Horizon City Church Sermons

https://youtu.be/7BidbU8u6NY?si=TSpl9LO7GZ8cr11s   Additional Resources: Article: Is there a Difference between Pastors and Elders (Denny Burk) Article: The Manly Work of Pastors (Jonathan Parnell) Video: Male Pastors Only?… But What About Deborah??? And What Can the Women Do in Ministry? (Kenny Ortiz) [25:49] Video: Q&A: All Things Related to Women Pastors (1 Timothy) [1:01:33]

https://youtu.be/eUukXTHwp5o?si=9FewfDSTXiLktxJ1   Additional Resources: Video: Q&A: All Things Related to Women Pastors (1 Timothy) [1:01:33] Video: What Did Paul Mean by ‘I Do Not Permit a Woman to Teach?’ | DA Carson and Tim Keller [6:16] Video: D.A. Carson on 1 Timothy 2 “Authority” [4:48] Article: Are Women More Easily Deceived Than Men? (Jared Compton) Article: What Exactly Does 1 Timothy 2:12 Teach? (Robert Yarbrough)

https://youtu.be/a5wud-U0cf8?si=xQ10bd2v6vYKt1uZ   Additional Resources: Article: Can Women Braid their Hair? (1 Tim 2:9) Article: A Translation Conundrum (1 Tim 2:9) Video: Man and Woman by God’s Design [52:45]

https://youtu.be/OXbeCQNQGsw?si=bzYsocHqGgrL9Awo   Additional Resources: Article: Prayers Well Aimed (by John Sartelle) Article: Does “All” Ever Mean “All” in Scripture? (by Tom Hicks) Article: The One for All: 7 Reasons Why 1 Timothy 2 Teaches Definite Atonement (and 3 Reasons Why It Matters) (by David Schrock)  

https://youtu.be/DdSn6vSHjtk?si=LFeJEYAq10EaxpRz

In the sermon, Pastor Kenny begins by discussing the recent assassination of conservative political activist and apologist Charlie Kirk. Kenny also briefly mentions a few other recent tragic events in American society. When we think about these tragic horrific events, we often wonder, “What is it that God wants to do? How are we to respond?” When hardship hits and senseless tragedies overwhelm us, there are many things that we could do (and many things that we probably should do), but before we do any else, our first response ought to be to pray. Our initial and primary response to tragedies and evil actions ought to be to increase both the quantity and quality of our prayers. Herein Kenny examines the first few verses of 1 Timothy, where Paul commands us to pray for all types of people, especially those persons who hold power and influence. Kenny also examines two dozen other passages of Scripture, all pointing us toward this reality: God wants us to pray, all the time, but when tragedy strikes, we ought to pray even more!

https://youtu.be/c5t6QdUmHTA?si=ms9KIXmgbLp5jzXa  

  Introduction: Summer in the Psalms We have come to the beginning of our journey in the book of Psalms. We will probably be in and out of Psalms for the next several summers. The Psalms are unique in scripture, and when I first became a Christian, I didn’t understand the Psalms. I didn’t have a category for them. I remember being in high school in 1998, and there was a song that came out called ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls. I was a junior in high school at this time, and I remember listening to this song. This song caused an unbelievable, powerful thing inside of me because there had been these emotions and sentiments that I had been feeling for several years. Then I heard this song, Iris, and it put to words things I had been feeling for years that I never knew how to articulate. ‘I don’t want the world to see me, because I don’t think that they’d understand.” I remember I was talking to one of the youth leaders at our church, and I was telling her about how I love this song because it resonates with my soul. This guy feels what I feel, I’m not alone in the world in feeling these emotions. Someone else gets me and is singing about it, and I can sing about it in my bedroom, yelling at the top of my lungs, singing this song. The youth leader at my church said to me, You know, that’s what the Psalms do for us. That part of scripture that God has put right in the middle of the Bible. They put words to things that many of us are feeling that we’re unable to articulate. The Holy Spirit has given us this gift of the Psalms that put words to reflections, meditations, prayers, and laments. They’re put down so that you can read them and know you’re not alone. Not long after, I came across a music artist by the name of Shane Bernard. He would later team up with another guy named Shane, and they would become the band we know today as Shane and Shane. But Shane Bernard was sort of an unknown artist in the late 90s, and one of his early albums was called Psalms. In that album, he put to music a dozen or so psalms. I remember listening to that in my bedroom by myself on a CD. I remember him singing from Psalm 103. The Lord is gracious, he’s slow to anger. He is rich in love. He is good to us. I remember reading or listening to these songs and thinking, wow, what a gift that God has given us, the Psalms, to put to words the things that are inside of us that he wants us to articulate. The Psalms are incredibly valuable, and it took me several years to really appreciate the Psalms and understand them. But the more I spent time in the Psalms, as I grew in my late teen years and in my 20s, it began to shape me. The Psalms have shaped how I pray. It gave me vocabulary that I didn’t have before. The Psalms taught me how to sing to God. I remember listening to some old hymns and recognizing some of the language in hymns. Oh, that was borrowed from these Psalms. The Psalms also taught me how to grieve and to cry. The Psalms are a powerful gift from God to us that are immensely helpful to us in so many ways, and therefore, they are worthy of our study. They’re worthy of our attention. This morning, if you’re not familiar with the Psalms, I want to give you a quick overview of the entire book of Psalms. Then we’re going to hone in on Psalm Chapter One. Specifically, I want to give you a tool on how to read the Psalms. I want to give you some basic, tangible things to do when you’re reading the Psalms that will make it much more helpful to you. We’re going to look at Psalm 1, and I’m going to model how we can examine the passage. Before we do that, let’s ask God for his help one more time. God, would you help us understand the Psalms? God, thank you for this gift. May it profoundly shape how we live, how we pray, how we sing, how we cry, and how we see you. Would you help us now? Would you be pleased to glorify yourself through Psalm Chapter One? I ask in Christ’s name. Amen.   Overview of Psalms If you don’t know this, the Psalms are not one book. It’s not one writing. It’s a collection of writings. There are one hundred and fifty different writings. Seventy-five of them are written by a man we call King David. Some of them were written early in his life, before he became king, some were written during his reign, and some were written immediately after he was ousted from being the king. David wrote about half of the Psalms. These Psalms were written over about a thousand years. So the earliest Psalm was probably written somewhere around 1500 BC. The last Psalm was written somewhere around 500 BC. These Psalms were written through human beings by the Spirit of God. Soon after the last Psalm was written, they were compiled together by Jewish leadership and prophets in the nation of Israel, after they came out of exile. So the Jewish people had been in exile as slaves in Babylon. Then, after 70 years, God rescues them, and they come back into the promised land. While they are there, around 500 B.C., they compile these Psalms. They organize them not chronologically, but thematically. The Psalms are not in order. Psalm 1 was not the first one written. Psalm 150 is probably not the last one that was written, although Bible scholars argue over that. But the first one written was probably either Psalm 29 or Psalm 90. When the Psalms are collected, they’re put together by themes in five different books. Book one, all of those Psalms, they all fit a particular theme. Book two fits a theme. The five books of Psalms all have their five different themes, and they tell a story. At the beginning of each of the five books, the Psalm that was placed there lays the foundation for the rest of the Psalms that are in that book. Traditionally, this collection of 150 distinct writings has been known as the ‘Psalter’. That’s the traditional word for the book of Psalms. We don’t use that word much in our contemporary Christian circles, but the Book of Psalms was traditionally called the Psalter. It was organized in five books thematically, not chronologically. That’s the overall structure. Two other important things to know about the Book of Psalms, the Psalter, are that all of the Psalms are poems. They are written in ancient Hebrew poetic style. Since it’s poetry, it uses a bunch of different poetic literary mechanisms. That’s important because that helps us interpret the Psalms a little bit better. It’s not just straightforward prose, it’s not just history, although there are elements of history, but there’s poetic commentary on history. The history is told in a poetic fashion using metaphors and imagery. It’s important to understand that when you’re reading the Psalms, it’s not the same as reading the book of Hebrews. It’s drastically different style demands a different type of hermeneutic, a different approach. The last thing I’ll give you this morning is that all of the Psalms are songs. They were put to music. There’s a rhythm, there’s a cadence, because they’re meant to be sung. The Jewish people, all throughout their history and especially after they came out of Babylon and came back into the promised land, would have used the Psalms as their hymnbook. The early Christians did this too. When we look back at early church records, the bulk of the singing of the early church in the first, second, and third centuries was the Psalms. Certain psalms were especially popular. In the region of Antioch (the modern day northern part of Israel, Syria, and Jordan), the churches in that region, for about 200 years, sang Psalm 63 at the beginning of their worship gathering every single Sunday. They looked at Psalm 63 as so valuable, all of the churches in that region would sing that same Psalm at the beginning of the worship service every single week for about 250 years. They valued it that much. Throughout church history, the early church and in the Middle Medieval era, Psalms were the primary way Christians worshiped God in music. Hymns came on the scene in the early Middle Ages. You start seeing some hymns appear in the middle part of the Medieval era. There are some hymns, but it’s predominantly Psalms. Up until the Reformation era, hymns made significant inroads into music. For the first 1500 years of the church, it was mostly Psalms. From the 1500s up until the mid-1800s, there is about a 300-year period where there’s a slow progression when Psalms are getting less popular in church services and hymns are becoming a little more popular. There’s this trade off. By the time you get to the mid-1800s, hymns dominate singing in churches. By the time we get to the late 1800s, especially. From the late 1800s up until about the 1970s, what we call hymns today really dominated music singing. In the 1970s, 1980s, we began to see a shift toward what we now would call contemporary worship music. Although hymns still have a place, they’re still around. We like to do hymns here. Contemporary worship music has dominated over the last 40, 50 years or so. But Psalms dominated church history. Now I’m not advocating that we go back to that necessarily, although there probably could be a good argument to be made for that. I’m not saying that we should do that. I’m just giving you history. The Psalms were extremely important to Christians for a really long time. It’s a part of our Christian heritage to care deeply about the Psalms. I think it’s a heritage we ought to wholeheartedly embrace. Make the Psalms a big part of your life. The best Bible reading plans are the ones that include Psalms daily. There are Bible reading plans that will have you read a little bit from this book, and then cap off your reading for the day with a Psalm or two. Those would be the ones I would commend to you. So that’s the overview and introduction to the book of Psalms.   How to Read the Psalms The next thing I want to highlight is that there are two different ways to read the Psalms. There are two different approaches. There’s more than just two, but we will focus on two of the main approaches. You can read the bible anthropologically, or you can read the Psalms Christologically. The anthropological reading of Psalms is that you read a Psalm as if it’s written by a human being, for human beings, because we are human beings reading it. You’re asking, how can I become a better human being? That’s the anthropological reading of the Psalms, and that’s a very helpful. There’s immense goodness in reading the Psalms that way. That’s how most Christians in America read the Psalms. Read Psalm 1. It’s going to talk about the blessed man. You’re going to ask yourself, I want to be a blessed man. What must I do to be more blessed? That’s the anthropological reading of a psalm, and we should do that. There’s a lot to be learned from an anthropological reading of the Psalms. However, you should not stop there. You should go beyond that. You should read the Psalms anthropologically, as well as Christologically. Meaning, you’re asking yourself, how does this Psalm reveal Jesus Christ? Christ is the hero of the story. So I want to ask myself, what is it in this Psalm that gives me better insight into the person and work of Jesus Christ? This is where most modern American Christians fail in the reading of Psalms. This is not a very common thing, but I want to commend you to do this when you’re reading the Psalms. An anthropological reading and a Christological reading are both useful to us; they are not mutually exclusive. We want to make use of both of those.   Anthropological Reading We’re going to look at Psalm chapter 1, and I want to give you a model for how to do both of these. The first Psalm was written by David. He starts off by talking about the blessed man. The opening phrase is ‘Blessed is the man who’. It begins to describe how that man behaves. That’s his goal. He gives us a description, and in essence, the idea of the blessed man is any person who lives like this. Then I want to read Psalm 1 and go, How does the blessed man live so that I can live like that and be blessed? That’s the anthropological reading. Before we get to that, it would be valuable for us to define the word blessed. What does it mean to be blessed? Often, we refer to blessings as material blessings. If someone is, let’s say, financially wealthy, we may say, that person is really blessed. Or if someone has a lot of gifts or talents, we may say that person’s really gifted, they’re blessed. That’s not necessarily the wrong way to use that language. I remember when I first got married and soon thereafter we had our first child, Lettie. I remember one of my friends saying, Kenny, you are so blessed. You’ve got a great wife, a great kid, and you are so blessed. That was true. That’s an appropriate way to use that language. You’ll hear people say, Count your blessings. What they mean is, be cognizant, acknowledge all the good stuff that’s come your way. Count your blessings. Again, that’s not necessarily a wrong use of the word. But it’s not the only way to use the word blessed. It’s not even the primary way. When the psalmists are writing the Psalms, that’s not the primary way they use the word bless. The word bless is used 27 times in the Psalms. Every time you get the sense of a state of being, a state of emotions. Psalm 32 says this: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.” Being blessed is the person who knows he’s been forgiven and becomes blessed. When you know you’re forgiven, it does something in you. Psalm 65:4, the psalmist speaking to God, says: “Blessed is the one that you, God, choose to bring near to dwell in your courts. He shall be satisfied with goodness.” You get the sense that to be blessed is to have been drawn close to God and to be satisfied by him, to be satisfied by God. Psalm 89 says this in verse 15: “Blessed are the people who know the festal shout.” You want to see a blessed man, the person who knows how to celebrate and shout because he’s seen the goodness of God. You get the image, the sense that to be blessed means that you know something about God that has satisfied you or has birthed joy in your soul, and it makes you want to shout and celebrate. To be blessed is to be satisfied and happy in God, not necessarily to have a bunch of stuff. Now, if God has given you a bunch of stuff and you recognize these are gifts from God, and it causes you to be satisfied in him, then those blessings are helpful. But you don’t necessarily have to have a bunch of good stuff, humanly speaking or materially speaking. To be blessed is to be happy, because you know who God is. I don’t think it’s a stretch to interchange the word blessed there with satisfied, happy, or fulfilled. The blessed man is the happy man, the satisfied man, the fulfilled man. So what the writer David is doing here is saying, you want to be happy. I think we all want to be happy. You want to be satisfied in this life, you want to be fulfilled. Let me tell you how that person behaves. Then he begins to give us some behavior in the first two verses. He gives us a picture of how the blessed man functions. The result of being blessed is this: look at verse 3: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” What an unbelievable image. In 2008, I was in Thailand on a short-term mission trip. I was leading a group. My assignment was to lead 70 high school students to the nation of Thailand for two months. As a part of our trip, we ended up in Chiang Rai, which is the very northern part of Thailand, at a place called the Golden Triangle. This is where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar, also known as Burma, come together. The Mekong River comes down from Tibet, China, and flows through this region. The Mekong River, one of the largest, fastest-paced rivers in the world. We went up there and we did some speedboats on the Mekong River. The Mekong River is almost 3,000 miles long. It’s the third-longest river in Asia. In some places it’s as much as a mile wide, and in some places as much as 300ft deep. At the Golden Triangle, it’s much less than that. It’s only a fifth of a mile wide, and it’s only about 100 feet deep. But it’s pretty big and pretty long, and it’s known as one of the fastest-paced rivers in the world. But it’s remarkable. When we were on these speedboats traveling up the river, you’ll find right in the middle of the Mekong River, you’ll find these trees called Lam Sung Trees. Some of these trees come up 20 feet above the river. The river is 100 to 150 feet deep. It means these trees are 100 to 170 feet tall. They go down deep into the riverbed, and they just stick up out of the river. They are solid and strong. There’s no movement to these trees. It’s unbelievable. I remember thinking to myself, you have this river, all this water coming fast, pounding these trees, and they just stand immovable. I think that’s the picture the psalmist wants us to have when he says that the blessed man is like a tree planted along the streams of water. Water comes at it, nothing fazes the blessed man. If you’re truly happy in God, satisfied, fulfilled in God, the cares of this world come at you. They pummel you, they hit you, they hurt you, but you stand firm. The only way to do that is to be planted in God, to know him, to know his forgiveness, and to allow that to satisfy your soul. The blessed man is planted firmly. He yields fruit. His leaves, they don’t wither. It’s a remarkable thing to consider. We all want this blessedness. I want to be blessed. I want to be stable in that way. I don’t want to be tossed about by the cares of this world. In our vision statement here at Horizon City, it has five pillars to it, five tenets. The first one is that we want to be a community of believers who possess steadfast happiness inspired by the grandeur of God. That’s our number one goal. I want to present you with the grandeur of God, the bigness, the awesome, the beauty of God, for you to see it, for that to inspire in you a deep, strong happiness that doesn’t move, no matter what you face. So that when the cares of this world come at you, you stand strong and nothing knocks you over. We want to be Christians who possess a steadfast happiness that’s been inspired by the grandeur of God. David calls that man blessed. David then gives us some instructions. Again, this is still the anthropological reading. He’s a human being, writing to human beings, explaining how you can be a better human being. In the early verses, he gives us a description. This sermon almost writes itself. If you look at the first two verses of Psalm 1, he says, speaking of the blessed man: “He walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. Day and night.” He gives us four things. This could be an easy, four-point sermon. Three things not to do, one thing to do. You go through each one of these, and you explain them. It’s a great anthropological sermon, and it would be a good sermon. It’s helpful to read the Bible in that way.   Two Pathways The imagery we get here is two pathways. There’s a pathway that the righteous people go down, and there’s a pathway that wicked people go down. The psalmist David is saying, Don’t listen to the counsel of the people who are willing to go down the pathway of wickedness. It’s going to be bad for you. You won’t be blessed if you listen to those people. Don’t take advice from those people. Some people embrace wickedness. Don’t listen to them. Some people believe wicked things. Don’t take their advice, ignore their counsel. You don’t have to listen to and tolerate every idea out there. Sometimes it’s okay to reject and ignore. Some people engage in behaviors that God says are disgusting, that are gross, abominations, wicked, and harmful. The psalmist is saying, people who do those things, it’s okay to ignore their advice. There will be people who engage in behaviors that are contrary to God’s law, and they will look at you and expect you to do more of what they do. The psalmist is saying, You want to be happy, you want to be stable. You want to be like the one planted by the tree, the tree planted by the river. Don’t go that way. Turn your ear off when those people are talking to you. Some people will champion and advocate for wicked behavior and wicked ideas, and we are to ignore them. There’s an interesting phrase in this section here. ‘The seat of scoffers’. The word ‘seat’ refers to proximity. If I said to you, Washington, D.C. is the seat of our nation’s capital, if you go to D.C., you will be in proximity to a certain type of person, to certain types of events. You’ll be in the seat. So what David, the writer of the Psalm, is saying is, don’t sit in the seat of scoffers. Don’t put yourself in proximity to those who feel the need to mock God or mock our Christian values. We all know these people who are the super hostile type. The person who’s the secular progressive atheist who’s hostile toward Christian faith, hostile toward deism. They mock you. Ignore those people. Turn off the YouTube channel. Don’t listen to that podcast. There’s a group of people that we have to be very careful who we get close to and who we allow to influence us. The writer David is saying there are scoffers. Be careful how close you get to scoffers. It will be impossible for you to be blessed, for you to be happy, for you to be satisfied, for you to be stable if you have a lot of scoffers influencing how you think. Now, certainly, we want to be friends with people like that because we want to share the gospel. We want to befriend them, we want to win them to Christ. We want to share the goodness and kindness of God. However, it’s really easy for them to influence you and hard for you to influence them. That should inform how you engage with those types of people. It doesn’t mean you reject them. It doesn’t mean you’re a jerk to them, doesn’t mean you ostracize them. But it does mean you’re very cautious in how you engage in conversation and how much time you spend and how much access to your life you give those types of people. Galatians, chapter 6. The apostle Paul tells us in the first verse of Galatians 6 that we ought to go to those who are in sin and rebuke them, correct them with gentleness. Then he says in the latter part of the chapter, in verse 1 of chapter 6, “But be careful that you yourself are not dragged in.” Be careful that you yourself are not polluted, another translation says. The apostle Paul knows it’s easy in your desire to hang out with wicked people, in your desire to win them over for Christ. It’s easy for you to get sucked into their sin. It’s really hard to pull them out of their sin. That ought to shape how you think about friendships. Again, we’re always going to be kind. We always want to be gracious. We want people to see the love of Christ. But we want to be extremely careful how much access to our minds, our hearts, and our lives we give wicked people who have wicked counsel. We’ll be very careful that we don’t sit in the seat scoffers because if we do, we won’t be blessed, we won’t be happy. Don’t take advice from wicked people. Don’t take advice from the scoffers. Then he says this in verse 2. Look at it again. Speaking of the blessed man, this is what he does: “His delight is in the law of the Lord.” He takes the law of God and he delights in it. It makes him smile. He reads it, he devours it. Do we do that? If you don’t, you’re not likely to be happy. You’re not likely to be satisfied. If you’re wondering, why am I not fulfilled? Maybe it’s because you’re not delighting in the law of God enough. We ought to do that. The more we delight in the law of God, the more blessed we will be.   Christological Reading of Psalms That’s the anthropological reading of Psalm 1. You can do that with all of the Psalms. It’s a human being writing to human beings seeking how to be a better human being. Very helpful. Lots of good insights on how to live our lives. But if we stop there, we’re missing something really important. That’s how the Jewish people read the Psalms, Anthropologically. Until today, Jewish people read the Psalms as if the New Testament didn’t happen or as if the New Testament is not accurate. So we don’t want to do that. We believe the New Testament actually happened and that it accurately accounts for the life and work of Christ. We should read the Psalms as if the New Testament is real and accurate. I recently used the illustration of the movie The Sixth Sense. You wouldn’t watch the movie The Sixth Sense not knowing the ending of the movie. The second or third time you watched the movie The Sixth Sense, you know how it ended. He’s been dead the whole time. The second or third or fourth time you watch the movie, you can’t watch it pretending like you don’t know the ending. Because you do know the ending. So when we read the Book of Psalms, don’t read the Book of Psalms like you don’t know the ending. We know the ending. The ending is that there is one blessed man above all. His name is Jesus Christ. We want to read the Psalms in a Christological fashion. John 5:39, this is Jesus speaking to Jewish leaders: “You search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness of me.” He’s saying, you guys are reading the Bible, the Old Testament, and you think that just studying the Old Testament is going to be enough to give you eternal life, but it’s not. You could be an Old Testament expert and still go to hell. The Old Testament testifies of someone, Jesus. So he’s rebuking them for reading the Old Testament and not looking for Jesus in the Old Testament. That should inform how we read the Old Testament. He’s rebuking them, saying, Don’t read the Old Testament without looking for me. When you read the Old Testament, look for Jesus. So when I read Psalm 1 and I read it Christologically, I want to ask myself, who is the blessed man? And the answer is, His name is Jesus. If we read it only anthropologically, it fails. Am I a stable tree planted firmly in my life? No, I’m not. Do I bear fruit in every season? Of course not. There are moments I’m not bearing fruit of the Spirit well, because I’m a sinner, and I flop. Am I unscathed by the rivers of this world? No way. I’m not that tree planted in the river. I’m like a twig floating down, being pushed by the river into the Pacific Ocean. When we read about the blessed man in Psalm 1, do you say to yourself, That’s me. I’m killing it. Not a chance. Not a one of us. We are so flaky and so fickle and so inconsistent. We’re tossed about by situations. We’re happy one minute, exhausted the next. Feeling excited one moment, totally saddened and discouraged the next, joyful one day, disheartened the next. We’re inconsistent, irrational, overly emotional, unnecessarily subjective, and defensive. If you read Psalm 1 and you think to yourself, I’m the blessed man, you’ve read it wrong. We read Psalm 1 and think, This is describing Jesus. Jesus is stable and faithful, not tossed about. He is the tree planted. He is the one happy in God, fully satisfied, fully fulfilled. That is Jesus. So we read Psalm 1 and go, Wow, how did you pull that off, Jesus? You are so awesome. You know how hard it is to avoid the counsel of the wicked? We are bombarded every single day with advice and ideas from wicked people all around us, way more than we realize. We embrace it way more than we realize. Sometimes we foolishly invite wicked advice from the media we consume, the TV we watch, the podcasts we listen to, and the social media we engage with. We invite counsel from wicked people all day. We are not the blessed one. We have to think, how Jesus lived on this planet with all the stuff that was around him, coming at him, and not walk in the way of the sinners, not do what sinners do? How did he live the human experience and not go down the pathway of wickedness when all of us have done so? You should read Psalm 1 and go, Wow, Jesus is impressive. So many of us have bad friends with bad ideas. Terrible, wicked behaviors. In our fear, we don’t want to offend them. So we let their advice ruminate, to come into our eyes and float around our brains, float around our ideas and our homes. In the name of evangelism, in the name of being good friends, in the name of not offending, we invite people into our lives who scoff at the things we believe are true. Then we wonder why we’re not happy, why we’re not satisfied, why we’re not fulfilled. We inevitably, foolishly end up allowing the wicked ideas and wicked people to influence us. I can’t help but think to myself, Jesus, how did you pull it off? You are even better than I thought. Then it says that the blessed man delights in the law of God. Jesus delighted in the law of God. We don’t. Maybe a little bit here or there. Do we devour the Scriptures the way we ought to? I don’t know about you. Sometimes I come home and I’m like, I can’t. I’m chomping at the bit to go watch the next episode of whatever show my wife and I are bingeing on Netflix at that time. I just want to see the next episode. Or I want to go see the game that’s on, or I’m chomping at the bit to do this thing. I’m delighting in this thing. How often do I delight in these things more than I delight in the law of God? The answer is almost all day, every day. But Jesus delighted in the law of God perfectly. He meditated on it day and night. See, if I read Psalm 1 anthropologically, it’s helpful to me. But if I read Psalm 1 Christologically, it humbles me and it puts my eyes on the one that deserves my worship, the blessed man, Jesus, the Christ.   Conclusion: Jesus Christ, The Blessed Man We want to read the Bible, the Psalms in particular, Anthropologically and Christologically. Not one or the other. I want to read to you Psalm chapter 1, the first few verses. I hope this doesn’t offend anyone. But I’ve edited it slightly to give you the Christological reading of Psalm 1. I’ve edited the first few verses to put Jesus’ name in it, because he is the blessed man. Psalm 1: ‘Jesus Christ is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But Jesus Christ delights in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Jesus Christ is like a tree planted by the streams of water. Jesus Christ yields his fruit and his leaf does not wither in all that Jesus Christ does, He prospers.’ We look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We look at the grandeur of who he is. We are in awe of him, and that births in us the steadfast happiness that he longs for us to have. Jesus is the blessed man. Jesus obeys. He does all that a blessed man would do. He earned the right to experience the benefits of being the blessed man. Jesus earned it, not us. Then Jesus chooses to share it with those who believe in him. Jesus is the blessed man. He did all the things that a blessed man must do to be blessed. Then he says, if you believe on me, I’m going to share with you all the benefits of being a blessed man. You’re going to experience being blessed, although you’ve not done that which needed to be done to be blessed. In Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul is writing, he says this: “You did not receive a spirit of slavery, but received the spirit of adoption.” When you came to faith in Jesus, you didn’t become his slave. You were adopted into God’s family. Then he says this, Romans 8:17: “And since we are children, we are heirs, heirs of God, coheirs with Christ.” God the Father has given an inheritance to His Son, Jesus. We believe in Jesus, and Jesus shares his inheritance with us. For those who genuinely believe in him, for those who have trusted in Christ and in Christ alone for salvation. You receive the benefits of being blessed not because you did what you needed to do to become blessed, but because Jesus did it, and he shares his blessing with you. So those are the two ways to read the Psalms. Anthropologically, we read the Psalms, we get some wisdom, and there’s some good instruction we can apply to our lives. We’re thankful for that. But ultimately, we read something like Psalm 1, and we go, This is what a blessed man does. I’m not that. I flop every day, and then I read it again, but Jesus does that. Jesus does it, and he has earned a blessing, and he will ensure that he shares it with me. The blessed man is Jesus Christ, who has done on your behalf what needed to be done so that you will be blessed. Church, our hope is not built on our ability to do the right things. We are fickle and inconsistent. He is stable and reliable. In the middle of the storm, he will be the anchor that holds you. When we are weak, he is strong. He is the cornerstone of our faith. He is the blessed man.

