the house of feasting, since it helps us remember the seriousness of life. Life can feel trivial when we’re engaged in activities, engaged on social media, or simply the pleasures of life, and we need to remember that this life is the doorstep to eternity.

Fear is put in the context of the reality that there’s a promise of entering his rest still standing. The door is still open. The window of opportunity hasn’t yet closed. If the opportunity were already gone, we would have no need to fear, but verse one gives us that exhortation. Have godly FOMO, fear of missing out. You know, some parents find FOMO to be an effective way of motivating children to clean their rooms or do their chores. If you don’t get your work done, if you don’t eat all your dinner, you won’t get dessert or go to a party, but here we have God using, in his word, fear of missing out to motivate us to enter that rest. But this isn’t just a fear of missing out on something great. The other side, that missing out on God’s rest, won’t just be a bummer.

The other side is not simply not as cruel. Eternity awaits us on the other side of this life. This life is merely a drop in the bucket. Like the one year of wilderness traveling compared to the centuries of promised blessing in Canaan, the length of this life is not worth comparing to what awaits in eternity. It’s been said that the closest thing, that this earthly life is the closest thing to hell that a believer in Christ will ever taste. And conversely, that this earthly life is the closest thing to heaven that an unbeliever will ever taste. We’re repeatedly reminded in this passage that we’ve been looking at, as God swore in his wrath, those who fail to enter rest will suffer wrath, eternal wrath, holy, perfect, white-hot, utterly pure, unadulterated, wrath against the scorning, belittling, ignoring, despising, and exchanging of God’s immeasurably glorious worth.

God’s glory will be upheld and vindicated, and the immense love of God will be displayed in a writing of all wrongs and injustices, and pouring out his holy judgment on everything that seeks to destroy and belittle all that is good and beautiful. This is so serious that the writer of Hebrews goes beyond saying that he doesn’t want any of his hearers to suffer such a fate. Look again at verse one. He says we should fear appearing to miss that rest. He doesn’t just want you to be afraid of actually missing out, but to even appear as though you might. I think we find a similar idea to what the author says later in chapter 12. In chapter 12 of Hebrews, verse one, it says, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

He says don’t just lay aside sin, lay aside anything that could encumber you, that could make you slow down, even if it’s not sin. And Hebrews here doesn’t want us to even look like we won’t make it. Israel appeared like they were going to make it. They looked like it was going to be good for them, yet they missed out on the end. And Hebrews doesn’t want his readers, the author of Hebrews doesn’t want his readers to take that chance. Now how did they miss out? In verse one, they were not connected. Verse two, they were not united by faith with those who listened. To those who listened, why wouldn’t he say to those who believed? Well, I think here he means listening as a synonym for believing. And this makes sense because in other places, the Bible speaks like this.

For instance, in Galatians, Paul asked this question, let me ask you only this, did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Or in Romans 10, verse 17, he makes this point. So faith comes from hearing and hearing from through the word of Christ. The point here is that we have to listen with faith. We have several reasons to fear in this passage. Verse one, the promise is available right now. Verse two, merely exposure to the gospel message is insufficient to give you entrance. And verse six, disobedience results in a denial of entrance. And finally, verse 12 and 13, he gives us another reason to fear is that God can observe our hearts directly. You can’t fake your way in to God’s presence or sneak in as part of the group.

All of these are ways to be denied entrance and should cause fear. But conversely, they come together to give us a complete picture of what it looks like to appear to have failed to enter. It looks like someone who rejects or disbelieves God’s promises. It looks like someone who hears the gospel but doesn’t really listen, doesn’t really take it to heart. And third, it looks like someone who demonstrates this in a life of disobedience. So we have this extra warning that such people should not expect to get away with it or overlooked in verses 12 and 13. By the way, just a note about the word sword there. We shouldn’t think of one of those three to five foot blades that they swing around in the sword fights. There’s another Greek word for such bigger swords.

We might actually be more inclined to call this weapon a dagger. A big sword isn’t very precise instrument and you often use it more as a bludgeon. But the imagery in verse 12 here is of a small dagger 12 to 18 inches long that can precisely dissect like a surgeon’s scalpel. And it’s meant to remind us that we won’t be able to get away with hidden stubbornness. You know, in this day of online meeting and working, it’s easier than ever to hide behind pictures and images. And not to give anyone ideas, but I’ve seen this hack where supposedly you can create a looping video of yourself, attentively paying attention, nodding along, and somehow upload it as your screenshot on your zoom feed, allowing you to go and do whatever you want instead. But Hebrews is saying, however sophisticatedly you might be able to fool other people.

You can’t fool God. He can see right to our hearts. He says it’s great. It’s great that you’re here even tonight listening to this message. But Hebrews wants to remind us that without faith, exposure to the gospel, hearing sermons, it won’t help you one bit on judgment day if you’re not united with faith by faith with those who listen. So our passage is bracketed by two exhortations. The first that we have is let us fear, but this is related to the second exhortation, which we find in verse 11. We’ve been told to fear and to fear is meant to lead us to strive. So secondly, let us strive. This comes from verse 11. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. This word strive carries the idea of earnestly pursuing something.

Still, it sounds a little odd on its face to say, strive to enter rest. Feels a little contradictory. In addition, as Christians were taught from scripture, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It’s the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast. So this can make us wonder how does striving fit in to the Christian life? How can we strive to enter rest when salvation is by grace through faith and not a result of works? Well, this question might arise from a misunderstanding about salvation that might come from an incomplete understanding of the term grace. So let’s take a little detour to make sure we’re all on the same page about this word grace. The definition that we’re most common, we’re most familiar with would be that of unmerited favor from God or something along those lines.

But what we sometimes forget is that the scripture also uses the word grace as a power to do what is right. Unmerited favor, we think of Romans 11, 6, for instance. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. But in terms of power, take a minute to flip over to Acts chapter 4 verses 33 with me. We’ll look at a few passages quickly in Acts. Acts chapter 4 verse 33, and with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. You see the word grace being connected with the word power. You flip over a few chapters to chapter 6 verse 8. We see this kind of thing again, chapter 6 verse 8 of Acts.

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Or you flip a few chapters further to chapter 20 verse 32, Acts chapter 20 verse 32. And it says, and now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Finally, to cap this off, we might look at 1 Corinthians 15, 10. 1 Corinthians 15, 10 puts this all together, but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them. Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Now of course, this power from God is unmerited, unmerited favor.

But if we try to insert the definition unmerited favor, every time that the word grace appears in the Bible, it won’t make much sense. Now this incomplete understanding of grace can also tie into an incomplete understanding of salvation in general. Now sometimes in discussions about salvation, justification can get all of the focus. Now of course, as a reminder, justification is what we call it when Christ is credited with our sins and punished accordingly. And we are given credit with Christ’s perfect righteousness and rewarded accordingly. Of course, this is summed up best in 2 Corinthians 521, for our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. We will never be able to exhaust the depths of this profound gift in our thinking, writing, speaking, and singing into eternity.

But salvation consists of more than merely being forgiven of our past sins. Forgiveness of sins gives us peace with God, but our problem is much bigger than being morally bankrupt and legally guilty. We’re also dead towards God. Our hearts are rebels intent on disobeying and hating him. We need new hearts that are alive to God and love him, not hate him. We also need the holiness of God. Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14 is a rather famous verse. It tells us, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Salvation isn’t meant to simply give us a license to sin by forgiving everything we’ve done in the past. And yet, if it were only justification, forgiveness of our sins and count it as righteous, it might be. Remember Paul’s question, why not sin that grace may abound?

But God gives us the Holy Spirit to come inside us, to make us holy. Ezekiel 36 27 says, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. The Holy Spirit’s main role in our lives is to make us holy. That’s why grace is both undeserved favor as well as power from God to be forgiven and walk in obedience. We do not strive to earn our salvation, but we strive in the grace of salvation. So striving is not antithetical to grace. We’re meant to strive in grace. But grace is just the backdrop, so to speak, the background work. God’s behind the scenes work. The place where it makes contact in our lives is faith. And here’s where we have a second safeguard to thinking that we can earn or merit or deserve salvation ourselves.

The way in which we obtain God’s gracious salvation is with the open hand of faith. At its most basic level, we simply believe that God is who he says he is and can do what he says he can do. That’s about all the Old Testament saints had to go on. But as the writer of Hebrews has been stressing since chapter one, we have a much clearer picture now of how God’s salvation works for us in the person and work of his son Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, God just said I’ll handle it. In the New Testament, he says the same thing, but we can see how Jesus does that for us and understand how he handles our sin. And faith is the perfect instrument to receive God’s grace because it prevents us from crediting ourselves or relying on our own power.

The goal of God’s salvation is to give us the benefits and him the glory. Now, how does this fit with striving? Well, faith means relying on God’s resources, remaining dependent on him, not just for past pardons, but also for future faithfulness. And yet everything around us, the remaining sin nature that resides within us, fights that God dependence like crazy. So we have to strive to remain dependent, strive to know how much we need God. And that’s the heart of our battle. In one sense, faith is easy. Look at Jesus and you can’t help but take him at his word. The problem is we constantly take our eyes off him. Daily we’re faced with difficulties that we think we have to handle in our own strength. Car repairs, disobedient children, death of a loved one, threat of a job loss, financial troubles, plans falling through, daily challenge to control our temper, to fight temptation and bitterness.

All these are temptations to handle them in our own strength. It’s so easy to strive to handle them in our own resources, but Hebrews wants us to strive to depend on God. We might not say that God can’t handle it, but practically we act as though we’re all on our own. We often get too caught up in the busyness of taking care of it, to start to think that we maybe don’t need him after all, which is a dangerous place to be. And we can start to seem to appear to have failed to reach that rest, God’s rest. Faith takes hold of God’s grace, does not remain an intellectual ascent to God’s ability and willingness or a mere emotional embrace, but it manifests itself in acts of love towards God and others. Galatians 5-6, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Faith is what counts as it works through love. Your dependence on God will not be passive. It won’t make you stop. What it will do is make you stop running on the fumes of your own strength and start running on the real high octane power of God’s grace. So we’ve looked at the exhortation to fear, which is meant to lead us to strive, but this is all meant to ensure that we enter. So let’s briefly consider what it means to enter that rest. Number three, let us enter. In verse one, we see the promise of entering his rest still stands. And verse six, it remains for some to enter it. Verse eight, if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. All these seem to be saying that the rest is in the future.

And yet other verses seem to suggest that the rest is in the present. Verse three, we who have believed entered that rest. Verse ten, whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. So which is it? Well, the answer is both. God’s rest is not yet. The world is not made right. Things are not at peace. God does not fully dwell with man. And yet God’s rest is already. In Christ, we can experience salvation now. We can have fellowship now with God. And they’re both connected. You can’t have one without the other. Just as John in his gospel speaks of eternal life as something that begins on this side of death when someone is connected to Jesus, Hebrews says that God’s eternal rest must be entered on this side of death in order to enter it on the other side.

We will enter God’s rest one day. And yet and yet we must enter God’s rest now. We must cease from our labors of meriting, attempting to merit our own salvation and contrast the rest that believers are to enter with the unrest of unbelievers. There’s no rest for the unbeliever because only true rest can be found in God. Christians that come to the Boardwalk Chapel will sometimes ask me, what’s the best argument against atheism or Islam or Catholicism or Hinduism or Buddhism? It seems like they’re all different. They all need their own unique answer. I tell them two things. First, come to the training on apologetics in June for all the specifics. But second, keep in mind the simple truth that apart from Christ, everyone is trying to earn their own salvation somehow. The guilty conscience won’t let you rest, and guilt can only be absolved by an adequate sacrifice.

Jesus is the only answer. Everyone, no matter what they claim to believe, they know that God exists and that one day they’ll have to stand before him to give an account of themselves. And that can cut through a lot of different philosophies. If you’re trying to earn your own salvation, like unbelievers are, you’re never done. The thing about serving idols is they always demand more and more from you while giving you less and less in return. The idols that the Canaanites worshiped, the idols that the Canaanites worshiped, they required the literal burning of the children. But the idols worshiped today, like money, purpose, and happiness, all have their own steep fees of time and attention, with poor returns in this life and misery in the next. There’s no rest in the pursuit of money or pleasure, even though they constantly promise it’s just around the corner.

If you think about it, rest is what we’re all ultimately looking for. There was a man named Augustine, he was a theologian in Africa who lived in the 300s AD, and he noticed this a long time ago. He wrote this to God, Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Faith in God offers unparalleled rest. Now it doesn’t always look that way from the outside. When we’re stuck in panic mode or doing mode, it actually sounds less restful to place our trust in God, because it seems like we have to take our trust off ourselves, which is true. Yet it is so powerful that even the secular world has noticed the unexpected rest that faith offers. We can see this in suggestions by unbelievers to just trust the universe, believe everything will be okay.

Those are empty promises that don’t give real rest. But we don’t enter God’s rest by meditating on mantras, by special breathing. We enter God’s rest by faith in the person of God whom we encounter through his word and prayer. Don’t neglect prayer. Sometimes it can be easy to keep checking off the box of Bible reading. But when that never translates into prayer back to God, we’re in danger of not benefiting from the message. Ask God to make his word slice open your heart, make you vulnerable to God. But don’t leave it there. Talk to God about what gets exposed. The rest is totally worth the risk. We’re going to talk more time, more next time next week about how the Sabbath relates to God’s already not yet rest. But for now take a final look at verse 10 as we close.

For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. This is fundamentally God’s rest. It’s a rest in God and a rest with God. The rest that God offers his people is fundamentally fellowship with him. God is not giving us gifts and then sending us on our way. God is calling you to enter into his rest. He’s calling you to come participate in fellowship with the triune God who created the world and brought you near by the blood of his son. So come dear saints, enter now the now and future rest of fellowship with God. Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven we thank you that you have given us your word. We thank you they have made this promise that the promise still stands of entering your rest.

So Lord we would ask that you would give us believing hearts, hearts that listen, hearts that are united by faith. And Lord you would help you would help us to enter that rest daily, even hourly, to enter that rest that you have been in since the beginning of the world. We ask that you would do this in Jesus name. Amen. Well in response let’s turn in our hymnal to 468.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 15, 2024
The Heart of the Matter is The Matter of the Heart

About this sermon

Hebrews quotes Psalm 95: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” as Israel did in the wilderness. Believers must take care that none has an evil, unbelieving heart that leads him to fall away from the living God. Apostasy is a danger for those inside the covenant community, and hardening comes subtly through the deceitfulness of sin. The remedy is mutual exhortation every day, as long as it is called today. God never meant any Christian to be self-sufficient; God gives comfort, wisdom, and correction through other believers.

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Sermon transcript

If you would remain standing and turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 3 verses 7 through 19. Hebrews chapter 3, you can find that in the Pew Bibles on page 1188 if you need it. Hear the word of the Lord from Hebrews chapter 3 starting in verse 7 through the end of the chapter. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, 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. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Therefore we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who were those that heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Amen. You may be seated.

Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we come to you this morning and we ask simply, Lord, that you would feed your people. You would feed your people from your word. You would nourish them, exhort them, comfort them, glorify your name. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Have you ever gotten a splinter in your finger? What about your eye or your heart? One of the most famous fairytale authors was a Danish author named Hans Christian Andersen. And he’s famous for many of his shorter fairytales, but his longest tale by far was called The Snow Queen, which was part of the inspiration for the popular movie Frozen that came out a few years ago. Andersen’s original fairytales were much deeper and darker than many of their contemporary retellings, and The Snow Queen is no exception. The stage is set by the devil himself attempting to bring an evil mirror up to heaven, which distorts all images to minimize the good and beauty and magnify evil and ugliness.