  Introduction: We Have All We Need We have come now to the end of the book of Hebrews. There’s a particular sentiment on display in the last few verses in the benediction. It reminds me of something. Have you ever been working on a task and in the middle of it you realize you don’t have everything you need for the task? Like you’re working on some home project and you decide that you’re going to randomly tear down a wall. You decide at 11pm because you’re bored, you decide you’re tearing down this wall. Your mind’s going crazy. You decide you gotta do something crazy. The Home Depot’s closed. You can’t go get the thing you need. Or you’re maybe you’re in the middle of cooking a meal. You’re in the middle of the meal and you’ve prepared, and then you realize, I don’t have the thing I need. I don’t have the paprika or the cumin or whatever it is. You’re realize that I’m out of that. The writer of Hebrews is in essence going to remind us that in the Christian life, when we are walking through this life and doing that which God has called us to do, that will never happen. We will never have a moment when we are in the middle of a task and we say to ourselves, I don’t have the thing I need. The writer of Hebrews is saying, God has ensured that that’s never going to take place. This morning, I want to give a thorough recap of the book of Hebrews. We’re going to remind ourselves of what we have seen over the last several months. Then, after the recap, we’re going to look at the last few words. It’s a prayer. It’s a benediction. The writer of Hebrews said, I’ve taught you a bunch of stuff. Now let me offer a brief prayer to God on your behalf. But remember, the Spirit of God is writing this through the writer of Hebrews. So it’s the Spirit of God praying a prayer that God the Father will hear and God the Father will listen to what the Spirit of God has lifted up. So this prayer that’s being offered by the writer of Hebrews on your behalf is guaranteed to come to fruition. It’s a prayer that will definitely be answered by God on our behalf, designed to encourage us. So we will do a recap of Hebrews. We’ll look at the last few verses and then, my hope is for you to hear God’s word and be encouraged that God is continually shepherding you through whatever season of life you’re in. Ensuring that you are equipped for what God has for you. There will never be a moment in your life where God has called you to a task where you won’t quite have that thing you need. The writer of Hebrews has prayed that we would be equipped and God will answer that prayer. So let’s pray one more time and we’ll do a quick recap before we get to Hebrews 13. Lord, we thank you. As we recap Hebrews and look at the last few verses, may we be encouraged by these words. Help us understand them. May they shape how we view you, how we live our lives. May that be true for all of us. In Christ’s name. Amen.   Recap of Hebrews: Jesus Is Better The writer of Hebrews has given us one central theme. Jesus is better. That’s it. That’s his point. The writer of Hebrews is writing this letter. It’s actually a sermon that’s been transcribed and is being sent to a local group of believers. He has caught wind of the fact that there are people in this church that have abandoned the faith. These are mostly Hellenistic Jews. They are ethnic Jews by nature, but they’re Greek speaking. They’ve embraced a lot of Greek culture, they’ve become Christians. They’re living somewhere in southern Italy, and they are a part of the Christian faith. Some of them begin to abandon the Christian faith and they go back to Judaism. The writer of Hebrews is catching wind of this, and so he preaches this sermon and he writes it down and he sends it to them. He wants them to know that whatever you go to, if you abandon Jesus to go to something else, that thing is less than Jesus. Whatever you compare Jesus to, Jesus is better than that. Look unto Jesus. Keep believing in Jesus. The entire sentiment, the heart behind this entire letter is to give them reasons to believe that Jesus is better so that they will not be tempted to stop believing in Jesus. In the opening two chapters, he starts by highlighting who Jesus is. He starts by reminding us that Jesus is the one that was in glory, who then stepped off his throne of glory and became a human being. He did what needed to be done to make purification of sin. We see in Hebrews chapter one, We are sinful. We need to be purified. We could not purify ourselves. So Jesus came to do that which needed to be done so that our sins could be purified. Talk about inconveniencing yourself. The God of the universe became a human baby, dependent on a teenage mother, subjecting himself to all the pains and ills of this world. He dies a brutal death on a cross where the wrath of God is placed on him so that all who would believe on him, his death would count for them. So if you believe on him, the wrath of God that should be for you has been placed on him. The wrath of God that was for me was placed on him. Then he raises from the dead and he triumphantly goes right back into heaven. God the Father, as we see in Hebrews chapter one, says, come sit at my right hand. The writer of Hebrews is saying, you guys think angels are great. He never said to any of the angels, come sit at my right hand. The only person God has ever said that to is his son Jesus. Because Jesus is better. The main point of the early section of Hebrews chapter one is that Jesus is better. As we go through Hebrews chapter one, into chapter two, he begins to tell us, there are a lot of great humans that have lived, but there’s no human that has ever done what Jesus did. No human was capable of doing what Jesus accomplished. He tells us that Jesus became lower than the angels for a little while. Back in October, I used this illustration of a pyramid. If you can imagine a pyramid, it’s got multiple levels. You have God at the top, the Trinity, God the father, Spirit, and you’ve got the angels. They’re the second level of authority. Then the third level of authority, the pecking order, is humans. Then fourth is the beast. That’s what we see throughout the course of the New Testament. Jesus is the top and we are below the angels. Jesus then comes down that pyramid, becomes a human being, goes to the third pecking order. God became subject lower than the angels for a period of time, became one of us, so that he could then rescue us and bring us up. The writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 2 that we are below the angels. But there’s a process that we are going through where one day we will actually go above the angels. We are currently third in the pecking order, but we’re on the way up because Jesus identified with us. No human’s ever been able to do that. Jesus is better. He’s the greatest human to have ever lived. Then as we go through from chapters 3 to 9, he’s making one major point over and over again. He’s using multiple illustrations and examples from the Old Testament to make the point. He’s using all of these people that these Jewish people would have revered. He’s says, remember Moses, he was great, but Jesus was better. Moses led you into a wilderness and nothing more. Jesus is going to lead you into the presence of God forever. Jesus is better than Moses. Jesus is better than Abraham. Abraham’s great. Father of many nations. He started the first covenant that we see and it’s been unfolding ever since on our behalf. But Jesus establishes a newer covenant, a better covenant, and accomplishes way more on our behalf than Abraham could ever have accomplished. Jesus is better than Abraham. He travels into chapter 4 and 5 and he begins to tell us that Jesus is better than the Old Testament priest. The Old Testament priests, they did a lot of stuff for the Old Testament saints, but Jesus is better than them because he offers a better sacrifice. They offered bulls and goats as we see in Hebrews 9, but Jesus offered himself. Jesus is better. Jesus establishes and mediates a better covenant than what the Old Testament priests could establish and mediate. They established a covenant that allowed one person one day a year to enter in the presence of God. Jesus establishes a covenant that all of God’s people can enter in the presence of God forever. He’s way better. The writer of Hebrews says, remember. Remember the Old Testament priest. Jesus is not even like them. He’s actually like Melchizedek. No beginning and no end. He’s not like those priests. Jesus is way better. He’s way better and establishes a way better covenant. If you abandon Jesus, whatever you go to is less than Jesus. So don’t do that. Stick with Jesus. Look to Jesus. Consider Jesus. Pay extra attention about the things you’ve learned about Jesus. Keep trusting in Jesus. Don’t stop believing in Jesus. That’s the first 9 chapters of Hebrews.   Themes of Hebrews As you travel through these chapters, there’s some themes that pop up. One of the themes that pops up is the fact that those who love God genuinely will want to obey God. If you disobey God, you’re not going to heaven, not because you’ve lost your salvation, but because you actually never were saved genuinely in the first place. That is what we looked at in Hebrews chapter 6. So if you hear God commanding you to do things and inside of you, you don’t want to obey, it’s because you’re not genuinely headed toward heaven. You’re actually on trajectory to hell. That should scare us a bit. In Hebrews 5, verse 9, he says “Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for those who obey.” As we travel through the chapters, we don’t see that the expectation is perfection. In fact, it’s very clear the writer of Hebrews expects that we will still sin. But is there a trajectory in your life toward obedience? That’s the question. Are you living your life in such a way where you want to obey God, where there seems to be a sense of growth? I’m obeying more today than I did a year ago, and I’m growing in my desire to obey. If that is you, then that means you’re one of his. That desire comes from God. But if you don’t really want to obey, if you hear the commands of God in Scripture and your inclination is to resist that diagnosis, that is a problem. Maybe you come to church, maybe you claim to be a Christian, maybe you do Christian stuff, but at the end of the day, if your heart doesn’t desire to obey him, something is wrong with your heart. He implores us, repent. Ask God for forgiveness. In Hebrews 10:26 and 27, he tells us, for anyone who deliberately disobeys God, if you are someone who continues to deliberately disobey God over and over and over again, if we sin deliberately, there remains only a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire. But there’s time. You can repent today. You can say, God forgive me. That’s the first 10 chapters of Hebrews. Then he moves into chapter 11, and he begins to give us examples of people who believed in God. He’s saying, emulate these people, do what they did. He goes through a list of all these people through the Old Testament that had faith in God. They were not perfect. They sinned. They made big mistakes, which is very comforting for us. The expectation is not to be perfect. See these people, they blew it. They did a lot of bad, dumb things over and over and over again, but they are still good examples for us to follow. They believed in the Messiah. They didn’t know his name would be Jesus because they lived before Jesus lived, but they believed that God would send the Messiah. They looked forward and they trusted God would send the Messiah and they believed in the Messiah to come, and that’s why they were forgiven of their sin. Likewise, we look to the Messiah and we are forgiven of our sin. We addressed this in a sermon a couple months ago. How are the Old Testament saints saved? The same way you are saved, by looking unto the Messiah. They looked forward to the Messiah and their sins were forgiven. We look back to what the Messiah has already done and our sins are forgiven. But it’s the same covenant, it’s the same truth, it’s the same reality, the same grace. The writer of Hebrews is saying, look at Hebrews 11. There’s some examples for us to follow there.   Exhortations from Hebrews Then he moves into chapter 12 and 13, which we’ve been looking at the last few weeks. This is the Uber practical section of Hebrews. He begins to give us some very specific practical commands and instructions. There were other exhortations throughout the book of Hebrews. There are moments while he’s teaching us that he gives us quick thoughts and exhortations. In Hebrews chapter 2, he told us to pay close attention to the things we’ve been taught about Jesus. In Hebrews 4, he tells us that whenever you’re being challenged by God’s instruction, do not harden your heart. That’s an exhortation he gives us. Later, in Hebrews 4, he tells us to trust and obey the word of God because it is living and active. At the end of Hebrews 4, he tells us to draw near to God. In Hebrews chapter 6, he tells us to leave the elementary doctrines of Christ, stop doing the basics, move on to the advanced, deeper doctrines, study them and allow them to transform you. He tells us in Hebrews chapter 10 to consider how to stir one another up in love. The word stir there is the same word for agitate. Imagine, like a washing machine. We’re a bunch of people in a washing machine. The idea is turn the washing machine on, stir each other up aggressively, cause one another to do good things. There’s a very proactive, intentional nature to this that we as Christians are to intentionally provoke one another to go do good stuff, agitate one another. Then later in chapter 10, he says don’t stop gathering with other Christians. Which is particularly interesting for our culture in Central Florida. In Orlando, where we live, is the most de-churched metro region in the United States. We lead the nation in people who used to go to church. Many of them have disobeyed this command. So throughout the first 10, 11 chapters, there are some exhortations here. But we get to chapter 12 and 13. That’s where he really gives us some significant exhortations. The first 11 chapters is mostly theology, truth, understanding of reality. Now that we know this is true, how do we live in light of that? That’s what chapters 12 and 13 have mostly been. He starts at the beginning of chapter 12 by telling us to get rid of sin. That’s good. That’s a good exhortation. If there’s any sin in your life, get rid of it. Then he tells us to get rid of hindrances. There are some things in your life that are not necessarily sinful, but they’re a hindrance. Get rid of those things too. Then as you go through chapter 12, he talks about the Lord’s discipline in our life. He says, the Lord’s going to discipline you if you are disobedient, but you are genuinely one of his. The Lord’s going to bring pain into your life to get you to focus and pay attention. He’s going to straighten you up. He tells us in Hebrews 12:5: “Do not regard lightly the Lord’s discipline.” Take it seriously. Recognize the Lord is disciplining right now. I have to take that seriously. I have to repent. I have to beg him for his mercy. I have to get rid of the sin to get rid of the injuries when he’s disciplining me. I better not take it lightly at the end. Toward the end of that chapter, he begins to talk about Esau and says, don’t be like Esau. Esau who cried over missing out on the blessing. But he didn’t cry about the ugliness of his own sin. He was sad that he missed out on God’s blessing, but he wasn’t sad that he was disrespectful and blasphemed God that led him to leave his lose his blessing. We should not just be sad that we miss out on the blessings of God. We should be sad about the sin in our life which causes us to miss out on blessings. He says, don’t be like Esau. He begins to use this imagery that’s similar to what we see in the Old Testament. Remember the Israelites, they were rescued from slavery, they came out into the wilderness, they wandered around for a while, and then as they were headed to the Promised Land, they disobeyed God and they hardened their hearts. So they never entered into the Promised Land. He’s saying some people who are a part of the church are kind of like that. There are some people, they’ve walked away from a life of really big sins, overt obvious sins. They’ve been a part of the people of God. They go to church, they do Christian stuff, but they never quite deal with their heart, so they never actually enter into the Promised land. He’s saying, Christians, remember Israel. Remember when that happened to them. That’s an imagery of us as Christians. We have come now to the edge of Mount Zion, the presence of God, where we experience his love and joy forever and ever and ever. The New Jerusalem is like we’re on the precipice of entering in. If you’re a part of the church, make sure you’ve dealt with your heart, that you’ve genuinely repented of your sin, that so that you go into the Promised Land. You don’t get stuck in the wilderness like the Israelites did. Then we go into chapter 13, and he gives us the quick hits. He gives us these six quick hits. He doesn’t unpack them thoroughly. He just says, here are six things to remember. Worship God in a manner that is acceptable to God. Be kind and generous. Avoid sexual immorality. Be content with what you have. Don’t fall in love with money. Avoid strange teachings and obey and submit to your church leaders and your pastors. And that’s the book of Hebrews that we’ve covered over the last eight months.   The God of Peace Then we come to the last section of Hebrews 13. It would be easy to read through this section of Hebrews and to think, there’s a lot of stuff for us to do. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do all this stuff he just told us to do. There are a lot of commands, a lot of exhortations really quickly. There’s a lot of stuff for us to deal with. In fact, it could be a tad bit overwhelming. The sermons, they feel much more encouraging as earlier in Hebrews. But as you go along, they feel a little less encouraging and a little more jab. I don’t know if you have felt that. I have felt it in my sermon study. The writer, he’s pushing us. He was just telling us how much Jesus loves us and how great Jesus is and how much Jesus has for us. But as we continue to read the letter, he just keeps punching. He knows it would be possible for them to go, we know that Jesus is better, but, you’ve just given us a lot of commands, and I don’t know that we can stick with it. He says, now listen, I’m going to pray for you. This is what he prays in Hebrews 13, verse 20. He says: “Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” He says, this is my prayer for you. Because I know I’ve just given you a lot. I’ve given you an array of exhortations and things to do and things to consider, things to implement, things to get rid of, things to lean into. I’ve given you a lot. But here’s the thing. I’m praying that the God of Peace would do something in you. And because it’s a little convoluted, he begins to describe the God of Peace before he gets to what he’s praying. So it’s a little bit convoluted. But if you look at verse 21, here’s the prayer he is praying to the God of Peace in verse 21, that he may equip you with everything good that you may do his will. I am praying that as you are going through this process, that it is not you figuring out how to do it. It is not you with your human ingenuity and ability to white knuckle it and just bootstrap it and figure it out. This is not you. Go do it of your own accord, of your own strength. No. Go do these things and the God of Peace will equip you as you endeavor to do these things. Just in case you forgot who the God of Peace is, I know I’ve just given you 13 chapters about who the God of Peace is and all that he has done. That he is better, but let me get just a couple quick tidbits about who the God of Peace is. Remember, look at verse 20. He’s describing the God of peace. That God is the one who: “Brought our Lord Jesus back from the dead.” The one who brought Jesus back from the dead. That’s the one at work in you, equipping you. In Romans, chapter 8, verse 11, the apostle Paul says: “That the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.” The spirit that brought Jesus back from the dead is at work in you. If he could bring Jesus back from the dead. I think he can equip you to do that which he’s called you to do. It’s not just some ordinary spirit at work in your heart and life. It’s not just some random taboo thing. It’s not some spell. It’s not some magic Harry Potter wand. No, it’s the God of the universe who brought Jesus back from the dead. He is at work in you. He will equip you to do that which he has called you to do. So if God has told you to do it, he will help you do it. I hope that’s a comfort to you this morning, believers. But he will help you.   Jesus: The Great Shepherd of the Sheep He also reminds them here who Jesus is. God brought Jesus back from the dead and Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. One of my favorite passages in First Peter 5, the apostle Peter is talking to pastors, saying, hey, you’re an under shepherd. Love the flock, take care of them, but just remember who the real shepherd is. It’s actually not on you, Kenny, to fix people. You’re not even capable of doing that. It’s not on you to equip them and make sure they’re ready. Do the best you can. But just remember this. There’s a greater shepherd than you. I didn’t step off the throne of heaven. I didn’t make purification of sin. There’s lots of things in the world better than me. Jesus, the great shepherd, he is better and he will guide you. He will help you. He will equip you. Psalm 23. Very well known psalm, famous psalm for good reason. Just like Jesus is the shepherd. This is David writing on behalf of the shepherd. He’s describing the shepherd. This is what Jesus does for his people: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” You’re in the middle of a battle. There’s enemies all around you. He says, come on, let’s have a meal. The God of peace. You got a lot of stuff going on in your life. Come on, let’s sit. Let’s have some barbecue. Verse 6. He says: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Jesus will shepherd you. God rescues us. He does that which is needed for our sins to be forgiven. But he doesn’t just leave us. Jesus, I’m going to be with you. I’m going to shepherd you. It’s not just, I forgave you of your sin. Now go figure out how to live for me. No, he says, I forgave you. I did what needs to be done for your sins to be wiped clean. I’m going to be with you every step of the way. When you face enemies, when your life is chaotic, I’m going to prepare a table for you. Jesus will ensure that we will be able to do what he has called us to do. Praise be to God. Yet not I but Christ through me. When we are in heaven, we will still sing in heaven, we will still be singing those words. It will still remain on my lips, yet not I but Christ in me. Still my lips shall repeat, yet not I but through Christ in me. It will never be you. It’s never been about you. It will never be about you. It’s always been about Jesus. It will always be all about Jesus because he is better keep believing in him.   How Does Jesus Equip Us? Last thought for this morning. This inspires or provokes a question. That is, how does Jesus equip us? He promised he’s going to equip us. How does he do this? Well, he’s just coming off of the heels of Hebrews 11, where he’s talking about these people that God did great work through. What we see over and over again is a pattern that God takes these people through situations where they learn some sort of lesson. Then many years later, the lesson they learn in a previous season of life becomes very applicable. So the pattern we see throughout the Old Testament and highlighted in Hebrews 11 is that God takes us through moments and through seasons in which we learn something. But we don’t realize we’re learning it. Then years later, we are equipped to handle a task because we went through a previous season. This is God’s pattern. There are other ways and other things in which God’s ways equips us. But it seems to be God’s primary means of equipping us. He takes us through some season, usually it’s hard. We learn some lessons and then later on in life we’re able to apply those lessons. But in the midst of the difficulty, we don’t realize that we’re learning a lesson. It feels useless. And we go, why God? We’re angry and we’re frustrated, and that makes sense. God is kind to us in those moments. He doesn’t get angry at us when we lash out. He’s still kind and tender toward us. But many years later, 10, 20, 30, 50 years later, we look back and go, oh, that’s what God was doing. In the last chapter of the book of Job, Job says this. “Now my eyes have seen what the Lord has done.” He’s going through this incredible hell for years. At the end of his life, he looks back and goes, oh, that’s what you were doing. I didn’t realize it. We see this with Joseph. Joseph goes through 23 years of incredible difficulty. Being abandoned, betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, accused, wrongfully thrown into prison, forgotten. Many years later, he rises to the second most powerful position in the world. He says in Genesis 50, this is why God did it, so that many would be saved. God had me go through all of this so I would be equipped to save people in this moment. We see this with King David over and over again. We see this with Esther. Esther goes through this moment in life and she walks into the king’s chambers and she’s able to save God’s people because of what she had experienced. God takes us through these moments that are difficult, but we don’t realize that in this season, he is preparing us for the next. You have no idea what you’re gonna face in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. But God knows. God is supernaturally organizing the days of your life, preparing you. Not merely for the days on this side of eternity. God is also doing work in you on this side of eternity, preparing you and equipping you to enjoy that which he has for you on that side of eternity.   I Don’t Want To Be A Casual Christian I want to share a story that seems a little charismatic. It can seem a little bit spooky. We want to be very careful to not build our theology on our experiences. It’s a terrible way to build your theology. We should build up what we believe to be true solely on Scripture. So I’m a little hesitant to share this story, but I do think it highlights what I’m teaching this morning. So I’m going to share it with some caution, but I think it’ll become obvious what I mean by it. I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, and I came to faith in Christ at age 14. I got involved at a church. I remember one night after our youth group Wednesday night, most of the teenagers had left, and I would volunteer to stick around. I was vacuuming our youth room at our church building, and our youth pastor, Rob Peters, came in and says, ‘Kenny, that’s a ministry, brother.’ I didn’t understand what he meant, I’m 14. I just became a Christian. I don’t know what the word ministry means. He’s says, ministry is when you serve, you’re ministering to the other Christians. You’re serving them and helping them by vacuuming. So God’s going to reward you for that, brother. I said, oh, that’s pretty cool. I’m going to keep vacuuming. I want the reward. So, I’m vacuuming and Rob is talking and he’s putting some stuff away. Then, Rob starts singing this song I had never heard. I was a new believer. I literally had been a Christian just a few months. He’s singing this song, and it goes like this. “I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be a casual Christian. I don’t wanna live I don’t wanna live a lukewarm life. I want to light up the night with an everlasting light. I don’t want to live a casual Christian life.” He’s singing this, and I said, what? I kind of like the lyrics of that song. He taught me the lyrics and we sang. He’s like, it’s a group named DeGarmo and Key. They were popular back in the 80s. It’s kind of a cheesy Christian song. He would sing it regularly. So I picked up on it, I started singing it, and I sang that song pretty much every day well into my 30s. I still sing it regularly. It became a mantra of my life. Lord, I don’t want to be a casual Christian. I don’t want to live a lukewarm life. I want to light up the night with an everlasting light. I don’t want to live a casual Christian life. I sang that song regularly. Rob would sing it. But here’s the thing. I had actually never heard the song. I had never heard the recorded version of it. For years and years. I had only heard Rob sing it. Fast forward to 2009, 13 years later. I was 27 years old by this point. I was working in real estate. I was also working for a Christian nonprofit organization out of Texas, where I helped lead short term mission trips. I worked from Philly and I would travel, leading spring breaks, summer, Christmas. I would lead high school students on short term mission trips. I did this for several years, and it was a great experience. Once a year, there were about 80 adults around North America that did what I did for the organization, where we worked for them remotely, from afar, prepping for trips and then leading trips. Since we lived all over North America, they would fly us into Texas once a year. It was called PD Summit. Project Directors. So all the Project Directors from around the world would come in every February for a couple days. It would be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. For training, encouragement, camaraderie. You know, it was a really great time. It was kind of like a family reunion every year. I did this for seven years, PD Summit. These are some of my best friends in the world. We’re all project directors, people who served in this role all across the country. Teachers, pastors, business guys. I built friendships with all these people. Some of my best friends in the world are people who were project directors across the United States. How I ended up in Orlando was there was a project director working at Mosaic, and he recruited me to come to Florida in 2013. So we go to PD summit. In the months leading up to PD summit in 2009, I had gone through a really difficult season. Some of the most difficult, most dark moments in my life. I wouldn’t quite say it was a depression I was in, but pretty close. One of the darkest moments of my entire life. I was incredibly discouraged. One of the sentiments in my life is, I was working in real estate, and I really sensed the call to vocational ministry, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. There were some obstacles and some opposition in my life that were really some painful things. I was feeling really discouraged. I was feeling like I was useless in the kingdom of God. I have nothing to offer people. There’s nothing in me that I could ever share with anyone of any value. I went to PD Summit. I’m hanging out with friends, and we did this game Olympics that week. This was a very elaborate thing they would do. It was over the top. They broke us up into 80 or 90 adults, into eight or nine teams. Every day in between the training sessions, we would do games, and your team would get points. There was going to be a big prize at the end of the weekend for the team that had the most points. There were different things that happened throughout Thursday, Friday, Saturday. and different members of my team had each done something to garner points. By Friday night, I had not done anything to offer my team anything. So as silly as it is, it reinforced what the emotion I was already feeling, this dark moment I was in. Having a real difficulty with some things and feeling like I’m useless. Here I am again, and I’m like, this is stupid that I shouldn’t be upset about this, but, my feelings are hurt that I’m useless. But yet again. I have nothing to offer anyone ever. I should just end my life. As absurd as that sounds, or over the top, that was it. That was the emotion, the sentiment I was feeling. We get to Saturday night and talking to my friends, and some of the guys were kind of jokingly teasing me, ah, Kenny’s done nothing. You struck out in kickball. They didn’t know what I was wrestling with. I was keeping it to myself and pretending to be happy, you know, jovial Kenny. Saturday night comes and I’m feeling pretty weighty. The last night was trivia night and we’re going through trivia. Our team is in second place of the nine teams going into trivia. We’re doing okay and everyone on the team is contributing. The last question, guys, it’s God’s providence, I’m telling you. The last question was, give us the name and artist of this song. For the first time in 13 years, I heard Casual Christian by DeGarmo and Key. I had never heard the recorded version before that moment. I had only heard Rob’s singing version of it in my head. For the first time in my life I heard it and I said to my team, this is Casual Christian by DeGarmo and Key. NO, Who’s that? No, guys, I’m telling you, I have sang this song almost every day of my life for the last 13 years. This is Casual Christian by DeGarmo and Key. They were pushing back. Every cheesy Christian 80s/90s band was being thrown out. I said to my team, I am telling you, this is Casual Christian by DeGarmo and key. One of the guys, Adam, was like, Kenny’s pretty confident, so, all right, we’re gonna lose. You haven’t come through for us for the last three days, but maybe you will. Of the nine teams, only two teams got it right. The second team that got it right was behind us. So we propelled into first place and we won. It was great. It was so silly. A bunch of 20/30 year olds elated that we won this silly game Olympics. It was the dumbest thing in the world. Then two of the guys, Adam and another guy, they actually lifted me up like on their shoulder. Everyone was chanting, Kenny, Kenny, Kenny. I mean, it was this elaborate moment. It was so ridiculous. People are cheering, they’re like, how did you know that? My youth pastor used to sing it. That night we were leaving, I was walking down a hallway. Something broke me. The heaviness that I had felt for months at that point. I can only describe it as being supernatural. It broke and something lifted. And I was different. I was a different person. I don’t say this often, I say this very rarely because I think it’s weird when Christians overuse this, but I really do believe the spirit of God spoke to me that night in a profound way. Kenny, I have been preparing you for things long before you realize. We were getting on a bus to go back to our lodging, and Adam says to me, it was like you were born for this. They had no idea. I shared with Adam many years later. We were in Vegas on vacation a couple years ago later, me, Adam and a group of friends, and I shared with him, that night, God did something in me that I can’t describe. From that moment on, I have never doubted that God will equip me for all that he has for me.   Closing: God Cares For You Now, that situation is not why I believe it. I believe it because the Bible tells me. But God used that moment to help me believe what the Bible says. I remember that night. There were bible verses that I had memorized that were coming to my mind, that for the first time I believed in a way that I hadn’t believed before. Jeremiah 1:5 came to mind. He says: “I have known you from the time you were in the womb. I formed you.” 1 Corinthians 2:9, The apostle Paul says that : “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived the things that God has planned for those who love love him.” I had known that verse, but I believed it differently. Your mind hasn’t even conceived the things that God has planned for you in this life and in the next. 2 Corinthians 4:17, when Paul says that the sufferings of this world are building for us, preparing for us, a weight of glory that cannot be compared to anything else. That the things you suffer in this world is creating something, this weight of glory that you will experience forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. You can’t even compare it to anything on this world. There’s no good thing on this side of eternity that could compare to the thing that God is preparing for you. The thing that God is using to prepare that thing for you is the suffering of this age. I all of a sudden believe that in a way I hadn’t believed it before. Then 1 Peter 5:7, when he says: “Cast your cares on him because he cares for you.” Church, He cares for you. I want you to know that. You can come to him with your cares. He cares for you. He has good things planned for you. Surely good will follow you all the days of your life. He cares for you. He sees you. He knows you. He is equipping you in ways you can’t even imagine. He’s taking you through difficulties and you’re learning lessons and garnering wisdom that you will then be able to apply in a future season of life, or more importantly, when you enter into glory. You will look back and say, that’s what he was doing. He’s even better than I thought. What a moment it will be when we step into glory and we see he was even better than we thought. The writer of Hebrews is saying, we don’t want you to miss out on that moment. So don’t stop believing in Jesus. Christians, Jesus will help you. He will equip you. He will strengthen you. He will be with you, shepherding you. He is better than anything or any person you could ever imagine. So don’t stop believing in Jesus.

  Introduction: Why Trust the Bible? It is a delight to be with you this morning. I am always delighted to be with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day. I am here with most of my family, my wife, Bridget, and our seven youngest children are with me. We bring you greetings from Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, where we have recently relocated and become members. We spent almost the last decade in Lusaka in Zambia. We went there to help start the African Christian University. We’re supposed to be there for three to five years, but ended up being there almost 10. But we are back now and excited about the opportunity to help start the Founders Seminary in Cape Coral. Pray for us as we get started. Our first semester starts on August 11th. I have the privilege of serving as the president of the new seminary, and it is a weighty responsibility, but an exciting one. So please keep us in mind, keep us in your prayers. Today, I have a very specific message to give you, and that is why we choose to believe the Bible. That’s something that I’ve been talking about, preaching about, writing about for a very, very long time. It’s something that has really come to the forefront in the broader culture at large. I don’t know if you know the name Wes Huff, but Wes Huff is an apologist. He’s a Canadian PhD student specializing in New Testament textual criticism. A while back, Wes got a call from a friend who was doing a podcast, and it was a last-minute thing where Wes was asked to come on and have a discussion, have a debate with another guy who was not famous, but he was well known in the biblical skepticism field. He is a guy who talks about all these conspiracy theories and how there are Egyptian myths and ancient texts, and all these conspiracy theories about the Bible. So Wes agreed to go on his podcast, and it was really bad. The biblical skeptic was utterly exposed as the fraud that he is. He goes all around the world talking to people about these things that supposedly undermine the authority of scripture. He said he was talking about this one example, this Sinai Bible that doesn’t even have the resurrection. So Wes Huff pulls that book off of his bookshelf. Again, Wes Huff, PhD student, is studying textual criticism. He asks if the guy was talking about Codex Sinaiticus, and it was. Wes opens in the original written language and shows that what he says is not there is actually there. The guy’s like, okay, I’ll take your word for it. It’s a couple of hours of moments like these. So much so that eventually Joe Rogan invites Wes Huff to come on the Joe Rogan show. Because the original podcast went viral. It was so embarrassing, and Joe Rogan was talking about how embarrassing it was. Joe Rogan, a well-known atheist, spends hours with West Huff talking about the Bible and textual criticism and all this sort of stuff. Wes brought different things with him to show and give to Joe. Joe Rogan is going to church now, communicating with Wes Huff regularly about the Bible. Now he’s been on other podcasts to talk about this because of the phone call that he answered and was ready for. Essentially, he answered the question that we’re addressing here today. I’m not saying that everybody needs to be a PhD-level textual critic. That’s not what we’re going to be doing here today. Today, I just want to help you be able to answer what I believe is the most important question for any Christian to answer. Let that sink in for a minute. Now, as I say that, some of you are sitting there thinking, well, I don’t know if that’s the most important question. Fine. Some of you are thinking, I think the most important question would be, Who is Jesus? My most important question would be, What must I do to be saved? Or the most important question, fill in the blank, whatever it is that you say is the most important question. Let me ask you another question. Why do you believe what you believe about that? The answer is because it’s in the Bible. Which means the more important question is, why do you believe the Bible? Because whatever else it is you think is an important question, your reason for it is going to be scriptural. So, at the end of the day, the most important question for you to be able to answer is, why do you believe the Bible?   Insufficient Answers to the Question As we think about that, there are a couple of very popular answers to the question. One popular answer to the question, unfortunately, is, That’s how I was raised. I was raised in the church. I was raised as a Christian. I was raised, and I’ve always believed in the Bible. That’s how I was raised. That’s an insufficient answer to the question. The older you get, the more you’ll understand how insufficient that is. Because the older you get, the more you’ll be confronted with things that you were raised to believe that weren’t true. There are so many wives’ tales and other things that you were raised to believe that weren’t true. So that’s an insufficient answer. Another answer that people often give is, I tried it and it worked for me. A very popular answer, especially today. Where experience is everything. I tried it and it worked for me. It changed my life. It’s only slightly better, but not sufficient. How many people in this world have tried things other than the Bible and had their lives changed? Many, many, many people. One story I love is the story of a young man who lived in the Boston area. His father was killed with his sister, and this young man got into all kinds of trouble. Eventually, he ended up in Harlem, New York. He was a gangster, a hustler, and was arrested, went to prison. He became a drug addict and a drug dealer. So he’s in prison, and in prison he meets some people who begin to tell him about this Messiah. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with it until one night, in his cell, he is visited by the Messiah. He goes and talks to the people who’ve been trying to tell him about this. And his life has changed, utterly transformed. He becomes a model prisoner. He gets out early, he continues to live a transformed life, and personally opens dozens of houses of worship. He tried this Messiah and it worked for him. His name is Malcolm X. His messiah was the honorable Elijah Muhammad. He’s the founder of the cultic group the Nation of Islam. So if we’re satisfied with, ‘I tried it and it worked for me’, even Malcolm X eventually came to realize that Elijah Muhammad was not the Messiah, that he was completely wrong. He shouted it from the rooftops, and eventually, the Nation of Islam assassinated him. So the fact that you try something and your life is changed because you tried it doesn’t make it true. So we gotta have a better answer.   Sufficiently Answering the Question I’m going to give you an answer, and I’ll spend the rest of our time teaching you this answer from a passage of scripture. Some of you may already know this answer. Somebody asks why you choose to read the Bible. Instead of saying, that’s how I was raised, or I tried it and it works for me, I prefer to answer, I choose to believe the Bible because it’s a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin. We are going to go through this step by step, and more importantly, we’ll go through it line by line, verse by verse. Because it’s not necessarily my answer. This is just my succinct communication of Peter’s answer in 2 Peter, chapter 1. I’m just abbreviating and consolidating Peter’s answer. Second Peter, chapter one, beginning verse 16. And there we read: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God and as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” This is our answer. By the way, it’s very important at the outset to say this, we don’t give this answer because it’s some sort of spiritual judo move that will make any and everybody submit and say Now I believe. That is not the way that this works. What’s interesting is, we talked about Wes Huff and his encounter, and while there are some people like Rogan who are now exploring more and going to church and talking a lot more about these things, and we hope will come to faith, the guy whom he obliterated, he’s even more entrenched. In fact, he came at two o’clock in the morning with a cease and desist order after that podcast, demanding that the guy whose podcast it was not publish. He did not want the world to see him. He did not say, You know what, I was wrong. The facts are on your side. He didn’t. Because at the end of the day, look at verse 19 again: “We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” That’s what it takes for people to believe, for the day to dawn and the morning star to rise in their hearts, for Christ to make them alive. So I don’t give you this answer because somehow it’s the magic bullet that will make any and everyone believe there is no such thing. I give you this answer because it is incumbent upon us to know what we believe and why we believe. It is incumbent upon us to be able to answer anyone who asks us the reason for the hope that is in us. We believe that God uses his word, and so if we’re going to answer, we should give one that is scriptural. I’ve had many an opportunity to walk through this passage of scripture with people because it goes a little something like this: we’re talking about whatever the subject is, I’ll say what I believe on the subject. You pick any subject, the subject of the day. I will say, when the Bible says this and the Bible says that, it never fails. People would say that works for you. But not everybody believes in the Bible; that’s your faith that works for you. I’ll get an opportunity to share with them why I choose to believe the Bible. It’s a reliable collection of historical doctrines written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. Therefore, supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies claim that the writings are divine rather than human in origin. Again, that is not my answer; it actually comes from a passage of Scripture. Then we get to talk about this passage of scripture. So let’s look at it in turn.   A Reliable Collection of Historical Documents First, a reliable collection of historical documents. Verse 16: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. We did not follow cleverly devised myths. Oftentimes, that’s what we’re accused of. We’re accused of following cleverly devised myths. These things are made up. These are just stories that have been passed down. In fact, these stories that have been passed down are not even reliable stories. We’ve often encountered people who will say that basically what we hold in our hands is a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation. Of course, so much has been lost as a result of that. Or you’ll hear people say that it’s like a game of Telephone. Or the name it used to be called by, Chinese Whispers. Listen, people still do this in college lecture halls in order to supposedly undermine the authenticity of the Bible. You whisper into the ear of one person, and then that person whispers into the next person’s ear, and so forth. Then, at the end, we get to the final person and ask, What did you hear? He says something that is not exactly what I whispered to the first person. That game is used as an example of why it is that we don’t have a reliable collection of historical documents. By the way, it is a collection of historical documents. Unlike many supposed holy books out there, our book is not written by a single individual. Our book is written by a collection of individuals. We have a reliable collection. It’s not just one book. It’s 66 books. There are over 40 authors. It’s written in three different languages. Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. It’s written on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. Again, over 40 authors, a period of over 1600 years. That’s how this collection came to be. It’s a reliable collection of historical documents. So of course, it’s a collection. Nobody’s arguing now, but it’s a reliable collection. That’s what people are arguing against because of this game of telephone, this game of Chinese whispers that gets us the Bible. Well, there are a couple of things wrong with that analogy. Here’s problem number one. I read for you from the ESV, the English Standard Version. Now, in order for that analogy to apply, the ESV would have to be a translation of earlier translations. So let’s say the ESV is a translation of the NASB, and then the NASB would have to be a translation of an earlier version. Let’s say that goes back to the New King James, and the New King James would have to be a translation of the King James, and King James has to be a translation of the Geneva Bible, and so on and so forth all the way back. But you see, the problem is it doesn’t work that way. The translators of the ESV didn’t go back to earlier translations. They went back to the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic documents themselves. So now here’s what the game of Chinese whispers looks like. I say something into his ear, and then I say something into her ear, the same thing. All the way down, I say something into each individual ear, all the way to the last person. Everybody heard it from me. That’s how Bible translation goes. People who use this argument are ignorant, evil, or both, because that’s not the way the Bible is translated. Ah, but wait. We don’t have the originals. This is true. We don’t have the originals. For example, we have books in schools about Julius Caesar. What they know about Julius Caesar probably comes from Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars. We have somewhere between 5 and 10 partial manuscripts, the earliest ones written a thousand years after Julius Caesar, dead and gone. You’re probably talking about Aristotle. Eventually, kids who go to school will learn things about Aristotle, maybe from Aristotle’s Poetics. Again, we have fewer than a dozen copies of Aristotle’s Poetics, the earliest ones. 1400 years after Aristotle. Definitely, these folks would be reading Homer’s Iliad, but nobody’s going to tell them that the earliest copies we have are 2100 years after the original. Nobody questions them, because when it comes to ancient literature, that’s not all that crazy. 900 years, 1400 years, even 2000 years. When it comes to the Bible, for example, the New Testament, we have somewhere between five and six thousand manuscripts or portions of manuscripts in the New Testament. The earliest dated document is called P52. By the way, one of the things that West Huff gave to Joe Rogan was a facsimile of P52. This fragment that we have. It’s about a generation after the death of the apostles who penned them. That’s from John’s Gospel. John was the longest-surviving of the apostles. So, within decades of his death, we can go and look at a fragment of the Gospel that he wrote. Again, nobody’s questioning Caesar, Aristotle, Homer. 900 years, 1400 years, 2000 years between writing and what we can put our hands on. Why on earth will we question the authenticity of documents? We can put our hands on copies that are as early as the lifetime of eyewitnesses. We have a reliable collection of historical documents. Well, some people say, I get that, but what happened was, there were monks, and these monks were the ones who created these writings that we have. They created these writings long after all of that was actually done. Ok, so we had these overzealous monks who deceived the world. Here’s what they would have to do. These overzealous monks would have to collect 6,000 manuscripts and portions of manuscripts, change them all the exact same way, not show their ink work, not get caught, and never give up the conspiracy. But there’s another level and layer to their problem, because within the first and second century, remember Jesus said that we were to go and preach this gospel to all people. The problem is that people groups speak different languages. So within the first century and a half, we have the Bible translated into Syriac, Coptic, and Latin, for example. So now these overzealous monks, they’re not dumb people. They realize that if they change the Greek manuscript, there are also Syriac, Coptic, and Latin copies of the Greek manuscript. The Syriac, Coptic, and Latin copies are going to say something that your forgeries don’t. So now you’ve got to collect not only all 6,000 Greek manuscripts, but you’ve got to collect all the Syriac, Coptic, and Latin manuscripts. You’ve got to change those, and remember the lies you told in Greek, you’ve got to get all those back to where you stole them from. Don’t get caught. Don’t show your ink work, and never give up your conspiracy. There’s another layer of the problem. The early Church Fathers preached and wrote commentaries on the New Testament. How thoroughly did they preach and write commentary on the New Testament? So much so, the New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger has argued that if all we had were the writings of the early Church Fathers, we would be able to reproduce the entire New Testament, save 11 verses. So now our overzealous monks, 6,000 Greek manuscripts, all the Syriac, Coptic, and Latin translations of the Greek manuscripts, all of the writings of the early Church fathers, and their conspiracy have to last several hundred years. It takes more faith to believe that than it does to believe that we have a reliable collection of historical documents.   Written by Eyewitnesses Not only do you have a reliable collection of historical documents, but we have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses. Let’s look at the next part of this verse 16: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His Majesty.” Remember, this is Peter. The sword in the ear. I’ll never deny you. Who do you say that I am? Bid me to come to you. Walking on water. This is Peter. He says, but we were eyewitnesses of His Majesty. Not only that, but listen, for example, this is how Luke begins his gospel. Luke, chapter 1, beginning verse 1: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things which you have been taught.” First John, chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. Listen to this: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” In case you didn’t get his emphasis in verse one. Listen to verse two: “The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.” In case he wasn’t clear in verses 1 or 2. Listen to verse 3: “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” We have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses. By people who were there, by people who saw, by people who touched, by people who hurt directly. It sets the Bible apart.   During the Lifetime of Other Eyewitnesses Not only do we have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses, but they were also written during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. Let’s put that piece together. We have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. Look with me at 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 1, Paul writes: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believe in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, (that’s Peter), then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” That phrase, ‘most of whom are still alive’, what that means when you do the math, is that during the time that First Corinthians was written, there were over 300 eyewitnesses to the resurrection still alive. Which means that the claim is falsifiable. That sounds like a bad thing. Actually, it’s the best of things. The claim is actually falsifiable. What that means is you can go and check it out. You put a witness up on the stand, and the witness says, This is what happened, this is where I was. What’s the first question you would ask? Can anybody here verify? If your answer is no, it’s not very strong evidence. If your answer is yes, there were 300 people that you can go ask right now. Here are their names. That’s the strongest testimony possible. Falsifiable evidence. Not, I was in a cave by myself, and this is what came to me. Not, I found these magic glasses. In the case of Mormonism, the angel Moroni came. It was just me and the angel of Moroni, and the magic glasses. It’s not falsified. This claim is. We have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. It was falsified.   Reporting of Supernatural Events So far, all we’ve got is a good history book. We need something beyond just a good history book. Look at verse 17: “For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”, we ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” That’s the Mount of Transfiguration. That’s when Jesus is transfigured and Moses and Elijah show up, and Peter says, We just need to camp out right here. We need to build something right here. This moment needs to be commemorated. Of course, Jesus says no. If you go to the site today, the Catholic Church has done exactly what Jesus said not to do and built a monument there. But I digress. This is the Mount of Transfiguration. This is the very voice of God speaking from Heaven; this is a supernatural event. This is not a superhuman event. Superhuman events, that’s Sports Center Highlights. This is a supernatural event. Again, we’re separating from just history here. We have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, and they report supernatural events. The woman with the issue of blood, the man with the withered hand, the storm that is still, walking on water, water into wine, and of course, the miracle to end all miracles. Friday dead, Sunday risen. Now the stakes are higher. You see, if we believe the first part of this, we could say, absolutely, the Bible’s a good history book. But once we recognize that this good history book reports supernatural events, we have to cross the Rubicon. Now we have to say, this is not just history. It’s not just supernatural events. It’s supernatural events that fulfill prophecy. Verse 19: “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” We have the prophetic word fully confirmed. So now we have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place and fulfillment of specific prophecies, not just general prophecies. Now we can go back. We could go to Isaiah 53. Written 700 or so years before Jesus was born. But you know, you may say that’s not far enough. 700 years, not good enough. Jesus, being the suffering servant, we have to go back further. Fine, let’s go back further. Let’s go back a thousand years before Jesus was born. Let’s go back to what you refer to as Psalm 22. But remember, the Bible didn’t have chapters and verses until very recently. The last several hundred years. The Psalms would not have been known by their number. Psalm 22, for most of its history, was not titled Psalm 22. It was titled by its first line. The first line is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Does that sound familiar? It ought to, because that’s what Jesus cries out while he’s on the cross. So Jesus is hanging on the cross, and he calls out the name of a song. Now, if you are within earshot and you hear him call out the name of a song, it would be as though you’re at an execution and the person being executed says, Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Number one, you know he’s referring to a hymn. But secondly, you also know the next line. If I say, Pass me not, O gentle Savior, what do you think? Hear my humble cry, while not this hour calling, do not pass me by, because you know it. So now, Psalm number 22. Jesus is being crucified. He cries out the title of Psalm 22. He says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The next line, Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Go down to Psalm 22, verse 6: “I’m a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him.” It’s exactly what’s being said to Jesus while he’s being crucified. Verse 12: “Many bulls encompass me; Strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like ravening and roaring lion. I’m poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.” Why? Because you’re nailed to a Roman cross. “My heart is like wax.” Interesting. Pierced in his side, thrusting upwardly, punctured the pericardium. Blood and water rush out. “It is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws.” Almost like you would say, I thirst. “You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs encompass me.” That’s a reference to Gentiles. “A company of evildoers encircles me; one on the right, one on the left. They have pierced my hands, my feet.” By the way, not everyone who was crucified was pierced in the hands and feet. You can be crucified by being tied to a cross and take days to die because you die by asphyxiation. “I can count all my bones.” Why is that significant? Well, Jesus was crucified just before a high holy day. He couldn’t hang on the cross during that high holy day, so he had to be dead. One of the ways to hasten his death would have been to break his legs so that he couldn’t hold himself up and slow his asphyxiation. But when they came to him, he had already breathed his last, so that he didn’t have to break his legs. Which is why the psalmist can say: “I can count all my bones—they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing, they cast lots.” This was written a thousand years before Jesus was crucified by someone who never saw the crucifixion. Because Roman crucifixion had not yet been invented, we had the prophetic word more fully confirmed.   Divine Rather Than Human in Origin We have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies. Finally, they report that their writings are divine rather than human in origin. Look at 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 20: “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Hundreds of times we find the phrase ‘and the Lord said’, ‘and the Lord spoke to’, ‘thus says the Lord’. Hundreds of times. These writers purport to be speaking the words of God himself. They claim that God is the source of this, that God is the ultimate author of this. So again, the first half of this, it’s easy to nod our heads and say, absolutely, because we’re just saying it’s not only good history, it’s great history. It’s a greater history than anything else in the ancient world. Things that we readily accept without question. Yes. Reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. Yes. Second half of this, they report supernatural events. Well, I don’t believe in the supernatural. You’ve got a problem because you’ve already acknowledged that this is not just good history. It’s the best ancient history that the world has ever seen. The best ancient history that the world has ever seen reports supernatural events. It doesn’t only report supernatural events, It reports supernatural events that happen in fulfillment of specific prophecies, not general prophecies. These people claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin, that this is the word of God. You’ve got to do something with that. You have to do something with the fact that this is the very book that teaches us the origins of man. Man’s sin problem, man’s guilt before a holy God, the justice of God that is going to come against man’s sin, and God’s provision through the person and work of Christ so that man might find forgiveness and eternal life in him. That’s what we find in this book. That’s what we find in this reliable collection of historical documents. Then some people say, I get all that. But I’m just more of a man of science. Unless you can prove it to me scientifically. I have to admit that when people say that, I have to hold back my enthusiasm because that one excites me a lot. Oh, you’re a man of science. You want me to prove it to you scientifically using the scientific method. Ironically, you would call yourself a man of science and know nothing about the scientific method. So then you know that in order to employ the scientific method, something has to be observable, measurable, and repeatable. Which means you don’t use the scientific method on historical events because those events are not observable, measurable, and repeatable. You use the evidentiary method like you would in a courtroom. What would that look like? That would look like you calling witnesses, collecting testimony. What would strong testimony in a courtroom look like? Maybe if you could find witnesses who wrote in three different languages, who wrote on three different continents, and there were like 40 of them from all walks of life, most of whom never met each other, and they wrote over a period of 1600 years, and all confirmed the same truth. Maybe that would be a strong case to put on in a courtroom, because at the end of the day, it would lead us to say, I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and they claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin. And, oh, by the way, I tried. It worked for me.   Conclusion: We Can Trust the Bible See, the claims of Christ are not just mythology. God didn’t just send us a myth and a story to be passed down. No, he sent His Son. In the fullness of time, God sent His Son, born of a virgin, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who are under the law. Christ lived his life in public, performed his miracles in public, taught His Gospel in public, was crucified in public, died and was buried, and then resurrected and was seen in public for 40 days after his resurrection. It was all public. Then God was gracious enough to record it for us, to preserve it for us. That’s why Luke says to Theophilus, I write this for you, most excellent Theophilus. Not so that you might have blind faith, but so that you might have certainty concerning the things you’ve been taught. So when I say, place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, turn from your sin and trust in Christ, I’m not saying close your eyes and hope real hard that this myth is true. I’m saying we have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They’re the ones who report these supernatural events, like the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies. They’re the ones who claim that this is the word of God. So it is God who says to you, Repent and believe. Trust in Christ alone for your salvation. He is your only hope. My prayer is that the day would dawn and the morning star would rise in your heart, that God would remove the scales from your eyes and that you would believe that The Lord Jesus Christ is who the Bible says that he is, and that you not only can, but must trust him for the pardon of your sins. Let’s pray. Gracious God, our heavenly Father, we bow before you in humility and gratitude. Humbled by your majesty, in awe of your greatness, and grateful for your goodness and your kindness and your mercy toward us. Thank you for providing and preserving for us your word. I thank you that you speak to us clearly and consistently through those things that you have preserved for us. Grant by your grace that we might not only believe the historical veracity of these things, but that we might come to understand the significance of the supernatural reality. And above all else, that we might come to know and trust the Lord Jesus Christ in the pardon of our sins. Thank you that you have not left us to wander aimlessly in the dark, but that you have revealed yourself to us. And you’ve done so clearly and publicly. Grant us faith to continue to believe, for we ask these things in Christ’s name and for his sake. Amen.

https://youtu.be/iOS6kby7rP4?si=Hz00yhGJMvgSEy2Q   Introduction: Importance of Doctrine We’ve come to a section in the Book of Hebrews where the writer is primarily focusing on application. In the New Testament letters, the writer will typically start with significant doctrine. Up front, there’s doctrine and theology. Then, after they’ve given us a doctrine of theology, they will move into a moment of application, saying, Here’s what I want you to do with this doctrine in theology. That’s what the writer of Hebrews is now doing. For the first 11 chapters, he provided us with a substantial amount of doctrine and theology. He told us a lot about who Jesus is, where Jesus came from, what he came to earth to do, and what he accomplished. He talks about Jesus being the image of the perfect God. That Jesus is better than angels, that Jesus establishes a New Covenant, and that Jesus mediates a better covenant with a better sacrifice than those of the Old Covenant. That Jesus is continually our great High Priest interceding for us. He’s given us a lot of doctrine. He’s explained to us what faith is and why it matters. Now he moves into chapters 12 and 13, and he begins to tell us, What do you do with this doctrine of theology that I’ve now given you? The Book of Hebrews is a transcribed sermon, and I think it serves as a model for how we ought to preach in our present age. We live in a culture in the United States where it is very normal for sermons to be primarily practical or application-oriented. You go to church and you hear, Here are three steps to do this. It’s often absent of theology and doctrine. When you look through the New Testament letters, they spend a lot of time teaching doctrine and theology. We see the book of Galatians has six chapters. The first five are doctrine and theology, and one chapter is application. We see here in Hebrews, 11 chapters chock-full of doctrine and theology, and two chapters of practical application. The most balanced letter is Ephesians. Three chapters of doctrine, three chapters of application. But most of the New Testament authors spend more time teaching doctrine and theology than they do practical application, which I think is a model for how we ought to teach in our services. Tragically, across the Western world, in modern evangelicalism, we spend very little time teaching doctrine and theology. We wonder why our churches are kind of a mess. People ask, Why do you spend so much energy teaching doctrine, because that’s what the New Testament author said. We want to be like them. So this is valuable in our conversations as believers; we should spend lots of time talking about doctrine and theology. As parents, we should be spending lots of time teaching our kids doctrine and theology. Now, certainly, we should not stop there. Those of us who are in the Reformed world sometimes we can stop with doctrine and theology, and then we forget to do the application part. So both are important. The writer of Hebrews has now moved into chapters 12 and 13, where he is spending significant time giving us very practical exhortations. In the first few verses of chapter 12, he gives us some exhortations. The one that I spent the most time talking about last week was he tells us to get rid of sin and to get rid of any hindrances that may distract us from Jesus, even if those things are not sinful. Get rid of sin. Sin is bad. It distracts, it causes harm, it dishonors Jesus. Get rid of sin. But in addition to that, there are lists of things in your life that are not necessarily sinful at all, but you should get rid of them because they potentially are a distraction between you and Jesus. The immature Christian asks this question, Is it sinful? It’s not that I can do it. The mature Christian or the maturing Christian asks a different question, a better question, not Is it sinful? But rather, will this thing help me run after Jesus better? If the answer is no, then you should consider eliminating it from your life. We talked extensively about that last week. That was the first exhortation in the first few verses of Hebrews, chapter 12. Then he’s going to give us significant, more practical applications as he goes through chapters 12 and 13. But before he gets to more exhortations, he has this moment here where he pauses and talks about discipline. He says, get rid of sin and get rid of things that may distract you, even if they’re not sinful. By the way, this is going to take some discipline to do well. If you refuse to engage in it, if you refuse to get rid of sin and to get rid of things that are distractions, God will discipline you because he loves you and he wants to make you better. That’s what he does; he begins to focus on it. So the sentiment that we see from him here in the middle part of chapter 12 is, in essence, to embrace God’s discipline. He doesn’t explicitly say that. That is the implied application. In the middle part of chapter 12, he’s going to talk about the fact that God disciplines us. This is a good thing, and we should like it. We should say, God, bring it on, because he disciplines those whom he loves. If God is not disciplining you, you should question whether or not you are genuinely his. That’s what the writer of Hebrews implies here. So this morning I want to talk a little bit about God’s discipline of us. I want to talk a little bit about how God disciplines us. Then I want to focus on one particular way he disciplines us. Primarily by the way in which we judge and correct one another. First, let’s pray one more time. God, as we look at a few verses from Hebrews chapter 12, would you help us understand it? Would you cause this to change our hearts, to transform us? May we embrace your discipline. May you discipline us as needed and make us more like Jesus. I pray, would you do that? Would you do that in me? Would you do that in us? I pray. Amen.   Understanding God’s Discipline Hebrews chapter 12, verse 5. The writer of Hebrews says: “Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?” There’s an exhortation that was given to you. There were some words given to you, some challenges. The reason they were given to you is because you are sons. You are children of God. Then he says this: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.” Don’t take it lightly that God wants to discipline you. It’s a serious thing. It’s sacred. We should make much of this. We should be excited about this. This is a good thing. I am a dad to a four-year-old. I have disciplined this child for quite some time now on a regular basis. I can assure you, she doesn’t like it when she’s being disciplined. But the writer of Hebrews would have me say, When your good Father disciplines you, you should be excited about that. In First Corinthians 11:32, the apostle Paul says this about God discipling us: “God disciplines us so that we may not be condemned along with the world.” That’s a remarkable statement. There are a bunch of people in the world who are going to be condemned. They’re going to face the wrath of God one day. It will be a tragic, heartbreaking moment, heart-wrenching. God says, some of you believe in me, and I’m going to continually discipline you so that you don’t end up in that category. When God disciplines us and causes us not to be in the category of people that are going to face his condemnation, that’s a good thing. Praise God. It is a gift to be disciplined. Then he alludes to this here in this chapter. Good fathers discipline their children. A father who refuses to discipline his children is not a good father. I want to say that to the kids in the room. When Mommy or Daddy disciplines you, they put you in a timeout, give you a lecture, or may spank you. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing because they love you. We have various forms of discipline in our home. Verbal warnings, time-outs, and there may be moments where there needs to be a firm, physical spanking. We call them pow-pows in our house. Lettie does not like pow-pows, I can assure you. But it’s good for her to get pow pows. It’s good for God to give us pow-pows when we sin. It’s good for God to introduce pain into our lives, to get our attention, for us to know that that behavior is unacceptable. When God gives you a pow-pow, you should say, Thank you, Daddy. Thank you. Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 9. He says, We had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. We’re thankful for them. Shall we not be much more subject to the Father? We recognize what a good dad does. How much more should we respect it when God does it? Side notes to the dads in the room. Discipline should be something that you are primarily involved in. It is very common, I’ve noticed, in American society for moms to carry the weight of disciplining the children. That is inappropriate. Dads, you should be thoroughly involved in that process. You should be leading the way. A good dad should be involved. Do not just advocate that or delegate that to your wife. That’s unfair to her. It doesn’t mean that Mama never disciplines children. But if Mama does all the discipline, that’s unfair to her. That’s way too emotionally exhausting. Dads, you should be involved in that process.   Consequences of our Actions Now, there are many ways in which God disciplines us. I’m going to mention a few of them. First, God will often allow us to experience the consequences of our own actions. He will say, You’ve made this bad, foolish choice. I’m going to orchestrate the events of your life to ensure you suffer the consequences of this thing. I sometimes have to do this with my kids. It’s hard. I want to protect them sometimes. My kid is doing something dumb, and there’s going to be a consequence of that. If you pull the dog’s tail or the dog’s ear, the dog might scratch you, hit you, pound you with his paw, and he might nip at you. I want to protect you from that. But it might actually be good for you to get a little nip from the dog so that you realize you shouldn’t pull the dog’s ear. He doesn’t like that. That’s not kind. So sometimes we have to allow our children to experience the pain of their own actions. That is hard as a parent to watch. But sometimes God does that for us. We see this over and over again in the scriptures. Sometimes God will lead us into difficult situations, hard situations, or God will allow us to experience variations of suffering. He doesn’t want you to suffer, but he is going to lead you into a really hard situation, into a moment where you are experiencing suffering because it will expose your sin. That’s God’s ultimate motivation whenever he’s disciplining us, to highlight in us that there’s something that he wants to get rid of. One of the greatest examples of this in the Old Testament is the Babylonian exile. If you’re not familiar, the nation of Israel came out of Egypt, went into the promised land, and they’ve been there for several hundred years. For almost all of that history, they have been incredibly inconsistent and unfaithful in serving God for hundreds and hundreds of years. God eventually takes the nation of Israel, and he says, I’m going to send you into Babylon. God raises up the Babylonian empire and the Babylonian army, and God makes them strong, this pagan army. God gives Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan ruler, the desire to attack Israel. God does all of that. God leads the Babylonian pagan army, and he strengthens them so they can attack and destroy lots of Israel. Lots of people are killed, lots of the city is destroyed, and the few survivors are then enslaved and dragged off to be slaves in Babylon. God did that to his people. God makes it very clear in the Old Testament, I did that to you, Israel. You’re gonna go be slaves for 70 years in Babylon because there’s something in you as a people that I want to get rid of. I’ve heard Christians in our modern era say things about God. God’s a nice guy. He would never do these kinds of things to you. God wouldn’t discipline. God wouldn’t be mean. God wouldn’t introduce pain into your life. God’s not that kind of God. The same God of the Old Testament is the one who wrote the New. I think you’re misunderstanding who our God is. He will absolutely raise up a pagan army and have you dragged off and be slaves for 70 years because he loves you so much. He’s willing to do whatever needs to be done to get out of your heart and soul the ugliness of sin. Side note, to be very clear, not all suffering is discipline. Sometimes we suffer in this life, and it’s not necessarily God disciplining us. There’s a host of reasons why suffering happens. Discipline is simply one variation or one reason. If you’re interested, we did a sermon series back in January on suffering. We did several sermons on why God introduces suffering. If you’re interested, you can find it on our website, horizoncitychurch.com, click the sermons button. You can find them there. We want to be very careful. If someone is suffering, don’t assume it’s because of discipline. That would be insensitive. I’ve heard Christians say some things that feel insensitive. If someone is experiencing some sort of physical illness, we ask, What’s causing God to discipline you? You don’t know that, so be very careful. We don’t want to make those sorts of assumptions.   Discipline by being Caught in our Sin Another way God disciplines us is that he will often let our sin get caught. This is often quite humiliating. God will discipline us by saying, I’m going to orchestrate the events of your life in such a way that when the next time you do that sin, you’re going to get caught, and it’s going to be incredibly embarrassing to you and those around you. We see this over and over again throughout the Scriptures and in church history. We see this a lot in our modern era. I’m always grieved when there’s a pastor who has a moral failure and he is caught in sin; it breaks my heart every time. Every time I say, Thank you, God. You love that pastor. You let him get caught. You didn’t let it be hidden. He isn’t dying with that sin; you let him get caught. As heartbreaking and embarrassing as it is to him, to his family, to his church, and the body of Christ as a whole, as much of a disgrace and a reproach as it is to the body of Christ, it is grace to that man. Praise be to God that you would love him enough to allow him to get caught. What kindness. There’s a prayer I pray regularly. Lord, if there’s anyone in our congregation with hidden sin, would you help them get caught? So if you’ve got some hidden sin, just know the clock is ticking because God’s going to answer my prayer. You’re going to get caught, and it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be humiliating, and it will be God’s mercy toward you. The thing we see with all of these forms of discipline from God toward his people is that these forms of discipline are never the first response. With the nation of Israel, they go into the land, and 800 years go by before he brings Babylon. 800 years of consistent blasphemy, disrespect, disobedience, and inconsistency. God is continually kind and faithful to them and protects them and provides for them over and over again, generation after generation. God is so patient and long-suffering with them, calling them to repentance. When God disciplines us harshly, it is because there has been a long track record of him disciplining us lightly that we have ignored. He says, I’m going to get your attention one way or another. So this is a great warning for us that when God is disciplining us lightly, we should listen, because if we don’t, he will discipline us more harshly.   Rebuke from Others The light way God disciplines us is that he brings other people into our lives to correct us and rebuke us, to point out our flaws. This is God’s discipline in your life. It’s the light version. You, as a Christian, have other Christians in your life to point out to you your flaws, to judge you, and rebuke you. That is God’s kindness to you. He’s long-suffering, he’s patient, he’s gentle. There are lots of reasons for us to have a Christian community. There are lots of good reasons for us to lean into Christian friendships and spend a lot of time to make sure we don’t miss Sundays, if at all possible. That we lean into relationships with other believers. It’s encouragement and inspiration. There are practical helps. But one of the most important reasons that we lean into Christian community and Christian friendships is that Christians can correct us when we’re wrong. They can highlight our flaws. We don’t like that one. If someone comes to you and tells you you’re doing something wrong, what you ought to do is say, Praise God. He’s being kind to me by bringing someone to tell me how wrong I am. I’m sure we all respond that way every time. No, of course you don’t. We get angry, we get frustrated. We don’t like it. But our responsibility as believers is to look at one another and to diagnose how we’re doing, to judge one another. First Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 12. The apostle Paul says this: “What have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” Some of you guys are so worried about sinners and people who don’t believe in Jesus, let’s spend a lot of energy judging one another in the church. Now, I know some of you are like, wait, didn’t Jesus say, don’t judge? Don’t judge lest you be judged. He did say words that sound like that, but that’s not precisely what he said. When you look at the context in Matthew and Jesus’ teaching, he’s talking about a hypocritical form of judgment. He’s saying, don’t hypocritically judge, lest there will be people who come along and hypocritically judge you. Jesus explicitly tells us to judge. In John, chapter 7, verse 24, Jesus says: “Judge with right judgment.” So there’s a bad form of judging hypocritically, or there’s a right form of judgment. When you use right judgment, there’s a right way to judge. People will say, I don’t judge. We all do. When I walk into Chipotle and I’m staring at the food, I’m judging whether or not I want to put that chicken in my mouth. Does that chicken look like something I want to consume right now, or would I rather the carnitas or the steak? I am passing judgment on which of these is best. I’m making a decision. The apostle Paul and Jesus make it very clear we should all be doing this as Christians with one another, looking at other Christians and determining, Are you doing what you ought to be doing? Are you living the way you ought to be living? When you lean into the Christian community, it’s like having a bunch of extra side-view mirrors. That’s what the Christian community is supposed to be, a bunch of extra mirrors that help me see more of my blind spots so that I’m less likely to cause a wreck. So I’m less likely to be a danger to myself or those around me. People ask me all the time, Why should I become a church member? Why does church membership matter when you become a member of a church? Is it because we get to vote on things? Here at Horizon Church, our members do vote on the budget. Our members have access to financials, my salary, and various decisions. Yes, there’s that element to it, but that’s such a small part of it. Becoming a church member is most valuable because you get a bunch of extra side view mirrors in your life. When you become a member of a church, when you lean into Christian community or if you’re a part of a church that doesn’t do formal membership, when you lean into those relationships with other believers, the thing you get, the most valuable thing, is a bunch of extra people to judge you. That is God’s kindness to you. That is God disciplining you through other believers in the lightest form of discipline possible. It’s not actually all that painful for someone to look at you and tell you that you’re sinning. It hurts our ego, it bruises our pride, but it’s not painful at all. Earlier in Hebrews chapter 12, the writer of Hebrews says, In your fight against sin, you’ve not shed blood. He says, You guys are all up in arms about the things you’re going through. In the process of disciplining you, you’ve not shed your blood. In the process of getting rid of sin, you’ve not shed blood, you’ve not lost an arm, you’ve not been crucified. What you’ve experienced is not that big a deal. So someone told you to stop doing what you’re doing. That’s not that big a deal. In fact, it’s God’s discipline in your life. Don’t make light of that. Later in Hebrews, in verse 11, he says this. “For the moment, all discipline seems painful, not pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” In the moment when you’re being disciplined by God, it doesn’t feel good. It’s not pleasant. But later, it will yield great fruit. So embrace it. The way God does this is he calling us to correct one another. 35 times in the New Testament, we are told to rebuke and judge one another as believers. Here’s the clearest one. Luke 17, verse 3. Jesus is speaking, he says: “If your brother sins, rebuke him.” That’s pretty simple. The implication there is, if you see your brother sinning and you don’t rebuke him, you are disobeying a direct command of Jesus. If I see a believer sinning and I tell them that they’re sinning and to stop, which I’ve done on occasion in my life. Sometimes I’ve gotten a response from some people saying, Who are you to tell me? Well, if I don’t tell you, I’m sinning and I’m going to stand before God, and so I don’t care if you like me or not. I care about what I’m saying before Jesus, and I’m judged by him. So if you’re mad at what I just said, fine. But Jesus is happy with me, and I live to make him happy. When a Christian brother or sister rebukes you for your sin, it’s a good thing. Proverbs 27, verses 5 and 6 say this: “Open rebuke is better than secret love.” Someone who openly rebukes you is better than someone who says nothing but claims to love you in their heart. Someone says, I love you and I keep my mouth shut. That’s not love. It is better for someone to open their mouth and to offend you. In fact, the very next phrase there in Proverbs 27:6 says this: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” The wounds you get from a friend correcting you, those are faithful wounds. Side note: When we seek to bring correction to one another, we want to be gentle and tender. Galatians chapter 6 says this. “If anyone is caught in transgression, restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” If any Christian you know is sinning, it is your responsibility to open your mouth and say something and restore that person to not sinning. But when you do it, do it in a spirit of gentleness. Sometimes people use the commands of Scripture to rebuke one another, to discipline one another, as an excuse to just be jerks. You’re being unkind, and you’re not representing Christ. We want to correct people. We want to do it in a spirit of gentleness. In addition to that, if someone rebukes you and they do it in a way that’s not gentle, that’s not an excuse to ignore them. That’s an immature thing to do. Someone can rebuke you, and they do it ungentlely. They sin in their rebuke, but the content of their rebuke may still very well be accurate. So you should ignore the fact that they were not gentle and just receive the rebuke. Maybe later down the road, you can follow up with them. A week later, you can follow up and say, You rebuked me that day. Thank you. I prayed about it. I’m asking God for his help to fight that. In the conversation when you rebuked me accurately, the way you did it didn’t quite represent Christ well. It might have been easier for someone in my church to receive that.   Responding to Correction In my pastoral experience, there are usually four ways in which people respond to correction. When God is seeking to discipline a Christian through another Christian. Here are the four ways we respond. Number one is that we get defensive. We begin to defend or justify the action. The second thing we often do is we get quiet, and we get really uncomfortable. We’re anxious about the confrontation, and we get quiet and pretend like we’re listening because we just want the moment to be over and move on. The third response is that we want to return the person who rebuked us. They’ve corrected us. They’ve said something to us that hurts our feelings. We want to then turn around and return the hurt to them. I am feeling hurt, and now I’m going to say something back to you with the sole purpose of hurting your feelings because you’ve hurt my feelings. Or the fourth way sometimes we respond is we simply ignore the person. We get defensive, we get quiet, we return the hurt, or we just ignore them. Friends, all of these are wrong responses. All of these are sinful responses. When another brother is correcting you, it is God seeking to discipline you. The writer of Hebrews says, Do not make light of that. The right response would be to humbly ask, Would you tell me more? Tell me more about how wretched I am. Can you tell me more about how I did that? Can you give me some other examples? What are some other things that I did? Can you help me understand how this is hurting other people? Do you have any wisdom that can help me get how I can get better at this? Or maybe you say, I’m sorry. Would you forgive me? For some weird reason, humans struggle for that to be one of our early instincts. Someone is sinning when we rebuke them; the right response we want to hear is often the expression of sorrow and apology. Or how about this one? Brother, sister, I think you’re right. Would you pray for me right now? Would you pray right now for me that God would help me to receive this discipline? Psalm 141, verse 5. This is David speaking about other people rebuking him. This is what he says: “Let a righteous man strike me. It is a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It is oil on my head. Let my head not refuse it.” Someone rebukes you, pour that oil all over me. It’s like a fragrance. Bring it on. Do we respond like this often when we’re being corrected? I wish I could tell you this is how I respond every time. God disciplines us through each other, and we should not make light of that. Church, if we refuse to receive the light discipline that comes from the verbal corrections of our fellow brothers and sisters, you should expect a more harsh form of discipline if you continue in your disobedience. The refusal to receive correction, I almost want to say it’s the worst of sins. I wouldn’t quite say that, but I almost want to say that because this sin, the refusal to receive correction, impedes every area of your life. If you have a major anger problem, but you’re willing to listen to correction and people correct you on your anger problem, eventually your anger problem will get better with God’s help. But if you refuse to listen to correction, no area of your life ever gets better. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Don’t make light of this. The Lord is going to discipline you. Receive it. In Hebrews 12:14, he uses the word ‘strive’. The word strive here is conjugated in the original Greek in a particular way. It’s a verb, and it’s a second-person plural verb, meaning it’s one person talking to a group of people collectively. This form of the Greek verb ‘strive’, the way it appears in the original Greek, implies that there’s a collective effort that he’s commanding you to do. So he’s saying, strive to do these things. But he’s not saying you individually strive, he’s saying plural. All of you as a group, collectively, together, strive to do these things. It’s a group effort because he knows he can’t do it alone. Then he gives them a list of things to strive together to do. Look at verse 14. He highlights two things. He says, peace with everyone and holiness. He says, Strive to have peace with everyone and to have holiness. But you don’t do it on your own. You strive together. Well, how do we strive together to have peace with everyone? Well, if one person doesn’t have peace with another one, someone’s got to say something. That’s the implication. There’s some form of verbal correction. Or, how do we have holiness? How do we strive for holiness together? Well, when we see each other not being holy, we open our mouths and we say, That thing you did wasn’t very holy. Then in verse 15, he highlights two more things: that no root of bitterness springs up. And he later says in the verse that no one is sexually immoral. So, as believers strive together to make sure no bitterness springs up. How do you make sure no bitterness springs up without talking to one another about it? If you see one person being bitter, it’s your job to say, I see some bitterness springing up. Let’s stop that. Or if you see someone being sexually immoral, you know of someone doing that which they ought not do. The Bible is very clear on what the parameters for sexuality are. One man, one woman, within the bounds of sacred covenant. Anything outside of that in any kind is sexually immoral, is an abomination to God. So if we see anyone else who claims to be a Christian doing that, it’s your job collectively to help them. They can’t do it on their own. We strive collectively to do this together. Together, embrace the Lord’s discipline so that we can be peaceful with everyone. To be holy, to have no bitterness, to avoid sexual immorality. I’m in a couple of private Facebook groups that have various discussions on various topics. In one of these particular groups, there was a conversation that came up. I chimed in and gave some thoughts. Then something I said led one of my friends to think there was some bitterness in me. My friend Ken, he lives in Tennessee, saw this thing I posted in his Facebook group and he sent me an audio text message. He’s said, Hey, man, I really appreciate your insights. I think there’s a lot of wisdom. However, there was one phrase you said in the middle of this paragraph that leads me to believe that maybe there’s some bitterness in you toward this other person. Maybe I’m wrong, bro. But I want to ask you about that phrase because I think most people reading this probably won’t pick up on it, but because I know you and I know the situation. Maybe I’m wrong. Just give me a heads up, correct me if I’m wrong. You know what? He wasn’t wrong. There was absolutely some bitterness in my heart toward that person. This was about two months ago. I wish I could tell you this was a decade ago. I had to pause and say, Ken’s 100% right. So I sent my message back and said, You’re right. I am bitter in my heart. We went back and forth, multiple messages. I was frustrated about the situation. I had not talked about it. So this bitterness slipped in, amid other words. When we went back and forth, I just said, Brother, forgive me for demonstrating my bitterness. Thank you for challenging me. That person wronged me. They were wrong in what they did. They’re probably never gonna say sorry. They’re never gonna apologize. They’re never gonna acknowledge it. So, for my own spiritual well-being, I was encouraged to choose to forgive that person. I have to be honest, that was really hard to hear. My friend Ken is saying, we need to strive together to have peace with everyone. These two believers are frustrated with one another, and he’s challenging both of them. My friend Ken is a gift to me. God disciplined me through the correction of a fellow believer. It was good for me. I recognized in my own heart, there’s some bitterness there. I need to go pray. I have some work to do. Lord, would you forgive me? God sends people your way because he loves you and he wants to root out of you the things in you that are ugly and broken.   Conclusion: Consequences for Ignoring Correction What happens if someone refuses to listen to the correction over and over again? Two things will happen. Number one is this: If you refuse to listen to the light correction, the verbal correction, and rebuke of those other believers, then God will find more harsh ways to discipline you. It’s going to happen because he loves you. He’s a good dad. Why would we expect him not to discipline us? Second thing, if someone continues to disobey, refuses to listen to the correction of people, refuses to embrace the lighter forms of discipline, then what’s going to happen is eventually those of us who are Christians, we are going to realize that this person is not genuinely saved, that their faith is not genuine, that they’re not genuinely a son of God. They may have duped themselves into thinking they’re a Christian. They may have duped others into thinking that their trajectory is eternal judgment. If there’s a person who claims to be a Christian, maybe they do Christian stuff. Maybe they’re a member of a church. Maybe they’re a member of this church. But if that person refuses, over and over again, to receive correction and to obey God’s word as commanded, that will be assigned to the rest of us. That person does not have the spirit of God at work in their life. That’s a very sobering reality. The Bible gives us very clear instructions as a church on how we deal with this. I won’t go into detail now, but Matthew 18 and 1st Corinthians 5 give us very clear instructions that someone in the local church who refuses to receive a correction must eventually be excommunicated. They are removed from that church. That is a painful, painful situation. We call that church discipline. When a church disciplines one of its members by publicly declaring that person is disobedient, and they refuse to do what God has called them to do. So we want everyone to know that we don’t think this person’s a Christian. We think if they died today, they would go to hell, and because we love them, we want them to know it, and we beg for them to repent of their sin. Now, the process of church discipline should be a long, patient process. My church in Minnesota, over the course of six years there, we disciplined and excommunicated seven different people over the course of six years. But each time, it was a one to two-year process of us trying to get them to listen, and they refused. Church discipline is a lost art in American evangelicalism. Today, when you excommunicate someone, you’re the bad guy. I can’t believe you would have kicked someone out. How evil you are. But the Bible says it’s a form of kindness. This person thinks they may be a Christian, they think they’re going to heaven, but they’re not. That’s a very dangerous place to be. So it is time for that person to know that they’re not going to heaven, and they should repent of their sin. Refusal to listen to correction could be evidence that you are not genuinely saved. You think you’re headed to heaven, but you’re not. I implore you, when you are corrected, humbly repent of your sin. Beg God for his mercy. He will give it. He disciplines us because he loves us. After all, we are his children. As the writer of Hebrews says here in chapter 12, if he doesn’t discipline us, then we’re not legitimate and we’re not actually of him. Therefore, seek the mercy of God and collectively strive for holiness. Allow God to discipline you through other people. Do not make light of that discipline. In doing this, as we embrace correction and discipline, as we strive together to do this well, in this process, we will experience all that God has for us in this life and the next.

Introduction: Overview of Hebrews 11 Those who are regularly with us know we’ve been traveling through the Book of Hebrews over the last several months. Just a few more Sundays and then we’ll be in the Psalms for the summer. We are excited for the summer. My wife is pregnant, and we’re expecting our third child in July. Very excited about that. I’ve lined up a few guest preachers for the summer. I’m excited to come and share from the Psalms throughout the summer. I’ve said this before: The Book of Hebrews is, in essence, a transcribed sermon. The writer of Hebrews at some point preached this sermon, wrote it down, and then sent it to this church that was significantly being persecuted. A church that was predominantly composed of Hellenistic Jews or ethnic Jews who spoke Greek and were part of Greek culture, likely located in modern-day Italy. He writes this sermon, this letter, and he sends it to them as a means of encouraging them to stick with the faith. His goal is that he doesn’t want any of them to abandon Jesus ever. He wants every person who’s a part of the church to stick with Jesus and love him all the days of their life. He knows the best way to do that is to make sure they know how great Jesus is. They need to know that Jesus is better than anything else they could compare him to. Jesus is better than whatever you think he is. If you have a high view of Jesus, that’s great, but he’s even better than that. If you have a low view of Jesus, that’s an error. He is significantly greater than that. But whatever you think of Jesus, he’s better than that. That’s been the overarching theme of the Book of Hebrews. Jesus is better than the angels. He’s better than Moses. He’s the best brother that’s ever been. He’s the greatest human that’s ever been. He’s a great high priest, greater than the high priest of the Old Testament. He establishes a covenant greater than the covenant that they mediated. He does it with a sacrifice greater than the sacrifices that they provided. Because Jesus is better. That’s his overarching goal. I want you to be convinced that Jesus is better. That anything you consider going to, anything you think about leaving Jesus for, just know whatever that thing is, it’s not as good as Jesus. Jesus is better. Then he gets to Hebrews chapter 11. In that chapter, as we’ve seen the last few weeks, he begins to highlight all of these great people from the Old Testament who lived like they believed that God is better than anything else they could think of. He mentions these various people, and he’s writing to these Christians who were ethnic Jews who had become Christians. As Jews, they would have loved the Old Testament. They would have esteemed the Old Testament. He begins to highlight some of their heroes. He explicitly mentions 16 different names and then alludes to at least 10 other people throughout the chapter. He says, see all these great people in the Old Testament, Abel and Enoch and Abraham and Noah and Isaac and Moses and David and the Prophets. They demonstrated great faith, and they stuck with God. Do you know why? Because they know that Jesus is better. That’s the overarching message of Hebrews chapter 11. His exhortation to them is, continue to live your life demonstrating faith in Jesus, just like your heroes demonstrated faith in God in the Old Testament. By the way, we know more about God than they did. God has revealed more of himself. We know more of who God is today than even they did. So if they lived out in faith, how much more should we live out in faith? That’s, in essence, the message of the first 11 chapters of the book of Hebrews. Then we come to Hebrews chapter 12. We will see in Hebrews chapter 12, in the opening few words, that he gives us three exhortations. Number one, he’s going to tell us to get rid of sin. Number two, he’s going to tell us to get rid of anything that could weigh you down, even if it’s not sinful. Number three, he will say, add things to your life that will remind you of who Jesus is. Those are the exhortations from the early verses of Hebrews chapter 12. Get rid of sin, get rid of anything that will weigh you down to distract you, even if it’s not sinful. Then thirdly, he will say, add some things to your life that will help you remember Jesus. So we’re going to look at Hebrews chapter 12. We’ll see these observations. But before we do that, let’s pray one more time. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Help us understand it, speak to us through it, shape us through it. Help us to know how to apply this to our lives. For your glory. Amen.   A Cloud of Witnesses So Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1, says this: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” When I was in high school, my pastor would always say this: Whenever you see the word therefore in the Bible, you should stop and ask yourself, what’s the therefore there for? Here, the word ‘therefore’ connects everything he has previously said. For the first 11 chapters, Jesus is better. Keep your faith in Jesus. Therefore, I want you to do some stuff. So he’s given them a bunch of great information, revelation of who Jesus is, and now he’s going to say, because that is true, therefore, do some stuff. Here’s the stuff he wants us to do. First, he mentions this great cloud of witnesses. Because we know there’s a great cloud of witnesses, we should do some things. Now, let me pause for a second. I’ve heard people talk about this throughout my Christian life. People talk about this great cloud of witnesses like it’s a bunch of people in heaven together in a crowd, watching us and cheering us on. I heard a Christian leader once explain it like we are track stars running around the track. This great cloud of witnesses, they’re in the stands cheering us on. That’s not at all what the writer of Hebrews is saying here. He’s saying we have this great cloud of witnesses. The word witness there is like a witness in a trial, like a court of law. We have a crew of witnesses. Who is he alluding to? Well, the people he just mentioned in Hebrews 11. The 26 people that are mentioned or alluded to in Hebrews 11, who put faith in God and saw God do some amazing things through them. It’s like he’s calling these people from the Old Testament up to the witness stand. The writer of Hebrews is like the prosecuting attorney. He’s making a case, and he’s calling people from the Old Testament to the witness stand. He’s saying, Noah, come to the witness stand and testify to these people what it means to have faith in God. Noah gets on the stand and says, I trusted in God and my entire family survived a global flood. He calls Abraham to the stand. The writer of Hebrew says, Tell us, Abraham, testify to us. Abraham says, I trusted God, and my wife and I are old, but he told us we would have a child. I don’t know if you know this about old people, but we don’t usually have children. But you know what? We had a child. In fact, I became the father of many nations. The writer of Hebrews then brings Moses and the Israelites to the stand. They say we witnessed miracles in Egypt. We witnessed the judgment and wrath of God on the Egyptians who refused to repent. We trusted God, and we saw him miraculously rescue us from Egyptian tyranny. We watched God part the Red Sea and cross us over into the wilderness. Then God brought us Joshua and the next generation. We went into the promised land, and we watched the walls of Jericho fall down. God handed us, on a silver platter, this land we now call Israel. Over and over again throughout chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews is calling people to the witness stand. Come to the witness stand and tell these Christians about what it means to have faith in God. These witnesses talk about the miracles of God, the mercy of God, how they took over kingdoms and defeated armies, and they shut the mouths of lions, and even a few of them raised people from the dead. They testify and they present evidence that should lead us to only one verdict. There’s only one reasonable, rational verdict that we can come to when we hear the testimony of the saints of old. That is, Jesus is better. Keep believing in Jesus. The Old Testament saints believed in the Messiah. They didn’t know his name would be Jesus, but they knew that God promised a Messiah, and they looked forward to the day that he would come. They believed in God, and they saw God do Great things. So the writer of Hebrews is saying, Jesus is better. Look at all these witnesses. It’s a great cloud, such a great cloud of witnesses testifying to you that faith in Jesus is worth it.   Get Rid of Sin Because that is true, here’s the first exhortation he gives us. In the middle part of Hebrews, Chapter 12, verse 1, he first alludes to the great cloud of witnesses. Then he says this: “Let us also 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, Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which clings closely. Another English translation renders it this way: “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” There’s a keyword there. The word is ‘And’. He wants us to throw off everything that hinders ‘and’ the sin that easily entangles. The sin that clings closely. The word ‘and’ there in the Greek means ‘And’. The word ‘And’ makes it clear that two distinct things are going on here. If I say to you, Kenny and Malaina. (Malaina is my wife.) Kenny and Malaina went to Jimmy John’s. How many people went to Jimmy John’s? It’s two. If I say to you the Eagles and the Chiefs played in the Super Bowl, how many teams played in the Super Bowl? There are two. There are two distinctive things here. He’s saying, listen, get rid of everything that hinders and get rid of the sin. The sin is the obvious one: get rid of sin.   Get Rid of Things that Weigh You Down But also, there are these other things. There’s this category of things over here that maybe aren’t quite sinful, but they might weigh you down. The imagery is that you are a runner. I mentioned this last week, I ran track in high school. I was pretty quick. I remember when you’re a runner, you don’t want anything to get in the way of you running. Your outfit, the way you cut your hair. You want to make sure you’ve got nothing that’s going to weigh you down. The writer is saying, the Christian life following Jesus is like running. You want to make sure there’s nothing on you or in front of you that’s going to slow you down. He’s saying, sin is bad. Get rid of sin. But also in addition to that, some things may not seem sinful, but they’re going to weigh you down, they’re going to slow you down, they’re not going to help you run. Get rid of those things, too. That’s his exhortation to us. So often, Christians live this dumb, minimalist Christian life. The question so many people ask is, Is it a sin? If it’s not a sin, then I can do it, right? That’s how immature Christians behave. That’s not the brand of a mature Christian. The person who wants to follow Jesus wholeheartedly does not ask, Is it sinful? That’s the wrong question. The right question is, will it help me run faster? Some things are not sins but could weigh you down. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Examine your life. Think about your life, think about your behaviors, think about how you live. Anything that gets in your way, even if it’s not sinful, get rid of that thing. Are video games sinful? No, not necessarily. But will they help you run after Jesus faster? It depends on how many minutes you spend playing. I don’t think video games are sinful at all. But are they potentially a weight that will slow you down? Maybe you should consider getting rid of them. Is Netflix a sin? No. (I guess it depends on what you’re watching.) Inherently, no, Netflix is not a sin. My wife and I have Netflix. We watch all sorts of dumb stuff. We’ve been watching every apocalypse show. My wife watches the British Baking Show regularly. Is Netflix a sin? No, it’s not sinful. But could it slow you down in the Christian life? Absolutely. So be very careful how many minutes you spend on Netflix. Dads, is it wrong to have your work email on your phone? No, it’s not a sin. But could it be an obstacle between you and the things that are most important in your life? Absolutely, it could. Maybe consider taking the email off your phone. Ladies, is it wrong for you to watch the rom-coms? No, it’s not sinful to watch the rom-coms, but could it cause you to think about relationships too much and think about wanting a boy more than you ought to? Of course. Could it be a hindrance? Maybe you should eliminate some of the rom-coms. Is it wrong to read a bunch of dystopian fiction novels? No, it’s not sinful. But is it a distraction? Is it weighing you down? How many minutes are you spending reading that versus reading God’s word? Is it a sin to have Instagram? No. Unless your parents say you can’t have it, then yes, it is a sin. You disobey your parents, then. No, it’s not a sin to have Instagram. But could it weigh me down potentially? How many minutes do I spend doing this? Opposed to this? A few months ago, I deleted TikTok from my phone because I was spending a lot of time on TikTok. I gave my wife anxiety because she would overhear me watching these videos. I really got into watching police body cam videos. The police released them. Or videos of people interacting with police. It’s terrifying. You realize how ridiculous humans are. I realized I’m spending way more time on TikTok watching Police Body cam videos than I am spending time with my kids or my savior. Clearly, this was a weight, It was a hindrance. So I deleted TikTok from my phone. Do I think having TikTok on your phone is a sin? I do not think TikTok is a sin at all. But for me, it was a hindrance. So, for me, I had to get rid of it. Your hindrance is going to be different than mine. We’re going to have different hindrances. It’s going to be different from person to person. So you have to pray and be honest with yourself. Prayerfully consider your own life, take inventory of your own heart and mind, and ask yourself, What are the things in my life that are a hindrance? The writer of Hebrews would say, Get rid of it and run after Jesus because he is better. There’s a great quote from Dr. John Piper. He’s a pastor, and he was a pastor in Minnesota for many years. He was my boss for a little while. Dr. John Piper says this: One of the greatest uses of social media will be to prove at the last day that prayerlessness was not from a lack of time. We’re gonna stand before God on Judgment Day. He’s gonna say, so you didn’t pray a lot, did you? Yeah, I didn’t have any time. He’s gonna whip out the logbook. You were on Twitter for 1,818 hours. Seems to me you have plenty of time to pray. Now, in his grace, this will be covered under his blood. Praise be to God. Those of you who know me, know I’m a political junkie. I love politics and culture, but I’ve had to limit myself to how much I follow politics. Election season, I’m all in. Then I turn it off for two years. My wife listens and watches. She’ll regurgitate stuff for a bit. But for me, it’s not good for my soul. In College in the early 2000s, I found this guy by the name of Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was one of the most influential men in American culture for many years. I started listening to Rush a lot. I was what they called a ditto head. I love Rush Limbaugh. I listened almost every day from about 2001 till 2012. About 11 years. I can probably count on two hands the number of days I missed Rush. He would be on the East Coast radio from about 12 to 3. I would orchestrate the day of my life and make sure that I would be in the car as much as possible during those hours. I love Rush. You know what I found? The more I listened to this guy. He was a conservative political talk radio guy. I started to hate, really loathe, liberal people who had liberal politics. I remember after the 2012 election, the person I voted for lost. I was so angry. I had this venom in my heart. I was a youth pastor, and I remember hearing the Holy Spirit prompt my heart, saying, I’ve commanded you to be kind and compassionate and sympathetic and gentle and tender. Do you think you could do that easily for a Democrat? Nope. Do you think the commands of God are only in play if the person voted for the same person you voted for? No. I remember the Holy Spirit really speaking in my heart. I realized, is it a sin to listen to political talk radio? No, it’s not a sin. But for me, it was causing things in me that were unhealthy and toxic. So I had to cut it. For me, it was a hindrance. I haven’t listened to political talk radio since 2012, and my soul is way healthier. I love people I disagree with. I can look at someone and think they’re absolutely wrong on a policy and totally reject their bad idea, and still have compassion and sympathy toward that person because I got rid of some hindrances in my life. I think a lot of Christians suffer from this in our modern society. So whatever it is for you, whatever makes it harder for you to obey God, get rid of that thing. So there’s this thing in my life, it’s not sinful, but it’s making it harder for me to do the thing that God wants me to do. Get rid of it. The Apostle Paul says this in First Corinthians 9, verse 27: “I discipline my body, and I keep it under control so that I will not be disqualified from the prize.” Another English translation renders it this way: “I beat my body too, and I make it my slave.” Paul says, My body wants certain things. You know what I do? I beat my body. You’re a slave to me. You will do what I tell you to do. In Romans 13:14, the apostle Paul says this: “Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.” Make no provision for the flesh. Don’t live your life in such a way that your sinful desires have any opportunity to be satisfied. I have a good friend of mine who was an alcoholic and is in recovery. He’s been a part of AA. God has done a really great work in his life over the last few years. He and I were hanging out a few weeks ago, and he told me that, because of his alcoholism and his background, he no longer goes to restaurants that have a bar. He just can’t handle it. He can’t go to Applebee’s because even looking at a bar will make him want to go back down that road. He can’t go to Olive Garden because they bring wine to the table for you to sample. He can’t even do that. So he and his wife only go out to eat at breakfast joints. Now, my friend, if he were here today, he would tell you he doesn’t believe alcohol is a sin. I would agree with him. There’s nothing in scripture that would say alcohol is a sin. Drinking alcohol is not sinful. However, for some people, it’s a hindrance. For those people, you should never have alcohol. Alcohol is not sinful, but it could weigh you down. So be extremely careful. This long list of witnesses in Hebrews, chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews is calling to the stand. They are all testifying. Living in this manner is worth it. Getting rid of the sin and the hindrances. It’s valuable and it’s worth it. It will pay off. God will do great things in you and through you, he will sustain you. He is better than anything you could ever imagine. Go all in on Jesus. Surrender all to Jesus. Give him your whole heart. He is better. Then he says this in Hebrews 12, verse 2, he’s going to allude to how we defeat sin in our lives. So first, he said to get rid of the hindrances. Get rid of sin. Then he says this in Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 2: “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” The writer of Hebrews is saying, You want to fight your sin. It’s what you do. Look at Jesus and look what he did. He’s the founder and perfecter of our faith. He came to this planet, and he endured a cross. Why? Because there was a joy set before him. The Father said to him, Son, if you endure this, on the other side of it, there will be a family of people that you’ve redeemed that we will enjoy together forever and ever and ever. Jesus looked forward to that. He said, I want them to experience me. I want those people to experience the maximum amount of joy and love that could ever be had. So I will endure the cross so that this thing will come to fruition. He took the shame and humiliation and pain of the cross so that we could experience his joy and so that he could enjoy us, so that we could enjoy each other forever and ever and ever. The writer of Hebrews is saying, You want to endure things in this life? Here’s what you do. Look at the one who endured for you. Look at Jesus. In fact, 14 different times throughout the book of Hebrews, he makes that sort of statement. He says things like, Consider Jesus. Look to Jesus. Think about Jesus. In Hebrews chapter 2, he tells us to pay close attention to the things you’ve heard about Jesus. Look at Jesus.   Add Things to Your Life to Remind You of Jesus Our third point for this morning is to practically add things to your life that will remind you of Jesus. I mentioned a few of these a couple of weeks ago, but they’re worth mentioning again. Gathering with Christians every Sunday on the Lord’s Day is an essential part of the Christian life because this is a place where you will be reminded of what Jesus did for you. It is why we do confession and communion every single week. I want to smack you in the face with the glory of Jesus every single week, week after week. I want to remind you of what he finished on the cross on your behalf every single week. I mentioned this stat a couple of weeks ago. Less than 50% of American evangelicals think it’s important to attend church weekly. Less than 40% actually do. The average American evangelical attends church on average 1.5 times per month. That’s considered normal, regular attending. Let me tell you that is not nearly enough. Not close. I’ve been really looking around, figuring out how to do a midweek service because I hate going a whole week without seeing you guys. I hate it. Another thing we can do to remind ourselves of Jesus is make sure that we have great Christian friendships. Are your best friends the people closest to you who are most influencing your life? Are they people who are gonna help point you toward Jesus? If they’re not, then maybe you should shuffle the deck of your friendships a bit. How about the media you consume? How about the music you consume? I love podcasts, but maybe turn them off sometimes. Turn off the fantasy football podcast or the This Teenage Life podcast, or the Joe Rogan podcast. Maybe just turn it off. Maybe turn some music on that will remind you of Jesus. This is why we have a master list of every song we’ve ever done on our website. This is why we publish sermons. I don’t want to publish sermons for people to just listen to the sermon they missed. No, it’s for those who are already here to go back and listen again, to remind yourself of what God has done on your behalf. That’s why we do those things. How about things like daily prayer, reading, family devotions, and personal prayer time? Are these things staples in your life? If they’re not, I would encourage you to add them. The writer of Hebrews is saying we have to look to Jesus. So, find some ways to add some things to your life that will continually remind you of Jesus.   Conclusion: Run the Race Those are the three observations we see in Hebrews 12. Number one, get rid of your sin. Number two, get rid of anything that’s a hindrance, even if it’s not sinful. Number three, look to Jesus. Intentionally add some stuff to your life that will consistently remind you of Jesus. That’s ultimately the exhortation from the writer of Hebrews. Last thought for this morning. He says here that there is a race that’s been marked out for us. There’s a race that’s been set for us. He’s saying, here’s the race I want you to run. That race has only been made possible because of what Christ has done on your behalf. If he has called you to it, then he will help you run the race. You don’t have to do these things by yourself. He will help you if you humbly ask Him.  