Heaven cannot tolerate evil, and the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, raining down on earth, embedding itself in window panes, spectacles, and even in people. One little boy in particular gets one in his eye and one in his heart, turning him to only see evil in others with his eye and only love evil with his heart. All of his friends and family aren’t able to get him to behave. He can neither see good nor love it, and when the Snow Queen comes to enslave him, he eagerly capitulates. Despite all efforts to free him, nothing works until the tears of one who sought him out of love fall upon his heart and melt that icy shard. This prompts him to shed tears himself, which then expels the shard from his own eye. The boy had a heart problem.

He hated those who loved him, and he loved those who hated him, and until that was addressed, he didn’t even want to be free. I think our text this morning, we find, is talking about a heart problem as well. I’ve titled this message, The Heart of the Matter is the Matter of the Heart. A couple weeks ago, we looked at a long passage in Numbers, chapter 13 and 14, that was the critical tipping point in which Israel, instead of going into the land of promise, turned back. They doubly disobeyed God, first by refusing to go in when he said he was with them, and then changing their minds and insisting on going in when God said he wasn’t with them. Rather than making up for their initial refusal, Israel’s foolheartedly rushing into the land was further confirmation that they didn’t think God’s presence made a difference, so his absence wouldn’t be a problem either.

Israel’s faithless, unbelieving hearts were doubly exposed, confirming the just judgment of God in preventing them from entering the promised land of rest. The last chapter of our passage this morning in Hebrews, chapter 19, diagnoses Israel’s problem of disobedience as tracing back to a failure of faith, unbelief. The writer of Hebrews warns his readers, and us, in verse 12, to beware of an unbelieving heart in ourselves. So we’ll structure our time this morning considering the ubiquity of an unbelieving heart, the danger of an unbelieving heart, and the remedy for an unbelieving heart. Number one, the ubiquity of an unbelieving heart. If you’re not sure how to spell it, it should be there on the bottom on words to listen for. But first of all, what in the world does ubiquity mean? Ubiquity is simply a funny sounding word that means everywhere.

I could have just said the everywhereness of an unbelieving heart, but as you can tell, that’s a little more awkward sounding. Ubiquity is just a shorter, easier word that means that something is everywhere. It’s pervasive all over the place, and in this case, we mean that everyone has one. Our passage begins with a quote from Psalm 95, which is why we read it this morning in our responsive reading to give us familiarity with what’s going on. And it starts with a warning halfway through the Psalm where the writer of Hebrews is quoting not to harden your heart. Then in verse 10, he goes on, they always go astray in their heart. What does scripture mean by the heart? Well, Craig Troxell, who gave a lecture at Geneva College that we went to for Reformation Day, he defines it this way, biblically.

He says, the heart is the governing center of a person. When used simply, it reflects the unity of our inner being. And when used comprehensively, it describes the complexity of our inner being as composed of mind, what we know, desires, what we love, and will, what we choose. The Bible groups what we know, love, and choose together in the heart. Yes, these things can be distinguished, but they cannot be fully separated. What we want to be true or not affects what we know. What we love can blind us to certain things, and what we know affects what we love and choose. It’s precisely this inner aspect of our being that encompasses our knowing, loving, and choosing, and that’s our big problem. A couple of famous passages across scripture describe it pretty starkly. For instance, in Genesis, chapter 6, verse 5, it says, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Things were so bad that God wiped out millions and possibly even billions of people in a worldwide flood that left fossils and scars over the entire earth that we see today. And he would have every right to do it again today. Thankfully, he made a promise to Noah, the one family that he saved, that he would never do it again. But every intention of the thoughts of his heart, the scripture’s most common way of describing the heart is its thoughts. In our culture today, we think mostly of the heart as referring to emotions only, but scripture often describes the heart as thinking. For in Jeremiah 17, verse 9, we read that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Think of it. At the core of our being is a corrupt, deceitful, desperately sick control center for our thinking, feeling, and choosing.

Sometimes we talk about fooling ourselves. This is because our thinking is not quarantined off from the inner aspects of loving and choosing. We’re complex, integrated beings, which unfortunately means our entire inner being is corrupt. When I’m trying to explain this concept of how people come to be evil, I sometimes ask parents, did you have to teach your kids to be good or bad? What’s their inclination towards? Have you ever heard of a child who didn’t know how to be selfish, disobey his parents, or throw a fit? Did he have to be specially taught those things? This is a reality that most people will admit to. They will all admit something is wrong, but what is it? And I’ve never heard anyone give a better explanation for what we see all around us than what the Bible says.

I’ve heard people say we need education, or meditation, or indoctrination, or even reformation. The Bible says we need regeneration. The Bible says this inner inclination to want, think, and do evil comes from something it calls original sin. Humans don’t come from the womb perfectly pure, holy, and righteous, loving God and all that he commands and hating everything contrary to him. The first two humans, Adam and Eve, were born without this inclination to do evil, but they chose to disobey God. And so all their future children coming from them inherited this innate desire for sin. The Bible uses various words to describe this. The flesh, the old man, the old nature, the sinful nature. God didn’t create the first humans with this sinful nature originally, but ever since the first parents of all humanity chose to disobey God, all their children have been born with this twisted nature as well.

Prefer sin over God. We don’t just have a behavioral problem. A problem is not mainly a lack of education, lack of money, not a lack of opportunities, not a lack of connections, not a lack of health or IQ or self-esteem or emotional integration or a lack of friends, a lack of love, a lack of housing, a lack of power, a lack of ideas. Our problem is a moral problem. We have a rebellious heart. One of the primary deceptions of our heart is to tell us that the problems are all out there, exclusively external, only on the outside. We’ll blame anything and everyone for our problems for the way we are. Any bad feelings, thoughts and actions can always be blamed on what someone else said or did to us, including maybe how our parents treated us or failed to treat us growing up.

We can feel like the world is against us. We’re surrounded by enemies, people that don’t support us that we need to cut out of our life. If we can just get rid of all that negativity that surrounds us, then we’ll be alright. But what we need to understand from the scripture is that the enemy is on the inside. Our biggest problem is not the people around us, the haters, the circumstances that just bring out the worst in us. The problem is that the worst is in us in the first place. Our problem is rooted in the heart. Our problem isn’t just a matter of cleaning up our act, getting better friends, fixing our circumstances, changing our appearance or behavior. There’s something wrong at the core of our being. We don’t just think evil, speak evil and do evil.

We actually love it. We actually want to do it. Unless we think that this warning, this word to rebellious, evil, unbelieving hearts is only for the people outside the church. Remember what this passage is written to. This passage in verse 12 is addressing brothers, brothers and sisters that is. Or if we look back to verse 1 of chapter 3, therefore holy brothers. This book was written to those gathered in the assembly, those in church, and the writer says take care, we cannot ignore the warning. Verses 16 through 18 of our passage, we see the writer of Hebrews making the point that it was those who were members of the covenant community who turned back on the cusp of the promised land. They had all left Egypt, led by Moses. They watched God smite the Egyptians with the plagues of judgment.

They walked through the sea on dry ground. They saw the Lord’s provision of daily manna, water from the rock, and it was these who turned back, refused entrance into the promised land of rest. Hebrews does not want us to miss this warning, and I think the author means this in two ways. I think one he means that there are, even within the covenant community, evil hearts present, and so all members of the covenant community should be mindful of whether they have been born again, regenerated, received that new heart in the first place. We should never presume that being in church, singing the hymns, praying the prayers, knowing the lingo can substitute for being born again, for being given that new heart. But secondly, I think he means that even those who have received that new heart, who have been born again, were not fully free from the presence of sin.

Being confident that you have received that new heart doesn’t mean you don’t need to take care. We still have a part of our heart, part of our old, unbelieving, God-hating, sin-loving nature that, if we will follow it, will lead us to fall away, to rebel against the living God. Look at verse 12, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away. This evil, unbelieving heart that leads those to fall away, as it says in the ESV, that same term is the Greek word for the term that we call apostasy. And what’s notable about apostasy, it’s leaving the faith, and it can only happen to those that are inside the covenant community. People who never go to church, who never profess faith, who never claim to be a part of the community, cannot apostasize.

Apostasy can only be done by those who have come in, who have professed faith, and appeared to be believers. So we’ve considered the ubiquity of unbelieving hearts everywhere. Everyone has one. So secondly, we’ll consider the danger, the danger of an unbelieving heart. And first, the dangerous subtlety of hardening your heart. Look at verse 8, begins with this exhortation, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. The writer of Hebrews says that this exhortation comes from the mouth of the Holy Spirit, and it’s a warning for us today, today if you hear his voice. Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. What does it mean to harden your heart? We sometimes speak of our physical hearts, our physical arteries hardening up, becoming less flexible, more rigid. There’s a story in the Old Testament, in the life of King David, of a foolish wicked man named Nabal.

David’s men had guarded Nabal’s sheep for months, and then asked for a little food when it was time to celebrate and shear the sheep. Nabal selfishly refused, and even mocked David and his hunger. But a few days later it says that God struck Nabal, and Nabal’s heart became like a stone within him. Stopped beating, it became hard and stiff like a rock. We need our physical hearts to stay soft and strong to keep pumping our blood. But we also need our spiritual hearts to stay soft. The scripture pairs this idea of stiffness, hardening the heart or the neck, as indicative of stubbornness, rebellion. A stiff neck on an ox won’t let you put a yoke on it. The stiff neck of a person won’t bow, won’t submit. A hard heart won’t listen. It isn’t open to correction or instruction or obedience.

And this is put directly in contrast to hearing and listening. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Hardening your heart is resistance to outside influence. The hardness is not simply inflexibility, since believers are told to hold fast, hold tightly to Christ without wavering. But it’s a rejection of the outside voice of the Lord. Verse 13 says that you can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. So sometimes hardening comes subtly from deception. We have to be on guard against the subtle deception of sin that creeps in where we can’t even see it. And that’s why we need others to point it out to us. Verse 8 and 15 tell us specifically to avoid hardening our hearts. Sometimes as reformed Christians, we can focus so much on God’s sovereignty that we can actually exclude any idea of man’s responsibility.

Now this passage specifically reminds us it is our responsibility to not harden our hearts. People who don’t go to sleep loving Jesus one day and wake up the next morning completely rejecting Christianity, if you look back, you will always find a pattern of hardening your heart, not listening to God’s voice. It comes on gradually. Do you read your Bible regularly listening for God’s voice? Are you open to hearing the Spirit call you out through his word? What about for the Holy Spirit to call you out through the words of another believer? What about encouragement? Sometimes we can feel so self-assured and unswayed and ungrateful that we don’t even take compliments from others. Are you open to hearing, well done, good and faithful servant from the mouth of a fellow saint as the Holy Spirit’s intended encouragement for you?

The deceitfulness of sin is such that we can even harden our hearts in the name of piety. Don’t reject God’s words of warning or comfort. Listen when you hear God’s voice. Be receptive to him. When I’m evangelizing strangers on the boardwalk or other places, I find young people are always the most open to hearing the gospel and receiving it by faith. They haven’t had as long to harden their heart. It’s not as hard as someone who’s spent decades hardening and hardening and hardening their heart against the voice of their creator. And the writer of Hebrews is saying you have a choice, a responsibility. Don’t harden your heart when you read God’s word, when you hear his voice. But second, the dangerous result of hardening your heart. Why such a strong warning? Because the Israelites lost Canaan by hardening their hearts.

They had spent months ignoring God’s warning, disbelieving his promises, doubting his goodness and power. So on the edge of the promised land, they refused to obey God and go in. They had never fallen out of love with Egypt. Despite all they had been through, they still had evil, unbelieving hearts that did the opposite of what God said. Now, we’re not at risk of losing Canaan today, here and now, but we’re at risk, the writer says, of falling away from the living God, of missing eternity, apostasy. God’s diagnosis of Israel’s disobedience in verse 10 is that they never knew his ways. Therefore I was provoked at that generation and said they always go astray in their hearts. They have not known my ways. Sometimes the most cutting words that a spouse can tell the other after even decades of marriage is, you don’t really know me, do you?

When God says this about Israel, he’s saying something profound. To know God’s ways is to love him. Israel never had a heart for God, after all. God put Israel to the test to see what was in their hearts. We might have been surprised, considering they were part of the covenant community, but what came out was not a surprise to God. He had seen it all along, because the Lord tests the heart. Verse 10, God responded in wrath. It says, I was provoked with that generation. This word provoked is translated in other places as, vomited out. It’s a violent word of action. Verse 12 warns us not to fall away from the living God. That phrase, fall away from the living God, the writer of Hebrews will use it again in chapter 10, verse 31. He says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The writer intends us to catch some of that fear, to guard us, to warn us of the danger. In regard to our hearts, God speaks in the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 18. He says, cast away from you all the transgressions you have committed and make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? The consequences of a hardened, unbelieving heart are not minimal. They’re eternally devastating. To be excluded from God’s rest means exclusion from heaven. The only alternative is hell, where God’s wrath is poured out against all wickedness. Hell is not a passive absence from God. It’s an active experience of the living, holy God’s wrath against sin forever. Well, we’ve looked at how unbelieving hearts are everywhere, how dangerous it is to harden your heart in unbelief.

So finally, let’s look at the remedy for an unbelieving heart. The remedy for an unbelieving heart. After focusing on these first two points, it might be tempting to despair or at least spiral into introspective doubt. How do I know if I have an evil, unbelieving heart? And if I realize I have one, what should I do? Well, the first thing you need is to get rid of your evil, unbelieving heart. You need an especially lethal weapon to get rid of this internal villain. The cross of Christ in his crucifixion, his death, is the only instrument capable of destroying your unbelieving heart. Just like the old fairy tales in which only the dragon’s own claw or tooth could pierce the dragon’s scales, only the wrath of God poured out against sin can kill that old heart.

The twist is that you can die now, before Judgment Day, spiritually. You can become one with Jesus, go into the grave with him by faith, and have your unbelieving heart killed now. But you don’t just need your old heart killed, second, you need to get yourself a new heart. Have you ever tried to give yourself a heart transplant? I hope not. I expect you can see the folly of even attempting such a procedure. The same is true regarding a new spiritual heart. What do you need for a heart transplant? First you need a donor, and then you need a surgeon, neither of which can be yourself. So you ask, how can you get one? Well, ask. Yes, but in what manner? Like a request for ice cream? I have seen some kids ask for ice cream as though they might die without it.

But I think we all know they won’t. No, ask, like not only your life, but your eternal future depends on it. The Bible calls it calling on the name of the Lord. Scripture says there’s a donor for the new heart that we need. It’s Jesus Christ who rose from the dead. Jesus is the donor. He has the new heart that we need, and the Holy Spirit is the transplant surgeon. Verse 14 calls it sharing in Christ, for we have come to share in Christ if we hold our original confidence firm to the end. You have to participate in Christ’s death and resurrection to have that new heart. Another way to say it is, Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

When your old heart dies and you get a new one, it means you have a new life. We call that regeneration. In verse 12 of chapter 3 of Hebrews, we have the warning, take care, that you don’t have a heart that will lead you to fall away. And then verse 13 gives the remedy, but exhort one another every day. As long as it is called today, then none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. See, our salvation is both definitive and daily. You notice we even have two sacraments that reflect this salvation. Baptism, once for all, definitive, you’re in. And the Lord’s Supper, again and again. We need that sustaining grace. While God sovereignly keeps those who are His, He doesn’t do this magically. He does this divine keeping in rather ordinary looking ways.

We call them the means of grace. The Lord keeps us walking with Him by faith to the very end, but this happens in community. Exhort one another. First, you need others to exhort you. This is something we commonly think of in terms of our need to be in church. We need to have others who know us. We need to have people in our homes, be in people’s homes. People that we can’t be fake with. To see things in our life that we would not see otherwise. We were not given the resources to be self-sufficient in our own Christian walk. You were made to be dependent on God, but also on other Christians. Some of God’s wisdom, comfort, and exhortation that He has ordained for you to receive, you will only get through other believers. But secondly, you need to exhort others.