https://youtu.be/wspauPqXrVY Introduction: 4 Minute Mile Well, last week I unintentionally lied to you. It was unintentional, I promise it was. As you were here, I told you we were going to just do two sermons from Hebrews 11. But as I was preparing and studying this week, I just thought to myself, we have got to have a third. There’s too much here. So, next week, Lord willing, we’ll be back in Hebrews 11. Then we’ll move on to Hebrews 12 after that. Last week, we talked a little bit about Abraham and how he was looking forward to a city to come, a city that has foundations, and how that was profound in his life. This morning I want to look at one other character that is mentioned here in Hebrews. He would be quite sacred to the Jewish people in the first century when this letter was written. We’re going to look quite a bit at Moses. I plan to examine Moses, and then next week, we’ll look at the whole chapter, and we’ll move on. The Book of Hebrews is, in essence, a transcribed sermon. The writer of Hebrews has preached this sermon. It’s been transcribed, and then it was sent to this church that was under fire. This church was predominantly ethnic Jews living somewhere in the Roman Empire. All of these Jewish people had become Christians. In this church that he’s writing to, there are three categories of people. Some people have been faithful to the gospel, and they’re joyful; they love Jesus. They’ve been faithful, and they’re excited and they’re sticking with the faith. That seems to be a minority when we’re reading this letter. But that group exists in this church. There’s also a second group of people who’ve been faithful to the gospel. They’ve not wandered away from the Christian faith, but they’re growing in their apathy. They’re considering whether or not they should stick with Jesus or go back to Judaism. They’re wandering in this moment. Then there’s this third group of people who were a part of the church that have now abandoned the faith altogether, and they’ve left. The writer of Hebrews is talking mostly to those who are apathetic, which seems to be the bulk of the church. He’s telling them, those that have wandered away from the faith, don’t be like those people. Stick with Jesus. He’s reminding them, as we’ve already seen in this letter, of some of the moments in their lives where they’ve already been faithful to God. He’s saying, stick with that. Don’t go away from doing what you’ve been doing. Stay faithful. Then he comes to Hebrews chapter 11, where he begins to highlight all of these people in Israel’s history. He is telling them to remember these people who had great faith, do what they did, and live life in light of the faithfulness of God. He’s highlighting all of these people in Hebrews 11. There are 16 different people either directly mentioned or alluded to in Hebrews 11. In essence, he’s saying, remember these people. Remember the faith they demonstrated. I want you to demonstrate this kind of faith. You’ve already been doing it. Keep on doing it. The writer of Hebrews seems to know that if he lifts up examples of great faith, then the people will know they can do it. Not because of them, but because of the grace of God. If the grace of God is at work in those people, and they could demonstrate faith, then we know because the grace of God is at work in us, then we too can live out faith. There’s something about the human experience where once we’ve seen someone else do something, we too can do it. We believe. Let me give you an example. In the sport of track and field, which expanded significantly in the late 1800s, early 1900s, track and field exploded on the scene as a very popular sport amongst Americans. For several decades, people have been running, and they’re getting stronger and faster. At some point in the 1950s, people thought humans had reached their pinnacle. This is the fastest they’re ever going to be. There was an argument amongst scientists, nutritionists, and biologists in the mid-20th century that it would be impossible for a human to ever run a mile in less than four minutes. It would be physically impossible. They had already reached the fastest humans will ever get, and they were getting close to four minutes, but they would never break the four-minute mark. Well, there’s a doctor by the name of Roger Bannister. He was convinced that the argument was not true, that humans potentially could break the four-minute barrier. He began to train and train and train. He used all the science that was available, but he still couldn’t break it. People were telling him, It’s not possible. But eventually, Roger Bannister broke the four-minute barrier, running a mile in 3 minutes and 59 seconds. It was global news all over the world, newspapers covered it. This feat seemed physically impossible. The very next year, two more people broke the four-minute barrier. The next year, four more people broke the barrier. Within five years, more than 200 people would break the four-minute barrier. Today, if you run a mile in four minutes, by Olympic standards, that’s pretty slow. Many years ago, when I was In High School, I ran a mile in 4 minutes and 51 seconds. It was the fastest in my high school, the fastest in the city of Philadelphia for that year. Then I went to State, and got blown away by everyone who was there because 4:51 was pretty slow. Two high school students were close to breaking the four-minute mile mark. This is in the year 2000, many decades after Roger Bannister. The writer of Hebrews seems to understand. If you lift an example of someone who’s done it, we as humans then think, I could do that. Roger Banister is not necessarily doing this with the power and grace of God at work in him. So, how much more as believers can we say, God worked in them, and they were able to do that with God’s help. Then that’s an example for me to emulate. It’s an example for me to look to and seek to follow after. The writer of Hebrews is saying, You remember these people in Hebrews 11, those who believed in God, you too believe in God. So you too can demonstrate faith the way they demonstrated faith. As he goes through this chapter, he’s highlighting all of these different people in the Old Testament, and he spends significant time on two characters, two whom he gives the most attention to. Abraham and Moses, which is not by accident, because these are the two characters that would have been most respected by Jewish people in the first century. So he’s writing to a predominantly ethnic Jewish audience, and they would have respected and revered Abraham and Moses. So he has spent a significant time talking about Abraham and Moses. He says, Remember the faith that Moses demonstrated. At the end of chapter 10, and into chapter 11, he begins to allude to the fact that the faith that you have shown is like the faith that Moses showed. Now, this would have been a huge deal to a Jewish person in the first century. You’re saying, I’ve done something similar to what Moses did. That’s remarkable. This would have been an unbelievable compliment to them. But remember, it’s not you. It’s Christ in you and through you. It is not faith in yourself that causes you to accomplish these things. It’s faith in Christ and his power through you. He’s saying, that’s how Moses did what he did, and that’s how you can stay and live the Christian life well. What Moses did is what we ought to do. So this morning, I want to take time to examine what the three main things the writer of Hebrews highlights about Moses. Number one is that he made a bold and deliberate decision. Number two, we see that Moses embraced the cost of that decision. Then, third, we’ll see that Moses valued Christ above all. We’re going to look at these three things in Hebrews chapter 11. But first, let’s ask God for his help one more time. God, we thank you for the examples that are laid out for us in Hebrews 11. I pray that we would be both challenged and convicted this morning, inspired and exhorted this morning. Lord, as we look at these verses, help us to understand them, and Spirit, help us to understand how to apply the truth we see here to our own lives. I pray for your glory, I ask these things. Amen.   Moses Made a Bold, Deliberate Decision Number one, Moses made a bold, deliberate decision. If you have your Bibles, look at Hebrews chapter 11, verse 24. It says this: “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” Now, many of you may be familiar with the story of Moses. If you’re not, here is a brief, quick recap. Moses is an Israelite. The Israelites have been enslaved in Egypt for several centuries. Moses is born into slavery. When he is young, there is an oracle that comes to Pharaoh that says there’s going to be a savior who rises up to rescue God’s people from Egyptian slavery. Pharaoh hears and says, You’re telling me that there’s an oracle that there’s going to be a savior born that takes my slaves away. So he is going to deal with this. Pharaoh says this baby has been born, and we don’t know who he is. So Pharaoh says all of the baby boys under age 2 are to be slaughtered. Across Egypt, Israelite boys are being killed. We don’t know how many, but probably into the thousands. Every baby boy under age 2 was killed by Pharaoh. Moses is one of these baby boys. He’s a young baby. At this time, his mother, seeking to protect him, takes baby Moses and then through this crafty plan, ends up introducing the baby to Pharaoh’s daughter. Through what seems to be this crazy, unplanned process that unfolds. Pharaoh’s daughter gets hold of Moses and determines she’s gonna raise Moses as her own. She takes Moses into Pharaoh’s court, into Pharaoh’s home. Moses is then raised amongst the wealthiest, most well-educated, and most powerful people in the world. When he gets to the age of 40, he comes out and declares that he doesn’t identify with Pharaoh’s family, but he knows that he is a Hebrew, he’s an Israelite. There’s this moment where he’s walking and he sees an Egyptian man mistreating one of his fellow Israelites, one of the slaves. Moses intervenes, physically attacks the Egyptian man, and eventually kills the Egyptian man. Through an interesting set of circumstances, Moses discovers that Pharaoh will likely be out to get him, probably prosecute him for this killing. So Moses flees at age 40. He will spend the next 40 years of his life as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian. We know these as his pre-Exodus Days. Moses didn’t; Moses just figured he would live in the desert, die, and be forgotten. He never thought he’d ever go back to Egypt. But at age 80, God appears to him through a burning bush. At age 80, Moses returns under God’s commands and guidance. He returns to Egypt, performs various miracles, and eventually, God uses him to rescue the Israelites out of Egypt. They go into the wilderness, and they wander there for the next 40 years. Moses dies at 120. Then his protege Joshua is the one that God raises up. Joshua eventually leads the Israelites into the promised land. There’s a moment at age 40 where Moses is at a fork in the road where he sees this Egyptian mistreating this Hebrew man, his kinsman, one of his countrymen. That’s the moment where Moses makes this deliberate, bold decision: I’m not gonna identify with those people, I’m going to identify with God’s people. The writer of Hebrews is highlighting this saying, Remember when Moses did this? That’s a good thing to do. We should do this. There will come a moment in your life when you have an opportunity to take a bold and deliberate stand to identify with God’s people. The writer of Hebrews is saying, when that time comes, do it. Do what Moses did. For some of you, that may mean that it’s time for you to really put your faith in Jesus Christ for the first time. It’s time to truly believe. It’s time to go, you know what? The Lord’s working in my heart, and the time has come for me to say, yes, I’m with him. I’m with the people of God. The apostle Paul says this in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 2: “Behold, today is the day of salvation.” Paul says, Today is the day. Come on, you’ve heard of Jesus. It’s time for you to take the bold and deliberate step to say, I will give my life to Christ. There’s a poker term called ‘all in’. If you’ve never heard that term, if you’re playing poker with people and you’re gambling, you’re putting money out. You’ve got your chips, and you come to the point where you say, I have no other options. You take everything you have and you put it to the center and you say, I’m all in. It means, everything that I have, I’m going to sacrifice it and leverage it for this moment. If I lose in this moment, I’m done. I got nothing else. I’m out of the game and I’ve lost everything. That all in idea is what Moses is doing here. He’s saying, listen, the writer of Hebrews is saying Moses went all in. All in means if you fail, there’s no second chance. This is it. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Go all in on Jesus. With my life, I’ve gone all in on Christ. Everything has been given to Christ. If Christ is not real, I’ve got nothing. But he’s real. I’m quite confident in that. For others of you, you may already be a Christian, you may be following Jesus, but maybe you haven’t taken a deliberate, bold decision to identify with God’s people in any public forum. I’ve seen this a lot in my almost 20 years of pastoral ministry. This is a very common sentiment I’ve seen in Americans. It is very common for Americans to say things like, I don’t want to offend my co-workers. I don’t want to frustrate anyone. So I’m not going to boldly say stuff at work. I’m just gonna be kind and I’m gonna love people well, and they will eventually figure out that I’m a Christian. Eventually, at some point in the future, there will be an opportunity for me to share the gospel with them. Eventually, there’s gonna be this moment where they’re sad and the lights from heaven come down and they’re gonna come to me and say, You have been so kind to me for 27 years. What is different about you? What do I not have? What is in you that is so different? You’re gonna say, it is Jesus, the Christ of Nazareth. They’re gonna go, oh, I believe. Friends, that moment will never come. Let me say this very clearly. In no uncertain terms. That moment will never come. You will die having missed the opportunity to share the gospel, and your friends and coworkers will die and burn in hell. That is not loving. I exhort you. Take the deliberate decision to identify with God’s people. I exhort you. I challenge you. I know it’s hard. It is really hard. I say it like it’s easy. I know. I’ve got a friend of mine I’ve been friends with for 27 years, and I recently had a conversation with him about stuff that he looked at online. I said, That’s gross. That’s disgusting. He’s told me he thought I was a conservative, libertarian guy. I said, I think that stuff should be outlawed. He was shocked. He’s said, What, you think these videos and images I watch should be against the law? I said yeah, if it were up to me, you’d be in jail. He thought I was kidding. He didn’t know that about me. It dawned on me I had not been deliberate enough with him. He thought I would be okay with that. It was shocking to him that after 27 years of friendship, I thought those kinds of images and videos should be against the law. If I were the governor of the world, I would make it illegal tomorrow. I thought to myself, after we got off a call, Lord, I’m so sorry. Forgive me that, for some reason, in 27 years of friendship, I have not been deliberate enough to speak in such a way that he would know that’s my stance. Lord, forgive me. So I want to make it clear to you, I’ve been guilty of it. I was waiting in the moment for him to ask me, well, why would you stake this thing? Why would you believe? But we hung up the phone. You know, he never asked me why. Why would you be against this? The next time I talked to him, a week later, I said, Remember that conversation we had? You never asked me why. Can I tell you why I want to be intentional? I want you to know why I think this should be illegal. He finally asked me why. After Moses dies and Joshua’s about to lead God’s people into the promised land, Joshua is talking to the people, and he’s saying, Remember when Moses was leading us? You kept going back to the old gods. You kept wanting to flirt with the fake gods of Egypt or the gods of Canaan. He says, we’re about to go into the promised land. Joshua says, I want you to make a deliberate choice, Israel. When we go into this promised land, we boldly commit to the one true God. He says this very famous verse, Joshua 24, verse 15, Joshua says to the people of Israel: “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites here in Canaan. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Listen, we’re about to go into the promised land, and you have options. You can flirt with the gods of Israel, you can flirt with the gods of Canaan. But here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to make a bold, deliberate decision. Me and my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord. We’re going all in on the one true God. Would you go all in with me? The writer of Hebrews is saying, That’s a model for us Christians to emulate. Moses made this bold, deliberate decision.   Moses Embraced the Cost The second thing we see in Moses is that he embraced the cost of going all in. There was a significant cost that Moses would have to pay. There was going to be some suffering, some pain that came along with this right. He embraced it. In Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 25, the writer of Hebrews says: “Choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God.” Rather than staying in Pharaoh’s palace with the richest, most powerful, opulent, influential people, He says, no. I’m going to identify with God’s people who are being ostracized and persecuted, and abused. I’m going to defend the one who is being persecuted. I’m going to kill the persecutor. It cost him 40 years in the desert. It’s a high price to pay for taking a stance. Different theologians and Bible scholars, and pastors throughout the centuries have debated whether or not it was right or wrong for Moses to kill the Egyptian. Some faithful believers would disagree with me on this. But I think there’s one passage in the New Testament that gives us some insight that it was the righteous thing to do. In Acts chapter 7, Stephen is giving his famous sermon right before he is killed. He’s recounting things that happened in the Old Testament. In Acts chapter 7, verse 24, Stephen, talking about Moses seeing one of the Israelites being wronged and mistreated, says: “And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him.” That’s the language of the New Testament. It says that Moses saw what was going on. He defended and avenged. The language and the sentiment from Acts chapter 7 seem to display that Stephen, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, believed that what Moses did was righteous. If we look through history, you can read through some Egyptian records, it does seem like there were some limits for how Egyptians could treat their slaves. So it does seem like this Egyptian man was breaking Egyptian law by harming this Israelite. When Moses, who grew up in Pharaoh’s court and knows the law, shows up and sees it, he kills this Egyptian man. That’s the righteous God honoring thing to do in the moment, is what Stephen seems to be outlining for us. Sometimes this is preached when Moses killed someone, it was wrong. It was murder. So then Moses fled because he wanted to escape being arrested for his crime. That’s not the sentiment we get from Acts 7 and Hebrews 11. It seems to be saying, what he did was righteous, and he knew that he would suffer some consequences for that. So he decided to flee from the King’s anger. Hebrews 11 tells us that, in this moment, Moses is associating himself with the people of God. He’s saying, these are God’s people. I’m with them. It cost him. It’s a good question for us. Has our association with the people of God cost us? Being an American Christian is way easier than being a Christian in most parts of the world. But it doesn’t mean that there’s no cost. In fact, in Hebrews 12, the writer of Hebrews will tell this church, You’ve suffered some things, but you haven’t bled yet. I think it’s similar. Christians in the room, some of you have suffered things for being Christians, but you haven’t bled yet. So there’s still more to give. There’s still more to sacrifice. Have you leaned into that? The writer of Hebrews is saying, Have you intentionally, deliberately done things that you know will cost you something? If you haven’t, you’re probably not doing it right. There’s gonna come a moment where you have the opportunity to speak up, and it’s gonna cost you something. The writer of Hebrews would say to you, Do what Moses did. Speak up, do It. I’ve seen this so many times. So if you feel this is you, you are not alone. I’ve seen so many people who profess to be Christians, who live the Christian life, and yet they never speak up at work about anything because they’re so afraid it’s going to cost them something. I’m not saying you have to be the loud, obnoxious, hostile fundamentalist. But most of us probably need to speak up more. I don’t want to offend anyone. Maybe it’s time to offend some people. We don’t want to offend just for the sake of it. That’s not the goal. My goal is not to offend if I can. But I must be willing to say that which is true, even if it may offend. There’s this saying that’s often attributed to St. Francis. The saying is, ‘preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.’ That’s a very common sentiment, and I think a lot of people like it and get behind that statement. We should be demonstrating the gospel the way we live. I get it, and I agree with that. But here’s the thing. Words are necessary a lot. Like saying, preach the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words is kind of like saying, stay alive, and when necessary, breathe oxygen. That needs to be done a lot. There are moments where you have an opportunity to make a deliberate, bold decision, and it will cost you something. Make the choice anyway. We Will Get Pushback When We Take the Stand I’ve gotten pushback from people on my commentary online about pro-life issues. You guys know I’m an abolitionist. That’s why we give money and we fundraise for Choices Women’s Clinic. I’ve had a few people say to me, as a church plant, you want to be careful what you say online. You don’t want to seem like one of those far-right-wing extremists. You want to be careful that you don’t seem too conservative. I’m not throwing myself in with MAGA. I’m throwing myself in with Jesus. He is the one who says the unborn are our life made in God’s image from conception. This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. If it costs me something, then so be it. Being Prophetic Against the Culture John the Baptist, whom Jesus praised as the greatest prophet ever, of all the people born of women, there’s none better than John the Baptist, Jesus said. John the Baptist was not arrested and beheaded because he preached the gospel. He dared to tell someone whom they could and could not marry. He says that particular marriage, you can’t do that. If he had just talked about the love of Jesus, he would have never been beheaded. There’s a very prominent thing in American culture where we just tell people, Jesus loves, Jesus loves, Jesus loves. Jesus is the nice guy, the doormat, you can do whatever you want. If you’re that kind of Christian, nobody is beheading you. You’ll live a perfectly fine, happy life. Jesus says, the ones that I endorse, the ones that I commend, the ones that I praise publicly, are the ones that will say to them, No, you cannot marry that person. That marriage doesn’t count. It’s not real. But they might behead you when you say it. You may speak up at work when they say you have to use a certain pronoun, you say I’m not going to do that. I don’t think that represents reality. I want to be very kind and loving, but I don’t want to do that. They may say, You’re going to lose your job, and you say, That is terrible. I don’t want to lose this job. But unfortunately, if that’s the cost, are you willing to take that stand? I know it’s easy for me to say it, and it’s really hard to live it. I have had lots of moments of failure. So in large part, I’m preaching to myself. But we are called to be prophetic to our culture, to tell them what is right and wrong. We do it with kindness, we do it with gentleness, we do it with tenderness. But we must do it decisively, deliberately, with clarity, with boldness. When it comes to issues of the sanctity of life or sexuality or marriage or Marxist ideology, that’s not political, that’s moral. But take a deliberate stand, and if it costs you something, so be it. In Romans, chapter 14, the apostle Paul says this: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or we die, we belong to the Lord.” Life in Our New Negative World I sent out an email yesterday with a link to an interview that Al Mohler did with Aaron Renn. Al Mohler is the president of Southern Seminary in Kentucky. Aaron Renn is a political and cultural commentary guy. He’s a Presbyterian pastor. He came up with this taxonomy that he calls the “negative world” taxonomy. He’s written a book that’s really good about how to live faithfully in a negative world. He says there are these moments in American history where things change dramatically. So you have the pre-colonial era, then the Revolutionary War happens, and things change dramatically. Then you have the Civil War, and things change dramatically. You have World War I, things change dramatically. And WWII happens, and things change, and then after WWII there’s this thing called the post-War consensus. After World War II, a bunch of Americans organically begin to think about how we ought to live. They recaptured some things from the 1800s, family values and some traditions, and there’s more overt emphasis on religion in some ways. It was in the 1950s that we added ‘Under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance, and we added ‘In God We Trust’ to the money. So from the 1950s up until the 1980s or so, that’s what we call the positive world, meaning if you were a Christian, that was beneficial to you, if you applied for a job and you were not a Christian, that would be held against you. Being a Christian was good, and to be a part of the Rotary Club. Every president claimed to be a Christian. Their lifestyles may not have shown it, but they all claimed to be Christian because that was helpful in American society. Up until about the early 1990s. Then, around the early 1990s, up until the early 2010s, Aaron Ren refers to in his book as the neutral world, where being a Christian is not helpful to you in any way, but it’s not harmful to you in any way either. So it’s a neutral world. But then he says it changes. Right around the 2010s, things began to shift. By the time we get to 2014, 2015, if you’re a Christian, it’s held against you. The demarcation moment that he highlights in his book is the Obergefell decision. It’s the Supreme Court decision that legalized so called same sex marriage across the nation. He says that was a moment that clearly shows that we are now in a different world than what we were before. Because how people would have responded to that just 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier would have been very different. So the world is different. He’s not saying that is good or bad, he’s just saying this is the world we live in. He’s saying a lot of the Christian books that have been written in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s about how to church plant properly, how to preach, how to do stateside missions, all of these books assume a positive or neutral world. He says those ideas don’t work in a negative world. We need a new way of thinking about ministry and how we do some things. It’s a really helpful book, really insightful. There’s an interview that Mohler did with Aaron Wren. He talked about this. I think this is helpful to understand the world in which we live, what we don’t want to be. What I don’t want to be is someone who’s known as hating culture. There are a lot of pastors who think Disney is of the devil. Everyone’s bad. I don’t look at culture as if all of culture is bad. I think culture is an opportunity for redemption. I can engage with elements of our culture, and I can redeem them for the glory of God. But how I do that in a positive world is different than how I do that in a negative world. In a negative world, being a Christian and taking a stance is not going to get you any social benefits. You’re not going to be invited to any clubs. Recently, I had someone who was in my youth ministry when I was a youth pastor. They now live in Jacksonville, and they’re going through the process of adoption. An adoption agency told them, You’re going to have to tone down a lot of the Christian stuff you’re posting on Facebook. You might want to tone that down a little bit because some agencies don’t want to place people with overtly Christian families. If you’re the kind of Christian who is a good Christian on Sunday morning, that’s fine. But if you’re the kind of person who’s going to bring that into your work, they may not want to place a kid with you. An adoption agency rep told him that two weeks ago, in a supposedly red state, Florida. We tend to want to think we should be careful, but being a Christian in the world in which we live today is not gonna get you any benefit. It’s gonna be held against you in some ways. Now, what we don’t do is run for the hills and become Amish and run away from culture. That’s not what we’re gonna do. I’m going to engage in culture. In the book of Jeremiah, when the Jews are going into Babylon, they’re going to be there for 70 years. God tells them, You’re going to live in a hostile culture. You know what I want you to do? Put down roots. Buy a house, plant a tree. Get married. Give your kids away in marriage. It’s okay. You live in Babylon. Don’t freak out and run away. Don’t cuss everyone out in the name of Jesus. Just relax. But you live in Babylon for a while, you’re not in Israel anymore. Things are going to be different. In 1965, if you got up and said, This person cannot marry this person, everyone would agree with you. Today, when you say that you’re a bigot. The writer of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 11, he’s saying, You’ve already experienced some of this stuff. In chapter 10, he told them that there was a moment when the Christians in this church, some of them, were arrested. The Christians were afraid to identify themselves as Christians. So they go to jail to visit some of their Christian friends. While they’re gone, all their neighbors realize that they’re Christians. So they plunder their house. We see this in chapter 10. The writer of Hebrew says, You’ve been plundered, publicly exposed, and mistreated. You’ve already experienced some of these things, Church, just know you’re going to experience more of it. When that comes, you know what you ought to do. Do what Moses did. Embrace the cost of your deliberate decision. It’s going to cost us something.   Moses Had a Proper Evaluation of Jesus Number three, why did Moses make this good decision? Because he had a proper evaluation of Jesus Christ. Jesus is greater than all. In Hebrews 11:26, he says this, speaking of Moses: “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.” The reproach of Christ was the humiliation he would experience for believing in the Messiah. He says, If you throw yourself in with Jesus, if you identify with God’s people, it’s going to cost you something. One of the things that may cost you is reproach. You’re gonna be humiliated, mocked. People are going to look down upon you. People are gonna think you’re stupid. That is more valuable than all the treasures this world can offer you. Being humiliated for Jesus is more valuable than anything the world has to offer. Moses believed that, and he lived in light of that. When people ask me, You believe the Bible is completely true? Yes, I do. You don’t believe that every creature on planet Earth today all came from a single-celled organism? No, I don’t believe that. In fact, science doesn’t corroborate that. You shouldn’t believe it either. Something I struggle with is, I want to be respected. A lot of us probably do. Here’s my wickedness that I have to repent of pretty much daily: I want to be seen as smart. So I’ve read a lot of books, I’ve done a lot of studies, and I almost did a PhD. I’ve got multiple degrees. I’ve worked hard because I want people to look at me and say, He’s intellectual. If I’m honest, I esteem that. It hurts my feelings when I’m told that I’m not smart. I told someone who I think is smart that I don’t think the evidence is that all creatures living on the planet today came from a single-celled organism. The narrative is that there’s a single-cell microscopic organism that, over the last 4 billion years, through multi-generational evolution and adaptations, is what forms every living thing on Earth today. I do not believe that. I told my friend, I’ve examined the data on that multiple times. No, I don’t think that. I don’t think the evidence corroborates that. I don’t believe that. I think the Bible gives us a better narrative to believe in verses what other people are trying to tell us to believe. My friend did not think I was smart because I don’t believe in Darwinian Evolutionary theories. It hurt my feelings to hear him say that. At the moment, what I wanted to do was to try to backpedal a bit. I try to give the intellectual, smart answer. I thought I found myself doing that pretty regularly in my life. In this one moment, I felt myself doing it. I remember thinking, Lord, just give me faith to trust what you say. I said, I’m bummed that you think I’m not smart because of that. He’s told me he was going to have to rethink what he thinks of me. It hurt my feelings. I said, Lord, help me. Help me to trust you. Give me the faith. My flesh will fail. But, Lord, your spirit is strong in me. Lord, give me the boldness to stand for what I believe in. Help me, God. I’m gonna be humiliated, Lord. But you were humiliated. I’m in good company. I want to follow in your footsteps, Jesus. I want to throw myself in with God’s people. I want to show solidarity with them. I’m in with them. I’m making a deliberate, bold decision. I’m one of those people who believe in the Bible, and it may cost me something. That’s okay because I value being humiliated for Christ more than I value the respect of the intellectual community. God, would you help me to live that out well?   Closing: God Give Us Faith The last point of application for us, in light of these three observations from Moses. We are naturally weak, and so we need God to help us. That’s why we sang Give Me Faith. That song is like singing a prayer to God, because to live this out, it takes faith. I need to believe that God is going to come through. Right now in the Ortiz home, we’re doing a little bit of retirement planning, and I’ve been doing some research on annuities. So an annuity, you pay a certain amount of money and you get a certain money back. You only put money in if you’re confident that you’re going to get something back in return in the long term. It takes a certain amount of faith and confidence in the annuity provider to put money in. It’s costing me something now, but I’m confident I’m going to get something back that’s greater in the long term. Similarly, it takes confidence in Christ. I’m willing to pay the cost now in the negative world because I know there’s a grander reward coming for me in the long term. There’s a spiritual annuity coming to me in the long term, in the next life, in the city to come, that I will stand before him and hear, Well done. That inspires me in this life. But I have to be honest, I don’t always have that faith. Sometimes my faith is lacking. Sometimes my faith is weak. I need to beg God, Lord, would you give me the faith? It may cost us credibility or donors or respect. Lord, would you give me the faith? Give me faith to trust what you say, that you are good, that your love is great. I may be weak, but your spirit is strong in me. Give me the faith to believe that you are good, that you are in me. That you will be strong in me. That you will be faithful to me. That there is a reward coming. That the humiliation of Christ truly is more valuable than the treasures of this world. Help me to believe that, God. Some days I don’t believe it. Would you help me? Help me to believe. You’re not going to leave me out to dry. You’re not going to leave me hanging, Lord. That’s why we sing. Oh, God, please give me faith. Give me the faith to be like Moses, to value the reproach of Christ more than the treasures of this world. Church, I implore you, I exhort you. Make the deliberate, bold decision. It may cost you something, but do it anyway. You do it because we value Christ above all. The moments when you struggle to believe it. Ask him to give you faith, and he will do it. Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your kindness to us. Would you give us the faith that we need? Give us faith, Lord, that we need to be the people you want us to be. Lord, I feel like I struggle with this so often. It’s easy to say it, so hard to live it. God, would you forgive me? I confess that I often don’t live this as well as I ought to. But I know that you are strong in me. My flesh is weak, but you are strong. Lord, I pray that you would give us the faith to live this out. May we emulate what we see in Hebrews 11. May we follow in the footsteps of Moses. May we value Christ above all, and may that shape how we live in this life until we see you face to face. May that be true of us. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