This might not be something we often think of as a safeguard for our own faith, but it is just as important to give exhortation as to receive it. I think of this sometimes in evangelism. Evangelism we might say, one of my mentors, Dr. Kravendam says, is part of your sanctification. And this is because you can’t share what you don’t know and treasure and believe. I still remember in 2015 the daughter of a pastor came to the Boardwalk Chapel one summer. She came for a week and there was one night me and some others were urging this troubled young man to put his trust in Christ, to cast himself on the mercy of Christ, embrace the gospel because it was the only way. And this young woman who had been participating in the conversation with us up to that point began to back things off and began to stop pressing, suggesting that, well, we don’t want to impose our beliefs on you.

We don’t want to claim that we’re the only ones who know the right way of salvation. And started to backpedal. Of course, I continued to press the young man. And later that evening, the woman was troubled. And after having looked depressed and sad all week, she came beaming the next morning with a smile on her face that she had trusted Christ for the first time. She realized she wasn’t able to share until she had had that new heart herself. And when we are trying to exhort others of the grace, of the warnings, it makes us consider whether we believe it ourselves. We need to look outside ourselves, look for helping one another, look for ways to encourage our brothers and sisters, and you may find that it helps you as much as it helps them.

And finally, in conclusion, I think verse 14 of our passage is the focal point. It says, for we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. This is the key, sharing in Christ. It tells us what it looks like, holding our original confidence to the end. This doesn’t mean that Christians never doubt for a second, or that the strength of our confidence is what we rely on. It means that we keep looking at Christ. And when we do, we don’t have to keep asking whether he’s willing to save us or able to save us. It’s obvious. We know he is. We know he can. I think our main problem is we quit looking. We look away. And when we’re looking elsewhere, it’s harder to remember how willing and capable our Savior is, which is why we need our fellow saints to grab us by the chin and point our eyes back to our Savior.

The word translated firm here is the same word used in chapter two, verse two, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, Christ has been proved to be reliable He is our original confidence and he is firm. God never calls for trust, belief, faith against reason or without reason. Faith in Christ is not like a blind leap in the dark. It’s like saying, I do, to the one you’re already in love with and want to spend the rest of your life with. Have you come to share in Christ? Have you called on Christ to be your Savior, to kill your old rebellious heart and give you his heart? There’s no time like the present. As long as it is called today, there’s still time to be prayed, still time to be saved.

When we look at verses 16 and 18 of our passage, it can look at first that disobedience kept Israel from reaching the promised land. Their sin brought judgment upon them and kept them from entering heaven. But notice what verse 19 says, it diagnoses that problem differently. It was not disobedience or sinning and rebellion that kept them out, it was unbelief. All of those rebellion, disobedience were symptoms and manifestations of unbelief, which came from hardening their hearts. Sin, disobedience, rebellion, incurs God’s wrath and anger, no question, but everyone has sinned. What kept Israel out was unbelief. They never caught hold of the remedy, they had no desire for a new heart, they didn’t trust God, believe his promises, fear him, love him, or desire his presence. And for you too, the only thing that can keep you from entering God’s presence in heaven is unbelief.

But conversely, that means no matter how much you’ve sinned, how rebellious you’ve been, how long you’ve been disobeying God, while it is still called today, all that is required is belief. Belief doesn’t save us as though it were a single good work to make up for everything that we’ve done. Belief is the way that we embrace God’s offer for salvation, in which he unites us to Christ, fills our old heart, transplants within us the heart of Christ. And as Hebrews has been emphasizing here, while it is still called today, you too can call on the Lord for mercy and be graciously given this free grace. Amen, let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that it is still called today and that you still hold out that offer of salvation, that those who call upon the name of the Lord can be saved.

Lord, we ask that you would look upon us this morning and you would have mercy, you would prompt us, give us faith to see you, to seek you for mercy, and to find that grace for help in time of need. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s respond by turning to hymn 466. Hymn 466, my faith looks up to thee, and if you would please stand as we sing.

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December 8, 2024
The Testing of God

About this sermon

Numbers 13-14 records how ten of the spies reported strong peoples and fortified cities, and Israel refused to enter the land. Their faithlessness blinded them to the truth: God had already conquered Egypt, giants are no match for him, and the land was good. They concluded God meant to kill them, grumbled, and wanted to return to Egypt. That unbelief brought forty years in the wilderness and death outside the land. Caleb and Joshua followed the Lord fully and entered. Faithfulness trusts God’s promises and power over every threat.

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Sermon transcript

Well, this evening, you may be surprised to find us in the Book of Numbers, but the passage that we’re looking at this evening is referenced in chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews, and so we’ll take this week to hop back to the Book of Numbers in Chapter 13 and take a look at this story in greater depth before returning to Numbers in the coming weeks. We’re reading this evening from Numbers Chapter 13, Verse 25, and through the end of Chapter 14. Please give your attention to God’s Word. At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land, and they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Peran at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.

This is the spies he’s talking about. And they told him, We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in this land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan. But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it. Then the man who had gone up with him said, We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we are.

So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, The land through which we have gone to spy out is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak who come from the Nephilim, and we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seem to them. Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would that we had died in this wilderness? Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword?

Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? And they said to one another, Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes. And they said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, The land which we pass through to spy it out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord.

Do not fear the people of the land, for they are bred for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. And the Lord said to Moses, How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them. I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they. But Moses said to the Lord, Then the Egyptians will hear of it. For you brought up this people in your might from among them, and they will tell of the inhabitants of the land.

They have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people. For you, O Lord, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them, and you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say, It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give them that he has killed them in the wilderness. And now, please let the power of the Lord be as great as you have promised, saying, The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression. But he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation.

Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt until now. Then the Lord said, I have pardoned according to your word. But truly as I live and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in this wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times, and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.

Now since the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, How long shall this wicked people, this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, as I live declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you. Your dead body shall fall in the wilderness. And of all your number listed in the census from 20 years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, no, not one shall come into the land which I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.

But your little ones, who you said will become a prey, I will bring in and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead body shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for 40 years and shall suffer for your faithlessness until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the numbers of days in which you spied out the land, 40 days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity 40 years and shall know my displeasure. Aye, the Lord has spoken. Surely this will I do in all the wicked, to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness they shall come to a full end and there they shall die. And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land, the man who brought up a bad report of the land died by plague before the Lord.

Of those men who went out to spy the land, only Joshua, the son of Nun and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh remained alive. When Moses told all these words to the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country saying, here we are, we will go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned. But Moses said, why now are you transgressing the command of the Lord when that will not succeed? Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are facing you and you shall fall by the sword, because you have turned back from following the Lord, the Lord will not be with you.

But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill country, though neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed out of the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them even to Hormah. This ends the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would open up your word to us this evening, that we would hear from you, that you would feed your people. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Do you ever get nervous taking tests? Who doesn’t, right? Well, I was never a great test taker in high school or college or even seminary. I would get nervous and then I would inevitably perform worse on my test than I might have done otherwise.

In high school, I took the SAT twice and the second time I was able to improve my score by 90 to 100 points in all three areas. It’s not because I’m so smart, it’s because I had become comfortable with the test and was much more relaxed the second time, while I certainly wouldn’t rule out the role of lucky guesses. I wasn’t stressing about the format and I could better understand what was going on, what was asked of me. A lot of my friends who did well the first time was because they had taken the practice SATs, something I didn’t think of at the time, but it probably would have helped me. When I read about Israel’s failure in this passage to pass God’s test and enter the promised land, I’m inclined to offer them the benefit of the doubt at first.

Maybe they got nervous and didn’t understand what was expected of them. What if they got a second chance? Maybe they could get a do-over and try again. But if we look carefully at our passage, we see they didn’t just get a second chance. They got chance after chance after chance. And then when God issued his judgment, they went back and proved again that they were lacking what God required. Scientists like to have great certainty and have a very high standard for what they call a mathematical proof. Presenting many cases in which the statement is true is insufficient for a mathematician. It must be demonstrated that the statement is true in all possible cases. What we have in our story this evening is this same type of situation. God is proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that this generation of Israelites were truly without faith.

We’re going to see this first in their negative cowardice and fear, but then confirmed by their presumption. So we’ll look this evening at first the cowardice of faithlessness, second the presumption of faithlessness, and third the reward of faithfulness. So first the cowardice of faithlessness. We come to the point in the story of Israel, which ought to be the pinnacle of the whole Pentateuch. This was the whole point of coming out of Egypt. God had come to Abraham centuries earlier, told him to journey hundreds of miles away from his home to another land, which he then promised he would give to his descendants in the future. This was meant to be that moment of fulfillment when the promise to Abraham was finally fulfilled as his numerous descendants set foot in the land that God had promised.

This should have been the pinnacle of the story, but instead it was the moment of failure. Moses had told them in verse 20 of chapter 13, the spies, when they were going into the land, he said, be of good courage. He knew that courage was going to be necessary, but the spies came back full of cowardice. The goodness of the land is overshadowed by the difficulty in capturing it. And when we look in chapter 14 verses 2 and 3, we see that the congregation is convinced that death is certain. Death is inevitable, and they’d rather die in Egypt in slavery than die conquering Canaan. Now this might look a little strange, irrational, but that’s exactly what cowardice does. Freedom always requires courage. Patrick Henry famously said, give me liberty or give me death. The Israelites here are saying give me slavery and death rather than require courage and faith.

Cowardice prefers slavery, while courage prefers freedom. And they’re so adamant about this, they’re ready to murder and revolt in order to return to slavery in the service of their cowardice. We’re going to see two things about cowardice. Cowardice prompts action, and cowardice blinds us to what’s transcendental. Cowardice prompts action. While we might think primarily of cowardice as a failure to act, it’s only a failure to act in the direction of courage. Avoidance is an action as well, and cowardice that the Israelites demonstrate is full-scale outright avoidance. It’s not a neutral stance. It runs in the opposite direction. Israel didn’t say, well, kind of scared, let’s wait on the edge of Canaan. Camping’s not that bad actually. We kind of enjoy our tents. No. They said, we’re not going into Canaan. We’re actually going back to Egypt, into slavery.

In this case, it led to full-scale outright rebellion. Fear is a powerful motivator of failure, fear of exposure, and it can lead to extreme action. When we talk about cornered animals who are injured, they’ll often act aggressively and irrationally. And this is how cowards get. Cowardice that comes from faithlessness is cowardice. Cowards are insecure. They think that everyone is their enemy. The Israelites turned on Joshua, Caleb, Moses, Aaron, and God. They were ready to kill them. It distrusts those that it ought to trust, and so God calls it despising him. In verse 23, none of those who despised me shall see it, this land that I’m giving. But cowardice also blinds to what is transcendental. We talk about the good, the true, and the beautiful, but especially in terms of God. God is the good, the true, and the beautiful, and cowardice blinds Israel to this reality.

They blinded Israel to the truth. God was in their midst. He had delivered them from slavery. It was farther to travel back to Egypt. They were blinded to the truth. Giants are no match for God. God had conquered the Egyptians. It blinded them to all these truths that should have been very clear. It also blinded Israel to the good. They couldn’t see the land as good. All they could see was Canaan as dangerous and ominous. They couldn’t see God as good. They thought that he was planning to kill them. They couldn’t see freedom as good. They preferred slavery. They couldn’t see their leaders as good. They wanted to stone them and choose someone else who would take them back to Egypt. And it also blinded them to the beautiful. The land was beautiful. They brought back the fruits, the produce, the cities, the pastures, the vineyards.

Freedom was beautiful. Israel’s on the edge of entering their own land. They’re about to become landowners. God’s glory is beautiful. God comes and brings his glory. He stops the stoning of Moses by the glory of the Lord appearing. God’s glory is particularly beautiful in an enormous take your breath away kind of way. God stops Israel and he comes and appears to them. But they had been blinded to the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 39 through the beginning of chapter 11 talks about this shrinking back, this lack of courage that Israel had. And it exhorts us to not share in that cowardice. It says, we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and preserve their souls. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

For by it the people of old received their commendation. And we find in Revelation 21 that there is God excluding people who are not saved from his holy dwelling place. And he says, the one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, adulterers, and liars, their portion shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. The first thing he lists is cowards, because cowardice comes from faithlessness. But second we see the presumption of faithlessness in this passage. Faithlessness has a two-sided coin of cowardice and presumption. Though they seem like opposites at first, they really come from a common root, losing sight of God.

Cowardice has lost sight of God as powerful and forgotten his promise to help. It fails to believe that God is willing and able to help. It doesn’t trust him. Presumption has lost sight of this as well. It’s a misplaced faith, a trust completely in oneself. When Israel was commanded to go in because God would whisk them, they refused. Their lack of trust manifested itself in cowardice. They were too afraid to obey because they didn’t believe it mattered whether God was with them or not. They still couldn’t defeat any giants. And yet, when they were forbidden to go in because God was not with them, they rushed in anyway. Their lack of trust manifested itself in presumption. They recklessly disobeyed rushing in because they didn’t think it mattered whether God was with them or not. Their presumption confirmed what their cowardice had already demonstrated.

Their faithlessness was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. It’s no wonder they were so fearful and cowardly. We can see by their presumption they clearly didn’t think it made a lick of difference whether God was with them or on their side. They believed that God’s promises were insincere and they thought his presence was irrelevant. God warns his people again and again throughout his word against presumption. Presumption in regards to God never ends well. Presumption is the opposite of trust since instead of begging for God’s mercy, it assumes everything is good. It assumes you don’t even need it. But God delights to be asked for mercy as Moses did and he detests to be presumed upon. As the people of God, we need to be on guard against sinful fear. Many times we can think of fear as something that happens to us, a reflexive action in response to circumstances or situation.

But I think we see in this passage a fighting fear with fear. There are some Christians who recognize the danger of fear and it’s incompatibility with faith in God. But the solution they propose looks more like the Israelites’ presumption. They might treat Jesus’ name and his blood as more of a talisman that can ward off evil spirits. If you say the right thing, if you cover yourself in the blood of Jesus by all these different, almost, mantras, rather than the words of God, rather than bowing in awe at God’s power and presence and letting your reverence of God squeeze out the fear of lesser threats. To fear the Lord is not merely to quake in terror at the Almighty, but to reverently esteem him, to be worthy of all glory, honor, and praise for his power and his character.

When you see God in such a way that you fear him with holy fear, all other terrors begin to fade. It’s so easy to think in our own lives that the solution, the alternative to cowardice, is presumption. Maybe we’re too scared to confront a person about some sin in their life and cowardly hold back from godly confrontation. But then in an effort to overcome cowardice, begin confronting the slightest offense that comes across our path. The solution to cowardice is faith, not presumption. And the solution to presumption is also faith. Neither Joshua or Caleb were suggesting that the Canaanites weren’t strong or that Israel wouldn’t be able to take them on their own. They weren’t naive about the challenges that lay ahead. They were honest about the difficulties. But they put their confidence in God, in his strength to overcome these enemies, and in his promise to do so.

Israel gave into cowardice and fear when facing their enemies at first. But then in an effort to compensate for their disobedience, they rushed into battle despite being warned that God was not with them. In both cases, they displayed a heart that believed they did not need God. It was now demonstrated in a double way that they lacked faith. They had neither confidence in nor reliance on God. Israel was tested by God, and they failed the test. In fact, they thought that they ought to put God to the test. In their test from God, their lack of faith was revealed. The Bible says Moses tells the children in Deuteronomy 8.2 of these very people that the Lord tests his people to see what is in their hearts. In Deuteronomy 8.2, Moses says, and you shall remember the way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.