https://youtu.be/S0KGQNv00CA?si=uhGnvIiI-gugE9s2   Introduction: Hebrews, Augustine, and The City My name is Kenny. I have the privilege of serving as pastor at Horizon City. Those of you who’ve been with us for a while, you know we’ve been traveling through the book of Hebrews, which is structurally a transcribed sermon. In essence, the writer preached a sermon at some point, transcribed it, and then sent it to this small church that was under fire. This church, predominantly ethnic Jews who had become Christians, but some of them were now considering abandoning the Christian faith and going back to Judaism. He is writing this letter to implore them not to abandon the Christian faith. As we’ve been traveling through the first 10 chapters of Hebrews, we’ve seen various exhortations and insights from the writer of Hebrews. Now we’ve come to chapter 11, which is one of my favorite chapters in the book. My plan is, next Sunday, God willing, for us to exposit the entire chapter, to go through all of chapter 11. But today’s message will feel a little bit different than normal because I want to just hone in on one particular phrase. One particular concept that has sort of been alluded to a little bit already in Hebrews, but now takes center stage. It will be examined and highlighted again later in the book. I want to focus on one phrase that comes from Hebrews 11, chapter 10. It’s speaking of Abraham, and it says that: “He was looking forward to a city that has foundations.” Now, if you’re not familiar with Hebrews, chapter 11, it is sometimes referred to as ‘The hall of Faith.’ It’s highlighting all these people from the Old Testament. The writer of Hebrews is going through the list of people in the Old Testament who demonstrated great faith, and he’s highlighting these people, and saying, here’s the thing this person did which demonstrates genuine faith. It is interesting, though, when you know the backstory of all the people labeled or mentioned in Hebrews 11. A lot of them made some good choices, but a lot of them also made some really poor choices. The resumes of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 are jam-packed with warts. I take great comfort in that, to know that my resume is checkered and sometimes ugly. My background is not pristine. Yet because of God’s work in my life, I, too, can demonstrate genuine faith. What an inspiration this chapter is to me and ought to be to us. So he’s going through Hebrews 11, and he’s mentioning these people in the Old Testament. He’s mentioning something each of them did to demonstrate genuine faith. When he gets to Abraham, he mentions something interesting. He mentions that Abraham was looking forward to a city with foundations, a city not built by human hands, but a city built by God. This is an interesting descriptor for him to hone in on because he could have said all sorts of things about Abraham. Abraham lived a pretty full life. He did a lot of things, made a lot of decisions, good and bad. He’s got a pretty stellar resume in some ways. So, of all the things that he could have said about Abraham to highlight him, I find it interesting that the thing above all that the writer of Hebrews feels the need to highlight is that Abraham was looking forward to a city. This city must have been a really big deal to Abraham. It must have shaped how he lived his life. Abraham’s not alone in that. More than 2400 years later, after Abraham, there would be a Christian pastor in Africa by the name of Augustine. Augustine was a pastor in North Africa. He lived in the late three hundreds and early four hundreds. Augustine is probably the most brilliant and most influential Christian theologian in Christian history. Augustine’s influence goes beyond just Christians. He has a profound influence even on unbelieving people. He engages in theology, but also philosophy. In fact, in the wake of World War II, in the 1940s and 1950s, lots of nations were debating this idea of ‘just war’. What does it mean to commit a war crime? Some people were arguing that it’s a war. You can do whatever you want. Others argued no, look at the atrocities committed during World War II, there needed to be limitations. So there is this moment in the mid-1900s called the Geneva Convention. A bunch of political leaders from around the globe debated how far is too far in war. They brought in data and literature from all sorts of writings. One of the philosophers that they quoted at the Geneva Convention was Augustine. 1500 years after he lived, a bunch of politicians are using Augustine’s work, along with others, to help them understand how far is too far in modern warfare. It’s a pretty big deal that this Christian pastor in Africa in the year 400 is writing things that are influencing the Geneva Convention in the 1900s. That gives you a little insight into who Augustine was. Augustine wrote a bunch of books, essays, tracts, and papers. A bunch of his sermons have been transcribed, but his greatest work is a book called The City of God. It took him almost two decades to write. In The City of God, Augustine spends a significant amount of time talking about this great city to come. Augustine says, Remember the big, great city that Abraham was looking forward to? Augustine spends a significant amount of time writing about that future city. His work, The City of God, would go on to be one of the most influential works in Christian history. In the book, he talks a lot about the idea of the City of God and the City of Man. There are these two cities, and everyone on planet Earth is a citizen of one of those two cities. We’re all born into the City of Man. Through faith in Jesus, we can then be transferred from the City of Man into the City of God. But everyone is a citizen of one of these two cities. In this age, in this world, these two cities we live in, intermingled, is how Augustine says it. If you are a genuine believer, if you put faith in Christ, you are a citizen of the City of God. If you don’t believe in the one true God, or if your faith is not genuine in Jesus, then you are a member of the City of Man. You are not a member of the City of God. But Augustine articulates quite vividly that there will come a moment in the future where Jesus comes back and he initiates a great divide, where the citizens of the City of God will be separated from the citizens of the City of Man. The citizens of the City of Man will be condemned and cast out. Then Jesus is going to radically renovate the world in which we live. This earth, it’s going to be way, way bigger, way better than it is now. The citizens of the City of God will remain in this new, radically renovated earth, and Jesus will live amongst us forever. That’s in essence the trajectory of the Christian faith. Those of us who love Jesus will remain on this planet in this new paradise that Jesus creates for us. Augustine wrote significantly about this. So, full disclosure, I am greatly influenced by Augustine. In this morning’s message, I’m going to lean a lot on Augustine’s work. Why did Augustine feel the need to write so much about this? Why is Abraham looking forward to this city? Why does the writer of Hebrews, of all the things he can mention about Abraham, why is this the thing that he feels the need to hold up? The city we’re looking forward to is probably a really big deal. We should think about it often. So this morning, I plan to give you four descriptions of that future city. I’m going to give you four observations from Scripture, and then I want to give you two practical applications. But first, let’s ask God for help. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, the Bible, this sacred text that is without error, that accurately depicts the life of Abraham and tells us about that great future city. Thank you for teachers like Augustine and other pastors throughout Christian history who have helped us to understand some of these concepts. And now, Lord, as we examine a few verses from Scripture this morning, I pray we would think about that future city, and it would shape how we live our lives. Would you be pleased to use the reality of the future city, the one that Abraham looked forward to? May that reality shape how we live in this world. And may we leave this place this morning more convinced of the future city and more passionate about looking forward to it than when we walked in. I pray these things in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.   Observations From the Text Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 10, speaking of Abraham: “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”   The city that Abraham was looking forward to goes by several different names. It can be confusing because it’s described in different ways. In Hebrews chapter 12, the writer of Hebrews gives multiple names to this city. The writer of Hebrews, speaking about the Jewish people, implies that they missed out on entering into this city because they were disobedient. But then he says this in verse 22, speaking to the Christians, “But you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” So in one verse, he uses three different descriptors, three different phrases to describe this future city that Abraham’s looking forward to. He says, it’s Mount Zion. It’s the city of the living God. It’s the heavenly Jerusalem. Those are the three descriptors. The word Zion he’s picking up on from the Old Testament. The word Zion is used dozens of times throughout the Old Testament, primarily by Isaiah and Jeremiah. In their prophecies, they use the word Zion, or sometimes the city of Zion, house of Zion, or Mount Zion. They’re always referring to the same thing. They’re saying that there’s this moment in the future where all of God’s people from all generations will gather. That gathering is called Zion. He’s saying to them, you Christians, you are the ones who have now come to the entryway of this city, of this great gathering, this heavenly city, this heavenly Jerusalem. Some people argue that these prophecies in the Old Testament are for ethnic Jewish people, for the nation of Israel. But when you look at what the writer of Hebrews is saying, I don’t think that’s what he’s referring to. The writer of Hebrews is saying the ethnic Jews God was faithful to them in the Old Testament. But all those promises in the Old Testament, they’re actually not for them. They’re actually for you, Christians. You are the ones who are going to enter the heavenly Jerusalem. The Book of Revelation in chapter 21 refers to this new community, this gathering, as the New Jerusalem. So those are all the different adjectives or descriptors used for this. We have the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Jerusalem, the House of Zion, the City of Zion, Mount Zion, City of God, City of the Living God, the Holy City, the City with Foundations. All of those descriptors are referring to the same thing: the gathering of God’s people when Jesus comes back.   This gathering is the final destination for all genuine believers. If you die in this world before Jesus comes back, which in all likelihood is going to be most of us. In likelihood, we’re all going to die before Jesus comes back, statistically speaking. So what do we do in the meantime? We were separated from our physical bodies and we’re in heaven. But that is a temporary holding tank. There’s going to come a moment where Jesus radically renovates the earth, and we are then joined with our physical bodies. But they’re going to be glorified, they will be new bodies. In Philippians chapter 3, we see that we will have bodies the way Jesus had a body post-resurrection. When Jesus rose from the dead, he had a glorified body. He could walk through walls. He wasn’t going to suffer from the things we suffer from. That’s the kind of body you’re going to have. You’re going to have a physical body that’s perfectly healthy. No cancer, no foot issues, no diabetes, no cataracts, no Parkinson’s, no sleep apnea. What a grand thing that will be. We’re going to have a new body, and we will be with Jesus in this city forever and ever, living in this radically renovated Earth. Side note, it’s important to note that it’s going to be an actual physical place. I think sometimes we think of heaven as this floaty place. We’re in the clouds, floating around. It will be just as real as your hand is today. We’ll eat food and we’ll spend time together, and we will enjoy Jesus together forever. The new Jerusalem, the city that Abraham was looking forward to, is a real physical place, a gathering of God’s people all together.   That future city is going to be a community of sinless people. When we think of cities, we often think of geography, locations. But that’s not the primary way the Bible uses the word ‘city’ or ‘nations’. Most of the time in scripture, when the word ‘nation’ or ‘city’ is used, it’s not referring to a physical place. It’s often referring to a group of people. We see this in the book of Exodus. The nation of Israel was considered a nation of people before they ever had land. They moved around. They were nomadic. Abraham was nomadic, moved around, but he was a people unto himself. His family became a people. So when we think about the future city, we shouldn’t think about location. We should think about a people. The New Jerusalem will be a community of believers in Jesus living together in perfect harmony. Abraham was not looking forward to pearly gates or big buildings or streets of gold or extravagant buffets or any other amenity. The streets of gold. How amazing will it be to see the streets of gold? That’s not the most amazing thing about the New Jerusalem. In fact, that’s not even in the top 1000. One of the most amazing things about the New Jerusalem is that it’s a community of God’s people living together in perfect harmony forever. The thing about this group of people that is most shocking is that we will be sinless. Because of the grace of God, none of us will ever sin against one another. Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a city with millions of other people and no one ever sins? That’s what it will be. Oh, what will that be like? Can you imagine being in a community of people with no disappointments, no gossip, no betrayal, no heartbreaks, no breakups, no misunderstandings, no miscommunication? A community of people where there are no insecurities or distrust, no racism or bigotry or misogyny or hatred, no sexual immorality, no abortion, no slavery. A city where no one is lonely and no one is hungry. A community with no war, no attacks, no debates, no theft, no strife. A community where there are no abusive leaders or toxic politicians or exploitation or manipulation or jealousy or envy. No agenda, no ulterior motive, no baggage of any kind. Can you imagine living in a city like that? Every time in this life someone sins against you, you can pause and think, what would it be like to be in a city where that would never happen? All of us have people we’re close to that we love, and we love things about them. But then there are things about them we can’t stand that irritate us or frustrate us. Imagine every person you know and love who follows Jesus with all the good about them, but all the things about them that are hurtful or sinful sliced away. Oftentimes, we interact with other believers, and they do something sinful or frustrating toward us, we want to focus on that thing. I would exhort you to think about it in this way: You’re a believer. You’ve done this thing against me. There’s going to come a day when you’re not going to do that anymore. I see in you the day, the version of you that will be in the new Jerusalem. What a day that will be. There have been all sorts of studies over the years done on what humans long for the most. Universities, think tanks, and all sorts of organizations have done survey after survey, over and over again. The number one thing that people will report wanting the most is a deep connection with other human beings. In a lot of those same surveys, you know what people fear the most? Deep connection with other human beings. It’s the thing we long for and we’re most afraid of. We’re nervous about what humans may do to us. We want to have deep connections with other people, but other people are the greatest source of pain in our lives. Well, can you imagine being in a city where you can lean into those deep connections and never have to fear being hurt by that person? What a day that will be. That’s the new Jerusalem. How do we know we will be sinless? How do we know that will be the case? Well, because Jesus is shaping us and preparing us and transforming us to be that. It’s not dependent on you. If it were dependent on you, it wouldn’t happen, but it’s not dependent on you. It’s dependent on Christ, and Jesus has promised to do it. This is what the Bible tells us in Colossians chapter 1, verse 22: he (Jesus) has reconciled you. Then he tells us why: “To present you holy, faultless and blameless.” The reason why Jesus reconciled you was so that eventually he would present you wholly faultless and blameless. In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul tells us this: “Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.” He did this to present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle. Jesus died for you. He loves you and he has promised that he will do in you what must be done, so that on that day you will be presented without spot, without wrinkle. Jude 1:24 says that God is the one who will protect you from stumbling and make you stand in the presence of his glory without blemish and with great joy. It is God who is doing the work in you. He is the One who’s going to keep you from stumbling in this life. He is the One who will guide you and protect you. He is the one whom you will stand in his presence, without blemish and with great joy. Then, of course, famously, Jesus says in Matthew 16, verse 18: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail.” How do we know for sure we will be sinless? Because Jesus is the one doing the work. He will build his church, and all of the gates of hell that seem like they will stand in the way, they aren’t going to prevail. Abraham understood this. The writer of Hebrews tells us that he was looking forward to that city whose architect and builder is God. God is the one architecting the city. God is the one building this community of believers. It is God who will bring it to fruition on that day. Believers and nonbelievers all long for paradise in some way or another. What we saw happen in the mid-19th century was this significant movement of people beginning to say we don’t have to wait for the future age. We can bring that today. We can bring paradise today if we only have the right political system. That ideology, in essence, is what gave birth to political systems like communism and socialism. Communism and socialism promise that we can create a utopia on this earth. We can create everything perfect. We can have a perfect city where we never sin against one another if we just provide everything for everyone. The problem is not humans. The problem is the system. If we can only have the right, perfect political framework, then we’ll have perfect paradise. But communism simply cannot change the human heart. Neither of those systems, communism and socialism, can deliver on the promise. Those systems are ultimately bankrupt because they demand something of humans that humans simply cannot do. That is to behave well all of the time, apart from the grace of God. That’s what communism wants. Communism says, behave, be good, work hard, even though you’re not gonna have any rewards, and even though you don’t have the grace of God at work in your life. But that simply doesn’t work. Those systems will never work. We should oppose those systems. They are contrary to the reality of human nature. They will never work. At the heart of those systems is a desire to create the New Jerusalem apart from the grace of God. It’s a desire to have politics architect the perfect city, rather than recognizing that only God can architect the perfect city. We see this with secular progressive politics all the time. The expectation is to do something that we simply cannot do. The expectation is for humans to behave in a way that humans cannot behave. It is like expecting ice cream to never melt in the Florida sun. It’s an absurd, preposterous expectation. We can build Utopia without God, but the reality is, that is a false narrative. If you want to build utopia, you need the only being that can create utopia. Simply put this way, if you want the city of God, you need to have God. My first point was, the city goes by multiple names. The second point was, it is the final destination. The third point, the new Jerusalem will be a community of perfect believers together. Finally, number four. The fourth characteristic of that great city, and this is the most important one.   God will dwell with us in that city. The apostle John writes in Revelation, chapter 21, verse 3, this: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them’.” Church, we’re going to live with God together, enjoying him forever. When you see his face, it will satisfy your soul more than anything you’ve ever experienced. It will be the most beautiful, most delightful moment that you’ve ever had. I try to think about what it might be like to see Jesus, to see him in his glory, his beauty, to bask in the glory of our perfect Savior. What will that be like? I think about moments in my life that have been pretty glorious. I remember the first time I had a Shake Shack burger with chopped cherry peppers. It was pretty amazing. It was a pretty glorious moment. I remember the first time I went to Six Flags in New Jersey, and I rode the Batman ride. It was a fantastic roller coaster. I remember the first time I had a great glass of wine, I just thought, wow, this is delicious. I remember the first time I sat watching a sunset with my wife after we were newly married. I remember that moment, how beautiful, delightful that moment was. I remember the moment when Jalen Hurts threw that 46-yard touchdown pass to Devontae Smith to seal the game. What a glorious moment that was. I remember the moment my first child, Lettie, was born. I remember when the midwife handed me that purplish-looking creature that I thought was an alien. I remember just holding her. I remember the joy. I remember how beautiful she was to me. I remember the delight that I felt in that moment. Church, all of those things, they pale in comparison to the moment we will see Jesus. When we see his face, it will be more beautiful, more delightful, more satisfying, more joyful than any of those things. Nothing in this life will compare to the moment when we see him face to face. We will be in a city where we stare at him forever and ever and ever. There will be nothing like it. Those are the four descriptors we see in scripture of the city of God.   Keep Your Eyes Focused on The City I want to give you two points of application. Number one, when you face suffering in this world, think about the future city. Think about Zion. Think about the new Jerusalem. In Revelation 21, verse 4, the apostle John tells us that when we enter into that moment, when we all gather together, this is what we can expect: “Jesus will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death will be no more, neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. The previous things have passed away.” Grief, crying, and pain will be no more. So in this life, when you face grief and crying and pain, none of us will escape that. We will all face those things in this life. But in this life, when you face that, you can pause and you can think about the moment to come, where it will all be wiped away. In this age, in this life, make no mistake, we will suffer as long as we are intermingled. The city of God and the city of man are living intermingled. In this age, there will be pain. We are all finite and fallen creatures living in a broken world. We are affected by our own sin and by the sinful choice of others. It’s inescapable. But when you face great pain in this life, in those moments, you can pause and think about the future moment to come, where it will all be wiped away. In the moments of this life, when you experience the curse of sin, the sting of death, you can pause and think about the future. The Apostle Paul tells us to do this, and models this for us in Romans, chapter 8. In Romans, chapter 8, verse 18, the apostle Paul is saying, when he’s facing pain in this world, this is what he does: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed.” What an unbelievable statement. In this life, you’re gonna face afflictions, sufferings. The glory to come is so magnificent, you can’t even compare the current to that. It feels like he’s almost invalidating the pain we feel in this world. But I don’t think that’s what he’s doing. He’s not making light of the pain we feel in this world. He’s just trying to make much of the glory that is to come. I remember a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about my wife and me looking to buy a house. We were able to buy a house about six weeks ago in Clermont. I remember looking at some houses, and I was talking to a real estate agent, and the real estate agent said, This one house I really liked was about 800,000 dollars. I was like, that’s about triple what we can afford, so we probably can’t buy that one. She told me, with her agency, because of all this stuff happening, it wouldn’t surprise her if one day that house was worth 80 million dollars. I thought to myself, imagine if that were true. Imagine if someone came to you and said, I’m going to sell you a house today for $800,000. You’d think that’s a lot. That would hurt paying for that. It would cost me something. I would feel the pain of that today. But what if I knew for sure it’s going to be worth 80 million dollars. That’s well worth the suffering I’m experiencing in this world. That’s the sentiment on display in Romans 8. The apostle Paul is trying to say, This world is real. It’s painful, but what you’re gonna get is so valuable. This is gonna feel like nothing. There’s gonna come a moment with the pain of this world and you’re gonna look back and think, that was nothing. He says a similar sentiment in Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 17. Paul, speaking of suffering and affliction, calls it light and momentary. Now, if you know the life of the Apostle Paul, he experienced a lot of painful situations. We read this and can’t believe Paul is making this statement. The afflictions of this world don’t feel light and momentary at all. They feel heavy, like they’re going to go on forever and ever. Paul says, keep your eye on the future that is to come, the glory that is to come, and the heaviness of this world will feel lighter and eventually will be wiped away. The rest of that verse, 2 Corinthians 4:17, He says: “For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” The suffering you endure in this world is preparing you for a weight of glory that you can’t even imagine. So in this life, when you experience pain and suffering, think about the glory to come. Paul helps us understand that it will give us the strength to endure. The glory that is to come will comfort you. In the 1600s, there was a great Puritan preacher by the name of John Bunyan. He wrote one of the most famous books in Western history, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Some of you may be familiar with it, if you’re not familiar, the story is about a man named Christian. Christian is on a pilgrimage towards the celestial City. That’s what John Bunyan called it. Along this pilgrimage, Christian meets another man by the name of Mr. Standfast. So, Mr. Standfast and Christian they’re going on this pilgrimage, and toward the end of their time together, Mr. Standfast is looking forward to the celestial city. He knows he’s about to die. He’s about to enter the other side. Mr. Standfast says to Christian, ‘The waters of this life indeed are to the palate bitter and to the stomach cold. Yet the thoughts of what I am going to and the convoy that waits for me on the other side do lie as a glowing coal at my heart.’ This life, sometimes it’s bitter. This life is so cold. When I think about where I’m headed and the convoy, the group of people that are there waiting for me, they’re already in. They’re already in a moment where they’re experiencing the glory of God. They’re waiting for me. Abraham is already there experiencing the glory of God. When I think about the convoy that awaits me, it burns in my soul like a glowing coal, Mr. Standfast says. The pilgrimage toward the City of God is strengthened by our knowledge of that future city and gives us great comfort to endure the difficulty of this life. The pilgrimage toward the celestial city is most successful when we keep our eyes on the celestial city. So, Christians, keep your eyes on that.   Our Response to Thoughts of the City The second point of application this morning. The thought of the new city should warm your heart. It should do something inside of you. You can use this as a diagnostic tool. As I’ve been talking about this as we’re reading passages of scripture from Romans, Corinthians, Hebrews, and Revelation 21, as you hear these scriptures, as you hear the reality of what is to come, it should be warming your heart. You should have a reflex or reaction to this. Remember when you were a kid, you went to the doctor and they gave you a little rubber hammer, they kind of popped it on your knee, and your leg would pop up, showing you the reflex. If you respond to it, that means you’re good, your reflexes work. But if you get popped on the knee with a little rubber hammer and your foot doesn’t move, or it barely moves, that means something is wrong. The concept of the celestial city, the New Jerusalem, is like that rubber hammer popping you on the heart. If throughout this sermon, you haven’t moved at all, something’s wrong. This is a diagnostic tool for you. What should happen is you should think about what an amazing moment it’s going to be. It should flood your soul with joy. Or it would also be appropriate to respond like, I’ve not thought about that much. I’m lamenting that I have not thought about it, but I intend to think about it more. But if you sit here this morning and you think to yourself, that’s cool, New Jerusalem, I bet that’s gonna be good. But it doesn’t do anything in you. It doesn’t warm your heart, it doesn’t stoke your affections for Jesus, it doesn’t cultivate in you a passion for Christ, it doesn’t grab you or nearly bring you to tears. If nothing is happening on the inside of you, something’s off. I challenge you this morning, if that’s you, take that to the Lord in prayer. It could mean many different things. It could mean that maybe there’s some sin in your life that you need to repent of, you haven’t brought to the Lord, you need to deal with. Or maybe there’s a relationship in your life that’s fractured, it’s causing you to not see clearly. Or maybe you’re just apathetic. Maybe you’re at a place in your Christian faith where you’re just so-so. Or maybe, you think you’re a genuine Christian, but your faith is not genuine. If you genuinely believe in Christ and you are one of his, when you think about being with him forever and ever, it should do something in your soul in the moment. If it doesn’t, you should go to him in prayer and say, Lord, what is it about me, what’s going on inside of me that this doesn’t grab my heart, this doesn’t stoke my affections for you? But if it does stoke your affections, if you do find comfort, then you can know the Lord is working in me. He has promised to complete the work he began in me.   Conclusion: Jesus Looks Forward to the City One final thought. Abraham looked forward to the City. Lots of Old Testament saints look forward to the City. Augustine looked forward to the City. But there is someone in all of human history who’s looked forward to the City more than you and more than anyone else. He’s greater than Abraham. His name is Jesus. Jesus is looking forward to the City. Jesus longs for the day when he’s going to be with us and we feast with him forever. This is what gave him the strength to endure the cross. In Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 2, it tells us that it was the joy set before him. He endured the cross. There’s a future picture set in front of Jesus, and Jesus sees it. The new Jerusalem. The celestial city, with my people enjoying one another forever and ever and ever. I’ll do the cross. I’ll go through this to get there with them. It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross. He went on a mission to ensure that our joy could be had. To remove the obstacle between us and him, and that was sin. Church, that is mega love. Jesus suffered the consequences of our sin. He died a brutal death on a Roman cross in our place. It should have been you and me on that cross. But Jesus dies in our place. He takes the penalty that we deserved. Pays the spiritual debt that we owed. So that there will be no more obstacles between us and the celestial city. So that now we can march into a community of people, a perfected people, where we enjoy one another together forever and ever. We will feast with him. We will see him, we will enjoy him. We will be satisfied by Him. That will go on forever and ever and ever.

https://youtu.be/zrskQkvlSXI?si=n9flo9-ph5kUfzxc Introduction: Higher Expectations It is a very unpleasant experience to be called into the teacher’s office after you hand in an assignment that you know wasn’t your best work. The teacher sits you down and looks at you, and says, This work isn’t like you. This isn’t the normal quality you usually submit. You normally do work much better than this. Your expected performance is much higher. It’s not a great feeling. If we are being honest, it feels like getting punched in the gut. Especially when you know it’s true. You know that the work that you submitted wasn’t as good, that you hadn’t put in the full effort. You phoned it in on this one, maybe out of discouragement or out of tiredness. The author of Hebrews, like a master teacher or coach, is doing the same thing for his audience. In our passage this morning, Hebrews 10:19-39, the author of Hebrews, like a good mentor or a good teacher, is coaching his readers to continue on in their former diligence, not to be content with this kind of work. He does this by first pointing out the ample resources available to them to draw on to aid them in their work. Then he warns them of the consequences of falling back in their faith. Finally, he’s going to encourage them, reminding them of their potential. They were successful in the past, and he is so confident that they will persevere until the end.   Make Use of Your Gifts We read beginning in Hebrews 10, verse 19: “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” In the letter to the Hebrews, there is this beautiful sermon about faithfulness to Jesus and all the blessings and riches that the believer stands to gain that he has through Christ. This better covenant has been discussed over the past nine chapters, and now, at this point in chapter 10, the hope is that the Christian would make use of all these gifts and blessings. Full access to God has been granted through the sacrifice of Jesus. We have an amazing High Priest, better than we could imagine. So the reader is urged to make use of these great privileges. May you draw near to God with that full assurance of faith he’s giving you, because you have been sprinkled clean, you have been washed, you have been purified through Jesus. Draw near and hold fast to your confession. You’ve been given these resources, so you should use them. Why is studying your Bible exciting? Because it’s going to recount to you the love and care that God has for you. Why is reading theology worthwhile? Because it’s talking about the faithfulness of our God. Hold fast to the confession of your hope, because the One who made it is faithful both to you and to all of his promises. It should be obvious what should be done. If we have these blessings, then we should take every opportunity to draw on them, to recall them, to meditate on them. If I have the Torchy’s Tacos gold card and I get free queso every time I show up to Torchy’s, why would I go to Torchy’s and not get free queso? As silly as that analogy is, that’s what’s going on here in Hebrews. He’s saying, you’ve been given these awesome blessings. You’ve got these gifts, you have these tools. Make use of them, use them. Don’t go to Torchy’s and not get free queso. Draw near to God. Hold fast to the sure hope that you have in Jesus.   Consider Ways to Stir Up Love Now, as we move on, in verse 24, it says: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day is drawing near.” Christians should take time to consider the way they can stir up other Christians to love, demonstrating that love through good works. Stir up is usually more of a negative word, used to agitate a crowd, but here it’s used positively. In the same passion, with the same fiery fervor, you might start a protest over something, do that. But do that for believers to love Jesus more. Stir them up. Fan the flames. Encourage the new believer to draw near to God’s word and to grow in prayer. Show others how valuable this Christian community is. Warm the heart of the suffering brother who may be going through a spiritually dry season. Call out and keep accountable others whose love may be diminished from the gloom of sin. These are just some of the ways. There are many others that you could stir up Christians to love and good works. The word I want to focus on here for a minute is consider. The challenge here is not only to go about stirring up others to love Jesus and obey him, but to think about ways to do this in advance of meeting those brothers and sisters on a Sunday morning. Plan out before Sunday morning gets here, ways that you can minister to others during the Sunday gathering. So when Thursday, Friday, and Saturday roll around in your busy week, take some time to plan for church, to prep for how you might encourage, uplift, or challenge others to follow Jesus. Don’t leave the stirring up of others to improvisation. All of us do this planning naturally for other things. I don’t think anyone here would invite someone over for dinner and not plan out a single detail until that person walked in the door. No, you make a plan for them coming over. All of us do this naturally and innately. We invite someone over, and we naturally start to think of what we need to do for them. We need to clean the house, we need to get it ready. We need to cook the roast, we need to go to the grocery store. We need to make a list so that when we go to the grocery store, we don’t forget something. In the same way, you should plan in advance. Consider ways to stir up others in the church. Give thought to the advanced planning of how you might encourage, equip, bless, admonish, and correct the fellow members of the church on Sunday morning. You can’t stir up others if you’re not around others. It’s obvious, but it needs to be said. So Hebrews reminds you not to neglect meeting together as the church, and it puts more urgency on doing so since the race is almost finished. The day of the Lord is near. For those of you who may have been in church for a long time, you’ve probably heard these verses before, and they’ve probably been in the context of exhorting you not to neglect meeting together. Don’t skip church because it’s bad for you. That you need the church, that’s the way you grow, and you miss out on so many benefits and equipping for yourself if you skip church. So make it a regular habit. Don’t be absent because you’re leaving behind growth for yourself, and it’s not good for your soul. I want to reiterate that it is all true, but I want us to look at this text from another angle this morning. Don’t neglect meeting together because there are others in the church who need you. There are other people on Sunday morning who need your particular encouragement. They need your help. They need your presence. You have been gifted. The scriptures tell us you’ve been gifted with special gifts and talents and abilities, encouragements, even just special words. These are given to you by God for the purpose of ministering to others in the church. You’re not gifted for your own upliftment, for your own spiritual growth, for your own edification. You have been gifted uniquely by God so others will benefit. When you neglect meeting together, when you make a habit of doing so, you’re robbing, removing, holding back those gifts that are needed by other people in the church. Don’t neglect meeting together because other people may need you. You’re necessary. It’s good, it’s important that you took the time to be here. Prioritize the church gathering, yes, because it’s good for you. But make sure that the church is a priority because we need you here. We need you with us. I need you stirring up love and good works in my heart.   A Warning from the Writer of Hebrews Now, the great teacher and coach, the author of Hebrews, is going to move into a very stark warning. He’s reminded us of the resources we have, the abilities that we have, and the community needed to help each other along the way. Now he’s going to give us a warning of what happens if we continue to go down the road of poor-quality work. What will happen if we embrace a pattern of neglecting the church, neglecting the gifts that Jesus has given us? What if we freely draw back, and instead we become apathetic and stagnant in our faith? What’s going to happen if you follow that path? Maybe that’s what the audience of Hebrews is starting to walk down. So we read in verse 26 this warning: “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” This is a strong, harsh warning to the believers that a judgment awaits those who fall away. What happens if they continue to hand in subpar work? What happens if they become lax? 
If they start to treat the gifts that God is offering them with contempt? The judgment of God comes. The author of Hebrews warns strongly that the judgment of God is no good thing. It’s fearful, it’s full of dread. No one wants to fall under the judgment of God. It is horrible. He compares the Old Covenant to the New Covenant in this warning. We’ve learned throughout the book of Hebrews that the Old Covenant has been made obsolete by the new and better Covenant. So if you or I, who are now under this new, better covenant, fall away, if we treat these better things with contempt, the gifts of God that we’ve been given graciously by him, if we treat those with contempt, how much greater judgment will there be on us? There was judgment on those who disregarded, disobeyed, and trampled underfoot the Old Covenant. Now that we have the New Covenant, how much more will God judge us for not paying closer attention to it, for disregarding it, for disrespecting it, for going on deliberately sinning? If God judged those in the Old Covenant who disregarded and disrespected their hamburger steak, how much more, the author of Hebrews is saying, will God judge those who have been given the prime USDA Black Angus certified rib eye and despise that cut of meat? You would not expect less judgment on the New Covenant. You would expect greater judgment. So don’t be apathetic to the covenant. Don’t fall back. Don’t be discouraged. Keep pushing forward in your faith. With that sobering warning, the author of Hebrews wants to snap our attention back to Jesus, to see the dangerous pit looming under you so that you can course correct and press on in the faith. While these warnings can sound harsh, and you may have started to wonder, Why is the author of Hebrews so mean? It’s quite the opposite. I hope you can see that it’s out of an abundance of care and love for them that he gives these sharp warnings to his readers. These warnings are to help you see the seriousness of falling away from Jesus. They’re supposed to remind you that there is so very, very much to gain in your faith, and there is so much to lose by turning away from Jesus. If my son walked out into the road and there was a speeding car coming right at him, I wouldn’t say, Kai, at your earliest convenience, could you please consider the bad choice that you’re about to make and kindly refrain from walking in that direction to avoid any potential bodily injury? No. I would shout harshly, Kai, get out of the road. The sharpness is needed. It puts you on high alert. It communicates to you the severity of the danger and the need for immediate action. Hebrews is warning us from being lazy and apathetic in our pursuit of God, for disregarding the gifts of God. There’s a short story by Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, called ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’. In this story, Bartleby is hired by a lawyer to be a clerk for him. Initially, he hands in wonderful quality work and a quantity that’s unmatched by the other clerks around him. But then, all of a sudden, one day the lawyer walks in and says, Good morning, Bartleby. Can I have those numbers on my desk by 10? Barleby looks up at him and, in a very unaffected, nonplussed way, just says, I would prefer not to. Well, the boss is taken aback. Well, it’s your job, Bartleby. Can you get these numbers on my desk? And again, the same unaffected response. I would prefer not to. Bartleby stops doing any work, and he simply stares all day out of a window that faces a brick wall. He stops taking care of himself. Anytime anyone asks him anything, he just says, I would prefer not to. The lawyer finds out that he’s living in the office building, and it starts driving him nuts that he continually says the same thing. ‘I would prefer not to do anything’. So he leases out his building to another employer and goes to get away from Bartleby. The new owner calls and complains and says, This guy is driving me crazy. How did you not warn me about this guy? He just says, ‘I would prefer not to’, to every request. I think this story can illustrate how apathy, a lack of motivation, can creep into our hearts. It not only ruins our lives, but it also drives the people around us crazy. It zaps all ambition from our hearts. I think that’s the temptation, to be like Bartleby. That may be what the author of Hebrews is trying to say to the people he’s addressing in Hebrews 10. After all, as we’re going to read on, these believers had already been enduring quite a lot. The cost of discipleship for them was high. They have been enduring mocking, disgrace, and possibly plundering of property. Maybe there was a vibrancy when they first started for the first couple of years to fight the good fight of faith, to be good witnesses despite persecution and sword, despite prison sentences. But now, after so many years later, there’s a temptation in this reader’s heart to just say, God, I don’t want to do this anymore. Year after year of hardship and struggle and pain, my perseverance, God, and my endurance is starting to grow thin. Maybe they, like Bartleby, just want to say, I would prefer not to have to do this anymore. They may be starting to say, I’m tired of being mocked. I’m tired of the culture constantly pushing against me. I’m tired of getting my stuff stolen. They may be thinking, I’m tired of being called names and being made fun of for my sincere faith, and I would just prefer not to have to do this anymore. So, by way of warning of what that apathy could lead to, the author of Hebrews is reminding them of the fearful judgment of trampling underfoot the covenant of God and Disregarding what they had been taught, he gives them this warning as a reminder to refocus, to not fall into apathy, to not give up in the face of hardships.   A Word of Encouragement But he doesn’t do just that. Like any great coach, he gives the warning of the danger they’re facing to be sure their attention is focused. But then he encourages them by reminding them of their past victory. We read starting in verse 32: “But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, ‘Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul will have no pleasure in him’.” Rehashing your past is a wonderful marriage counseling tool. It’s helpful for couples who you are counseling that seem to be so angry and against each other that they practically can’t speak to one another. So what you do as an aid in this situation is to do separate sessions with them, and at each one, one at a time, you start to pull the story from them of when they first fell in love. What was it that really drew her to your eye? What was it about him that you didn’t want to be away from him for a second? As you recall that story, the feelings of love start to flood back into your mind. The temporary blinding by this frustration-fueled amnesia fades away, and they see with a little bit more clarity the beauty and deep abiding love for their spouse. Nostalgia can work wonders as you are reminded of when the sparks first flew, when the fireworks of romance first exploded. There was a time when that person was so dear to you, you were not always antagonistic towards each other. This can help in many situations beyond just marriage. When you’re feeling burnt out, remembering why you’re pursuing something in the first place can reignite the motivation that’s now become dormant from all the frustrations that you met along the way. The author of Hebrews is using this method as any good coach or mentor would, to motivate his readers to press on despite the pain and frustration. They need a boost. They need this reminder. They need endurance to keep running at the great pace they had started with. The race isn’t over. It’s been arduous for them. For the audience of this letter, life seems to be full of trials, and they’re probably getting exhausted with all they’ve had to endure so far. So the author is reminding them of what they have in Jesus. The zeal they had at first was because of the glory revealed to them and secured to them in the New Covenant. They knew there was a greater kingdom to come. Their eyes had been fixed on the reward Christ had for them. So what does it matter if their property was plundered? What does it matter if they’re going to go to prison? What’s a year-long prison sentence in view of an eternity with God and all the joy set before them? What could men do under persecution compared to what Jesus had already secured for them? The value of Jesus was worth enduring anything. The picture in their mind of the kingdom of God drove their steadfast faith. So just like in that marriage counseling tool, he’s reminding them of these things to fan the flames of faithfulness that may have started to grow cold, to fuel up their emptying tanks of endurance, urging them to continue to fight the good fight of fate, to not put down their sword, to not abandon the battle. Our great coach and teacher, the author of Hebrews, continues encouraging his pupils by letting them know that he has full confidence in them, their character, and their work. They’re not part of this faithless crowd that falls away and faces the judgment of God, they are faithful people. They’re winners. They’re achievers. Like the best teachers and mentors, He says to his audience, I have confidence in you. I know you’re capable. I know you’re the kind of person who perseveres to the end. I am confident that you are not one of those who shrink back and fall into destruction. In verse 39, he says: “But we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” You’re with us. You’re one of the ones who perseveres to the end, who sees the great reward that there is in Jesus, who sees the kingdom of heaven kept for them, the better kingdom not built by human hands. That’s the kind of people you are. From this section of warning and encouragement, he’s going to jump into a very, very long sermon illustration in chapter 11 of all the people in the past that held on by faith. All of those who have gone before them who have shown themselves faithful despite hardships, those who have endured to the end in their faith. As he goes through this list of people he’s pointing his readers to see, this is the crowd you belong to. These are your people, not the people who shrink back and are destroyed. You are like these people. That’s the team that you are on.   Closing: Don’t Settle For a Weak Faith By way of application, what can we glean from this passage this morning? The warning that the author of Hebrews gives in Hebrews 10 is very strong, very sharply worded for a church that is growing tired and lacking motivation in the face of persecution. They need this endurance to persevere in their faith. The temptation to just give up and give in is strong. The author of Hebrews gives this strong and sharply worded pastoral warning to help them course correct. To help them not give up on the great reward that is waiting for those who continue to the end. If this is a warning for them, it certainly is a warning for us. who have yet to face the kinds of trials the audience of Hebrews suffered. If they could be tempted by apathy, who had already faced public shame, prison, and stolen property, they did that gladly for their faith. How much more can we be tempted today to disregard these things, to grow apathetic, to grow lax in our faith? The bar is already been set at the lowest it’s ever been in church history. Very little is expected of the average Christian. Biblical illiteracy is rampant in churches. It’s even becoming common for pastors today to have little knowledge of the Bible. Church attendance is seen as a low priority. Ethics is a forgotten subject. Serving is optional, Prayer is a foreign language, and the kingdom of God is just another far off distant land. You enjoy an unprecedented amount of comfort and freedom that the persecuted church might be jealous of. You should be outperforming those who have limitations on their meeting places. Those who have to do underground churches face prison sentences and death if they convert. You would think that that would mean that the American church would skyrocket, but it’s not. We’re marked instead by increasing apathy, self-centeredness, and laziness. It’s marked by less discipleship, less biblical knowledge, permissive and sometimes unashamedly sinful congregations. We have not grown more than the persecuted brothers and sisters. We have fallen so far behind them in faith that it’s kind of baffling. There are so many temptations that you face in the world right now to abandon Christ. It is not always in dramatic ways, but sometimes slowly, like the drip of a leaky faucet. Satan seems to have enticed us into being deceived, into thinking that with all of our accomplishments, achievements, technologies, and comforts offered to us, we can somehow reverse the curse of the sin-stained world. Removing from us the desire for that better kingdom. Because with our luxury, it’s hard to imagine that what we have now is worse than what’s coming. It’s hard to imagine that kingdom is any better than all the nice things we have now. How often are you clinging by faith to the better kingdom of God awaiting you? Or are you just desperate for a little bit more time here? Let’s raise the standard. Let’s set the bar higher. Let’s not settle for weak faith, but press on into maturity. How can you expect to grow and stir up others into good works in the face of hardships and difficulties in life if your faith is weak? Is the best hope you can offer to the struggling Christian just a little bit more worldly comfort? Is it the best that we can do to stir up others by just talking about the new iPhone or how cool AI is? Be comforted, Christian. Instead, point them to the riches in Jesus. Lift up this future kingdom that awaits us. That despite the pain today, there will come a day when the people of God will be presented to Jesus, adorned as a bride, ready for the wedding feast of the Lamb. Look forward to that day, discouraged brother. Feast on the coming promises of God, distressed sister. Jesus, in his parable of a man who finds a valuable treasure in a field, says that that man went and sold all that he had to purchase the field because he knew that not a single one of his possessions compared to the value of the treasure that he found in the field. This man sold everything he had, and it says he did it with joy. He’s delighted to sell everything he has because he knows the treasure in that field is already worth more than anything he could possess. He isn’t begrudgingly doing it all. It’s not, if my pastor says I have to, or since you’re making me feel guilty about it, I’ll sell my possessions. This isn’t a lecture. It’s not a guilt trip for him. No one is spending hours convincing him that the things of God are good and important. The Christian shouldn’t have to be convinced that the things of God are worthwhile. You shouldn’t need to be argued into faithfulness. But this man is wiser than we. He quickly assesses the value to be had. He weighs it against all he currently has, and he realizes there’s much more value there. I need to get that field. I need that treasure that’s in there. So who cares if he has to sell his Ninja Blender or autographed football? Who cares if he has to sell his Chevy or his house or any of his other stuff? Who cares if he has to sell it? Jesus is worth far more than the value of all these things combined. My stuff doesn’t hold a candle to Jesus. You have a lot of work in the faith ahead of you. You have need of endurance. This morning, you need to keep your motivation in the faith. So draw near to God. Hold fast to him. Hold fast to the sure confession, because he is faithful. Come to the gathering because you need it, and we need you. I am confident that you will not hear these warnings and encouragements and shrink back. I am confident that you all are those who will endure to the end and preserve your souls.  