But this works both ways. Testing also brings out the faith in those that have faith. When Caleb was put to the test, it became clear that his reliance was on God. He knew God would keep his promise, and to his eyes, the land was as good as theirs. Which brings us to our third observation, the reward of faithfulness. Now, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 that Jesus said, now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Clearly, this story about the Israelites failing to enter Canaan is more than just a historical event. We are meant to see this pivotal moment in redemptive history as a lesson for us as we look forward to entering heaven. The problem we saw in the Israelites was they had never fallen out of love with Egypt.

Our problem is more serious than merely entering the promised land, since the promised land is but a picture of heaven. We stand in danger of failing to enter eternal life. All of us naturally are born slaves like the Israelites were in the land of Egypt. No amount of hanging out with good people, coming to church, keeping up with Christian things can change us on the inside. The Israelites were part of the community, the covenant community of God, but they had never had changed hearts. You can go through a lot of motions, look a lot like a Christian without a changed heart. Every one of us needs a new heart. The old heart that the Israelites had was in love with Egypt. There was only one solution, the heart has to die, has to be killed.

The other ten spies, they were still in love with Egypt. They wanted to go back and die there. Faithless, blind, rebellious hearts that we’re born with have to be killed and replaced with a heart of faith. I’ve heard people say sometimes that faith and sight are opposites, and we do sometimes see those things contrasted, but there’s another sense in which faith is really the way to see what is truly there, to see reality. And we’ll look briefly at what faith sees and what faith receives. Joshua and Caleb saw the giants just like the other spies, but they saw things in proper perspective. They could see giants, they could see challenges, but those paled in comparison to God. Compared to the giants, the Israelites were like grasshoppers, but compared to God the giants were food for the Israelites.

Because they saw God as more powerful, as on their side, they could see the good land. What did Joshua and Caleb focus on when they encouraged the people to enter the land? If we look in Numbers 14, verses 7 and 8, they tell the people, the land that we pass through to spy it out, it’s an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Caleb and Joshua were looking ahead with eyes of faith, believing that the promises of God that what lay ahead was far better than anything they had left behind in Egypt. The Israelites who lacked faith were acting like God didn’t exist and certainly didn’t think that he rewarded those who seek him.

They thought he had simply invented a more painful way for them to die when Egypt or the wilderness would have done just fine for them. Hebrews 11, 6 says, without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and he rewards those who seek him. Faith sees God, it sees the promise that he made to bring them into Canaan. It believes God is there and that he rewards, that he fulfills his promise. So we see what faith receives. Faith believes that God will keep his promise. Faith honors God because it assumes he both can and will do as he has said. Have you ever been doubted or disbelieved? It’s hurtful, it’s dishonoring. But God doesn’t require faith just because his feelings are hurt. Faithlessness is in fact sin.

John Piper has given a definition of sin before. He says sinning is any feeling or thought or speech or action that comes from a heart that does not treasure God over all things. At the bottom of sin, the root of all sinning is such a heart, a heart that prefers anything above God, a heart that does not treasure God over all persons and all other things. Sin is the glory of God not honored, the holiness of God not reverenced, the greatness of God not admired, the power of God not praised, the truth of God not sought, the wisdom of God not esteemed, the beauty of God not treasured, the goodness of God not savored, the faithfulness of God not trusted, the promises of God not believed, the commandments of God not obeyed, the justice of God not respected, the wrath of God not feared, the grace of God not cherished, the presence of God not prized, and the person of God not loved.

Is faith then atonement for our sin? No. Faith is simply the instrument by which we receive the promises of God, precisely because it excludes reliance upon ourselves. Now our passage that we’ve looked at in the evening has a lot to say about those who are unfaithful, the whole nation of Israel it seems, at least that generation. But what about those of us, maybe here this evening who have followed the Lord and are still following the Lord, seeking to enter that land, but feeling beaten down and weary? I imagine Caleb, when he came back from spying out the land, was full of hope. He tried to stir up his fellow Israelites to enter the land, but they tried to stone him. Maybe he began to wonder if it was true. Maybe he’d looked into his own heart and saw that it wasn’t pure, and heard God’s pronouncement that the whole camp would die in the wilderness, and began to wonder if he had an evil, unbelieving heart as well.

This might be why, at verse 24 of chapter 14, God gives him this encouragement. He says, but my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit, and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land which he went, and his descendants will possess it. But there’s still a question. God had just sentenced the community to wander in the wilderness for 40 more years. Some of you, including me, have not been alive that long. Caleb was already 45. He wasn’t going to get to enter the promised land until he was 85. So much for enjoying the promised land. He’d be 85 and then have to start fighting giants. But yes, he’d get to go in. But he’d be so old, maybe he wouldn’t even be up for fighting giants at that point, which would have to happen before he could start enjoying the land.

Would he even get to see his children and grandchildren enjoying that land that the Lord had promised? Maybe he’d be too weak to enjoy his reward. Well, if we turn over to Joshua 14, verses 6 through 14, we see how the story ends. I’ll just read a few verses here. Joshua 14, starting verse 7, is Caleb talking. He said, I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spread out the land. And I brought him word again, as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt. Yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely on the land on which your foot is trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.

And now behold, the Lord has kept me alive just as he said these 45 years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now behold, I am this day 85 years old. I am still as strong today as I was in that day that Moses sent me. My strength now is as my strength then, for war and for coming and going. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke to me on that day. This is what he did for Caleb. This is what he does for all his children. The trials of this life are not worthy of being compared to the glory that awaits. Brothers and sisters, God keeps his promises. You can bank on that. Caleb entered fields that were planted, houses that were built, vineyards and orchards ready to yield fruit.

But Christ has gone to prepare a place for you better than any Canaanite could build for the Israelites to claim. Christ has gone on ahead of us to do it. Caleb and Joshua had eyes of faith. They could see God’s promises. They were certain they were a reality. They were able to trust God with far smaller promises than we have today. In 2 Corinthians 1.20, Paul says, all of the promises of God find their yes in Christ. Jesus is the one who makes those promises come to fruition. Every promise that God makes to us is fulfilled through the person of Jesus Christ and in him. The promised land still exists for the people of God. It’s found in Christ, in who he is and what he has done. It means that we can rest from our work of trying to earn our own way to heaven.

And you don’t have to wait for it. Brothers and sisters, this begins now. We begin entering this rest now. You enter this rest if you embrace Christ by faith. There is a promise coming that is beyond anything you can imagine. But what we have now been given is beyond your imagination as well. You’ve been given Christ, the son of God, the very image of God who is invisible, the glory of God himself, the firstborn of all creation, the founder and perfecter of our salvation, the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power has been given to you. Embrace him by faith and receive the promises of God for you. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have not left us without hope, but you have given us great hope to embrace you by faith, to find that reward, that promise of God, that you have promised to those that follow you, that hear your word, believe your promise, that you have promised to be faithful.

We ask, Lord, that you would work faith in our hearts. Keep us from cowardice, faithlessness, or presumptive faithlessness. We ask that you would work faith in our hearts. Keep us from cowardice, faithlessness, or presumptive faithlessness, and give us that reward of true faith found in Jesus Christ. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. In response, we’ll sing Hymn 477. If you would, please stand as we sing Hymn 477, by grace I am an heir of heaven.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

November 24, 2024
A Heavenly House with a Divine Architect

About this sermon

Hebrews 3 calls believers to consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of their confession. Moses was worthy of honor: a faithful servant in all God’s house who testified to things God would speak later, pointing beyond himself. Jesus is worthy of more glory, as the builder of a house has more honor than the house. He is faithful over God’s house as a Son, not a servant, and believers are that house, built as living stones into a dwelling for God, if they hold fast their confidence and hope.

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Sermon transcript

If you would remain standing, give your attention to the reading of God’s word. We’ll be reading from Hebrews chapter three, verses one through six. Hebrews chapter three, verses one through six. Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses. As much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself, for every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. Now, Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope.

You may be seated. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would open our eyes to see your word, to see what you have for us, that you would change us by your word. We live by your word. You’ve given us new life, and we ask that this evening that by your word you would be kind, merciful. You would give us your spirit so that your word might bring life to us. We ask that you might give clarity to me, your servant, that your people might truly see and hear what is the word of God from your word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Have you ever visited a truly impressive house? I know that some of you in this congregation have visited the house not too far from here called Falling Water.

Callie and I have not yet visited that, but it’s on our list, and I hear it’s quite a sight. I grew up in North Carolina, and we used to visit the Biltmore Estate or the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina with my family, and Callie and I have visited a few times after we got married. I’ve always been fascinated by houses, and to this day, I can’t drive past a construction site without wanting to stop and take a look around. I had the privilege when I was 16 of helping be engaged with my family in building a log home. We got to be engaged from the very beginning, setting out the plans, scribbling them on graph paper, taking it to an architect who actually made the walls the proper width, and fixing our plans into a blueprint.

Then we actually saved money by doing a bit of the work ourselves. I was 16 and didn’t have a construction license, but anything that didn’t require an electrician’s license or a plumber’s license, I helped my 14 and 12-year-old brothers work on doing the finishing work, covering the walls, trimming out the doors and windows, and all the rest. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, didn’t have too many accidents. But here’s the great thing about houses, great houses especially, while they’re great in their own right, they ultimately stand as a testament to their designer and builder. All of the glory that a house garners goes to its architect and commissioner. The Biltmore Mansion’s impressive size and beauty point to Mr. Vanderbilt and the architect he hired, Richard Morris Hunt. Similarly, we cannot talk about Falling Waterhouse without mentioning its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and its commissioner, Edgar Kaufman.

Although neither of these houses were built by these men alone, and they very likely did very little of the work themselves, it is they who receive that chief credit. And our passage this evening in Hebrews is talking about houses and contrasting the glory that a house gets and the glory that its builder gets. Now in our passage this evening, we’re going to consider three things. We’re going to consider Moses, who’s worthy of honor. And then we’ll consider Jesus, who’s worthy of more honor. And finally, we’ll consider God’s house, which is a household of faith. So let’s start by considering Moses. First, consider Moses worthy of honor. Now why would the author of Hebrews want to bring up Moses? I think we can all agree that we believe that Jesus is superior to Moses. In our day, if you brought up this point, we would all agree with that.

But I think that many times this higher view that we have of Jesus is not because we have such a high view of Jesus, but because we have too low of a view of Moses. So I want to spend a few minutes elevating our view and our understanding of Moses to the point that I believe the first audience of this epistle would have had. If you were to ask me, what person am I most excited to meet when we get to heaven? It would be Moses. In verse two, we have in our passage, it says that Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Now we just read a little bit earlier from Numbers 12, which is actually, this is the quote that this comes from. Numbers chapter 12, if we flip back there and look, we find it says in verse seven that Moses was faithful in all God’s house.

The context is that Aaron and Miriam have been questioning Moses, but God comes down to vindicate his servant Moses. And in verse seven, he says, Moses is faithful in all my house. And then verse eight, with him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? See, God is distinguishing Moses from all of his other servants. No one has been as close to God as Moses was. He beheld the form of the Lord. And Moses actually penned more words in our Bibles than any other human author of the Scriptures. He gave us the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Have you ever considered how our Bibles are put together, how our Bible is constructed?

Because if you think about all the religions all over the world and throughout history, people have come forward with claims about divine revelation. Now usually, it’s an individual who has gone away into a cave off by himself somewhere else. He has a private experience, and he comes and I have a word from the Lord, and we’re just supposed to take his word for it. Whether it’s Islam or Mormonism, all of these religions are based on a private individual having what he claims is an encounter with God. But the Bible is different. The Bible is unique. It’s not produced by a single individual going off in a corner into a trance, writing things down that cannot be independently verified. If you were living in Palestine around 900 B.C. or sometime during the Bible, and someone comes up claiming to be a prophet of God, how do you know if he’s lying?

What’s your criteria to determine his truthfulness? Well, I think many of us would be inclined to say, does he do miraculous things? Is he doing miracles? And we might cite to back that up Deuteronomy 18. In Deuteronomy 18, God gives criterion for Israel. If you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or does not come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. That’s what we have in Deuteronomy 18. And yet, if we look earlier in Deuteronomy 13, we find that false prophets do miracles as well. So we need a better test than simply miracles. Deuteronomy 13 verses 1 through 3 says that if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord has not sent him.

He is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. So even false prophets can bring the miraculous. So what we need is something which we can evaluate that message. And this is where Moses comes in. See, the books that we have from Moses, the first five books of our Bible, they weren’t penned in secret. Millions of people saw God miraculously deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, walk them right through the Red Sea, and watched him descend in a pillar of fire and speak directly from heaven on Mount Sinai to Moses. There was no question about whether Moses had actually spoken with God. Everyone could see that. And then what Moses wrote becomes the measuring stick against which all future prophets, whether it’s Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, if they are preaching something that contradicts these first five books, the Pentateuch, the Torah, that Moses gives us, you know that they are not from God.

Christianity, the Bible, is based on the unmistakable, verifiable, massive displays of power and word, confirming that it comes from the living God. He’s not asking anyone to believe a private revelation that you had yourself that doesn’t come from God. So we know that Moses heard from God. And if you contradict Moses, then you must not be hearing from God, no matter how many miracles you do. And this brings us to start to understand why the Jews would have held Moses in such high esteem. It was to him that the law was given. He uniquely talked with God face to face in a way that no one else ever did. The Jews esteemed Moses very highly, and so should we. But now our text in Hebrews chapter three brings out three ways in which Moses was faithful.

The first is that Moses was a faithful servant. If you look at verse five, it says, now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant. He was not inventive, not authoritative, but obedient. He was a servant. We’ve been reading through the book of Exodus in prayer meeting, and the story starts out with exciting plagues and miracles, but slows down once they get to Mount Sinai. And then you have chapter upon chapter of instructions, followed by chapter upon chapter of how they followed those instructions. But if you step back and look at the big picture, Moses, at the beginning of the book, is reluctant, disobedient to God. But by the end of the book, we’ve gotten so used to this phrase, and Moses did everything as the Lord had commanded him, that we start to skip over it.

But the big picture point is that Moses faithfully did what was commanded him. He was a faithful servant who obeyed God just as he was told. But the next thing we see in our passage is that one particular way in which Moses obeyed was in building the tabernacle. Moses was a faithful builder of God’s house. We see this in Exodus. Moses was not only famous for giving the law that he received from God, he was the original constructor of the tabernacle, the first house of God. Hebrews 8.5 reminds us when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain. See Moses as a faithful builder who followed God’s direct blueprint exactly. The last part of Exodus can start to feel very repetitive, because there’s a whole bunch of chapters in which God tells Moses how to build the tabernacle, how to build his house, and then a whole bunch of chapters that just say that Moses did it exactly as God said.

But the point is clear, Moses followed God’s instructions exactly. He was a faithful builder of God’s house. But Moses’ faithfulness as a builder and as a servant, all of this was meant to point beyond himself. And so Moses, we see, is a faithful testifier of the things to come. Verse 5 in our passage in chapter 3 of Hebrews says, Moses was faithful to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. Moses himself was intended, just like everything else he did, to point beyond himself. The Jews in Jesus’ day, the problem was they thought Moses was the end-all be-all. For instance, the Sadducees, a whole sect of the Jewish religion, they only accepted the first five books of Moses as scripture. They threw out everything else that came afterwards, but they were wrong. Moses was great, that’s true, but his role was to point to someone who was to come later.

Even Moses’ own life demonstrates this. I’ve often thought about the fact that Moses didn’t get to enter the promised land. He did all of these things, brought the law, built the tabernacle, and yet he is forbidden from actually entering the promised land. Yes, it is a punishment for disobedience that he disobeyed God and couldn’t enter. But we’re going to see in chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews that the promised land was meant to represent heaven. And we notice that Moses, who brought Israel out of Egypt, who brought them the law and built the tabernacle, couldn’t bring them into that land himself. He had to step aside for his immediate successor, Joshua, which we could also say Yeshua, or we could also say Jesus. Yes, Jesus and Joshua are the same name in Hebrew. And so Moses’ own life of bringing people up to that point and yet not fully in that promised land, and the one who brought them in was named Joshua, or Jesus, which means God saves.

So the question, I think, as we consider Moses, who is worthy of great honor, what about us as God’s servants? Are we seeking to point beyond ourselves? Do we really want people to look past us and look beyond us to Jesus? Moses is a role model, faithful to be a witness concerning the one who would come after him. But so second, our passage would have us consider Jesus. We’ve considered Moses, who was faithful, worthy of great honor, but Jesus is worthy of more honor. Verse 1 tells us, consider Jesus. He was faithful like Moses, verse 2, yet worthy of more glory than Moses, verse 3. Now he’s worthy of more glory because he has superior roles. He and Moses are similar. Both were faithful, but Christ’s roles that he is given are more glorious, and so he receives the greater glory.

And the first thing we’ll see that Christ is a faithful representative. While Moses was a faithful servant, Christ is a faithful representative, and we see this in verse 1. Verse 1 says that Christ is the apostle and high priest of our confession. Both of these roles involve representation. Apostle, this designation of Christ as an apostle is actually the only time that we find this, Christ being called this in all of scripture. But normally when we hear the word apostle, we think of those 12 followers of Jesus. Sometimes we even get the words apostle and disciple confused. But the word apostle is actually different. Disciple means follower. Apostle is messenger or sent one. But actually in the New Testament it comes to have a technical definition as an eyewitness and representative ambassador for Christ in the church.

So Christ here in our passage is said to be appointed as an apostle by God. He represents God. He is God. And then secondly we see the high priest. High priest is meant to represent the people. Moses served God and the people, but Christ represented God and the people. So Christ is worthy of more glory than Moses because he in his faithful representation of God as God and man as man, he brought them together to bring about that reconciliation within himself. And then secondly, Christ superior to Moses extends to him being a faithful architect of God’s house. Moses was faithful to assemble God’s house, but Christ is like the architect. Moses had assembled that house, but whose house was Moses building? Who was in charge? Who wrote the blueprints? Verse three, for Christ has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.

As much more glory as the builder of the house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. Even construction workers on a house don’t usually get much recognition. We don’t even notice them unless they fail to follow the blueprints. But they do deserve some credit when they get things right. Yet at the same time we refer to falling water for instance as being built by Frank Lloyd Wright. Not because he hammered every nail or tightened every screw, because he designed it. Because he is the architect. So Moses was great to assemble the house, but understand he was just following the instructions that he got from Jesus. Moses put it together, but ultimately it was God who built it. Jesus’ superior glory to Moses comes from the fact that he is the architect of the house that Moses built.

But Jesus is not only the architect, a faithful architect of the house that Moses built. He’s also a faithful embodiment of those things that Moses testified about. Of those things that were to come. Because he is the son. Verses five and six of our passage contrast Moses as a servant in and Christ as a son over. This is a contrast between a servant and his master. Servant in versus son over the house. Going back to Moses, as the audience seemed tempted to do, the writer of Hebrews says, that’s like chatting up the butler who opens the door and completely ignoring the master of the house who walks up behind him. The butler shows you in the door, but if he’s doing a good job you hardly notice him. Moses was the butler in God’s house, the servant.

But his role is entirely to testify, to point to the things that were to come. To the heir, to the son who is in charge, Jesus. If you miss Jesus because you’re focused on Moses, you’re getting Moses all wrong. It’s not Moses’ house, he just works here. The house belongs to the son. So we’ve considered Moses and we’ve considered Christ. To move on to our final consideration, consider God’s house, the household of faith. First, the honor due the architect of God’s house. The first thing we have to say is that the nature of an exceptional house is to give glory to its builder and its owner. The first two questions that come up when considering, when looking at, admiring a beautiful house is who built it? Who designed it? Who’s the architect? And then second, who owns it?

Who was it built for? Who commissioned it? God built his house and God owns his house. The more beautiful God’s house is, the more credit, the more glory and honor he is due. But this leads us to consider the second thing, which is the makeup of God’s house. The makeup of God’s house. We’ve been thinking about houses and house builders. But then we get a plot twist in verse 6. Look at verse 6, the second sentence. And we are his house. This whole time we’ve been thinking about physical houses. Moses was faithful to assemble things according to God’s design and instructions. He’s also the butler in God’s house. But where do we fit in? How do we relate to all of this? Are we mere spectators, admiring Jesus as the architect and commissioner of the house that Moses built?

No. If we turn to 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 1 through 17, we find something interesting. I’m not going to read this whole passage, but rather just sum up what we find here. But you can write it down for later. 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 1 through 17. David has built himself a palace. God has established David as king. And David has built himself a glorious, beautiful palace. But he finds himself embarrassed that his own house seems to upstage God’s humble tabernacle, originally built by Moses. So David makes big plans to build a temple. And Nathan is fully on board. A big, glorious house for God. But that night, God sends Nathan back. And God has an answer for David. His answer comes back. No, David, before you build me a house, I’m going to build you a house.

What does he mean? Well, this play on words carries right over from the Hebrew into English. House is a physical building we might dwell in, but also a household or family and descendants. God says, before you build me a physical dwelling, I’m going to build you a dynasty, a house. And Hebrews 3, 6 is doing that same thing, taking that imagery of house and turning it, saying, And we are his house. We are Christ’s house. If we were to look over, if you turn over to 2 Chronicles 6, 18, or just listen as I read, 2 Chronicles 6, 18, we find that Solomon is praying for the dedication of the temple that he’s just built. Solomon, David’s son, has just finished building the temple that David wasn’t allowed to build. But he says this, But will God indeed dwell with man on earth?

Behold, heaven, in the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built. Solomon gets it. The real house of God is not a building. If we flip over to 1 Peter 2, 4, we find Peter spelling this out explicitly. In the New Testament, Peter describes it this way, 1 Peter 2, 4, he says, As you come to him a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house. Peter gives us this picture of God building a house. But instead of big stone blocks, it’s made up of people. One by one, God is gathering and placing believers into the walls of the house in which he intends to dwell. This is why Hebrews 3, verse 6 says, We are his house.

It also relates back to verse 1 of our passage in the way that the author addresses his audience. Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling. What heavenly calling? Heavenly calling? Being part of God’s house. God is building a big, beautiful house made up of living stones. Holy brothers and sisters who have a heavenly calling. A calling to be a part of God’s family and a place where he dwells. God’s house is his people who have been made holy. That is where he dwells. Moses served in the house, but ultimately, he was merely one more part of that house. Jesus is both the cornerstone of that house and the builder of that house. And this leads us to close by considering a third consideration of God’s house, which is how to be a part of God’s house.

How to be a part of God’s house. Look at that final part of verse 6. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. There’s a condition here. We are if. The writer offers assurance. We are. But it’s not unqualified assurance. It says if indeed. It’s an invitation, if you’ve never done so before, but also an exhortation to continue if you’ve already begun. Do what? Hold fast. Hold fast to two things. One, our confidence, and two, our boasting in our hope. What does that mean? Imagine you’ve fallen off the side of an ocean liner. And as the salt water is filling your lungs, someone yells out, hang on tight as they throw you a lifesaver. You’d hang on tight for dear life at that moment. But you wouldn’t just let go after a few seconds, would you?

You’re going to keep holding on until you’re all the way safe on the boat. Our confidence and our hope rest on the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus. In this passage, holding fast to your confidence means holding on to a person. The writer of Hebrews is concerned that his audience will be tempted to stop holding on to their confidence in Jesus and look for confidence somewhere else, maybe in Moses. But Hebrews is saying that would be like holding on to the lifesaver and cutting the rope that could haul you back to the ship and instead causing yourself to drift out into the sea and be lost. Moses is only helpful to the extent that he points us to Christ. No one can be a part of Moses’ house. Moses is a part of Christ’s house.

Becoming a part of Christ’s house and remaining a part of Christ’s house means making him your confession, verse one, your confidence, verse six, and your hope, verse six as well. It’s what we call faith, putting your trust in Christ and his faithful work and not looking back. Confessing that he is God, God’s representative apostle, confessing that you need his high priestly atonement for your sins and then confidently relying on who he is and what he’s done in taking away your sin and then banking your eternity on him. Going all in, relying on him to make you holy, to make you his holy brothers and sisters. But our passage doesn’t end on confidence. It doesn’t just say hold fast to your confidence, but also to our boasting in our hope. Confidence is internal. It’s an attitude.

It’s a disposition. But boasting is verbal and outward. You can’t boast silently to yourself. Boasting is an outward expression of inward confidence. The good news that Jesus is worthy of much more glory than Moses, that he has actually paid for our sins himself, that he has actually given us a real hope of glory in his person and work is not meant to be kept to ourselves. We are to hold fast to our boasting in this hope. People should know about it. See, the writer of Hebrews doesn’t want his audience to be content holding fast to their own inward confidence in Christ, which might keep them from being embarrassed or keep them from being persecuted. Confidence is important, but he urges them to hold fast to boasting. He urges them to boldly tell others about their confidence that they have a hope of glory.

Brothers and sisters, you who share in a heavenly calling, you who are part of Christ’s house, he urges you and I to do the same. Let’s hold fast our confidence in being part of Christ’s house and not stay silent, but boast. Let others know of the hope that we have. Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us, you have appointed Jesus Christ, and he has been faithful, faithful apostle, faithful high priest, and we can hold fast our confidence and our boasting in him. We ask that you would make us steadfast in this. You would hold on to us. We pray this in Jesus’ name for his sake. Amen. Let’s respond in singing hymn 403. In 403, glorious things of thee are spoken. And if you would please stand.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

November 17, 2024
The Ultimate Older Brother

About this sermon

Hebrews 2 presents Jesus as the older brother of his people. He shared in flesh and blood to make them his siblings. Through death he destroyed the devil, who held the power of death, and freed those enslaved by fear of it. He sanctifies them, bringing them to God and making them holy, and he is not ashamed to call them brothers. Made like them in every respect, he became a merciful and faithful high priest who made propitiation for their sins, and because he suffered when tempted, he can help his people in their temptations.

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Sermon transcript

If you would please turn in your Bibles, we’ll be reading from Hebrews chapter 2 verses 10 through 18, that’s found on page 1188 in your pew Bible. Here now from God’s Word, Hebrews chapter 2, starting in verse 10. I will tell of your name to my brothers, in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise, and again I will put my trust in him, and again, behold, I and the children God has given me. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. You may be seated. Let’s pray. Our Father in Heaven, we would ask that you would give us your Spirit. We need your Spirit to open your Word to us, to make us alive to it. We know that your Word is living and active, but we need your Spirit to apply it to us, so that we would have ears to hear and eyes to see what you have for us in your Word. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, the sermon title this morning is The Ultimate Older Brother.

Do you have an older brother? Many of us probably have a love-hate relationship with our older brother. In my case, I am the older brother. In Jewish culture, it was most common for the oldest brother to receive 50% of the inheritance of his father, and the other half to be divided among the rest of the siblings. I haven’t discussed that with my dad yet, but we’ll see. But this was because the oldest brother was tasked with carrying on the family name. While we don’t have the same practice in our American culture regarding inheritance, the older brother still plays a special role in our families. Who can remember their big brother? Being the oldest among my siblings, I didn’t have anyone directly in my family to play that role for me. Instead, I was that role in my siblings’ lives.

I can still remember when I only had four or five of my ten siblings, and I was between eight and ten, and somehow my siblings had gotten the idea that sitting next to Isaiah was preferable above all things. I still don’t know how this period lasted as long as it did, but my mom’s eventual solution to quell the fights that would break out was to assign numbers on dice to seating arrangements at breakfast. We had four bar stools, and one of the morning rituals was for each sibling to roll a die to determine where you would sit at breakfast, each number corresponding to one of the four bar stools. This way, God would decide who got to sit next to Isaiah. I don’t remember how long this went on, but I think it was at least a couple of months.

My main memory is being embarrassed about all the fuss of which I was the source. I think all of us crave that older brother relationship. It’s a special peer-mentoring relationship that really can’t be found anywhere else. In my case, I had defined it throughout my life in older brothers that were not members of my immediate family. In some instances, a brother who’s younger can fulfill that role for a sister. But regardless, there’s a hole that we have in our hearts for that older brother. It’s not quite in the father role, but still he serves as a protector, example, guide, and companion in a way that no one else can. Our passage this morning is saying that Jesus ultimately fulfills this role in our lives as believers. So the outline we have this morning in our passage, I want to look in two main areas.

First, Jesus is our ultimate older brother, and we’ll see three points underneath that. With Jesus suffered to make us his siblings, Jesus unites us to God and makes us holy. And Jesus is proud to call us his brothers. And then in the second half, we’ll see that Jesus as our ultimate older brother, he gives us three things. It gives us freedom from fear, freedom from wrath, and freedom from facing temptation alone. First, we see that Jesus is our ultimate older brother. We see in our passage that Jesus is our ultimate older brother. It says in verse 10 that God’s plan is to bring many sons to glory. Now we should just clarify this two-fold reality that it’s speaking of. By using the word son, the Bible’s not intending to exclude women or daughters. But at the same time, there is a sense in which son was the one who received the inheritance to carry on the family name.

We both, men and women, are said to be sons of God in the sense that we receive the inheritance and the name of God in salvation. So that’s what we mean when we speak of many sons to glory. Now as Jesus is our older brother, first we see that he suffered to make us his siblings. We have to keep in mind the reason the book of Hebrews was written. A few weeks ago, we considered the exhortation not to drift away or neglect salvation. Later in Hebrews, we’re going to see repeated calls to hold fast, to not give in to doubt and discouragement. So the book of Hebrews was written for Christians who were in danger of being discouraged, losing hope, giving up when following Christ was hard. We’ve already seen that the first strategy of the book of the author of Hebrews is to set forth the glory and magnificence of Jesus as the word of God and everything else that’s said about him in chapter one.

We also saw last week how Jesus fulfills the destiny of humankind that they had lost by their sin. And as we finish out here in chapter two, we’re presented with another angle of attack on that doubt and discouragement that we might face. What could be more discouraging than thinking that you’re going through hardships alone? To this day, the most effective form of punishment is solitary confinement. So often when we encounter difficult situations and circumstances, one of the most discouraging thoughts is that we’re perhaps the only one going through this. No one else has encountered this particular difficulty before, and no one else is going through it now. Whether it’s true or not, our minds can tend to go inward. We can isolate ourselves in our thoughts, think that nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. All these talk about Jesus being exalted above the angels and even in verse nine, crowned with glory and honor, could leave us with the impression that Jesus is distant from our pain.

But the writer of Hebrews wants to dispel that idea right away. Jesus, who was crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, was made complete through suffering. Look at verse 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. Make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. Now let me head off any misunderstandings that we might have from this word perfect. The Greek word comes from the root telos, which is translated as perfect here, but sometimes could be translated as complete in other places. So when we see the word perfect here, we shouldn’t mainly think of it as sinless, but as complete. Jesus was already sinless. He didn’t become more sinless by suffering.

Now the English word perfect has this nuance to it, which is the reason it’s perfectly fine translation. We just need to make sure that we don’t misunderstand it in a different direction. So when it says God the Father, in verse 10, that made Jesus perfect through suffering, it’s not saying that Jesus was lacking anything as God, but that as his incarnational atonement for our sins was made complete by his suffering like and with us. Peter and Paul have a lot to say in the New Testament about how we must suffer with Christ as believers. And the writer of Hebrews will get to that later in this book. But here he wants to start off by pointing out that Christ suffers with us. We don’t really need to be told that life is hard, that things are difficult.