https://youtu.be/mx-NMpAcFoA?si=BWkyMztF3NeUC4CM   Introduction: Expository Preaching This morning, we have come to the middle section of Hebrews chapter 10. Similar to what we saw last week in Hebrews 9 is jam-packed with all sorts of doctrinal lessons and implications. Lots of theology is being taught. Like I said last week, Hebrews chapter 9 and into chapter 10, this section of Scripture is like a giant squid with hundreds of tentacles and arms reaching into every theological topic, debate, and subgenre of theological study. It is nearly impossible to discuss any topic of theology without having some need or obligation to consult this particular passage of Scripture. Yet again, rather than giving you 10 or 12 sermons from this passage, which we easily could, we will do just one. Quick side note on my philosophy of preaching and what we’re hoping to cultivate here at Horizon City. We are committed to expository preaching. We’re going through books of the Bible over several weeks or months and looking verse by verse, passage by passage. We believe in expository preaching. But there are different flavors of expository preaching out there. So people say they’re expository. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all the same. There are different philosophies, different approaches, and there are some that are not necessarily bad; they’re just different. Then there are some that I would say are not so good. There are various categories in that way. The particular flavor that I have when it comes to expository preaching is, in layman’s terms, what we would call the one-point sermon. One main point, then any subpoints or sub-ideas, are simply reinforcing or expounding upon that one point. The philosophy is simply that people only remember one thing. By the time you leave, you’ve forgotten most of what I said. The reality is you’re not going to remember most things. Some preachers take the approach that they’re going to give you a lot of different points, and they just hope you remember one or two, and everyone’s going to remember a different one. Kind of like the adage, you throw enough stuff at the wall, eventually something will stick. That’s the philosophy. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad or wrong. It’s just different than my approach. My approach is I want to give you a one-point sermon, and I want to drill it over and over and over again. The hope is that you remember the one thing that we want to drill home. When we’re doing expository preaching, the hope is that the one point of the sermon matches the one point of the passage that the original author intended. So when the writer of Hebrews is writing these verses in the middle part of chapter 10, he has a particular point in mind. The hope would be that my one-point sermon matches the one point that he was making in the middle part of Hebrews, chapter 10. If he is making a point and I am making a different point, then I’m not accurately representing what the writer of Hebrews was seeking to articulate. I think I’ve seen that in sermons. I’ve probably been guilty of it at times in my life. Where you take a passage of scripture and you manipulate it. You use the scripture as an excuse to say what you want to say rather than accurately representing what the original author intended to say. So the goal is not, What am I getting out of this? The goal is, What did the writer of Hebrews intend to communicate to his audience? We want our sermons to be in line with that. That’s our overarching goal. In addition to that, when it comes to our philosophy of preaching, we also want our sermons to then take that one point that the author made, and we want to connect it to Christ in one way or another. We want to go, how does this one point from this passage shed light on Jesus? What does this one point give us that we didn’t know before about the person and work of Christ? One way we do this is to have communion every single week. In sermon prep, I’m always asking myself the question, What is in this text that gives me yet another reason to remember Jesus in communion? So it’s a one-point sermon that should match the one point of the text. Then I want to ask, how does this one point shed light on the person or work of Christ? What I’ve just described to you is what theologians refer to as the redemptive historical expository approach to preaching. There are other variants, there are other philosophies. You can categorize most preachers into different categories. This is our philosophy. So that’s the primary focus. Redemptive historical. That’s the primary flavor of our preaching here. However, there are times when we will deviate from that because we think there’s some good reason to. This morning happens to be one of those times. We don’t want this to be normal. It’s not a normative practice to deviate from the redemptive historical approach. But we do want to do this occasionally. We do this occasionally for one of two reasons. Usually, when you’re going through a book of the Bible, like Hebrews, sometimes you’ll cover passages of scripture, and it’s the same theme being hit over and over again. So if you take this approach to preaching, what inevitably happens is you’ll have three or four or five sermons in a row. They kind of feel like they’re saying the same thing over and over again. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes we need to hear the same thing over and over again. That’s valuable. But there are other times when we feel it’s helpful to do something slightly different. So the main point of this text in Hebrews, chapter 10, is that Jesus is better than priests. Jesus made a sacrifice better than the sacrifices that the priests in the Old Testament made. That’s the main point of the text. Well, we’ve already covered that pretty thoroughly. We’ve preached several sermons on that theme, and we could preach it again from a slightly different angle, and that could be helpful. There are times to do that, but then there are moments where we think, are there secondary points in the text? So maybe it’s not the main point, but is there a second-place point or a third-place point in the text that we haven’t covered. In this text, there is a secondary theme being covered. Again, we don’t want to just make up something. We want to still get it from the text.   Secondary Theme: Sanctification We look at the middle part of chapter 10, and we see there’s a main theme, and there’s a second and third secondary themes. They’re still important. They’re just not the primary point of the text. So we want to kind of pull away. So this morning we’re going to look at what I think is a secondary theme in the text. If you read the text, that’s not the first thing that stuck out to me. That’s the reason why I want you to know, here’s the thought there. But it’s clearly there. I’m not just going to get up and make something up and pretend it’s in the text when it’s not there. So we look through the text. There are three or four different things in this text, and of those three or four, we can’t cover all of them on a Sunday morning. So let’s pick one that we think would be most helpful to us in this particular moment. What I’d like to do this morning for us is to look at sanctification. Sanctification, this process of being sanctified. Sanctification refers to the process of becoming more holy, the process of being cleansed by God. So in this text, he makes this primary point, but then throughout the text, he alludes to the work that God is doing in us to make us more holy. I want to lean in on that this morning. The process of sanctification is the process of us growing in our faith divine, developing in Christian maturity, in essence, becoming more like Jesus. That’s the sanctification. This morning, my goal is to look through this text and to ask the question, How can we grow in our faith? How can we become better Christians? More importantly, how can we become more like Jesus? The first answer I’m going to give you is going to feel a little bit discouraging because it’s going to tell you that you actually can’t, that you’re incapable of it. But then I’m going to tell you how you can. That’s our plan. How can we grow in our faith? You can’t. But here’s how you can. That’s our plan for this morning. Let’s ask for God’s help. Lord, as we look at this text, would you help us understand? May we walk out of this place more like Jesus and more committed to growing our Christ likeness. Would you do that for all of us, myself included? Amen.   Jesus Becomes Human Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 5. The writer of Hebrews is quoting from the Old Testament. He says this: “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.” This is interesting because the writer of Hebrews says, Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said this. But you can’t find any of these words anywhere in the New Testament. There’s no record in the Gospels anywhere of Jesus saying these words. The writer of Hebrews says, when Jesus came into the world, he said these things, but he never actually said these things. So what are you talking about? Well, he is quoting from the Old Testament. This is Psalm 40, written right around 1000 BC, and the writer of Hebrews is saying, Remember that psalm that King David wrote in a thousand B.C.? You thought that was just David writing, but those were the words of Christ that would be fulfilled through Jesus when he came onto the scene. He said, There’s much more to Psalm 40 than you realize. He equates the words of Christ with the words of Psalm 40. He is saying, Psalm 40 is Jesus speaking, not just King David speaking. He equates the Old Testament with God speaking. Therefore, to disobey the Old Testament, to disobey God’s word, is to disobey God. To disobey the words of God is to disobey God himself. These are the words of God. Every Sunday, when we have someone read Scripture before the sermon, we have them say, ‘These are the words of God.’ I want to remind you that you’re not just hearing random words on a piece of paper. You’re hearing the words of God. I’ve heard people say, Wouldn’t it be great to hear God’s voice? Yeah, read the Bible. That’s the voice of God. People say, I want to hear the audible voice of God. Well, read the Bible out loud. You can hear the audible voice of God any moment, anytime. So the writer of Hebrews is saying, Remember when King David wrote Psalm 40 a thousand years ago? That was Christ speaking. I’m going to read the writer of Hebrews’ quote again. But rather than imagining King David saying this, or the writer of Hebrews saying this, imagine this is Jesus speaking. Jesus says this, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.” Jesus is speaking to his father. Father, you don’t take pleasure in a bunch of goats being killed. You don’t take pleasure in burnt offerings. But you’ve prepared a body for me. Jesus speaking to his father, you are preparing a body for me to step into to do that which you take pleasure in. He doesn’t take pleasure in goats dying. He takes pleasure in the Son of God dying because that leads to the redemption of God’s people. Then he says this in Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 7. Again, it says, Jesus speaking: “Behold, I have come to do your will, oh God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.” Jesus, 1000 years before he becomes a human, says to his father, You are preparing a body for me, and I am excited to go to earth to take that body on to do your will, oh father. As it’s been written in the scroll of the Book, Jesus is saying, God, my father, is preparing a body for me that I’m going to step into so that I will fulfill that which the Old Testament has been talking about for generations and generations and generations. There’s a lot packed into a very short section here in Hebrews chapter 10. Jesus is telling his father, I’m going to go and do what you have called me to do. We get the same sentiment from Jesus in John chapter 6. Jesus is speaking to a group of Jewish people, and he says to them: “I have come not to do my own will, but to do the will of the One who sent me.” Not to do my own will, but to do the will of my Father. The writer of Hebrews is quoting from Psalm 40 and leveraging that in this passage to make the point that Jesus is willing to do what the Father has commissioned him to do, to provide a sufficient sacrifice that will deal with sin permanently. Not like the sacrifices of the Old Testament, which had minimal value temporarily, but to offer a sacrifice that will have maximum value permanently. Jesus was sacrificing the body that the Father prepared for him, which was prophesied about in the scroll hundreds of years before Jesus showed up on the scene. We see this unbelievable relationship between God the Father and God the Son. There’s this plan. You guys know I’m a big football fan. I think about before a big play, let’s say in a Super Bowl, before Jalen Hurts throws a 46-yard touchdown pass to seal the game. There are these big moments in the middle of a game where the team has a huddle, and they go, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this, and it’s gonna accomplish this. If anyone in that huddle is not on the same page, not committed to the plan, it goes awry. The Father and the Son, they’ve gotten in the huddle, said, Here’s what we’re gonna do. Father says, we’re gonna prepare a body for you, we’re gonna send you. The Son says, I’m on the same page. I’m not here to do my own thing. I’m here to do what we have agreed to do. The Father says, Holy Spirit, you’re gonna glorify the Son. The Son says, I’m gonna glorify you, Father. The Father says, I’m gonna gather a group of people and I’m gonna give them to you as a gift, my son. They’re gonna glorify you. You see this unbelievable, beautiful team at work, deploying this incredible redemptive work on our behalf. The writer of Hebrews is alluding to all of this. He knows that there are people in his audience who are considering abandoning Christianity. He’s thinking to himself, do you not understand what has happened on your behalf? Did you not know the playbook? You are considering abandoning Jesus, the one who did this for you. Why would you ever think about leaving him? Then he finishes this last section here in verse 9. It says this, “He does away with the first in order to establish the second.” Jesus comes, and he fulfills what was promised in the Old Testament. He says, the Old Covenant, the first one, it’s come to an end. We’re doing away with that one. It’s been fulfilled. Now there is a second covenant being established, a better covenant being sealed and inaugurated. A second, better covenant for you.   The Process of Sanctification There’s this prophecy being alluded to in this text. It’s not explicit, but there’s this prophecy being alluded to. Then it becomes explicit a few verses later. What is this prophecy? Look at Hebrews 10:14. The writer of Hebrews says this, speaking of Jesus: “For a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” So Jesus perfected, past tense, those who are being sanctified, present tense. So there’s this sense of Jesus did something that’s been done in the past, it’s complete to a particular group of people. Who is that group of people? It is those who are in the present tense, being sanctified, being cleansed, being made holy. Jesus did something remarkable in the past that cannot be undone. It’s permanent, it’s done, for a group of people who, in the present tense, are being sanctified, cleansed, being made holy. That’s those of us who believe in Jesus. You’ve been perfected, so in some sense, your salvation is set. But then, you’re still in the process of being sanctified, of being cleansed. The apostle Paul alludes to this in Romans, chapter 8. He talks about the fact that we are all being conformed to the image of Jesus. Imagine if someone could take every moment of your life and put it up on screen. Instantly, you’re thinking, that would be embarrassing. If Jesus were in your shoes, living the life you’re living, and put on a screen, how would he live that life? Then you compare the two. Here’s how you’re living your life. Here’s how Jesus would live your life. For those of us who are believers in Jesus, there are probably some things that match. Praise God. There are some things that I’m doing that Jesus would do. We’re happy about that. But, there’s a whole lot in this movie of how I’m living my life that doesn’t match the way Jesus would do things. There’s a long list, a lot of scenes of the movie that are not quite like Jesus. What Paul is saying in Romans 8 and what the writer of Hebrews is saying here in chapter 10 is that we are all going through a process where God is changing us. So as that movie unfolds, it matches the Jesus movie a little bit more each day. Today, I will behave a little bit more like Jesus than I did yesterday. By God’s grace, tomorrow I will behave a little bit more like Jesus than I do today. There’s this process I’m going through of being conformed to the image of Jesus. You get the sentiment that God has promised. He’s doing it both here in Hebrews 10 and Romans 8. The Greek tenses they’re all passive. So it’s not something you do to conform yourself to the image of Jesus. It’s something being done to you. You’re not sanctifying yourself. You can’t do that. You are being sanctified by the power and grace of God. It’s passive. He is doing it to you. God has promised that he will do in you what only he can do to ensure that you are molded to be like Jesus. That is your final destination. You have been predestined, Romans 8 says, to be conformed to the image of the Son. That’s what God has promised. It will happen. If you are a believer in Jesus, you will be completely conformed to the image of Jesus. You are being sanctified. He will continually do in you what needs to be done to ensure that it will come to fruition. He wants us to be more obedient to his moral law, and he is working in us to do that. Another quick side note, in our exhortation the next few weeks, we’re going to cover the Ten Commandments. Remember, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that the moral law is the inherent right or wrong. That’s the big picture. That’s who God is and how he wants us to behave. This is the moral law. Then God gives us a very brief summary of the moral law. We call that the Ten Commandments or the Decalogue. The decalogue is given to us, these 10 statements that summarize the entire moral law. Then God goes to the Jewish people, to the Israelites in the Old Testament. He says, I’m going to give you this old covenant that’s got over 600 additional laws to help them follow the 10. So God says, I want you to follow the moral law. But the moral law you don’t fully understand. So let me just give you 10. You’re still struggling with those 10 because they’re too vague. So let me give you more specific rules, 600 of them, to help you figure out the 10. Let me give you a silly example. This week, my three-year-old daughter and I were spending time in the kitchen, and my daughter tasted the milk that I had just poured for her. She says, yuck. She throws it out in the sink. I said, Baby girl, what was that all about? Why did you do that? She said, I didn’t like that milk. It was warm. I was pretty sure it wasn’t warm; I had just taken it out of the refrigerator. So I said it was not warm. She said, No, I didn’t like that one. I want a different one. I want almy milk. (Almy milk instead of almond.) I said, No, almond milk is for Dada. You drink the regular milk. She said, Fine. I said, baby girl, I want you to know we’ve talked about this before. We don’t waste things in our house. God has given us gifts and resources. We don’t want to waste it. God has given us this milk, we don’t waste it. Remember when we talked about that, about how we want to be good stewards, we want to take care of the things that God has given us. She goes, I remember. So, I gave her another rule to help her fulfill the principle. Anything we pour into her cup, she drinks it. That’s not a choice. See, because there’s a grander principle that I want her to live by. But she’s not getting it because she’s immature. She’s three. So it’s coming upon me to then give her a more specific rule that helps her fulfill the principle. Similarly, God does this with Israel. He’s like, I want you to follow the moral law, but you guys are too immature. You’re not getting it. So I’m going to give you the Old Covenant with 600 very specific rules. If you follow these rules, that’ll help you fulfill the moral law. But the goal is not to follow these 600 rules. The goal is for you to fulfill the principle. When Leti is 33 years old, she should not have to follow the rule of drinking whatever her dad pours for her. That won’t be a good rule. There’s going to be a point where she reaches maturity and she no longer needs the rule because she will hopefully understand the principle. Similarly, God says to Israel, I’m going to give you some rules. But these rules, they’re only temporary. He gives these rules in about 1400 BC when they come out of Egypt, before they go into the promised land. He says, I’m going to give you these rules from now until the Messiah comes. But when the Messiah comes, these rules, all bets are off. These rules are temporary for you because you’re too immature to understand the moral law. So I’m giving you some rules. That’s what he does with Israel. But right in the middle of this moment, while they’re living out these 600 rules, he gives them a promise. About 800 years after the law, right around 600 BC (the law is given in 1400 BC), there’s a guy named Jeremiah who shows up on the scene. The Israelites have been living for 800 years at that point under the Old Covenant Law. God says through Jeremiah to the people of God, there’s going to come a moment when you don’t need these laws anymore. I want you to know there’s going to come a moment where I’m going to do something inside of you where the rules will no longer be needed. The writer of Hebrews leverages that promise here in Hebrews 10. So he’s talking about how we’re being sanctified. He alludes to back in the day when Jeremiah prophesied and God spoke to us through Jeremiah that there would come a day when we don’t need the rules anymore. The writer of Hebrews is saying that the moment has come now through Jesus. He says this in Hebrews 10, verse 16. “This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.” He’s saying God has a moral law that you can’t see. Since you were immature, God gave you a bunch of rules. There’s going to come a moment where the moral law is written on the inside of your hearts, where I put it inside your mind. God is going to do something supernatural in you that will cause you to not need rules because you’re going to have him. The writer of Hebrews is saying that it’s come now because of Jesus. Do you know who the people are that he’s going to do that for? It’s the ones that are being sanctified by Jesus. If you’re a first-century Jewish Christian, like this audience, they’re Jews by ethnicity and nationality, but they’ve become Christians. They’re part of a local church. They’re reading this letter. They’re going, wait a minute. That promise from Jeremiah we thought was for all of the Jewish people, but you’re telling me it’s actually for Christians. When he said that God would do this in Israel, you’re saying he didn’t mean physical Israel, that he meant a spiritual form of Israel. Hebrews is saying that the promise wasn’t for Jews, it was for those who would believe on Jesus, for those who are being sanctified by Jesus. That’s what he’s promised. The writer of Hebrews is saying, all those promises that God made hundreds of years ago to do a great work in people, do you know the people he’s talking to? People who believe on Jesus. So if you are a believer in Jesus here today, God has promised to you that he will do what needs to be done in you to ensure that you will become like Jesus. It’s a long explanation. I know that the passage can be a little bit convoluted.   How Can I Be Sanctified? There are two questions I want to ask this morning. First, how will you be sanctified, and what can you do? What’s your part? How can you ensure sanctification? The answer is you can’t do anything. It’s not on you. Spiritual growth is a work of the Spirit. We’ve already seen this in Hebrews chapter 6. The writer of Hebrews was talking about milk and meat. Remember, a couple of months ago we talked about this? He’s saying, you guys are drinking milk, but you should be eating meat. Basically, you’re immature Christians. You should grow up in your faith. But then he says this to them in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 3, Hebrews 6:3. “And this we will do. If God permits.” We’ll grow in our faith. We’ll graduate from milk to meat. We’ll grow up in our faith only if God permits. Hebrews 6:3. He implies that if God doesn’t permit for you to grow in your faith, you’re not going to grow in your faith. It’s a work of the Spirit. Philippians 1:6. The Apostle Paul says this: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.” He does not say, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will give you the opportunity to bring to completion that which he started. That’s not what it says. It doesn’t say, he who began a good work with you now leaves it up to you to figure it out and finish it. That’s not what he says. He who began the good work is the one who will bring it to completion. He’s the one who started to work in you. He is the one who’s going to finish the work in you. Spiritual growth in you is a work of the Spirit. That is important to remember for two reasons. One, it cultivates incredible humility. That’s why we sing that song. All of my boast is in Jesus. If I grow in my faith, anytime someone tells me, Kenny, you’ve progressed or you’ve gotten better, you’ve grown in your faith, or you’ve learned something, you did it. I can take no credit for it. All of my boast is in him and him alone. Knowing that it’s based on his work and not yours gives you a guarantee and assurance that it’s going to happen. Because if it were based on you, it wouldn’t go. So there’s going to come a day where I know for sure I’m going to look like Jesus, or I’m going to behave like Jesus, and be like Jesus. I know that 20 years from now I will be more like Jesus than I am today. Not because of me, because he promised it. I can take great pleasure in that. Knowing that he does it cultivates humility in us.   What Can I Do To Work On My Faith? So the first question we asked this morning was, How can you grow in your faith? The answer is, you can’t. It’s not on you. There’s nothing you can do. It’s a work of the Spirit. Then the next question is, What can I do to work on my faith? The answer is, you can do it by looking to Jesus. People ask all the time, What can I do to grow in my faith? I want to become a better Christian. I want to develop, I want to mature. That’s a great question. Here’s how to do it. The most often used metaphor for spiritual growth in the bible refers to trees or plants with the idea of fruit. Several years ago, I lived in Ocoee with some guys. Five single dudes in a house. We called ourselves the Men of the Misty. We lived on Misty Meadow Road. We had robes with embroidered nicknames. It was classic. So we lived in the house together and we had a tree in our backyard which was supposedly an orange tree. I say supposedly because it was not very healthy-looking. But it did one day eventually bring some oranges. They were the grossest-looking oranges you’ve ever seen in your life. We tasted one and it was awful. But it did produce a few oranges once every few years. Imagine you have this orange tree, and someone said, This is an orange tree. Now, imagine if one day someone said to you, Make that tree grow fruit. I can’t do that. It’s a natural phenomenon that God created. We can’t force it. The tree doesn’t wake up and produce fruit like that. You can’t force a tree to grow fruit. But you can create an environment where the tree will be healthy. Healthy trees will naturally produce quality fruit. So you cannot produce spiritual growth in your life. Spiritual growth is a work of the spirit. However, you can put yourself in environments where you are more likely to see health in your life, spiritually, and emotionally. Which will then allow the Spirit to do what only he can do in your life. Make sure that you put yourself in environments that are conducive to growth. That will lead to growth. In Galatians, chapter 5, the apostle Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit. When the Spirit of God is at work, the Spirit brings forth fruit. It’s the Spirit’s work. In Galatians 5, he says, “The fruits of the Spirit are love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” If you’re lacking in any of these things, it’s because the Spirit of God hasn’t brought these things to you. You ought to prayerfully, humbly put yourself in environments where the Spirit of God can do the work in you that you cannot do. Oftentimes, this is how we do it. We are lacking in self-control. We think, here are three steps on how to have better self-control. Here’s a book, 13 Steps to Be a More Self-Controlled Person, this week. That’s work. That’s energy you’re putting forth. It may seem okay for a little while, but ultimately it fails. Lasting fruit can only come from the work of the Spirit. If you go to the About Us page on our website, you will find a section where I talk about our core values. I want to read it to you. This is my ministry philosophy. Speaking of our church, “We want to see people grow and mature in their spirituality and faith, but we cannot manufacture spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is wrought by the Spirit of God. However, we have observed that the Spirit of God most often and most intensely grows and matures people whenever they are confronted with the goodness and beauty of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we shall seek to confront people with Christ’s goodness and beauty as often as possible.” That’s our ministry philosophy. How do you grow? You can’t. Put yourself in environments that are conducive to growth. What are those environments? Environments where you’re being reminded of the goodness and beauty of Christ. So here’s a simple answer. Someone says, How do I grow my faith? My answer is simply something like, put yourself in situations where you can be reminded regularly of how good and beautiful Jesus is. The Spirit of God will grow you. You can’t manufacture spiritual growth, but we can put ourselves in environments where we will be smacked in the face daily with the beauty of Jesus. So my exhortation to you is to put yourself in the types of environments where the Spirit of God tends to grow people. You know, where he doesn’t tend to grow people? When they’re in a dark room by themselves, looking at inappropriate images on the Internet. That’s not an environment where people typically grow. Here’s an environment where people don’t typically grow. Where they’re spending lots of energy, figuring out how to evade their taxes. That’s not an environment where people tend to grow. Here’s an environment where people tend not to grow: when they’re lazy and never read their Bibles. That’s not an environment where people tend to grow. Here’s another environment where people don’t tend to grow. When they’re consuming a bunch of trashy media. There are certain environments more conducive to growth than others. So my exhortation to you from the writer of Hebrews is, you are the people being sanctified. So here’s what you ought to do. Put yourself in the places where you’re going to be sanctified. Put yourself in a position to be consistently reminded of the goodness and beauty of Christ.   Practical Applications Let me give you a few quick, practical applications. 1. Weekly Church Attendance You know where you don’t get smacked in the face with the goodness of Jesus? In your bed, sleeping in. This doesn’t happen there. The current stats are that only 40% of American evangelicals attend church weekly. 60% of people who claim to be followers of Jesus do not gather with Christians every single week. It’s heartbreaking to me. The current stats are about once every three or four weeks. That’s the norm. We have that here. We have a crew of people who would call themselves members. I was in a community Facebook group, and someone posted recently looking for a church. People started posting in the comments. I read some of the comments, and one was, You should go to Horizon City. It’s a great church. You would think that would feel like a compliment. But then I saw the person’s name and I thought to myself, I think I see you once every six weeks. I thought to myself, I was excited that they would commend our church, and that person seems to think they are a part of this church family. But I’m pretty sure most of the people who show up here don’t know you. I thought to myself, I think that person thinks that’s okay. So I sent the person a private message and gently encouraged them. Hey, thank you for commending the church. Let’s talk about this. This is also why we do weekly communion. First, because I believe the New Testament commands it, but also because it’s an opportunity to be confronted with the beauty and goodness of Christ every single week. Week after week, to have his grace bestowed upon us. This is why we’re committed to expository preaching. Our entire liturgy is crafted to smack you in the face with the goodness of Jesus. That’s our goal. Even the songs we select. There are certain good songs that we would not sing here because I don’t think they smack you in the face with the goodness of Jesus. There are some good Christian songs, but the beauty of Christ is not explicitly on display. So I’d rather not sing those songs. The scripture verses, our liturgy, everything that we do from start to finish, is designed in some way or another to remind you of some element of the goodness of Christ. That’s our whole goal. You can’t get that online. When you walk in this door and you’re greeted warmly by someone who loves Jesus, you’re reminded of the goodness of Christ. When you sit and you chat with someone, I’m reminded of the goodness of Christ. I can’t do that at home in an online setting. YouTube makes for a really poor church. 2. Embrace Expository Teaching Our sermons are online. You can find them on YouTube, you can find them on our website, and you can now find them on Spotify. If you’d like, just Google Horizon City Church sermons. You can go to our website. Click the sermons button. They’re on our website, they’re on YouTube, they’re on Spotify. We’re working on getting them on Apple podcasts so you can go back and listen to them throughout the course of the week. Listen, I’m a political junkie. But you know you’re not gonna be reminded of the goodness of Jesus while you’re listening to Ben Shapiro or while you’re watching Fox News or while you listen to NPR. Fox News is not gonna remind you of the beauty of Jesus. Let’s turn that off occasionally, and let’s put something on that’s gonna remind you of the goodness and beauty of Jesus. Let’s turn off the podcast, turn off the Gary Vee or the Alex Hormozi, and let’s listen to something that’s gonna remind us of the beauty of Jesus. I listen to sports talk radio. You know, I’m not gonna be reminded of the goodness of Jesus listening to Eagles fans rant on the radio. So you know what I should do? I should turn that off occasionally and maybe turn something on that’s gonna remind me of the beauty of Jesus. 3. Make Christian Friendships a High Priority in Your Life Make it a high priority to be around believers regularly because the more you’re around people who believe in the goodness of Christ, the more likely it is you will be reminded of the goodness of Christ. 4. Consider Your Music and Media Consumption Media and music have more power than we think. I highly encourage you to put some music in your life that will remind you of the goodness and beauty of Christ. If you want a good starting point, you can go to our website. Go to the About Us page, scroll down to the very bottom. We have a section called Our music. There are two buttons on there, Apple and Spotify. Every song we’ve ever done is on that list. Maybe listen to those songs on a regular basis, and hopefully, the Lord will use that music to inspire you and to remind you of the goodness and beauty of Christ. How about Bible reading? Family devotions? Personal prayer times? How often are you doing those things if you’re not doing those things on a regular basis? If I’m frustrated that my home is not a place where the Goodness of Christ is on display. Well, then it’s on me to do something about that. These are ways in which we can put ourselves in environments that are more conducive to growth, find ways to be reminded of the goodness and beauty of Jesus.   Conclusion: Life is Like a Tree My last thought for this morning is this. I want to quote from the great theologian and philosopher Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump quotes his mom with a great maxim. He once said, Life is like a box of chocolates, You never know what you’re going to get. In some sense, that’s accurate. But I think in one major sense, Forrest was wrong. Forrest’s mama was wrong. I think we should think about life as a tree. Life is like a tree. You always know what you’re going to get. If you have an orange tree, you’re going to get oranges. If you have an apple tree, you’re going to get apples. If you have a life where the goodness and beauty of Christ is not constantly invading, then you’re not going to have great spiritual growth. But life is like a tree. If you invest in the goodness and beauty of Christ, you will bring forth fruit born of the goodness and beauty of Christ. If you say you’re an orange tree but you produce apples, that’s problematic. You are not what you claim to be. Similarly, if you claim to be a follower of Christ but you produce fruit that does not remind people of Christ, you are not what you claim to be. In that case, I would encourage you to repent before God, confess your sin to him, and beg him for his mercy. We can grow in our faith. We have been perfected by Jesus. We are being sanctified by Jesus, and we will graduate to be what Jesus called us to be. If G  