What Hebrews wants to show us here in verse 10 is that it’s fitting since we suffer that we have an older brother who’s gone through everything that we are going through as well. But the gospel is not merely that when you hurt, Jesus hurts too. When you hurt, Jesus hurts too. Misery loves company, but we need something more. And that’s why number two, Jesus unites us to God. Jesus as our older brother unites us to God and makes us holy. Look at verse 11. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have one source, or we might say are of one. This is very important. Some commentaries suggest that the one source mentioned is intended to reference Adam. But I think the logic of the passage better supports the idea that God the Father is the source of those who are sanctified.

Our brotherhood to Jesus is not inherent to our being human, but the fact that we have a new common father. If we look in John chapter 20, verse 17, we see Jesus speaking to Mary. Jesus has resurrected, John 20, 17, and he says to Mary, Jesus said to Mary, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Remember that none of the disciples there were Jesus’ literal brothers, not even his stepbrothers. Yet by his death and resurrection, he designates them as his brothers based on their common father, my Father and your Father. And secondly, we should notice that this word sanctify in our text in Hebrews has two senses.

It means to make holy. Now there is a definitive or a one-time sense and also a progressive sense. Now most of the time when we use the word sanctification today, we’re thinking of it in its progressive sense. We’re becoming more and more holy. By that we mean that we are matching God’s perfect sinlessness more and more closely. But sanctification also has a definitive meaning. For instance, the tabernacle, the temple and the priests were set apart as holy for their service to God. They weren’t becoming more and more holy over time. It was definitive. And this is also a valid way to speak of believers. One of the most common ways to address believers in the New Testament letters is to call them saints, which literally just means holy ones. Believers have been definitively set apart from the world for a holy purpose, even though our hearts and lives do not yet fully conform to the perfect sinlessness of God.

We’re still saints. We’re still set apart. We have one common father with our older brother, Jesus. But then this brings us to the next thing in verse 11 that is said. The second sentence in verse 11, that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. So number three, we see as our older brother, Jesus is proud to call us his brothers. Now, in typical fashion by the writer of Hebrews, the wording is actually in the negative. He is not ashamed to call us brothers. Now, this is a rhetorical device called the totus, which is a type of understatement. It’s often used for when what is being said is too wonderful to adequately be expressed by words. Instead of reaching up for words which will ultimately fall short, a writer or speaker will instead reach down, intentionally saying less than he means.

I might say that a groom was not unhappy on his wedding day or that a certain blonde toddler in our church does not have a small amount of energy. Jesus is not some solemn or proud older brother doing his best to distance himself from us or criticize us for our association with him. He’s not embarrassed by filthy origins, our weak resolve, our repeated failures or our outright shameful activity. There are no black sheep in Jesus’ family. He’s proud to identify us as his brothers. It’s no wonder that Hebrews uses understatement. It really sounds too good to be true. If we didn’t have clear scriptural teaching supporting such a claim, we might be inclined to doubt it. We might be able to imagine Jesus suffering for our sins, giving us peace with God and even promising us a mansion in heaven, but still wanting to keep his distance.

If he gets too close, we might contaminate him. We might taint his record or reputation. But the reality is just the opposite. All over the Gospels, we see Jesus touching people who were unclean. And what happened? Did Jesus become unclean or did the unclean become clean by touching Jesus? When Jesus touches the unclean, they become clean. That’s the way it works. It’s a one-way relationship. I don’t know if you ever noticed, but whenever you buy a bag of coffee at the store, you might notice a little round plastic piece on the bag with two little holes. Those two holes are a one-way air valve to keep the coffee fresh. The air can only go out. This lets the lovely coffee smell out and keeps new air from getting in and making the coffee stale. No matter how much you squeeze the bag or blow on it, the air is only going one direction.

Jesus has a one-way holiness valve. When we get too close to him with our sinful selves, instead of him getting contaminated, we get clean. We get holy. You don’t need to worry about making Jesus tired or dirty or depressed by bringing him your mess. No matter how many problems you bring him, no matter how many times a day you come to him, you’ll find you never become less holy. He never becomes less holy. You only become more holy. Don’t ever try to protect Jesus from your problems. And next, this leads us to the second half of our passage, in which we see that three things, as Jesus, as our older brother, gives us. See, Jesus, as our ultimate older brother, he gives us freedom from fear, he gives us freedom from wrath, and he gives us freedom from facing temptation alone.

First, freedom from fear. We see this in verses 14 and 15. It says, Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. Now as a quick side note, I’ve preached a sermon on this passage back in June, so you can look that up, but I’m not going to dive deeply into this verse here. But notice the focus in these verses on fear. Jesus took on flesh and blood, a human nature just like his brothers, so that he could die in order to deliver us from the lifelong slavery of fear. Not to deliver us from death, but from the fear of it.

Fear is a universal experience, but it’s difficult to define, because it can come from both real and imagined danger, but it can even arise in non-dangerous situations like public speaking or failing a test. While we often think of fear arising from a situation, it originates in us, as demonstrated by the fact that it arises in both real and imagined danger. I was always afraid of the dark growing up, but as soon as I had someone with me, things didn’t seem so scary. But when I was alone, it seemed like anything could happen out there. When we’re together, my wife will sometimes grab my arm or my hand if a noise startles us. There’s something comforting about having that strong arm, strong hand to hold onto, that caused many of us to gravitate towards a big brother growing up.

So take a look at verse 16 of our passage. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Now I find this sentence very interesting, because of this word that’s translated, helps. It’s not the same word that shows up two verses later in verse 18 in the Greek. We find the Greek word from verse 16. Instead we find another occurrence in Hebrews 8 verse 9. If you turn over a few more pages to Hebrews 8 verse 9, you find this word showing up where it says, On the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. This Greek word translated helps here, it can also carry the sense of took them by the hand. Helps is a perfectly fine translation, but I think we can miss the word picture that comes across when we understand the Greek word.

I believe the writer chose this word because he wanted to convey that image of a big brother grabbing your hand, making you feel safe. God says he leads Israel by the hand out of Egypt, and in this verse we see it is not angels that he takes by the hand, but is his brothers. He helps the offspring of Abraham. Jesus doesn’t save angels from the fear of death. He grabs, takes by the hand his brothers and his sisters and leads them right through the valley of the shadow of death. Notice also the reference to Abraham. He doesn’t say Adam, because he doesn’t save all of Adam’s children inherently from death, but he takes the hand of those who believe in him. He made a covenant with Abraham and all those who are his children by faith.

This was a covenant, the covenant that he made with Abraham though was not just to take away fear, but also to take away wrath, which is what we see in the next verse. Number two, we see that as Jesus’ older brother, he gives us freedom from wrath. Look at verse 17. The word propitiation means to take away wrath. Adam and his children have sinned. Instead of being called children of God, they are by nature children of wrath, as it says in Ephesians 2-3. Now there are some cultures in Africa and Asia in which the oldest brother is given the role of priest for his family. While those cultures, they worship pagan deities, but Christ serves as the true high priest for his family, for all those who are believers. Cultural Christianity likes the idea of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, but there’s often an aversion to speaking about wrath, the wrath of God due to us for sin.

But the writer of Hebrews here doesn’t flinch from speaking of our greatest need for a second. Christ didn’t come just to identify with us, experience our pain, offer us a hug and an understanding nod. He does do all those things, but his most important identification with us is as our sin substitute. The role of a priest is to be a mediator between God and man. The priests in the line of Aaron fulfilled one essential qualification. They were fully human and part of the people of Israel. In a similar way, Christ had to become fully one of us, made like his brothers in every respect. And of course, God could not participate in sin himself, so Christ as God did not take on sin as a sinner. But instead he took on our sin and suffered the wrath of God for our sin in our place, says he made propitiation for the sins of the people.

Now the term says might become a merciful and faithful high priest. That term faithful in regard to a high priest, it doesn’t occur often. In fact, one of the few times we find it is in the passage we read earlier, 1 Samuel chapter 2, particularly verse 35. When God promises, I will raise up for myself a faithful high priest who shall do all that is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house and he will go in and out before my anointed forever. Believers are that house that God promised to build for his faithful high priest, Jesus. Now I don’t know if any of you were this generous, but my wife can recall a practice in her household in which growing up a very benevolent sibling could volunteer to suffer spankings that were due to another sibling.

Some of them amazingly took up that offer. I don’t think I would if it was offered in our family. But this is what Jesus, our older brother, who saves us from fear, does by taking away the wrath of God due to us for sin. With Christ as our older brother, we’re no longer children of wrath with the penalty for sin hanging over our heads. We’re children of God’s blessing and his pleasure. And now finally, as we close out our passage, the writer wants us to see one final benefit that our older brother Christ gives us. So number three, Christ as our older brother gives us freedom from facing temptation alone. Look at verse 18. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. I think the reason that the writer ends with this reason is because it touches on our most felt need.

We do need freedom from fear and freedom from wrath. But when we’re in the throes of temptation, those needs can sometimes feel quite distant. And I think sometimes we can think that Christ is distant from those needs, that we’re all alone facing temptation ourself. How could Christ, whose God, truly have felt and suffered temptation like we have? And yet we’re assured here in verse 18 that he has suffered when tempted. He is able to help those who are being tempted. We sometimes think that the better a person is, the less they understand about temptation. But I think that C.S. Lewis helpfully explains why that’s actually not the case. C.S. Lewis wrote, No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.

This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. This is why bad people in one sense know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life, always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it. And Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.

The writer of Hebrews wants to leave us with this important knowledge that if Christ is your older brother, you’ll never face temptation alone. One of the biggest lies that the devil will tell you is that you’re on your own. Christ saved you, but now it’s completely up to you to not mess up what Christ did for you. It’s a lie from the devil. He wants you to feel distant from Christ because as soon as he can convince you that you’re on your own, it’s only a matter of time before you fall big time. You and I are no match for the devil in our own strength. He’s been tempting people for thousands of years. You need help from someone who’s got more wisdom and more power than the father of lies, the God of this world, the ancient serpent from a bold, the accuser of the brothers, all names that the Bible speaks of the devil.

You need an older brother. You need the ultimate older brother who’s gone ahead and experienced every temptation that you will face, but instead of falling to it, beat it. The writer of Hebrews began our passage in verse 10, looking at how Christ completed his work through suffering and ended in verse 18 by reminding us that that suffering included temptation, the same temptations that you and I are going through. And rather than being ashamed of his role, Christ is proud to call you his brother. When through faith, through him, by faith you share that same Holy Father that he does. He became human to be your big brother, your ultimate big brother, and take you by the hand every step of the way in this life, even right through the scary valley of the shadow of death and into the glory that awaits.

Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have sent your Son to truly be one of us, to claim us as brothers, as sons of God. We thank you that you have not despised our estate, but you have been proud to come down and suffer for our sake to identify with us that you might bring us to glory. Lord, we ask that you would give us eyes to see, hearts to believe, and that we would walk by faith, united to the Son of God. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

November 3, 2024
Destined for Dominion

About this sermon

Hebrews 2 quotes Psalm 8: God made man a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honor, and put everything under his feet. That is what humanity was made for. Yet we do not see everything subject to man, because sin and death rule. What we do see is Jesus, made lower than the angels for a little while, crowned with glory because he suffered death, so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone. As the true man, Christ defeats death and wins back the dominion, and his people reign with him.

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Sermon transcript

If you would, please turn in your Bibles for our scripture reading. Our scripture reading this evening for the text is from Hebrews chapter 2, Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 through 9. You can find that on your Pew Bible in page 1188. Write our text this evening, Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 through 9. Hear now the word of God. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting 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 see everything in subjection to him. 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. This ends the reading of God’s word. May be seated. Let’s ask God’s blessing on our time this evening. Father in heaven, we ask as we come to your word this evening, we ask that you would open up our hearts and minds. Lord, we do not want to just read this word and be dead to it. We need your spirit to bring illumination. So we ask, Lord, that you would open our hearts and our minds to see the truth that you have for us, that you would make it alive, you would make it to pierce our hearts, that it would do its work of being living and active.

Lord, we ask that you would be with me as I seek to expound your word, that you would guard my words, that they would be from you, and that anything that is faulty in error, you would cause it to fall away and not be taken up and embraced. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, the title of the message this evening is Destined for Dominion. What is your destiny? Nearly every hero wrestles with this question. What is my destiny? Many heroes go on quests to discover the answer. We love to read stories of humble characters rising to greatness through courage and service to others. Some heroes aspire to greatness. Others have greatness thrust upon them. But all of them come to that moment when they finally step into their calling, their destiny. Some turn down opportunity after opportunity, seeking some point of escape.

But if they’re truly a hero, there comes a moment in which they finally accept their responsibility and courageously step into their role. We like to read these stories because we want to know what our destiny is. Are we also destined for greatness? I think we can also hear an echo in each of these stories. The true hero, who at his moment of crisis, when he considered his crucifixion destiny, said in John 12, Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. See, rather than shrinking back at the moment when suffering came, he courageously embraced his destiny to taste death on behalf of his people. Our passage this evening from Hebrews chapter 2 is dealing with the question of destiny, I think.

We’re going to look at our passage this evening under four main headings. Number one, what we were made for, dominion. What we don’t see, dominion. What we do see, Jesus, the Death Eater. And finally, what this means, which is union with the Death Eater. So point number one, what we were made for, dominion. Our text this evening starts out with a negative assertion. Chapter one has been contrasting God’s Son with the angels, and the assumption has been that these are very exalted beings. Angels are the messengers of God who dwell in his very presence. They are glorious, exalted, spiritual beings, which we might even be tempted to worship. In fact, those who encountered them throughout our redemptive history, from Abraham to the Apostle John in Revelation, often tried to do so and were forbidden. But Hebrews stops us in our tracks in this passage with a negative assertion.

As exalted and glorious as angels are, they were not given authority over the new age, over the new earth in the age to come. The assumption being made here is that we understand that it is human beings who have been promised governance in the age to come. Now this is a big assumption, and we’re going to take a closer look at it later on in the evening. For now, we’re going to travel through the argument that the writer of Hebrews follows in support of this opening point. If we look in verse 6, we see the writer quotes from Psalm 8, which is what we sing in our opening in worship this evening. Psalm 8, verses 4 through 6. What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him?

You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor. And then he makes a little skip and says, putting everything in subjection under his feet. He omitted the line, you have given him dominion over the works of your hands, which occurs in Psalm 8 if you were to look back there. But I think it’s just that the writer of Hebrews is just getting to the point of what’s being made in Psalm 8 and quoting as little as he needs to which is that he’s putting everything in subjection under his feet. Psalm 8 is a short but famous psalm that talks about how God uses weak things to bring him glory. The first few verses talk about infants bringing God praise. In the verses that come just before the passage that’s quoted in our text, David is gazing up at the night sky.

He becomes overwhelmed with wonder that in the midst of this vast universe made by God, little puny men and women should be given such an outsized role in creation. Not only does God clearly care for mankind, but he’s even given them dominion. Now David is clearly thinking of Genesis here, which is why we read it earlier in worship. God created man and woman after his own image as we read earlier and he gave them dominion over creation. Adam’s first task in this regard was to name the animals. God could have just told Adam their names, but instead he delegates that authority to Adam. This dominion mandate given to mankind is a dual task, to make use of it and to care for it. The writer of Hebrews doesn’t want us to miss the fact that there’s nothing in creation excluded from man’s dominion.

He makes that point in verse 8, now putting everything in subjection to him. He left nothing outside his control. Now scientists have long observed ironically the significant disadvantages that mankind as a species has in relation to other animals. In terms of fur, we’re almost naked, at least most of us are. We only have two legs, we have no tail, our hearing, eyesight and smell, even when we’re at our best, is subpar compared to many species. We’re significantly smaller and weaker than a large portion of the animal kingdom. We require more shelter, more frequent meals than many other mammals. Our skin is rather fragile compared to the armored scales or spines that other animals possess. As a species, it’s often been observed our main obvious advantage is our mind. Yes, we require more accessories to survive, but we’re also quite a bit better at inventing shelter and accessories than on the other member of the animal kingdom.

But that being said, when compared to angels, even though we don’t know a lot about them, it seems like they would be a more likely candidate for ruling the world. But neither the writer of Hebrews nor David, who penned the Psalm, is concerned about whether man’s authority is deserved. He simply observes that man has been given dominion. This is something that unbelievers regularly ignore in their assessment of the world. By throwing out the history of Genesis, they try to build their anthropology on a bad foundation. They view man as a parasite on creation at worst and a necessary evil at best. But of course, the Bible has a very different view of creation. In the biblical worldview, creation was given to mankind to rule and care for. We’re neither parasites struggling to gain control of a planet we don’t deserve nor a necessary evil needing mitigation.

Creation care is an important responsibility that Christians should care about, but that should never be pitted against our authority as stewards to rule this world for God. This means the biblical ideal is not the untamed wilderness to remain untamed. God intended Adam to develop and cultivate creation, not merely leave it untouched. Even the very good creation was not at its ultimate potential. God told Adam and Eve that he wanted the earth full of their offspring, using and ruling the earth for his glory. Consider for a moment the difference between angels, which appear to have been created instantaneously with a fixed number from the moment they were created, and mankind, which is conceived, born, and gradually develops in maturity. This process of cultivation and development is what God intended for mankind to do as his image bearers to all creation.

It’s popular for people, even unbelievers, to make reference to the image of God as a reference to human’s inherent value. But another aspect of bearing God’s image is that we are sub-creators and rulers. We name the animals and domesticate them and make them serve us and our ends. God’s intention for mankind is to expand, to cover the earth, and subdue the unruly wilderness to serve our purposes, not to attempt to submit ourselves to the purposes of unguided nature. Mankind was created for greatness. We were created to serve God, to serve as God to creation, as its ruler and caretaker. But as anyone who takes a moment to look around will tell you, that’s not how things look right now. Which brings us to our next point, point number two, what we don’t see, which is dominion.

What we don’t see, dominion. As soon as the writer of Hebrews finishes stating that dominion of all creation was given to mankind, he immediately counters it with a reality check. Look at the last sentence in verse eight. At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him. The him there is mankind. Despite the glory mankind was destined for, the reality on the ground is far from that. Instead of ruling creation, mankind looks like it’s in a losing battle against nature. Not only is the creation around us plagued with what Paul calls in Romans eight bondage to decay, but even as individuals we find, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, our outer natures are wasting away. Nature sometimes looks like it’s on a runaway course towards destruction with no one in charge, and instead of making things better, in many cases mankind is only making things worse.

Who thought it was a good idea to take a virus and make it exponentially more contagious and fatal? Humans, apparently. We can find countless examples from just the past few years to highlight the fact that mankind’s attempted dominion of creation is failing pretty miserably. This is bad for creation, but it’s also bad for mankind. We were made for loving dominion over creation. This is our purpose to bring God glory. Have you ever tried to use a hammer to drive a screw into a wall? It doesn’t work very well because that’s not its purpose. If you ask anyone who’s depressed whether they have a strong sense of their own purpose in the world, the core of most deep depression is a deep feeling of a lack of purpose. As a human race, we’re chronically depressed because we’re failing to fulfill our purpose.

So why don’t we see proper dominion happening at present? Well, our passage doesn’t explicitly spell this out, but I think the writer has an assumption that can be deduced from the next verse. In verse 9, he presents the solution to the problem that we’ve been looking at as Jesus. In the next point, we’ll take a closer look at what Jesus is doing, but I want to highlight the last part of that verse there because of the suffering of death and that he might taste death for everyone. Why would it be important for Jesus to taste death? Well, I think we get a helpful insight into the mind of the author if we flip forward a few chapters in Hebrews. If you turn forward a few pages to Hebrews 7, verses 23 and 24, we find this talking about the priesthood.

He says, the former priests were many in number, Hebrews 7, 23 and 24, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office. But he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. We’ll talk more about this passage when we get to it in our series on Hebrews, but at this point, simply notice the way that the inevitable reality of death limited the Levitical priesthood. And I think there might be something of a similar thought going on in the writer’s mind in chapter 2. In the background of our passage, mankind is prevented by death from exercising his full dominion. That’s why Jesus had to come and take care of the death problem. Death plays an integral role in the decimation of our ability to exercise our originally determined dominion. Rather than rulers of creation, we find ourselves captive to our own inevitable death.

As Romans 5-12 says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men. But Adam’s seed didn’t just bring death to humans. It brought down a curse on the whole of creation. Romans 8-21 calls it a bondage to corruption or decay. All of creation is on a disintegrating path, wearing out, decaying. Creation is groaning under the specter of death ever since its ruler and representative rebelled against his creator. So when we look around, Hebrews observes, it doesn’t look like mankind has the authority given him. But if you notice the next sentence, there is something that we do see, which brings us to point number three, what we do see. Jesus, the Death Eater. While we don’t see humanity living up to its destiny of dominion, we do see one man who is living up to it.

Look at verse 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. Do you know what Jesus’ favorite title for himself was? It was something that no one else called him except Stephen when he was dying. It was the Son of Man. People have scratched their heads about this phrase ever since Jesus first used it. But if we were more familiar with the prophet Daniel, then we might not be so puzzled. Turn, if you would, in your Bibles to Daniel chapter 7. Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14. And there we read, I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man.

And he came to the ancient of days, and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed. Keep your place in Daniel 7, because we’re going to come back to it in a few moments. Now, by itself, the phrase son of man is simply used to denote an ordinary human, which is why Daniel’s vision is so extraordinary. A human being is given God-like dominion over all creation. Who would ever be worthy of such a thing? Daniel’s vision never fully makes sense until Jesus arrives on the scene. Here, finally, is a human being who’s crowned with glory and honor, given all authority and power and dominion.

And why is he given it? It comes, as a result, in verse 9, the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. Ever since Adam, the intended rulers of creation have been forced to taste the bitterness of death all around them in creation, as well as their own inevitable impending death. Yet here, by the grace of God, we observe a man, not an angel, who has come and eaten death. In Revelation, chapter 1, Jesus introduces himself to John in verses 17 and 18. He says, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of death and Hades. Jesus ate death for lunch. He drank it down to the last drop, swallowed it whole, tasted the complete bitterness.

Jesus didn’t just observe death or smell it. He tasted it. He suffered it. He died. He became a complete human being. He made himself lower than the angels who worshiped him and went to that suffering of the cross. He drank the cup of death. But dying was never meant to be the end. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 28 following his resurrection. All authority and power has been given to me. I’ve received dominion. The dominion that Adam lost through his disobedience, Jesus regained by perfect obedience. That’s what Hebrews wants us to see here. That’s what Hebrews wants us to see here. Even though humanity lost the right and ability to govern creation as they were originally intended, Jesus has come down, fulfilled that destiny, so that even now one of our own species, a human being, sits on the throne.

A man has been reinstated as the ruler of creation. This is cause for great rejoicing. But there’s actually more. And that brings us to point number four, what this means. Union with the Death Eater. As wonderful as it is to have our team win, to have our favorite player dominate, see our relative gain the gold, it would not mean very much in the long term if nothing changes in our life. We can cheer for our favorite team winning the Super Bowl, the World Cup, or any other championship. We can live vicariously through the victories of our children. But living vicariously is vastly inferior to actually living. It’s amazing how much joy we can experience by living vicariously through others. And the picture in our passage could be misunderstood that way at first. Okay, so we’re not living our destiny of dominion.

But one of our guys is, yay, a fellow human. But that would miss the real predicament that we are in. We didn’t fall just from top place as rulers to upper or even middle class. We’ve become total slaves to sin and death. The real comfort doesn’t come from living vicariously, but from an expectation of the ripple effects that directly affect your life. Fans can watch a football game with an investment in the individual success of their preferred player. But that cannot compare to the investment of the player’s teammates. Their success is directly predicated on and linked to the success of their star player. When he wins, they all win. Too many people want to think they can have the benefits of the win by remaining spectators, even avid fans of Jesus, but never becoming part of him.

The problem is you cannot have vicarious eternal life. Eternal life has to be possessed directly. You have to become part of the team. We call this union with Christ. You and I have to become so closely linked to Christ that his win is our win. When that happens, when your life becomes utterly entwined within Christ’s life, astounding realities become yours. When we go back to Daniel 7, we find a refrain in verses 18, 22, and 27. Verse 18 of Daniel 7, But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever and ever. Verse 22, Until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, And the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom. Or verse 27, And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the saints of the Most High.

His kingdom shall be an everlasting dominion, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. Now, we can’t know exactly what this will look like, but it’s repeated again from the very mouth of Jesus in Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3. He says in chapter 2 verse 26, The one who conquers and who keeps my words until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. Or Revelation 3, 21, The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Union with Christ means that what he did, you did. What he does, you do.

What he possesses, you possess. Now, if we look back at our text in verse 9, there’s a final phrase that says, By the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. One note on that final phrase, taste death for everyone. Taken by itself, it could sound like everyone is automatically saved. And if this were the only thing that the scripture, that the entire Bible had to say about salvation, we might be able to assume that, but it’s not. The scriptures are clear that the only way to be saved is in Christ, and that not everyone is or will be saved. So that leaves us with three options for interpreting this verse. One would be to say that the Bible contradicts itself, and it made a mistake here among other places. Or two, you could say that this passage trumps everything else the Bible has to say on the subject of salvation.

Or three, you can say, I need to try to reconcile this less clear statement in scripture with passages that are clearer. Now, as Christians, we believe that the Bible is authoritative and without error, which eliminates the first option. In terms of option two and three, Christians throughout history have held to the position that scripture must interpret scripture. And so we must use the clearer passages to understand the more difficult, leaving us really with the third option. I would suggest that it’s far easier to see how everyone in this passage might be shorthand for everyone who is saved, everyone who is united to Christ, then to use this passage to overrule all the other places that say everyone is not saved, that say not everyone is saved. The options boil down to either everyone is saved or they aren’t.

And if not, then what is this passage saying? Well, the simplest and easiest explanation, in my opinion, is to simply understand everyone to be shorthand for everyone who is saved. The writer’s point is not to focus on the extent of who receives salvation, but a particular aspect of salvation that the recipients of salvation receive, namely that Jesus tasted death on their behalf. Jesus tasted death for every one of those who are part of him. When you’re connected to Jesus, he takes away the bitter sting of death. As we close, I want to highlight a few applications that come from the teaching in this passage. We find that Paul uses this doctrine in some unexpected ways in his letter to the Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 3, 21, for instance, Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for dividing about which teachers they prefer.

But his argument in chapter three probably would catch us off guard. 3, 21, he says, Let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours and you are Christ’s and Christ’s is God’s. He says, Why are you arguing about your favorite teacher? If you’re in Christ, you literally own everything. Or a little later in chapter six, he rebukes the believers for taking each other to court with another unexpected argument. First Corinthians, chapter six, verses two and three. Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels?

How much more then matters pertaining to this life? Stop taking each other to court, work out your disputes, because you’re destined to rule the world and even sit in judgment over angels on the last day. I would have just said, get along because you’re one body, which is something Paul does say in other places. But here he leverages this amazing implication from the destiny of the saints. We don’t have monarchs in America, but we could still understand the concept of a king telling his sons to get along, because you’re going to be king one day. Stop being petty when you’ve got such a weighty destiny. I don’t think we are accustomed to thinking in these terms. We often speak of our inadequacy, our unworthiness, our frailty, our own unreliability. And this is certainly true of ourselves and especially when compared to Christ.

But Hebrews doesn’t want us to focus exclusively on our past. Faith is the focus on the future, the future in Christ. Faith unites us to Christ, and in Christ we finally become what humans were meant to be. God never intended angels, as powerful and glorious as they are, to be given dominion and responsibility over creation. They aren’t said to be made in his image. Only mankind was given that great privilege and responsibility, which was utterly squandered and destroyed by sin, dooming them as slaves. Yet in Christ, we can become the image bearers of God that we were intended to be. You see, sometimes people who aren’t Christians are afraid that becoming a Christian won’t make them change, make them boring, or not allow them to be themselves. In reality, the opposite is true. You will never be able to truly be yourself outside of Christ.

You were created for greatness beyond anything that you can imagine, but the only path to that is by being united to Christ by faith. Apart from Christ, you won’t just be a lesser ruler. You’ll remain a slave in this life to sin and death, and face far worse after that for eternity. Come to Christ in repentance and faith, and discover your true identity and destiny. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we are in wonder, like David, that what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man, that you care for him. You made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. And yet we have squandered that destiny, and now can only find that our true purpose, our true calling, as we were made to be within Christ.

Lord, we ask that you would draw us in, you would make us a part of Christ by faith, unite us to him that his win would be our win, that we would find our true humanity in the God-man. Lord, we ask that if there are any here tonight who do not know themselves to be a part of Christ, you would open their eyes, show Christ to be precious, and give them a desire to be united with him this evening, even now. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, in response, if you would turn in your hymnals, we’ll be singing hymn 515, More Than Conquerors.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

October 27, 2024
Catching the Drift

About this sermon

Hebrews warns believers to pay closer attention to what they have heard, lest they drift away. If the old covenant, delivered by angels, carried just penalties, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, declared by the Lord and confirmed by signs and gifts of the Spirit? Drifting happens gradually when we neglect God’s word and measure ourselves against others instead of his holiness. The remedy is to keep anchored in Christ through the word, so that we do not slide away from the salvation he gives.

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Sermon transcript

Amen. You may turn, if you would, in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews. We’ll be reading from chapter 2, if you would remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We’re reading this evening Hebrews chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. Hear the Word of God. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was tested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. You may be seated.

Let’s pray. Our Father in Heaven, we would ask that you would give us your Spirit, that these might not be dead words, but that we might be alive to their truth, to their value, to their beauty, that they might be words that impact our lives, that change us, that we might come and hear your words of life. We ask that you would be with us this evening, that we might hear your truth and see its beauty. For Jesus’ sake we pray this. Amen. Well, the title of my message this evening is called Catching the Drift. Now, often when people speak of catching someone’s drift, they’re actually talking about whether you understand what they’re saying. But here I’m thinking of, as we say in Presbytery, arresting the drift. That is, catching the drift before you’ve gone too far.

Well, Callie and I love to go kayaking. We often go on a river near our house in North Carolina called the Yadkin River, and when launching the kayak out from the bank, we always have to make a choice. Do we start out paddling against the current or simply begin by going with the current down the river? The advantage of going against the current to start means that it’s easier on the way back home, since you can just ride with the current. But on the other hand, if we take the easy way downstream first, we have to paddle back all the way against the current all the way home. Now, the current in the Yadkin right there is very subtle. From the bank, at first you can’t even tell that there is one. But as soon as you get in the water, it becomes pretty obvious.

All we had to do was stop paddling. The instant we stopped paddling, the boat would slowly turn sideways, and within a few minutes we’d be completely turned around, drifting in the opposite direction. So even though you couldn’t always tell from the bank, there was a current all around us that wouldn’t let us stay still. Unless we were actively paddling, the current would begin pulling us in the opposite direction. Our passage this evening is talking about drifting. Not drifting down a river, but drifting away from the faith. So we’ll divide our time this evening by looking at three things. Number one, the tendency to drift, to drifting, why we drift. Number two, the danger of drifting, what happens when we drift. Number three is the solution to drifting, how to keep from drifting. So number one, the tendency to drifting, why we drift.