Introduction: The Old Covenant vs. The New Covenant Well, good morning again. We have come to Hebrews Chapter nine, which is one of the most theologically dense passages in the entire Bible. Some scholars would say it’s the most theologically dense. The amount of theology and doctrine on display, being asserted, being taught, and being defended is frankly mind-boggling. There are hundreds of different theological debates amongst Bible scholars and theologians. Literally hundreds, maybe thousands, but at least hundreds of different topics and debates. There is not one single debate or theological topic that Hebrews Chapter nine doesn’t speak to in one way or another. You can’t find one. You can’t say that about any other chapter in the Bible. So Hebrews chapter nine and into chapter ten has its arms and everything. It’s like a massive giant squid with hundreds of tentacles and arms reaching into every single genre and subgenre of theology. Sort of how Hebrews chapters 9 and 10 function in some ways. There’s a big chunk of Hebrews 9 that can be pretty complicated. It’s sort of convoluted in our English translations, because of the style of the Greek language in the original, it’s not always easy to translate. So there’s a chunk of this chapter that Bible scholars have debated for quite some time as to how to properly translate. So it is pretty normal in sermon prep throughout the course of a week to spend a bunch of time studying a passage. The vast majority of what we do in sermon prep doesn’t make it to the pulpit. It’s cut on the floor, the threshing room floor. It’s like the hair in the barbershop on the floor just getting swept out. So hours and hours of research, and most weeks it’s like 80-90% of what you come across out there in scholarship doesn’t really make it to the pulpit sermon. With this passage, it felt like an even higher percentage. 99% of the discourse around this chunk of Scripture feels really valuable, insightful, but probably too complicated to deal with on a Sunday. Probably more helpful to deal with at the living room table with Bibles out and coffee in hand. It lends itself to that sort of conversation. So there are lots of things in this passage that I’m just gonna skip this morning, and I encourage you to read through it on your own. If you want to sit and chat with me one-on-one or in a small group, I’d love to do that. I told you about my friend in Tennessee who preached through the Book of Hebrews at his church, and it took him seven years to get through the Book of Hebrews. Well, he preached 12 sermons from Hebrews 9. Like, I think he knows more about the Book of Hebrews than the writer of the Book of Hebrews. But if you really start investigating the passage, I could see it actually. There are a lot of different topics and themes being dealt with or alluded to. Various debates amongst scholars are worthy debates, but can be a little difficult. So we’re going to do one sermon on the entire chapter and a few of the verses in chapter 10 as well. So we’re going to cover quite a bit of all the things that are taught, the dozens of themes that are asserted and argued for in this passage, I want to hone in on one. There’s one that I think is most important above the others. The others are also important, but there’s one that I think is most significant. That is this: What was the ultimate purpose of the Old Covenant versus the ultimate purpose of the New Covenant? That’s one of the overarching themes being taught in this section. Here’s what the Old Covenant was all about, here’s what the New Covenant is all about, and here’s why the New Covenant is clearly, oh, so better than the Old Covenant because it accomplishes something much grander than what we even realize. Throughout this section of Scripture, the writer of Hebrews is going to highlight at least six or seven differences between the Old and the New. He’s going to allude to multiple things, but there’s one overarching sentiment kind of woven through all of that. That’s where we’re going to hone in on this morning. We’re going to focus specifically on the purpose of the Old versus the New. Once you see the purposes, you go, oh, the New is clearly better. So that’s what we’re going to do first this morning. Our plan is to answer the question, what was the ultimate point of the Old versus the New? In addition to that, I’m going to give you three side notes as you go through this chapter. There are three ideas that arise that are, as we’re talking about this, there’s a question that’ll pop into your mind. I want to answer those questions. There are probably several questions that’ll pop into your mind, but there are three that I know will pop into your mind because I’ve been asked those three questions by people in this room right now. So that makes sermon prep easy. What do my people need? Well, they asked me a question, so I can answer that. That’s great. Then the third thing we’ll do this morning is we’ll give you one practical implication from this passage. So that’s our plan for this morning. What’s the difference between the Old and the New? What’s the biggest difference? We’ll do three side notes as our second section, and then our last section will be one practical application for our lives today. Before we do that, let’s ask God for help. Lord, we thank you for your kindness to us. Would you help us understand this passage? I thank you for the many scholars who have given us great insights into passages like this that may seem convoluted or difficult, but they help us. So, thank you for the body of Christ at large, which is helpful to us when we navigate these sorts of passages. And I pray, Lord, would you speak through me this morning? I’m a sinner, I’m inadequate. I’m incapable of explaining this text in a way that’s most helpful to your people. So, God, would you take my basic futile efforts? Would you use them to help your people in this room this morning? I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.    Recapping the Old Covenant So the first few verses of chapter nine, the writer of Hebrews is, in essence, he’s recapping things. He’s already hit on the first few previous chapters. He’s talking about the Tabernacle extensively. Remember, the Tabernacle has an outer wall. There’s an outdoor court area. There’s the actual tent. The tent has two sections, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. The two sections of the tent are split by a curtain. Beyond the curtain is where the presence of God is. The priest would come in and do all sorts of various rituals throughout the course of the week, throughout the course of the year. Then, on the highest day of the year, one day a year, the high priest would go beyond the curtain throughout the course of the year. The priest would make various sacrifices and go through various rituals. So he spends the first seven or eight verses here in chapter nine, recapping all the things that he’s already talked about from chapters five through chapter seven. He’s talked extensively already about this. He says in verse eight, this powerful statement, he says “By these things, the Holy Spirit indicates.” Saying, remember all that stuff that happened back then? Through all that stuff, the Tabernacle, the showbread, the sacrifices, the priests, all the stuff that God did back with the Israelites, all of that indicates something. It wasn’t just done by accident. The Holy Spirit was doing that stuff to indicate or teach some specific things. So we should look back on the Old Covenant and allow it to teach us some things about the New Covenant. In verse 9, he will say those things symbolize the present age. So when we look back on the events of the Old Testament and the structures of the Old Covenant, they give us insights into things about the present age after the Cross, right in the post-Cross era. Then he’s going to highlight one specific major difference between the Old and the New. Look at verse nine. The latter section of verse nine says this, speaking of the Old Covenant, that “It cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper.” Other translations would say cleanse or make whole the conscience of the worshiper. The word perfect in the Greek there refers to something that is broken or lacking. Saying that the conscience of the worshiper is broken, it’s lacking, it’s inadequate. The Old Covenant could not fill in the gaps, could not make it whole, implying that the New Covenant can. This is a huge difference between these two. Through the rest of the passage, all the way through chapter nine and into chapter ten, he’s going to be alluding to the fact that the Old Covenant was useful in some ways, but was lacking in one major way. There’s one specific thing that the Old Covenant could not do, and that is it can’t take the conscience of the worshiper that is already broken and inadequate, and it can’t make it whole, it can’t perfect it, it can’t complete the conscience, it can’t cleanse the conscience. In essence, the Old Covenant can’t actually remove sin from a person. Only the New Covenant can do that.   Purposes of the Old Covenant Now, before we kind of unpack that a little bit more, he does allude to the fact that the Old Covenant was useful in some ways. We’ve seen this throughout the Book of Hebrews already. We’ll continue to see it as we go into chapters 11 and 12. He will allude to the fact that the Old Covenant did have some good value. We talked about this in a sermon a few weeks ago, that the Old Covenant has tremendous value for us. But what I did in previous sermons is that I talked about how the Old Covenant was helpful to us today. I never specifically said what the Old Covenant did for the Israelites in the Old Testament era. So I’m gonna give you three. There are three things that the Old Covenant did for them. 1. It gave one person access to God one day a year. That may not seem like a big deal, but no one could enter the presence of God. On one day a year, one person, the high priest, could enter into the Holy of Holies and experience the fullness of the presence of God, the representative of the people. One person could go in and experience the presence of God where the maximum amount of joy, the maximum amount of love, the maximum amount of power and glory, and beauty resting in this one place. One day a year, one person could go in and enjoy that, and then come out and tell the people about it. The Old Covenant accomplished that. 2. It brought temporary reconciliation between God and Israel. God, because of human sin, was determined to be just against all of humanity. I’m going to treat you justly. But there’s one group of people, the Israelites, who are treated very differently. They have this special relationship with God, this special covenant relationship. Temporarily they are reconciled to God. Temporarily. For a period of time, Israel, the entire nation, is treated as if they were not sinful. They were treated as if they had been cleansed of their sin. There’s a temporary reconciliation to. 3. Protection and Blessings. God promised them as a part of this covenant, I’m going to offer you special protection that I’m not offering any other nation. I’m going to offer you special blessings and provisions that I’m also not providing to any other nations. So the Old Covenant actually was quite substantial. It was very helpful to the Israelites. It gives them blessings. It gives them protection, provisions, and temporary reconciliation between them and God. The high priest gets to experience the presence of God once a year. This is a big deal.   To the Moon in a Minivan But the writer of Hebrews is going to hone in. It could not accomplish the one thing we want most, permanent forgiveness of our sin. Skip ahead to chapter 10 in Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 1, the last clause of that, Hebrews 10:1 says this, speaking of the Old Covenant. It says that: “He could never make perfect those who draw near.” So any person in the Old Covenant who would try to draw near to God, the Old Covenant was incapable of perfecting them. In verse 4, Hebrews 10:4, he says this. “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” So these blood and these bulls and goats, they’re being sacrificed as a part of these rituals in the Old Covenant. But they could not actually remove the stain of sin. That was actually by design. That’s not a flaw of the Old Covenant. It was the design of the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was never designed to do that. Let me give you a silly example. Let’s say you bought a car. Buying a new minivan for the Ortiz home. As we have a third baby coming, we are looking to upgrade to the ultimate status symbol, the minivan. I think we’ve narrowed it down to the Chrysler Pacifica. I think that’s the one. Okay, I really want the Toyota Sienna, but I can’t afford it. We’re gonna have to go with the Pacifica. Anyway, if you have any minivan advice, I’m all ears. So let’s say I buy a minivan, and someone comes to me and says, Hey, Kenny, can you give me a ride over to Sanford, to the other side of town, you know, 40, 45 minutes away to the east side of town? Sure, I’ll give you a ride in my new minivan. I drive you over to Sanford, and then I drop you off, and all is well. The minivan is designed to take you across town. That’s what it does. It can drive. Let’s say two weeks go by, and the same person comes to me and says, Hey, Kenny, I need a ride again. Can you give me another ride? Sure. Absolutely. Where do you need to go? Okay, this time I need to go to the moon. What? Yeah. Can you take me to the moon in your new minivan? No, I can’t. Well, why not? You said the minivan was valuable. You said it was good. You said it was helpful to you for a season. Wasn’t it? Yeah, but it was never designed to do that. To get to the moon, you need a much more robust vehicle. You need a rocket ship. You’ve got to call Elon. In the same way as a car was never designed to get you to the moon. The Old Covenant was never designed to get you into heaven. That was never its goal. The Old Covenant was valuable. It was useful to the Israelites for a season, but it could not actually accomplish the ultimate goal that they wanted, and that is to remove the stain of sin permanently. It couldn’t do that. It can accomplish lots of stuff, but it could not accomplish that. Only the New Covenant can take you into the presence of God. Now, there’s some continuity between a minivan and a rocket ship. Similarly, there’s some continuity between the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and the New Covenant. There’s some similarities between a minivan and a rocket ship. There are some similar materials. There are some similar elements, but ultimately one is far bigger and better, and more robust, and it actually can accomplish the grander task. Similarly, the Old and New Covenants have some similarities. They were established by the same God, but the old is rendered obsolete and the new is established.  It can actually do what we want it to accomplish, that is, permanently remove the stain of sin. It can actually perfect the conscience of the worshiper.   How Were People in the Old Testament Saved? Three side notes. As we’re going through this passage and thinking about these things, there are three side notes, three questions that might pop up. We’re gonna throw them on the screen for you there. This first side note is, how were Old Testament believers saved? This is a question people ask all the time. Wait a minute. If they’re a part of the Old, like David, Moses, Abraham, these people who followed God in the Old Testament, they obeyed the laws that were given to them. You’re saying that couldn’t get them into heaven. How did they get to heaven then? How were they saved? It’s a great question, and here’s the answer. The Old Testament believers are saved the same way you are saved, by looking to the Messiah. It’s the same way the sacrifice of bulls and goats never rescued anyone from the tyranny of sin. The Messiah does that. Adam and Eve sin in the garden, and moments later, God promises he’s going to send a savior, a Messiah. He tells Eve, from your lineage, from your womb, from your descendants, will come a Savior. Genesis 3:15. Scholars call this the Proto-Evangelium. Proto, first or earlier evangelium. The declaration of the Gospel, the good news. So, Proto Evangelium, the first time the Gospel is declared is in Genesis 3:15. I always think to myself, this is such a remarkable thing. From the time humans sinned, how long does it take before God promises to send the Savior? You can’t even turn the page. Humans sin, and God’s immediate response is, I’m going to send someone to rescue you from your own sin. This shouts to us the mercy of our God. And God says, I’m going to send you a Savior. That promise the Savior would come through Eve gets passed down generation to generation to generation. Any person in the Old Testament who would hear that promise and believe it. So when Abraham hears there’s a Savior coming to save me, it assumes that he recognizes he needs a Savior. Any person in the Old Testament who would say to themselves, I recognize I need a Savior, and God has promised he will send one. I believe he will do what he said he would do. Any person in the Old Testament who believed that they would be saved, their conscience would be perfected, would be cleansed. The Old Covenant was established to accomplish various things. But do not confuse the Old Covenant with that which actually saves. Well, people would ask, how are their sins cleansed if Jesus hasn’t died yet? Well, it’s quite simple. Jesus’ death is retroactive and proactive because God is outside of the bounds of time. So Jesus dies on the cross. His sacrifice covers the sins of everyone living in his era. And then it goes backwards in time, and it covers the sin of all that was believed in him before. All those who believed they didn’t know his name was Jesus, but they believed the Messiah would come. The sin retroactively goes back and cleanses their sin. Then it goes into the future from the cross 2000 years till today and cleanses my sin and your sin if you would believe on him. The death of Christ is what covers those in the Old Testament who were saved by looking to the Messiah, and we are saved by looking back at the Messiah. You are saved by looking to the Messiah, faith in him. In Romans, chapter 4, the apostle Paul is talking about Abraham, and he says “Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness.” What did Abraham have to do to be considered righteous before God? Believe. That’s it. Circumcision and the elements of the Old Covenant were valuable for other purposes. It was Abraham’s belief that rendered him righteous before a Holy God. That’s how Old Testament saints were saved. The same way you were saved. That’s side note number one.   Why Do We Confess Our Sins? Side note number two. People ask this all the time. Well, this doesn’t make sense. People ask all the time, if Christ’s sin has already forgiven us, then why do we confess our sins to Him? This is a good question. I’ve been asked this multiple times. There are people sitting in this room who asked me this question. Why do we have to confess our sins? We do this every single week as a part of our liturgy here. I say that we pause and we confess our sins. Why do we do this? Why do we confess our sins? Well, there are three reasons why we confess our sins. If Christ has already forgiven us, if the ultimate mission is already accomplished on our behalf, why do we confess our forgiveness? 1. Confession keeps us humble. It cultivates in us humility. Humility, the reminder. Each time we confess, we’re reminding ourselves that we’re not actually all that good at being good Christians. We actually fail a lot. It cultivates in us humility that is much needed and very valuable to us in various ways in our lives. Confession, it stokes this contrition, this desire to have a contrite heart. In Psalm 51, the Holy Spirit, speaking through King David, says this: Psalm 51, speaking to God: “You take no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart.” God’s not looking at bulls being sacrificed and somehow taking pleasure in that. No, the thing that God takes pleasure in is when we have a broken spirit before him. Because we’re broken over how sinful we are and we have a contrite heart, we come to God. I’m so sorry. I recognize that I have failed you over and over again. Yet you have been so merciful and kind to me. That’s what God takes pleasure in, not in the killing of some bulls. Confession cultivates in us much-needed humility. 2. Confession brings healing to us. You see this all through the Psalms over and over again. The prophet Jeremiah talks about this multiple times. The apostle Paul alludes to this multiple times in Colossians. James, the little brother of Jesus, in his Epistle, alludes to confession leading to healing. There’s this idea that when we bring our sins to God, it does something in us. There’s an emotional or spiritual healing that takes place that frees us to experience the grace and kindness of God. Confessing our sin does something in us. If your sins have been forgiven the moment you believed on Christ, all of your sins, past, present, and future, are totally forgiven and wiped clean. Absolutely. We know that to be true. He says that here in Hebrews 9 and Hebrews 10. But we confess to bringing that to him so that we can experience God’s grace. So many people who are Christians, who are probably headed for heaven, live far beneath what God has promised or made available to them because they’re not experiencing the fullness of God’s grace in their lives. Confession ushers us into that. 3. Prepares our heart for communion. There are different theological positions on communion. Most American Christians today believe that communion is merely a symbol or memorialistic meaning. You grab the bread, the wine, it’s just this symbol, and you’re remembering Jesus. That is not what most Christians throughout Christian history have believed. Up until about the 1800s, very few people took a memorialistic view. Even in the 1500s, the few who did champion a memorialistic idea eventually came around to a different view of communion. The most famous is a guy named Zwingli, who, late in his life, was like, actually, I was wrong. Communion is much more than just a memorial, a symbol. In communion, when we come to the Lord’s Supper, we participate in it. There’s actually a supernatural grace that’s bestowed upon you. There’s nothing supernatural about the juice or the wine itself, but the act of taking it and remembering it. In that moment, when you do it in the context of a congregation and we do it together, through that act, the Holy Spirit bestows a grace to you which strengthens your soul. There’s a supernatural thing happening there, and it has the ability to either harden your heart or soften your heart. If you have unrepentant sin in your life, if there’s sin in your life that you’ve just continued to sin and not dealt with it, and you take communion, the supernatural grace, the supernatural thing that happens in communion, it will happen to you, and it will take your hard heart and make it harder. But when you confess to God and you bring a soft heart, the grace bestowed upon you makes your heart even softer. It’s like the same sun that can harden a piece of clay can melt wax. The sun is the supernatural power coming to you through communion. It has the power to either harden your heart or soften your heart. So we confess our sins to prepare ourselves to experience the supernatural grace that comes through communion. The Apostle Paul alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 11. In 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul tells him, Listen, some of you guys in the church, you’ve gotten sick, and some of you have even died. Because you took communion wrongly. That’s a scary proposition. This is a scary reality that if you take communion wrongly, it literally can make you physically sick and maybe even die. We should take that very seriously. For most of church history, Christians have taken that very seriously. It’s a very recent phenomenon and mostly almost American evangelicals, where communion has been viewed as this sort of low, simple thing that’s not made, that’s sort of. Sort of flippant about just this random little thing we do For most of church history, coming to the Lord’s Supper was a monumental thing, and it was often at the center of the worship gathering, which is why we do it every single week here at Horizon City. We think it’s a big deal. So we confess our sins to God. God, would you forgive me? There’s this disobedience in my life. Would you forgive me? I bring that to him in confession so that when I experience his supernatural grace in communion, it will soften me and cultivate the contrite spirit that he takes pleasure in. So those are the three things that confession does. It cultivates humility. It brings healing to our own souls, and it prepares our hearts for communion.   The Law and The Gospel The third side note this morning: if the Old Covenant couldn’t actually save. As we study and understand this, we begin to ask ourselves, well, what about the law and expectations that might have been in the Old Covenant? A lot of American Christians today think about the law and the gospel, like the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, was the law. The New Covenant is the Gospel. There are some Christians, that’s how they teach. The New Covenant has no expectations on you. God loves you no matter what you do, and you can live however you please. There are no expectations on the believer. That’s how some churches preach the gospel. That’s not what we see in the Bible. Law in the gospel is not the Old Covenant/New Covenant. Law in the gospel is found in both covenants. There was law and gospel in the Old Covenant, and there was law and gospel in the New Covenant. Law is, anytime God says, this is what I require of you. Gospel is that which is given to us freely by faith. The law is, here’s what God expects of you as a Christian. The gospel is the free grace given to you, knowing that you will not meet the requirements of the law. We want to preach both of those. Daniel, brother, great exhortation today. The exhortation that God expects things of us, that what God commands of us, we must always do, and what God prohibits, we must never do. But we have the gospel. The good news is that, when we fail, because we will, he freely gives us his grace and mercy. We praise God for that. But we want to be very careful that we don’t preach like God has no expectations of us. I think, frankly, I try not to be condescending from the pulpit, so this is going to come across more condescending than I wanted to be. But I hope my intention is noble. I think American evangelicalism is weak sauce. Like across the board, the North American church is weak. Because we don’t actually get up and preach to people, saying God expects some things from you, and you better obey him or it will not go well for you. We’re afraid to say that kind of thing. I have law and gospel in my house with my 3-year-old daughter. I have expectations of my 3-year-old. Don’t hit your brother. Be nice to your mother. Don’t leave a dirty pull-up on the floor of the bathroom. Eat your eggies. We have expectations of her, and there’s gospel because I know she’s going to blow it and she’s going to fail. Is there anything she could possibly do that would cause me to stop providing for her? Absolutely not. That room is hers. That food in the fridge is hers. All that I have is hers. Is there anything she could ever possibly do that would cause me to stop loving her? Absolutely not. Is there anything she could ever do to cause her to stop being my daughter? No. She’s always going to be my daughter. She’s three years old. There’s nothing she could do to undo our relationship. That’s gospel. There are free things given to her, and there’s a law. There are expectations of her. God has the same in his family. For those of us who are in his family. We enjoy his grace and mercy, and kindness. There are also some expectations. There’s law and there’s gospel. God has commanded some things of us. God has commanded that we believe on Jesus. God has commanded that we be baptized. God has commanded that we gather with other believers on the Lord’s Day. God has commanded that we take communion together. God has commanded that we be holy in our thoughts and our behavior. That we use our money and our sexuality, and our recreational time to honor him. He has commanded that we pay our taxes and be good citizens. God has certain expectations of us, and it’s unacceptable to be flippant or apathetic. There’s law and there’s gospel because we will fail. We are sinners. By nature and by choice, we will not meet the expectations that he has set for us. That will not undo the perfecting of the conscience that he has done on our behalf. That is a work of grace that we receive through faith, not of works of our own accord. We cannot boast of that. We follow his law because we love Him. We receive that which we could not earn through faith in Him. There’s law and Gospel, and we esteem both.   Practical Application: Looking for the Second Coming Those are our three side notes. So our first part was that the Old Covenant can never save. We need a rocket ship for that. We need a New Covenant. Last thing is, I want to give you one practical implication. But we’re going to go through some of the chapter together. Just briefly. As we get to the practical application, as you go through the latter part of chapter nine, Hebrews chapter nine, and into chapter 10, he’s going to talk more and more about what the goats accomplished versus what Christ accomplished. Mainly, that Christ could actually accomplish something great. Hebrews 9, 13, and 14. Ryan read it for us earlier. Hebrews 9, 13, and 14 says this, “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled purses with ashes of heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” If blood and goats could sanctify a little bit, how much more will the blood of Christ sanctify? If a sinful priest could show up and do some stuff and accomplish some stuff for Israel, how much more valuable and helpful would the perfect high priest be to those who believe in him? If the sinful high priest could accomplish some stuff, how much more will the perfect high priest accomplish through his willingness to shed his blood on our behalf, his willingness to die? In verse 15, it says that “He purchased for us an eternal inheritance.” Eternal inheritance. We’re going to inherit some stuff from God that we will own eternally. The bulls and goats purchased some stuff for Israel, but it was temporary. What Jesus accomplishes is forever. And in verse 22, he says this, “That without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.” If Christ had not stepped in and shed his blood, there would be no way for our sins to be forgiven. If Christ had not stepped in and died in our place, we would be left with bulls and goats that could not save us. If we had not been given the rocket ship, we would be stuck with a minivan trying to get to the moon, and it would be useless. The Apostle Peter put it this way. Lisa read it for us earlier. He says, “that we were ransomed not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.” In the book of Colossians, the Apostle Paul says that, “We were hostile in our minds toward God, but that because Christ shed his blood, we now have peace with God.” In Romans 5, the apostle Paul says that, “We were enemies of God, but now, because of Christ, we have peace with God, peace that we will enjoy forever and ever and ever.” This should stoke in us some affection for Christ. This should cause us to go, He did that for me. The writer of Hebrews will allude to the fact as he goes through the end of this chapter, that it should cause us to long to want to see him. He says at the very end of chapter nine, verse 28, he’s saying Jesus is going to come back. “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time. Not to deal with sin.” He’s already dealt with sin. That’s ultimately done. That’s definitive. No, He’s going to come back a second time. Here’s why: “To save those who eagerly wait for him.” Another translation says, those who are eagerly waiting upon him, those who are eagerly seeking his return. The sentiment we get that’s through this chapter. He’s explaining the Old Covenant. Valuable, but couldn’t accomplish the ultimate thing, the New Covenant. It could accomplish the ultimate thing, the removal of your sin. Permanently allowing you to experience the presence of God forever and ever. Not just one day, a year, but forever and ever and forever. That was accomplished. That covenant was sealed and inaugurated because Christ was willing to die in your place. He came the first time to deal with your sin. It has been dealt with. He did this amazing thing. Because we recognize how beautiful he is and how amazing what he did is on our behalf, it causes us to want to see him face to face. He’s going to come back and he’s going to save those who eagerly wait for him. That’s the sentiment we see here. So I asked you this morning, a practical application question. How often do you think about the return of Christ? I think for some of us, we go days, weeks, maybe months at a time. Doesn’t even cross our minds. The writer of Hebrews is saying he’s implying, this should be on our minds all the time. Every day you wake up, you go, Is today the day he comes back? Maybe today is the day. Are you eagerly waiting for him? In the moments when you face hardship, you go, This was hard, but I know I’m gonna see his face and he’s gonna make it right.  When we’re facing ailments, difficulties. Some of you know, my mother has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in her late 50s. So she was diagnosed. She’s now in her early 60s. The woman who raised me, whom I love, is pretty much gone at this point. Multiple of her siblings and her mom and some aunts and uncles have all experienced early onset Alzheimer’s. It appears that in the Ortiz family, we hit the genetic lottery. I have about a 10 times higher probability of getting early-onset dementia than the general population. I’m 42, and I think to myself, that’s not that far away. Late 50s are not far away. I think to myself, Lord, if that’s me, it’s a scary proposition for my family, for my children. Think about my mother. How many years is she gonna live in this? I think to myself, does she have five years, 10? She’s relatively healthy. Her mother lived 17 years after being diagnosed. One day I’m going to see his face, and he’s going to make it all right. He’s going to reconcile every ailment, every bad back, every hurting heart, every broken thing in this world. Every wrong that has seemingly gone unpunished or unaccounted for will be accounted for when I see him face to face. I eagerly await that day. Do you eagerly await that day? The writer of Hebrews seems to be connecting, eagerly awaiting him, and understanding what Jesus did. There’s this connection there. If you do not eagerly wait to see Jesus again, it is probably because you don’t really understand or appreciate what he did the first time he came. There’s a connection there, and the more you understand and appreciate what he did in his first coming, the more it will cultivate in you a desire for his second coming. So it’s a good diagnostic tool for us. If you would say, Kenny, I don’t know that I really think about the second coming much. I’m not eagerly awaiting. Then I would encourage you in your prayer time, go to him individually and say, Lord, help me understand what you did at your first coming. May that stoke in me, cultivate in me a grander desire for your second coming. Because he’s going to come back to save those who eagerly wait for him.   Closing: Box Seats Many years ago, about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I went to an Orlando Magic game, and I sat in the cheap seats because that’s what I could afford. Me and some buddies of mine sat up there. Then, about a week later, there’s a man in our church, an affluent family, who came to me and said, Hey, we got box seats for the Orlando Magic game. Do you want to go to the game? We’re not going to go to the game tonight. So myself and two buddies, we went to the Orlando Magic game a week later, and we sat in the box seats this time. We had special parking just for us. It was great. We could get in and out with minimal traffic, and we’re in the box; it’s unlimited food. You just press a button to bring nachos or steak or an adult beverage, whatever it may be. We had the perfect mid-court seat. I mean, it was a phenomenal experience! I’m going home and I’m thinking to myself, we’re driving home, going, that was way better than the cheap seats, man. That was way better, man. I was kind of spoiled. I don’t think I ever want to sit up there ever again. I was just loving it. I thought to myself, you know, I don’t know what those box seats cost, but man, they had to be very expensive because I enjoyed an incredible experience. Sort of a silly comparison, but similarly, with the death of Christ, we don’t fully grasp how expensive it was for God to become a man and shed his blood on our behalf. I think we don’t fully recognize how precious the blood of Jesus actually was when it was shed on our behalf. But we can experience what he purchased. We’re sitting in a spiritual box seat called Being in the Family of God. We will experience that in grander fashion with him forever and ever and ever. Because of what Christ did on our behalf, the Old Covenant could not accomplish it. So Christ came to inaugurate the New Covenant that Christ could accomplish. Because of what he did on our behalf, we will be with him forever and ever and ever. And I eagerly await the day he comes and gets us to enjoy him face to face.

Introduction: Florida Man Well, many of you in the room know me. If you do not, my name is Kenny, and I have the privilege of serving as pastor here at Horizon City Church. It’s our first Easter Sunday. We’ve existed now for approximately six months. God’s kindness. So, thank you for worshiping with us this morning. My wife and I moved from Minnesota to Orlando in the summer of 2023 with the hopes of planting a church in the area in the fall of ’24. That was the plan. When I started telling people in Minnesota that I was going to move to Florida, people began to allude to or make mention of this sort of well-known trope known as Florida Man.  Some of you are familiar with Florida Man. If you’re not, just devote like 12 minutes later this afternoon to googling Florida Man. So there is this idea that people in Florida do wild things. So you’ll regularly see headlines from news outlets that will say Florida man did this thing. And it’s referring to a man in Florida. You know, not the same guy doing all the things obviously, but the way the headline will read, it would seem like there’s one dude, the Florida man, who’s doing all this crazy stuff.  Well, there was a Florida man headline that I saw not long ago, sort of a tragic situation, but I saw a Florida Mound headline about a Florida man who was beaten with his own weapon after breaking into a home in Sarasota. In 2016, a man in Sarasota, Florida, broke into a family’s home with a baseball bat and intended to do harm to the family.  Well, it appears that he did not realize that he was in for something beyond what he could imagine. The married couple realized he was in the home, and they attacked him first. They tackled him down to the ground. The wife was able to wrestle the bat away from his hand, and she began to hit him with the bat multiple times, causing severe injuries to this man. The man was able to escape, but a few hours later, he was caught by the Sheriff and arrested. He would eventually plead guilty. Pretty crazy situation.   The Death of Death That is a silly illustration, but I think gives us a little bit of insight into precisely what Jesus did. You see, Death was Satan’s greatest weapon. Death is the weapon he intends to use to clobber us. And he invades with that weapon into our lives, into our kingdom. But our king said no, he ripped that weapon out of the Devil’s hand, and he beat the devil with it. Jesus beat the devil with the devil’s own weapon. Jesus triumphed over death by dying. The death of death came through the death of the one who would defeat death.  Jesus defeated death by dying. It feels like an oxymoron. It feels so counterintuitive. Yet it was the masterful plan of God. So this morning, I want to talk a little bit about the death and resurrection of Jesus. I want to specifically hone in on two things. One is, how did Jesus defeat death? What was the process he went through? And then secondly, I want to answer the question, why did he choose to defeat death? What was the reason why he did this? So those are the two things we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to ask the question, How did Jesus defeat death? And then, secondly, why did he go on this mission to defeat death? That’s the plan.  We’re going to start this morning by examining a very well-known passage of scripture, John chapter three, where Jesus is having this conversation with a man named Nicodemus. In this conversation, Jesus will give us probably the most famous Bible verse in all of the Bible, John 3:16. So that’s what we’re going to do this morning. But before we look at John 3, let’s pray together one more time.  God, as we look at John 3, would you help us to understand it, and may it stoke our affections for you. May we leave this place loving you more than when we walked in. And I pray that if there’s anyone in this place this morning who does not know you, it’s not a genuine believer. I pray that today they would see you, they would see the beauty of Christ. And may today be the day they choose to put all their faith in Christ alone. I ask these things in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.   Nicodemus Seeks Out Jesus In John chapter 3, Jesus is having this conversation with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were the very, very strict, legalistic religious leaders of the first century. In First-Century Israel, they had significant religious authority, but also some political authority. Nicodemus was one of the most powerful of the bunch. In the city of Jerusalem in the first century, the population was about 600,000 people. There was a 70-seat elder council that basically oversaw all of the authority. 70 men who had all of the authority over the city of Jerusalem. Nicodemus was one of those 70 dudes.  So he’s a very powerful guy. He’s wealthy, influential. And the teachings of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus had created a sort of buzz throughout the region. People had heard a lot about this. So I would imagine Nicodemus had heard a lot about Jesus and was very curious. But, because of his position of political power, it would be kind of risky for him to go meet with Jesus in a public fashion. The bulk of the people on this 70-seat council, this Sanhedrin it was called, were not friendly to Jesus. They were very hostile toward Christ. And so Nicodemus, being a Pharisee, and there are many other Pharisees, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Pharisees in Jerusalem. They are very hostile, most of them toward Christ. So Nicodemus kind of has to step carefully here. So he seeks out Jesus in the middle of the night, and he starts to have this conversation. And you can tell that he wants to believe in Jesus, he wants to understand, but he’s got some doubts. This conversation would give us some of the most brilliant insights into the work and person of Christ.  Side note, it’s okay if you have some doubts about Jesus. Nicodemus had some doubts. His humble approach in coming to Jesus, to engage in conversation, and ask questions led to one of the most glorious conversations in human history. I think sometimes we think that our doubts are going to scare God, or we’re a bad Christian if we have doubts, or we can’t express those doubts. But the reality is that often when we come to him humbly with our doubts, it leads to some of the most glorious and most helpful interactions with Jesus.  So if that’s you this morning, you’re like, I’m just not really sure what I think about some of these things. Jesus invites you. He’s not going to bite your head off. He’s not going to bring condemnation. He’s going to kindly engage with you. That’s what we see him doing with Nicodemus in John 3.  So Jesus and Nicodemus are having this conversation. Nicodemus clearly has some respect for Jesus, and he wants to understand. In essence, he’s asking Jesus, How do I follow God well? How do I do what God wants me to do? Jesus says to him, In John chapter 3, verse 3, Jesus says, You must be born again. Nicodemus has no clue what he’s talking about. Nicodemus says to him, Born again? Do I have to go back into my mom’s womb and be born? What are you talking about, Jesus?  He doesn’t understand. He’s confused. So then they have a little bit of back and forth and there’s some more conversation. Eventually in this conversation, Jesus is going to allude to the fact that, hey, Nicodemus, you’re one of the teachers of the law, you’re one of the most religious, you’re one of the most influential people. If you don’t understand these things, we’re in trouble. If you don’t understand this, how is anyone in Israel going to understand these things? But here’s what Jesus does not do. He doesn’t get mad at Nicodemus for not understanding. He does not say, You dummy, I told you, be born again. No, he didn’t say that. Because it’s not how Jesus responds. When we don’t understand, we can say, Jesus, I don’t get it, man. And then Jesus kindly says, Okay, let me explain it to you this way. Jesus then will give him an analogy by using a moment in the history of Israel. 1400 years before this conversation is happening, there were these events that happened in ancient Egypt that we call the Exodus. So we’re here in 2025, 2000 years ago, Jesus and Nicodemus are talking. And then 1400 years before that, there’s this event called the Exodus. Many of you surely are familiar with this. The Exodus is the moment when God rescues the Israelites from slavery. The Israelite people, hundreds of thousands of them, were slaves in the nation of Egypt for several hundreds of years under Egyptian tyranny. God uses Moses as the leader, raises up Moses to rescue them out of Egypt, and brings them into the wilderness. They will be in the wilderness for a period of time and eventually go into the Promised Land. That is their trajectory.    Bronze Serpent in the Desert But there’s this amazing moment, this incredibly beautiful and tragic moment in the wilderness after they come out of Egypt, before they go into the Promised Land, during that 40-year moment when they’re wandering around the wilderness. There’s this event with a bronze serpent. Jesus alludes to that event here in John 3. He’s like, Nicodemus, you don’t understand what I’m talking about on how to believe properly. Remember that thing that happened 1400 years ago back in the wilderness with the bronze serpent? Do you remember that? Let’s hearken back to that, because that moment in history will help us understand what I’m talking about. This is what Jesus says in John chapter 3, verses 14 and 15, Leon read it for us a moment ago, Jesus says,  “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus is alluding to this moment of the bronze serpent. Many of you may be familiar with what happened in the wilderness. If you are not, let me give you a quick. For those of you who have been around for the last few months. Most of you in the room have been with us when we’ve been traveling through the Book of Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews talks a lot about the Old Testament being filled with these things we call shadows or types. The Old Testament is filled with all these little Easter eggs, these little clues, these hints that foreshadow the things of the New Testament, mainly Jesus and the things that he would accomplish on our behalf.  So Jesus is, in essence, here in John 3, telling Nicodemus that event that happened in the wilderness with the bronze serpent is a shadow, a foreshadowing of something that I’m going to do for you, Nicodemus. So the Israelites, there, they come out of Egypt. They’re in the wilderness, wandering around. This takes place right around 1400 BC, approximately. They’re wandering around the desert. They come to the edge of the Promised Land. But they make sinful, disobedient choices, and so God does not allow them to enter the Promised Land.  So then they wander around the wilderness. And while they’re wandering around the wilderness, they begin to complain and grumble. They behave in ways that we would say are very disrespectful and blasphemous toward God. They begin to complain and say, I can’t believe God has not taken us into the Promised Land yet. Have you forgotten it was your sin that caused this? This is the event happening in the wilderness. So God’s wrath comes against the people of Israel, his righteous judgment. God says to them, in Numbers, chapter 21, verse 6, it says this: “The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people. And many of the people of Israel died.”  So the people of Israel they’re being disrespectful and blasphemous. God has them wandering around the wilderness. They still grumble and complain at God and at Moses. And so God says, What are we going to do? I’m going to send a bunch of poisonous snakes to live in the camp. So there are hundreds of thousands of people. They live in these tents, kind of mini houses, portable houses in a big circle. In the middle of the camp is the tabernacle. So, hundreds of thousands of people living in this kind of mini city out in the desert. And God sends snakes.  Can you imagine you’re living out here in the desert, and one day you’re in your bed, and out from under the drape of your tent comes this big old snake, and it bites you. And the pain, the poison is like, it feels like your arm’s on fire. And people begin to die. The Bible doesn’t tell us how many people die, but lots of people begin to die. This is a great picture of how God deals with sin. He punishes sinners, he hates sin sometimes. We have this view in our modern society that God is just love. Love is mercy. Love is love. We say these things in our culture. God would never demand justice. If you read Numbers 21, it’s very clear. God demands justice. These Israelites deserved the bites of the snakes. They deserved to die. This was not unrighteous or unfair.  So as people are dying, Moses then comes to God and says, God, would you be merciful? Would you take away these snakes? I know we deserve the snakes. Moses says, These people are stiff-necked people. That’s what he calls them. But would you be merciful? I know you’re a God of mercy. Would you take away the snakes we rightfully deserve? And God says to Moses, No. You’re going to live with these snakes. And for decades they live with, every day, living with the potential of snakes popping up in the camp. It’s not every day, but pretty frequently. God says this, because I am a God of mercy, Here’s what I will do: I’m not going to take away the judgment because you deserve the judgment. But here’s what I will do instead. I will make a way for you to be healed of the consequences of the judgment. God tells Moses, Here is what you’re going to do: I want you to go and make a big bronze statue of a serpent, a big old bronze statue of a big old snake. And I want you to put it up high on a hill. And anyone who lives in the camp who gets bitten by a snake, if they look to the serpent that has been lifted up, and if they believe that there is healing power in the looking, if they would believe that, then they will be healed.  That’s what he does. And so for the rest of the time they’re in the wilderness, they live with snakes, which they deserve. If someone is bitten, they’re instructed to look out and say, God told us that he would have mercy on us. I deserve to die. But I look to the bronze serpent that was lifted up. God, would you heal me? And every time the person was healed, God’s mercy. Every time.  I said something like this on Friday night, but it’s worth saying again. There are two categories of people in the camp. There’s the person who gets bitten who says, I trust in God. I am so confident in God, and I know he’s gonna heal me. They run out of their house, and they immediately look to the bronze serpent, and immediately they’re healed. Or there’s the person who gets bitten who says, This hurts. I’m gonna die. I don’t know if I really believe that the bronze serpent can heal me. I don’t know about God. I kind of believe in God, but, you know, I’m going to look to him. My confidence is shaken. I don’t feel like I’m a really good Israelite, but I’m going to look to him.  That person walks out, and they’re not sure what’s going to happen. They look up, God, would you heal me? And they’re healed. Because the healing was not dependent on the fervent nature of their confidence in God’s healing power. It was not dependent on how much they trusted God. It was dependent on how fervently God had been committed to them. Their faithfulness or their genuineness, or their intensity is not at the heart of the commitment. It is God’s commitment to us at the heart of his healing power.   Jesus Takes on Death So Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. He goes, Nicodemus, you don’t understand what I’m saying, but do you remember the Bronze Serpent 1400 years ago? Do you remember? That story that happened back then wasn’t primarily about them. It’s a true story. It actually happened. But that story’s not about them, Nicodemus. That story is about me. He says, just as Moses lifted up that bronze serpent, so too the Son of Man, referring to himself. His favorite title to call himself was the Son of Man.  Jesus says, just as the bronze serpent will be lifted up, the Son of Man must also be lifted up. And all who look to the one who has been lifted up will find eternal life. What an incredible promise. Jesus is equating himself with the serpent. Now, usually in the Bible, the serpent refers to evil or the devil. But in this particular case, Jesus is actually equating himself with the serpent. This is a remarkable moment in the history of Israel. The idea that the serpent is both the source of condemnation and the source of the cure is quite interesting. God wants to make it very clear what Jesus must do. Jesus must become like a serpent. He must become the condemnation. He must become the curse. It is serpents causing people to die in Israel. Therefore, we need a serpent to be the source of healing. Similarly, with all of humanity, it is death that causes us to be plagued. Therefore, it is death that must defeat death. In Galatians chapter 3, verse 13, the apostle Paul says it this way,  “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”  In Second Corinthians 5:21, the apostle Paul says that Jesus became sin. He doesn’t ontologically change. The essence of Jesus doesn’t transform into being sin. But in a legal sense, Jesus becomes the very thing that is plaguing us. Back in the Garden of Eden, in Genesis chapter two, God said, If you sin, you will surely die. Death is the curse for all humans. Ever since Adam, we have all sinned. All of us are in a slow march toward death. Physically and emotionally decaying, falling apart.  We are victims of this curse. This march toward death for all of us is quite painful. It’s the curse that we deserve. As humans, we are disconnected from our life source. Humans had taken flight, but we disconnected ourselves from God. So, like an airplane that loses all of its fuel mid-flight, we crash. We are spiritually unplugged from the power that we need to live the life God would want us to live. This is the curse. We became dead men, and therefore, to rescue dead men, Jesus had to become a dead man. We sinned and became dead men. And so he became a dead man to save us. Hebrews chapter two. We saw this a few months ago. In Hebrews chapter 2, verse 9, the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus tasted death. Later in chapter two, he says that Jesus was the one to destroy the devil and deliver us, because the devil has the power of death. Again, alluding back to my silly Sarasota man analogy. The weapon that Satan comes after us with is death. Jesus takes that. He says, You want death to be the weapon? Let me take that, and I’m going to die. In such a way that will defeat you and death forever. Oh, you’re trying to kill my people. I’m gonna let you kill me, but I’m gonna die in a fashion that will render your ability to kill people totally obsolete. I’m gonna defang you with my death, He says to the devil.    How Does Jesus Defeat Death? How does Jesus do this? So the two questions we asked were, how and why? Jesus defeats death by surviving the sentence that God had pronounced upon him. Let me give you a silly example. A few months ago, I was watching a video on TikTok about a guy who had committed several crimes and was sentenced to 945 years in prison with no chance of parole. That was the sentence. 945 years. Well, the reality is there’s no human that could last that long. You’re gonna be long dead. However, if there were a human that could live, let’s say, another thousand years, that person could go to prison for 945 years and then he would be released to live the last 55 years of his life. If that person could survive it. The problem is that no human can survive that sort of sentence. Well, similarly, the sentence for your sin from God is the full wrath of God. Because you are a sinner. Because I am a sinner. The sentence that God gives is the full wrath of God. All of the wrath that God has to offer, you must take. But the reality is none of us can survive that. Our souls would crumble and be in torment and hell forever and ever and ever because we don’t have what it takes to survive that sort of sentencing.  But Jesus did. He wasn’t an ordinary man. He was the God man. He was God, so he could suffer the wrath of God. So Jesus goes to the cross, and the sentence is the full wrath of God. God takes all the guilt and shame of your sin, and he puts it on Jesus. Then God says to Jesus, Here is the sentence. Everything I have to offer you. All of the guilt and shame that could ever be placed on someone, I’m putting on you right now. Any other human, spiritually speaking, would fall apart and would be destined for hell forever.  We could not handle that. But Jesus could handle it. He took the full wrath at the cross. He died a brutal physical death. But that pales in comparison to the guilt and shame that was put on him. The spiritual punishment that was placed on Jesus at the cross. For several hours on a cross, he is enduring, like the silly analogy of the guy going through 945 years of prison. Jesus is on the cross, taking it wave after wave after wave of the wrath of God. Taking it, taking it, taking it, taking it, taking it until it was all taken. And then he yells out, It is finished, and he dies. He becomes the dead man, in the process, paying for all of our sins. He’s placed in the tomb owned by a man named Joseph and his body cared for by a man by the name of Nicodemus. Who, just a few months or years earlier, had had a conversation with Jesus. Jesus was dead. He had paid the price. He survived the sentence that God had given him. He paid for the spiritual crimes of humanity, and he was dead in a tomb.  But he doesn’t stay dead because it would be unjust to leave someone in prison after the sentence has already been paid. It would be unfair, unrighteous. So God says to his son, You have paid the price. Now we do the just thing, and we raise you up from the dead. On that first Easter Sunday morning, Christ walked out of that tomb as the evidence that he is who he said he was.  See, if he had died, we would say, did he really pay the price? Did he really have what it took if he had stayed dead? He raised us up and said, No, I took it all and I am still here to live and tell you about it for forever and ever and ever. Jesus makes an offer, an unbelievable bargain. He says, Come on, let’s make a deal. If you will follow me, my actions at the cross will count for your sin forever and ever. You’re already condemned. You’re already living in the camp with serpents all around you biting you.  This world is filled with things that bite us and cause pain. We are already on our way to condemnation. God doesn’t have to offer any more condemnation to you. We’re already headed there. But if you would look to me, just like the Israelites looked to the bronze serpent, if you would look to the Son of Man who was lifted up, your sin will be forgiven. His death will count for you. He offers you a pathway to experiencing the full joy of God. As we sang in that song a moment ago, Heaven’s gates are now wide open. He says, Come. Would you look to me, the one who was lifted up? You will be healed. There was a spiritual healing for those who look to the one who has lifted up.  Jesus turns death into something quite glorious. Death should have been the thing that scares us the most. The most frightening, most horrible thing that you could ever do to someone is to kill them. And yet Jesus turns it upside down. As one theologian once said. Oh, how the turntables. (Two of you got it. That’s good.) Death would have been the thing that catapulted us into hell. But because of what Christ has done on our behalf, instead, death becomes the thing that catapults us into the fullness of joy. The Apostle Paul says it this way in Philippians 1. “To die is gain.” To die is to gain something remarkable. More than 20 times in the New Testament, there is a clear connection between the resurrection of Christ and our future resurrection. We know that we, too, will be resurrected from the dead and will enjoy God forever. The reason we know that is because Christ has risen from the dead. The only thing that could stop us from enjoying God forever was death. And the fact that Christ has risen from the dead is evidence that death has been defeated. The Apostle Peter says it this way. Christ suffered once for sins that he might bring us back to God. Jesus says this in John 11,  “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”  You’re going to die physically, but if you believe on him, you will never die eternally. In First Corinthians 15. My wife read it to us a moment ago. The tone of 1 Corinthians 15 is a tad bit boastful. Paul is talking trash to death. Kind of like when I play basketball at the YMCA, even if I miss 20 shots in a row, I make one shot and I’m like, yeah, what you got? That’s right.  Listen, you guys know I’m from Philadelphia. I’m a big Eagles fan. When the Eagles won the Super Bowl, I was trash-talking all of my friends who are Giants fans. Oh, they all got text messages from me. Y’all ain’t got nothing on us. Super Bowl champs, baby. That’s exactly what Paul’s doing. In First Corinthians 15, he’s saying, Hey, Death. Ha ha. You thought you had me. He says, Hey, Death, remember this? This perishable body is gonna put on an imperishable body. This mortal body, oh, it’s gonna put on immortality. Then he says this in 1 Corinthians 15:55,  “Oh, death, where’s your victory? Oh, Death, where’s your sting?”  Death, you ain’t got nothing on me. Most of us will die. Maybe some of us will see the return of Christ. Maybe. But in all likelihood, we’re all going to die. We’re going to die of something. Cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s. We’re all going to deal with something. It’s going to sting for a moment. Then you will walk into the presence of the king, and you will laugh and say, Oh, Death, that’s all you had to offer me? I now get to enjoy him forever. Because Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.  Side note, in this life, death is still very painful. The snakes that bite still hurt. They still kill. There’s a glorious serpent that’s been lifted up on our behalf. But in the moment, it still hurts. Many of us have experienced the death of loved ones, disappointment, and betrayal. All of us have experienced pain in this life. It’s real. But he will strengthen you. In Romans, chapter 6, the apostle Paul says this,  “The spirit of God who raised Jesus up from the dead now lives in you.”  The same power that brought Jesus back from the dead now indwells you and will strengthen you as you go through this life. So not only is there a promise of ultimate healing, but there’s a promise of strength. As we walk through the valley of pain here in this life, he gives us emotional strength and spiritual strength, and physical strength to endure. And we have a hope that lasts forever. So the Apostle Paul says this in 1st Thessalonians 4. He says,  “We do not grieve as others do who have no hope.” When unbelievers experience death, they have no hope. But we do have hope because Paul says this first. Thessalonians 4, verse 14.  “Because we believe that Jesus died and rose again.”  That’s what he says. We suffer in this life, but we have hope and strength. Why? Because we believe that Jesus died and rose again. So that’s the how. How did Jesus defeat death? By surviving the sentence God gave by becoming a dead man and then justly being raised from the dead.   Why Does Jesus Defeat Death? The second question I want to answer is the why? Why did Jesus do this? Well, he tells us in the very next verse, the most famous verse in all of the Bible, Jesus says to Nicodemus, Let me tell you why. John 3:16, Jesus says to Nicodemus.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Why? Why did Jesus become a man to be lifted up? Love. True love. Because he loves. Because he loves you. God could have allowed all of us to die. He would have been perfectly within his rights. It would have been righteous and fair for everyone in that camp to be bitten by a snake and to die. God is not obligated to raise up a serpent to look to. There’s no cosmic law that says God has to save you. God could have said to all of us, To hell with you, literally. And he would have been righteous and fair in doing so. It would not be unfair.  But God says, I love them too much for that to be the end of the story. God says, I love them. God says, I want him in my family. God says, Tom, I want you in my family. He says, Hank, I want you in my family. He says, Olivia, I want you in my family. He says, Bridget, I want you in my family. Joyce, I want you in my family. And I will do what it takes to get you into my family. If it means God becoming a man and being lifted up so that you can look to him and have your sins forgiven, I love you in that way. I love you in a way that leads me to experience pain and death. Because my love is redemptive toward you.  Christ defeated death by dying. He was justly vindicated, brought back from the dead by the power of God, by the way, the power of God that is now alive in you. He did it because he loves you. Because he loves you with a matchless, everlasting love beyond what you could ever imagine.    Closing If you are here this morning and you are a believer in Jesus, if you are a follower of Christ, if that is you, he says to you this morning, I love you. I love you. And if you are here this morning, you are not a believer. You would say, Kenny, I’m not a follower of Christ. Jesus says to you, Come. Come experience that love forever and ever and ever. Oh, death, where is your sting? Death, you ain’t got nothing on us.  