Have you ever caught yourself spending more time than you would like on social media? I’ve come across a term recently called doom scrolling. Have you heard of it? It’s the ubiquitous practice of people on social media, video, or even news sites to become glued to their phone or computer, continuing to scroll for a long time and often inevitably finding increasingly depressing content. We get sucked in. Before we realize it, we’ve spent hours with very little helpful or good results to show for it. See, we have to remember that we don’t live in a world that is friendly to our faith. Now the Westminster Confession summarizes our three enemies as the world, the flesh, and the devil. Having been involved throughout my life in various denominations, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Presbyterians, I like to suggest sometimes that in general Pentecostals focus on the devil, Baptists focus on the world, and Presbyterians focus on the flesh.

But the Bible teaches that we face all three of these enemies. Now in terms of the flesh, we must remember that we have an enemy on the inside. Paul uses the term flesh to refer to the sinful nature that we still have present within us even as believers. While the Bible is clear that sin has no more power over those in Christ, there is still a part of us that wants to sin because the presence of sin has not been fully removed. Despite receiving a new nature that wants to love God and obey him, Christians don’t always do this. Not yet. And we should not discount the role that our sinful flesh, sinful nature plays in tempting us to drift away from the faith. But we must also not forget that we have enemies on the outside.

Despite the fact that some Christians want to ascribe every temptation and difficulty in our lives only to antagonistic evil spirits, we should not make the opposite mistake to think that every thought or temptation is due exclusively to our sinful flesh. The devil is real. Not every temptation comes from your own lack of self-discipline. Sometimes it really does come out of the blue, and it’s important to recognize that. Beating yourself up for being tempted by the devil is not helpful or true. Your sanctification is not just a battle between you, your old and new natures. There are real evil spiritual forces out for your spiritual blood intent on taking you down and out. But I think that the most subtle danger to drifting comes from not realizing how the values of an ungodly world are shaping us.

Many reformed Christians have rightly pushed back against those who want to say that all of culture is evil and should be rejected. There’s much good and true even in a world marred by sin and a culture full of people that hate God. Common grace that God gives means that God restrains evil, and we need not condemn every idea coming from unbelievers as completely without merit. Yet, in this, we need to be aware of the potential for drift. There’s a current in this world. There’s the danger out there of the creep of two kinds of cultural ideas. One might not look like a threat. It seems right at first. Or the others that are obviously wrong but repeated so loudly and so often that we eventually begin to accept part of the premise. And this can happen with even the worst ideas.

It usually happens gradually. But it’s more likely to happen the less deeply we’re studying scripture for ourselves. But before we wall ourselves up in a Christian community, consider that while the culture out there is the problem that we need to be wise to, we should not think that simply walling ourselves up to be an isolated, private Christian community will protect us from the world. Because the world out there finds its resonance within us. In 1 John 2, the Apostle John sums up what he describes as the world. He says in verse 16, For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. So this should make us realize that this is not something people out there struggle with.

The desires of the flesh is, of course, bodily desires. Comfortable seats, clothes, houses, cars, delicious foods, and all the rest. Desires of the eyes. Those things that look attractive. Attractive cars, attractive people, attractive jewelry, and all the rest. In English, lust has a negative connotation while desire is more neutral. But there’s only one Greek word. That’s why some translations say desire, while others might say lust. See, the difference is not whether, the difference is in whether the desire is appropriate. Same for pride. While it can be good in some situations, like proud of your son or daughter, it can be bad in others. What John is talking about by the pride of life is not the I’m proud of you son. It’s the pride we take in our possessions, our positions, or our achievements. When you’re proud of what kind of car you drive, proud that you only eat organic, or maybe proud that you don’t buy into that nonsense, or simply more preoccupied with your identity in terms of what you possess than who you are in Christ.

You’re drifting with the world. All of these things arise from within communities of people who have not been fully purged of all sinful desires. That includes Christians. Since we all have remaining sin nature, there’s a part of us that resonates with the outside culture and wants to drift towards those things. No one drifts towards holiness and truth. Our environment is flowing away from God. If you try to sit still, if you’re not paying attention, you won’t just pick up where you left off. You’ll wake up finding yourself a long way from home. Drifting is clearly easy to do, and it’s happening all around us. But what’s the danger of drifting? That brings us to number two, which is the danger of drifting. What happens when we drift? This summer, when I would talk to unbelievers about sin on the boardwalk, a lot of them shared a similar idea about sin.

Even for the ones who had been to Catholic school, the prevailing thought was, since everybody sins, it’s not that big a deal. I mean, nobody’s perfect. If everyone does it, it can’t be that bad. So maybe there’s a current in this world, but what’s the big deal? What if I’m more comfortable drifting? Will the best things in life come to those who wait? To put it bluntly, the problem is that the current of this life is flowing straight to hell. Look back at our text. If we look in verse one, it says, don’t drift. But then verse two and three say why. Verse two, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

The writer makes a comparison and then lets you connect the dots. In Hebrews, there’s a recurring theme of a contrast between the old and new covenants. We’ve just seen the ways in which the new covenant is better than the old in chapter one. In chapter one, we saw the old prophets versus the new son as the better means by which God speaks. And then the old angels versus the new son as the better messenger of God. But now Hebrews wants to remind us of the flip side of that coin. If the old covenant had a strict, harsh punishment, then the new covenant will have an even stricter and harsher punishment. Now this is not the way we typically think about the old and new covenants, but it’s something that Hebrews wants to highlight for us here.

And he’ll expand, the writer will expand more on this theme later. Let’s make sure we understand what he means. First, when we see the phrase, the message declared by angels, we shouldn’t think of just a few scant references in the Old Testament when the angels directly spoke. We should understand this phrase to be a synecdoche. That is, speaking of a part of something to refer to the whole thing. For instance, when we say boots on the ground, what we mean is soldiers wearing those boots on the ground, not just a pile of boots. The Bible does this with God’s law, which is sometimes a reference to the entire Scriptures, not merely those portions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which lay out particular commands. And in Acts 7, Stephen refers to the law delivered by angels.

Angels delivered the law to Moses. And so when Hebrews says the message declared by angels, we should understand him to be talking about the whole Old Covenant. Hebrews is reminding us of God’s commanded punishment for disobedience in the Old Testament. God established a zero-tolerance policy for idolatry, murder, adultery, Sabbath-breaking, profaning his name, etc. Once the charge had been clearly established, there were no plea deals or exemptions. Judgment was certain. Rather than suggesting that in the New Covenant, judgment is less harsh and less certain, Hebrews assumes that a superior covenant carries more significant penalties. It’s an argument from the lesser to the greater. We can expect the New Covenant to be more comprehensive and with harsher punishments. It’s a serious mistake to think that now that God spoke by his Son, it’s a majestic Son that we can expect greater leniency against sin.

Hebrews clearly tells us to expect the opposite. A part of the reason for this is the confirmation of the truth of the message. Look at verses 2 through 4. It was declared at first by the Lord, attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. The Old Covenant was completely true and reliable. You could rely on everything that was said, and it was provided through angels and prophets. How much less excuse does anyone have to doubt the New Covenant? Since it has been declared directly from God’s own mouth by his Son, as well as confirmed by apostolic authoritative eyewitnesses, miracles, and spiritual gifts. Now if you notice, the drifting that Hebrews is talking about here is warning against.

He describes it as neglect, neglect such a great salvation. In this passage, he’s not warning against high-handed rebellion. That is a problem, but that’s not what he’s talking about here. He’s talking about a mindset that just doesn’t take the Bible’s message too seriously. This might not be a conscious rejection of its truth, merely a lack of concern, a distraction from, a deprioritizing of the Gospel in our lives. We find this illustrated in a parable that Jesus tells in Mark 4. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record a parable that Jesus told about four soils in which Gospel seed tries to grow. The soils represent different kinds of people and how they hear. The first doesn’t listen at all, and the seed never even germinates. But for the other three, the seed begins to germinate. In the rocky soil, the seed dies before it’s ripe because the soil was too shallow and difficulties just kill it off.

But the third soil looks very promising. The seed begins to germinate. There’s no rocks in the way. The only problem is there’s too many other plants eating up the nutrients, taking up space, shading it from the sun. The seed never makes it. In Mark 4.18, Jesus explains that the thorny soil is they who hear the word. But the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things enter in and choke out the word, and it proves unfruitful. This is what the writer of Hebrews is anxious to warn us about. Wake up! Don’t drift! Pay close attention. Drifters won’t make it in the kingdom of heaven. At this point, I also want to point out the second word in verse 1, we. I’m sure all of us can think of people we have known who drifted away from what they heard.

There’s even a classy name given to it these days called deconversion. Well-known proponents of Christianity suddenly turn their back on their faith and the church. While it may look sudden, I guarantee you that if you were close to this person, you would be able to trace a drift of neglecting the means of grace, of finding the Bible less and less important, and losing interest in Christ and the Gospel. Drifters will wake up to find themselves far from home. The reason that the writer of Hebrews says we is he wants you to look after, look after those around you. Don’t be content to pay close attention all by yourself. The writer is calling his listeners to gather each other and not let them drift. For some people, church is the last thing to go. For others, it’s the first.

We need to be checking in with each other. Don’t just ask how things are going at work. How’s your Bible reading? How can I pray for your faith? How is your prayer life? How’s your marriage? How is your relationship with your kids? Don’t just assume everything is fine. Remember, the cost of drifting is too great to allow assumptions or feeling awkward to let others drift without being called out. So what’s the solution? Well, number three. The solution to drifting. How to keep from drifting. What is the solution to drifting? Well, if you’re a sailor on a ship, you prevent drifting with an anchor. Coming up in a few chapters, we’re going to see Hebrew talk about anchors for our soul. But in this passage, we have our answer in verse one. Pay attention. Pay much closer attention to what?

To what we have heard. Remember how chapter one began. God spoke in these last days through his Son. The previous means by which God spoke, the prophets and the angels, they were meant to point away from themselves. But when God speaks by his Son, he is meant to be the focus of our attention. Our primary task as Christians is to focus on Jesus. The fact is, the command to pay attention to Jesus should be the easiest command to obey in the world. After all, he’s only the most majestic, glorious, fascinating, absorbing, and mesmerizing person to ever exist. Not only in simply who he is, but also in what he has done. He will be our subject of attention and source of delight for all of eternity, starting at the moment of our salvation. This is not a hard job.

Pay attention to the most fascinating person in the universe, unless we don’t want to. The unbeliever wants nothing to do with Jesus, and our remaining sin nature wants to look at anything except Jesus. The natural man yawns in the face of glory. He neglects the glorious salvation found in Jesus. Turns out, even the most captivating subject can fail to capture the attention of someone who is distracted. That’s why, whenever we want to pay attention to something, we make preparations. Maybe you buy noise-canceling headphones to help drown out the world while you listen to your favorite album, audio book, or podcast. Ever motion at people to be quiet while you’re on a phone call? Maybe you arrange a cozy reading nook to curl up with your favorite book, or buy the right game day snacks just before the game so you can focus on it.

Or maybe you drink caffeine to stay awake while studying. The point is, whenever we’re committed to focusing on something, we make preparations. We don’t just expect it to happen. Yet, how many of us neglect preparation to pay attention to Jesus? The first command that we get in the book of Hebrews is not to do something for God, not to clean up our act, but to pay attention. The first command in the book of Hebrews is not, work for Jesus, but look at Jesus. Listen to Jesus. As David says in Psalm 27 that we read earlier, verse 4, One thing I have asked of the Lord, and that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

All of our spiritual life, all of our spiritual life change happens from this foundation. In 2 Corinthians 3, 18, Paul says, And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Spiritual transformation is what we need, and only God can give it, and what he uses to do that is our gazing upon the sun. That’s why Hebrews opens with an entire chapter setting forth the majestic son of God. The Christian life is not primarily a collection of practices, but a subject of attention. The Pharisees had reduced following God to a set of practices. As a result, they lost sight of God. Instead of keeping their attention on the giver of the law, they let their attention drift to themselves.

They became preoccupied not with God, but on how they were doing checking boxes for themselves, and how well others thought of them. And this is the very same drift that all of us must guard against. Very likely you know the phrase, comparison is a trap. It’s also a recipe for drifting. When you’re constantly comparing yourself to others, you’ll either feel terrible about yourself, or you’ll feel like you’re not that bad. In both cases, your frame of reference is gradually drifting away from God’s perfect holiness. You can always find someone who’s worse at something than you are. It’s like the game of telephone in which a message gets more and more garbled the longer it’s passed along the line. Our standard of holiness drifts further and further away from God’s standard of holiness when we only compare ourselves to others.

So if beholding is how you and I change, what happens when you and I behold the glory of the Lord, when you and I pay much closer attention to what we have heard? What does it look like to highly regard instead of neglect such a great salvation? I want to spend a moment trying to help us do just that. So I want to suggest to you two things. First, when you look at Jesus, when you look at God, you begin to see yourself as you are. John Calvin began his work in the Institutes with the observation that we cannot understand ourselves apart from God. So the first thing that we see is our sin. Just a few weeks ago, Pastor Jeff preached from Isaiah 6 where the prophet caught a glimpse of God in his temple.

The first thing he realized was he’s not that holy at all. He could see that his heart wasn’t pure. His hands weren’t clean. He was a filthy, guilty law breaker. But he also saw that his community was a filthy and guilty community. He was a sinner in a family, in a community, in a village of sinners. That meant he was done for. In fact, that was the first thing he said. Woe is me. One of the first things that we saw from Hebrews chapter 1 is that the son hates wickedness more than anyone else in the universe. So when you see yourself as a sinner, someone who was thought and done and said that which God hates with an absolute and eternal hatred, you know that you’re done for. Woe is me. God’s love for absolutely pure and holy righteousness burns white-hot, and out of it comes his white-hot hatred for sin.

But when you look at the son of God, you see something else. You also see God’s atonement for your sin. When you pay much closer attention to the son who, after making purification for sin, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, you don’t just see God’s hatred against sin. You also see the unbelievable grace, mercy, and compassion of God for those that deserve his white-hot fury. You see the glorified nail scars in the human hands and human feet of the God-man himself, and you remember that every drop of that white-hot fury of God against you for your sin was fully and completely poured out on the one person who should never have had to taste a drop of it. You can see the breathtaking justice and mercy of God rolled into one, the son of God, the living one who literally went through hell to save you from sin’s penalty, died to break its power in your life, and rose again to give you a perfect record of obedience and fill you with the Holy Spirit as a new creation.

This transformation is so foundational and fundamental that the Bible describes it this way in Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The life that I now live by faith in the Son of God. Living by faith, we use the term so often we can forget what it means. Faith is the instrument by which we receive salvation, which is to say, hearing and seeing the life-transforming promise God offers and believing it like your life depends on it, because it absolutely does. Faith has been described as the gaze of the soul. So to live by faith means to pay much closer attention to what you have heard.

It’s the opposite of neglecting. We’ve got the direct words of Jesus, the testimony of the apostles, along with the wonders and miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, all urging us to look at God’s Son and not take our eyes off him. Let him capture your full gaze and attention. Don’t let the world, the flesh, or the devil make you drift away. And of course, keep an eye on those around you. Don’t let them drift away either. This salvation is too great to be neglected. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us your Son, that you have given us the one to show your love, that you so loved the world, that you gave your Son so that whoever believes on him might not perish and have eternal life.

Lord, we ask that you would give us eyes of faith that we might do, as David said, gaze upon your beauty, and we would be captured and captivated by this. Lord, we ask that you would do this. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

October 20, 2024