https://youtu.be/N0O0l9_Q7mY?si=0t2KaR_ah0MLetQM   Preamble: Interstate I-95 Well, most of you know that I was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia. I grew up just a few miles from one of the busiest entries onto Interstate I-95. If you don’t know, I-95 is one of the busiest interstates in the United States. It goes all the way on the East Coast from the northern part of Maine down to South Florida. It is one of the first freeways built when the freeway system was established in the mid-1950s. I-95 is a free interstate from Maine through the New England states into New York. But then you get to New Jersey and something happens. The state of New Jersey has determined that I-95, the road as it goes through the state of New Jersey, will be the New Jersey Turnpike. So many states have a turnpike, but New Jersey didn’t build a new turnpike. They commandeered the federally funded preexisting road and said we’re going to add a bunch of rules and regulations to I-95. We’re going to rename it and we’re going to change how it functions for this period of time. So while you’re driving through New Jersey, it is the New Jersey Turnpike. And then when you get out of New Jersey into Delaware, I-95 then throws off the shackles or extra elements of the New Jersey Turnpike and it becomes just I-95 again. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s how I see the old Covenant. In the old Covenant, God gives humanity certain commands, expectations. From the Garden of Eden down through the pre-flood world to Noah, all the way down to Abraham, and down to us today, through the ancient world, through the medieval era, all the way down to the modern world. God has certain commands that all people everywhere are responsible for obeying. That’s what theologians often call the moral law. These are ideas that everyone is accountable to. It goes from beginning to end. It’s sort of like I-95 from the very northern part of Maine down to South Florida. The entire East Coast has this one interstate running through it. However, for a brief season in history, God added some extra stuff to the moral law. So the moral law, like I-95, goes all the way down. You get into one moment, there’s a bunch of stuff added to it. Then, when you get past that into Delaware, those are set aside. The old covenant is this: God gives the moral law. He says, All humans everywhere, this is what all humans must do. But then, for this brief season, God takes this nation called Israel and he establishes a covenant with them, a sacred contract. He says to Israel, for this period of time, you people, you Israelites, I’m gonna give you some extra stuff. So Israel is like a New Jersey turnpike. And then when you get into Delaware, it’s like Jesus rose from the dead. Delaware is the new covenant.   Introduction: Moral Law vs. Mosaic Law Anyway, this morning, what I wanna do is two major things. First, I want to make sure we understand the distinction between the moral and Old Covenant laws. What is that which God has given us from the beginning that passes through time, that we’re all accountable to, versus what was given just to the Israelites for that period? From the time they came out of Egypt to the time Jesus came, that period of time, the old covenant was only for a certain group of people for that certain period of time. We need to understand the distinction between those two things. The second thing I want to do is, I want to give us some understanding of why. Why God did this? Why did God create a turnpike in this place we call Palestine in the land of Canaan? Why would God have done that for those people at that time period? And why did he bring it to an end? Why did he do this? It doesn’t always seem to make sense to us. And so that’s what our goal is. And as we understand the reasons why, the purposes, that will give us some practical application for our own lives. So that’s our plan for this morning. First, I want to examine the distinctions between the moral and the Old Covenant laws. And then I want to give us some practical reasons and give us some purposes of the Old Covenant Law. And as we do that, we’ll see some practical examples for our own lives. Let’s pray one more time, and we’ll dive in. Lord, we thank you for the moral law. We thank you for. Thank you for the interstate that allow us to travel around this country. We thank you for Interstate I-95 being a silly illustration that can maybe help us understand a little bit more of what you’ve done. As we examine things we see in your word, help us to understand you more. May that stoke our affections for Jesus. Maybe walk out of this place loving you more than we walked in. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.   The Moral Law So, God expects all people to follow the moral law. All people everywhere. That’s I-95. That’s the transcendent morality from start to finish, forever and ever. The moral law is, in essence, what we would call objective truth. Objective right or wrong. There are some things that are intrinsically right and some things that are intrinsically wrong. There are some things that are inherently good, right, and beautiful, and some things are inherently wicked and evil. How does this come about, though? How do we know who gets to make the call as to what is inherently good and what is inherently bad? What’s good, what’s evil? Well, it comes from God’s character. He is the standard. God has certain moral inclinations. There are certain things that God leans into or leans towards. There are certain things that God desires, that God likes, that God prefers. God has various opinions on things. Well, his opinions in essence become what is right and wrong. If God prefers one thing over another, it is wrong to prefer the thing he prefers less. Or said another way, if God wants something, we should want it too. It is a sin not to want what he wants. God loves certain things. We should love what he loves. God hates certain things. We should hate what he hates. The problem is we often don’t love the things he loves enough. We often don’t hate the things that he hates enough. God has various opinions and friends, If your opinion is different than God’s, something’s got to shift. If you disagree with God, it’s not God who is wrong. The moral law comes about by examining the character and nature of God and reflecting him. So any behavior or any ideology that does not reflect God perfectly and accurately is wicked and evil. If you behave in a way that does not reflect God, you should behave in such a way that other people could look at you and go, Oh, that’s exactly how God would behave if he were in that situation. So any behavior in your life that does not match God exactly is evil. There are a lot of things I do that are not quite like God. Every minute of every day, something is going on in our hearts and our minds and our lives that doesn’t reflect God. That is wicked. It’s not just kind of off. It’s not just, well, you made a small mistake. No, it’s wicked, it’s evil, and it’s deserving of the wrath of God. The moral law is huge, big, magnificent, glorious. It reflects who God is, his character, and his moral inclination. He expects us to fall in line with that. And the moral law has always been in play, as I mentioned a moment ago, from Adam and Eve through history till today.   The Summation of the Moral Law But as I said a minute ago, there’s this unique moment in history where God rescues the Israelites. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt for about 400 years, approximately 1800 BC to 1400 BC. Scholars differ on exactly when it happened, but around that time period of history, this true story actually happened. These Israelites were slaves in the nation of Egypt. Then God miraculously rescues them through an incredible series of events. He pulls them out of Egypt and he brings them into this wilderness land, modern day Middle Eastern region, northern parts of Saudi Arabia.. He says to them, I’m going to take you into the promised land. The land of Canaan which will later be known as Judea. Many people today would refer to that land as Palestine. That piece of land was going to be given to these Israelites. God says you’re going to go. But before you go, God has them wander around the wilderness for a while, and he brings us to this mountain known as Mount Sinai. At Mount Sinai, he gives them this thing called the Decalogue, or you may know it better as the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are, in essence a very brief summation of the moral law. So the moral law from Adam and Eve all the way down, it’s going on forever and ever. This is what’s right or wrong. This is how we should live our lives. Then he says, I’m going to give you these ten commandments, this decalogue. It is, in essence, this very simple summary of the moral law. Now the moral law is so, so huge. It’s every behavior or idea ever, all of who God is, wrapped up into the moral law. There are not enough books on the planet to contain all the things that can be written down about the moral law. But God, in his kindness, says, I’m going to try to make it simple for you. Here’s ten. These ten sum up all of the moral law. Jesus will give us an even simpler summation of the moral law in the New Testament. He’ll say all those ten, all those commandments, and all the moral law, it’s wrapped up in these two things. He’ll say in the New Testament, love God and love people. Love your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. Because the ten were too difficult. So let’s get down to two. In essence, the Ten Commandments are split into two categories. The first four are basically what theologians call the first table. That’s referred to as the first commandment Jesus gave when he says, love God with all your heart. That’s the first four commandments. They correspond. The second table of the law, commandments five to ten, they corresponds to the second commandment Jesus gave to love your neighbor as yourself. So God says, here’s the whole moral law. I’m going to narrow it down. Just give you ten commandments, make it simple. And then Jesus is like, I’m going to make it even simpler. The first four commandments basically say, love God with all your heart. The next six commandments are to love other people. That’s the summation. The moral law, to the decalogue, to the great commandments from Jesus, that’s the summation of it. That’s the process he gives us. Then, at Sinai, after giving him the decalogue, God says to them, I want you to take these ten Commandments, and I want them to govern how you run your country, Israel. When you go into the promised land, these ten commandments are going to be the law of your land. They’re gonna be the constitution, the framework that governs the land when you go into it. They should govern the way you live and treat one another, and should govern how you interact with other countries and other people groups. That’s what he gives them. What God would prefer is that he wouldn’t have to give them any additional rules and regulations. I’ve given you the Ten Commandments, the decalogue. That should be more than enough. Here’s what God would prefer: I want you to spend time with me, hang out with me, get to know me, enjoy me, and I will enjoy you. We will have this incredible love affair, this vibrant friendship, and you will get to know me and my desires and my preferences, and you will know how to apply these Ten Commandments to your life, because you’re going to know me. I remember, early in my marriage, my wife and I would frequent Chipotle. I would always forget what my wife wanted. I forgot regularly. That’s why I wrote it down. I put a note in my phone. I still have it. But over time, I spent enough time with this woman whom I love, that when we go to Chipotle, I now no longer need to look at my phone, because I love her, because I know her, because I spend time with her. I live with her, I share a bed with her. We raise kids together. I know her. I know her Chipotle order. I don’t need to look at the law anymore. That’s what God desires for his people. Spend time with me. Know me. So you don’t have to look at the rules anymore. The more you know me, the more you love me, the more I will be in you. And you will know how to take the moral law and apply it to your life. Because you will know me. And you will know what I would do if I were in your situation because you spend time with me.   Mosaic Law But the problem is that God knows these Israelites really well. He knows he can give them these Ten Commandments and tell them to know him and love him and apply them, but they’re probably not going to get it right. These people were quite ignorant of the truth. They were unaware. So God gives them these rules and regulations. In addition to the Ten Commandments, He gives them more than 600 additional specific rules and regulations. And they’re very particular about, rules. Very specific expectations around worship and religious rituals and animal sacrifices and lifestyle and behavior and relationships and political policies, and food restrictions. Certain foods were unclean, others were clean, sexuality, all sorts of things. There’s all sorts of stuff in these 600-plus laws. Very, very detailed and in essence, what they are, what they are designed to do for Israel is to help them understand how to take the Ten Commandments, the decalogue, and apply it to their life and their context as they enter into this brand new nation called Israel. So God makes this serious contract, this covenant with his people, gives them the decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and then he gives them all these extra laws. He’s like, they are now in New Jersey, here’s a bunch of extra stuff. You’re on the turnpike, okay? And he tells them, I want you to follow these rules to a T. There were significant consequences for disobeying God. But he tells them, as long as you guys follow these rules, you’re going to enjoy special blessings and special protections that none of the other nations enjoy. There’s going to be some unique things that happen in Israel through you, so long as this covenant is in play. Through you, the Messiah is going to be born, and he’s going to bless all the nations. What an amazing privilege Israel had. These extra set of rules, this spiritual New Jersey Turnpike. We often refer to that as the Mosaic Law or the Law of Sinai. Sometimes, because it was given at Mount Sinai, sometimes its just called the law. So the contract that God makes with Israel is the Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant. The laws that went along with that contract are what we would call the Old Covenant laws or the Mosaic Law. Sometimes people use those words interchangeably. Old Covenant or Mosaic Covenant, Mosaic Law. They are distinct. But people use those terms sort of interchangeably. The law, the Mosaic Law, the Old Covenant Law, was only for the Israelites for that period of time from Mount Sinai until the coming of the Messiah. That’s it. It’s about a 1400-year period. But none of the other people in the world were actually expected to follow that law. They were expected to follow the moral law. Everyone follows the moral law. But only the Israelites were expected to follow the Old Covenant law. We know this specifically because there are later moments in the Old Testament where God sends prophets to other nations. He does not rebuke them for disobeying the Mosaic Law. He rebukes them for disobeying the Moral law. He sends the prophet Obadiah to Edom, and he tells the nation of Edom, they’re not Israelites. They’re not under the Old Law. They’re not under that Old Covenant. But he says, You’ve sinned against God, repent. We see this with the prophets of Jonah and Nahum. Later on, in the Old Testament, they go to the city of Nineveh, which is in Assyria, and they say you need to repent of your sin. Side note, there’s this idea that people say only God’s people are expected to follow his law. No, all people, everywhere. Someone who’s not a Christian you can’t expect them to follow God’s commands. Well, God disagrees because God goes to people who are outside of his people and says, listen, you follow too. So it’s absolutely appropriate for me to look at anyone living in Winter Garden and say, you are commanded to follow the moral law whether you are a Christian or not, and God will hold you accountable for that. But only the Jews, only the Israelites in the Old Testament, were expected to follow the New Jersey Turnpike expectations, the 600-plus specific laws. That was only for them, and it was only for a period of time. It was going to come to an end when the Messiah came. This is explicit in the New Testament.   Released from the Mosaic Law Let me give you a couple of examples. In Mark, chapter 7, verse 19, Jesus says, Now all foods are clean. In the old Covenant, certain foods were clean and unclean. You only ate the clean ones. You didn’t eat the unclean. Jesus said, Now all food is clean. In Acts chapter 10, Jesus commands Peter to eat some foods that Peter thought were unclean based on the Old Covenant. And Jesus is saying, no, those rules were for a period of time. Peter, that time has come. It’s come to an end. Go ahead, pick up that shrimp taco, brother. In Acts 15, the apostles tell the churches, You are no longer under the old covenant law. It’s explicit in Acts 15. In Romans 7, Paul says, that we are released from the law, but he will imply later in Romans that we are not released from the moral law. In First Corinthians, Paul says that we are not under the law, referring to the old law, but we are under the law of Christ, referring to the moral law. So there’s one law put away, but there’s one law, a higher law. You’d better never get off that interstate. In Colossians chapter 2, the apostle Paul is talking to them about the different convictions. In the church of Colossae, a bunch of these Christians they have different opinions on what they should or shouldn’t eat. They have different opinions on the festivals and the holidays. What festivals and holidays should Christians celebrate or not celebrate? And in the church, they disagreed. They argued about it. It was a big deal. Paul says to them, Listen, you have freedom. You don’t have to all agree on this. If some of you don’t want to eat that shrimp taco, go ahead, you don’t have to eat it. Some of you want to eat the shrimp taco, you can eat it, but don’t make your brother eat it if he doesn’t want to. Be kind to one another in this process. He’s making it very clear that the Old Testament law is no longer the rubric by which we measure our behavior. That’s not our standard. That’s what he’s telling them. Then, of course, most famously, the entire book of Galatians is all about this same issue. The entire book of Galatians is all about the fact that circumcision and the rituals of the Old Covenant no longer apply to God’s people. We have gone out of New Jersey and into Delaware. Why are you still driving in Delaware like you’re in New Jersey? Why would you do that? New Jersey has a high sales tax. 8%. Delaware, no sales tax. Come on. We throw that off. Why would you want to insist on paying the sales tax when you’re in Delaware? You don’t have to anymore. So Galatians is all about that. That’s his message. Sort of a ridiculous, crass summation. In essence, that’s what he’s saying. And then, of course, we have the book of Hebrews. For those of you who have been with us for the last few months, we’ve been traveling through the Book of Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter seven, the writer of Hebrews talks about the weakness of the Old Covenant. He’s implying that there are some elements of the covenant that are useful, but there are also elements of the Old Covenant that are useless because it can’t go on forever. In Hebrews chapter seven, at the end, he talks about the inadequacies of the priests. Daniel preached about this for us two weeks ago. The priests were inadequate. Therefore, their priesthood is inadequate to go on forever and ever. Then in Hebrews chapter nine, we’ll see this, God willing, in two weeks, he talks about the sacrifices that the priest offered were also woefully inadequate. You can’t rely on that forever, so don’t even try. Then, of course, we come to the end of Hebrews chapter 8. Frank, read it for us earlier. In Hebrews chapter 8, verse 13, the writer of Hebrews says the Old Covenant is obsolete, outdated, fading away. It’s like a VCR, like a cassette tape player, like Blockbuster Video, like going to get your film developed at Rite Aid or CVS. It’s faded away. It is like an old-school original Click wheel iPod from 2001 that could hold a thousand songs. Oh, that’s lame. Because my iPhone at the current moment has access to 100 million songs. Why would I go back to the Click Wheel iPod? It’s obsolete. No speakers. You had to have corded headphones. The message of the New Testament is explicit. The Old Covenant regulations they’re no longer in play. And they’re not even in play for modern Jewish people. Sometimes I’ve heard Christians say this. The Old Covenant doesn’t apply to Christians, but it still applies to Jews. No, it doesn’t. I can read the New Testament and see how Paul lived his life. Paul clearly is not living under that covenant. Paul was the Jew of Jews, the best Jew ever, and he no longer followed the covenant as he lived his life. Why would he expect modern Jews to follow? If you want to follow the law, there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s no obligation whatsoever, and there’s no spiritual value from that. We are all free from New Jersey. That’s the Old Covenant law versus the moral law. Those are the distinctions. I want to make sure we understand.   Purposes of the Covenant Law The second thing that we’re going to do this morning is, I want to help you understand what the purposes of the law. Why was the Old Covenant Law given in the first place? I’m going to give you five reasons this morning. 1. Prophecies of Jesus I’m going to give you five reasons why the Old Covenant Law was given. Number one, the prophecies of Jesus. There are over 300 prophecies of the Messiah baked into the Old Covenant law. More than 300 of them, Jesus meets every single one of them. It’s remarkable. It was predicted in the Old Covenant that Jesus would be crucified 500 years before crucifixion was invented. Crucifixion was invented by the Persians around 500 BC, picked up by the Romans around 300 BC, and they perfected it. Jesus is predicted to die by crucifixion in 1000 BC. Or how about today? Daniel talked about Palm Sunday a moment ago. In Zechariah 9, we see that there’s this clear prophecy of the Messiah coming into Jerusalem and people greeting him with palm branches, shouting, Hosanna, Savior, the one who can save. Would you rescue us? Hosanna in the highest. These were all predicted, and they’re baked into the Old Covenant. So one of the reasons why God gave the Old Covenant in the first place is because he wanted us to be able to see and recognize the Messiah. Look at all these things the Messiah was prophesied, predicted about. That’s him. This bolsters our faith today in the modern world, where people want to give us reasons for why we ought not believe in God or we should question the authority of Scripture. We can look back at the Old Covenant and say, but look at these prophecies that are so clear and specific, pointing to Jesus. It’s a great apologetic for the Christian faith. 2. Help Govern Themselves as a Nation The second reason the Old Covenant was given was to help Israel govern itself as a nation. Remember, God wants to bring them into the promised land for them to have a nation. The ultimate goal is for the Messiah to be born into this nation, and then through that nation, all the nations be blessed. But for that to happen, we’ve got to make sure this nation actually survives. The ancient Near East world in which they were living was crazy chaos, all sorts of disgusting sins, pagan rituals. God is saying, I’m going to take you to the Promised Land. I’m going to create you as a nation. We want to make sure you actually survive until the Messiah shows up. So we’re going to give you these specific laws to govern you so that you know how to function. Remember, they had never been a nation. These Israelites had been slaves under Egyptian tyranny for over 400 years. They had never governed themselves. There’s no scripture, there’s no biblical teaching, there’s no religious practice, or very little. Most of them have very little understanding of the moral law or the truth. They live amongst a bunch of pagans. So there are all sorts of bad pagan ideas. Then, when they go out into the wilderness, scholars tell us it’s maybe on the high end, about a million people. The low end, maybe 700,000. You have hundreds of thousands of people leaving Egypt. But with them, it’s not just the Israelites, A bunch of Egyptian pagans, after they’ve seen how God rescued them, they abandoned Egypt, they abandoned the pagan gods, and they follow Israel. So when they go out into the wilderness, it’s a mix. It’s a bunch of Israelites and a bunch of Egyptian pagans kind of mixed together, and none of them know anything. So God’s like, if I give you the decalogue, you guys ain’t gonna figure it out. So I’m gonna graciously give you these very particular laws for you to know exactly how to govern yourself so that you can function for a season, to make sure your country doesn’t implode, so that we can make sure we have the Messiah born to bless all the nations of the world. The giving of the Old Covenant law is incredibly gracious. We all think of the Old Covenant law as oppressive or bad. It’s the exact opposite. It was God being kind to them. The Apostle Paul says this in Galatians chapter three. He says that the Old Covenant law was like a guardian in Galatians 3. Another word for that would be a babysitter or a nanny. The Old Covenant law was like a babysitter. So, imagine Malaina and I go out for dinner on a Friday night. We hire a babysitter to hang out with our three-year-old and our one-year-old. So you have the babysitter who stays with them, but eventually they’re going to be old enough and mature enough where Malaina and I can go out and we don’t have to hire a babysitter. If Leti is 17 years old and we still need a babysitter for her, something has gone seriously wrong. The Old Covenant was a babysitter for them, for the Old Testament Israelites. So Paul’s saying in Galatians 3, you needed it for a while to kind of keep you on track, but eventually you should sort of know how to govern yourselves. You shouldn’t need this Old Covenant. Jesus comes in the New Testament and says the New Covenant is here. The world is mature enough and ready to receive the Messiah; the guardian, the babysitter, is no longer needed. Thank you. You were helpful to us in your day, but you can go home now. 3. Help us Apply the Ten Commandments to our Lives The third reason why God gave the Old Covenant is that the Old Covenant helps us today apply the Ten Commandments to our lives. You heard Malaina read it a moment ago. First Corinthians 10. When Paul says all these things in the Old Testament happened and were written down for our instruction. So be careful. If you think you know what to do, be careful lest you fall. Paul says in First Corinthians 10, Be careful. Paul says listen, the moral law is still in play. But don’t just run off and think you know exactly what to do. You should consult the Old Covenant because it gives you the wisdom to know how to apply the Ten Commandments to your life. I’m gonna make a side note. Christians sometimes debate this. Are the Ten Commandments still applicable to Christians today? There’s a pretty strong percentage of evangelical Christians who would say no. And I gotta be honest, I don’t understand that. Because if you understand what the decalogue was, the Ten Commandments are a summary of the moral law. To say the Ten Commandments don’t apply is to say the moral law doesn’t apply. But the moral law always applies. So the Ten Commandments are absolutely still in play for us. We are to obey the Ten Commandments. But the way the Israelites obeyed the Ten Commandments is different than how we obey the Ten Commandments. Those 600 laws, we do not have to abide by those. That was for them to take the Ten Commandments and apply them to their lives in their context. We are to take the Ten Commandments and apply them to our lives in our context. That will look different than how Israel did it. But we can go read about what it was like for Israel, and that will give us wisdom to know how to apply it to our lives. Let me give you an example. The fifth commandment says, You shall not murder. So there are all sorts of laws in the Old Covenant; of those 600-plus laws, there’s a whole section that helps them abide by that. All of the laws in the Old Covenant, all 600, each one of them ties back to one of the commandments. These 600 are, in essence, an exposition on the ten. And so every law of the 600 helps you obey one of the ten. So there’s this whole section of the Old Covenant about murder. But the law doesn’t merely say, don’t commit premeditated killing. It’s more than that. Let me give you another example. One of the Old Covenant laws says, that everyone must put a parapet around their roof. You know what a parapet is? It’s like a fence. In the ancient world, most people had flat roofs. People would hang out on the roof, and it was cool. In the evening, they would go up there. That was the family room. That was where you had guests over. You’d hang out on the roof. It was very normal. So the Old Covenant said, make sure you put a fence around your roof, because if someone falls off the roof and dies, even if it’s an accident, you are guilty of violating the fifth commandment. Do not Murder doesn’t merely mean don’t kill someone. It also means make sure you live your life in such a way that you don’t unintentionally cause someone to die or be harmed. So am I required to put a fence around the roof of my townhouse that I just purchased in Claremont? No, that law doesn’t apply to me. But I want to pause and ask myself, why did God give that law to them? Because that does apply to me. God gave them that law to ensure they did whatever they could to protect human life, to protect people from getting injured. Well, that does apply to me. That should govern how I cook, how I drive, how I operate machinery, and how I interact with kids. We should not just blow off the Old Covenant, which is what a lot of American Christians do. We should ask ourselves, Why did God give that to them? Let me give you another example. God gives them this long list of foods they can’t eat. Why? Scholars debate the reason why. But there’s one reason we all agree. The primary reason is that God was demanding they look different. All of the nations around them all ate certain foods, all of them. Those foods participated were a part of various pagan religious rituals. And God is saying to them, I want you to live amongst pagans, and I want your lifestyle to look different. That’s the moral law. And they’d be like, well, I don’t know how to do that. And God’s like, okay, fine. Don’t eat shrimp. Okay? Don’t eat shellfish. Don’t eat this, don’t eat this. Nothing with scales. Nothing. Bottom feeders. He gives them the rules. Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this. Don’t do this. But the higher precept, the higher moral law is, look different than the culture you live in. So, can we eat shrimp? Yes. Praise be to God. Can you eat bacon? Absolutely. But the moral command to look different is absolutely still in play. If one of your unbelieving friends and family examined your life, how different would it look from someone who’s not a believer? If they looked at your bank account, would it look different in the way that you give how much money away? You’re here on a Sunday morning. That’s different. Lots of people are at soccer, take kids to soccer games or are sleeping in. That’s good, but it should go way beyond just Sunday morning. Does your life look really different? Jesus ups the ante on this commandment. He says this in Matthew 5. He says, “You have heard it said, you shall not murder. But I say to you, everyone who is even angry with his brother will be liable for judgment. And whoever insults his brother will be liable to the fire of hell.” You’ve heard the fifth Commandment, Don’t murder. I’m telling you something much greater than that. If you even insult your brother, you’re guilty of violating the fifth commandment. Does Jesus sound like he’s throwing away the Commandment there? I don’t think so. He’s taking the Commandments and he’s upping the ante on those commandments. He’s saying, let’s stop worrying about this particular nature of the Old Covenant and let’s think about the moral law, the higher law, the law of Christ. 4. Helps Us See How Sinful We Are Number four, the law helps us see how sinful we really are. Imagine you’re driving down Plant Street and you get pulled over, like me on Tuesday. You’re going down Plant Street, and the motorcycle cop waves you over. No sirens, no lights, just a dude in boots just pointing you over. So, imagine you get pulled over. The cop says to you, Do you know what the speed limit is here? Sure, you know how fast you’re going. Imagine he says to you, You’re going 45 on this road. And I go, oh, is that bad? He goes, well, you see that sign right there? It says 25. You see that sign right there? You see that building? That’s a school. And right there it’s 15. Oh, like, I knew I was bad. But I didn’t realize how bad I was until the law was put in front of me. Like, 45. Probably not ideal in this neighborhood. But then, when you see the sign that says school zone 15, you go, Oh, I’m worse than I thought. It’s exactly what the law is for us as New Testament believers. The Apostle Paul says this in Romans 7. For if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known how egregious and sinful I was. And so I looked at the Law, and so it’s a model for us. We should look at the law. The law is like a mirror. You don’t realize you got something in your teeth until you look at the mirror. You don’t realize your hair is all jacked up and disheveled until you look in the mirror, and the mirror shows you how gross you really are. You think you look one way, you actually look another. That’s what the law gives us. Paul says we’re not under that law, but we can look at that law, and it’s a mirror. God expected a lot from them. Man, I thought I was doing okay, but I’m actually worse than I thought. Much worse. 5. God’s Kindness to Us in His Response to Sin Number five, in the Old Covenant, we see God’s kindness to us in his response to sin. We’ve talked the last few weeks about how much of the Old Covenant points to Jesus. Last week, we talked about the idea of types, these shadows, these little hints, these Easter eggs in the Old Covenant that foreshadow Jesus and his work. God put together this entire elaborate, detailed system, and he did that to show you that he hates sin, but he is simultaneously very serious about dealing with your sin on your behalf. When you look at the Old Covenant law, you read through Leviticus. It feels boring. It feels laborious. But what you get in Leviticus is instruction. Detail after detail explaining God’s plan to deal with your sin so that you don’t have to. And that laborious, boring, seemingly legalistic book called Leviticus is actually a grand, beautiful picture of God’s commitment to rescuing you.   Closing Today is Palm Sunday. As Daniel talked about 2,000 years ago, Jesus walked into the city of Jerusalem, and a bunch of Jews shouted Hosanna. With palm branches waving at him, shouting. Most of the Jewish people in Israel would turn on Jesus just a few short days later. They would disrespect him, they would disappoint him, they would betray him. Ultimately, they would blaspheme him and they would murder him. Yet he responds by humbly submitting himself to that. He says, I will do it. When we study the Old Covenant and we understand how it points to Jesus, it gives us a picture of God’s redemptive love. What is he willing to do? He is willing to do more than you could ever imagine. God’s redemptive love, his commitment to rescuing you, is baked into and woven into the Old Covenant law. Christ the Lawgiver, the One who gave the Law, the Judge of the universe, the maker of all things, the Creator of everything visible and invisible. He could have just tossed us into the flames of hell, but instead, that Lawgiver came, lived among us, and died a brutal death on a cross in our place. God put your sin on him. It should have been you on the cross, should have been me on the cross. But he dies in our place because he loves us. And the Old Covenant, if we examine it rightly, shouts to us, one of the major themes of the Old Covenant, that the one true God loves you and is faithful to you even when you are not faithful to him, that he is committed to dealing with your sin so that you don’t have to. This Easter season, we celebrate. We celebrate that redemptive love on display in the Old Covenant. We praise God for that.      

Introduction: Surprise Endings Well, if you have your Bibles and you’re not already there, flip over to Hebrews, chapter 8. I want to ask you, have you ever seen a movie where it ended in a surprise? There was a surprise twist of some sort. There are a lot of movies you could probably put on that list. You think that did not end the way I thought. Wow, what a twist! I don’t know about you, but some of my favorite movies, Shutter Island, or how about The Prestige? Hugh Jackman, fantastic movie. Kind of ends with a twist you didn’t know was coming. How about the Village, which was filmed about 12 minutes from where I grew up in the Philadelphia area. Another M. Night Shyamalan movie, Signs. Filmed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, not far from where I grew up. Or how about The Others? Remember that movie in the early 2000s, the Nicole Kidman movie? Arrivals. It’s like the timeline is not what we thought it was. Time is language. Language is time. It’s good! We’ve all seen movies that have these surprise endings. Like, whoa, I did not see that coming. But I think for most people who are in my demographic, if you went to high school in the late 90s, and if you’re a younger Gen X or elder millennial like myself, the movie that’s in that category, undoubtedly, is The Sixth Sense. It’s the Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense, another M. Night Shyamalan movie. Sort of the movie that put M. Night Shyamalan on the map, starring Bruce Willis as the Doctor. So listen, I’m gonna ruin the ending for you right now. If you’ve not seen it, it’s been 26 years. You’ve had plenty of time, all right? And don’t be like, well, I was gonna watch it tonight, Kenny. No, you weren’t. Okay? You were not gonna watch it tonight. In the Sixth Sense, the doctor is dead the whole time. He’s been dead the whole movie, but you don’t know it until the very end. It’s the very last scene when you realize he’s been dead. And it remarkably changes how you view the entire movie. It’s this unbelievable moment, this shocker. And it was right in front of me. And it’s just this remarkable thing, right? There aren’t many things that are more heart-stopping than when you have that kind of moment in a motion picture. Imagine, though, you go back and watch the movie. And I found going back and rewatching the Sixth Sense is actually more enjoyable than the first time, because then I went back and tried to look through all the little clues and hints that were in the movie. It was there all along! He tries to open the basement door, but he can’t. He doesn’t ever unlock the door. He never changes his clothes the entire movie. Every time he walks in the room, his wife’s breath changes; you can see it because the temperature goes down, because he’s a ghost. And ghosts apparently make it cooler in the room. That’s the logic of the movie. There are these clues throughout. These little hints, these little Easter eggs in the movie that show you all along. If you’re paying attention, it’s right in front of you. He’s dead. And he’s been dead the entire time. The director of the movie, who wrote the screenplay, M. Night Shyamalan, does an incredible job of putting in these little hints. And if you go back and watch the Sixth Sense the second or third time, and you look for them, you find little clues each time throughout the movie where he’s hinting at this. It’s pretty remarkable. Wow, this is a really well-crafted screenplay. It’s not perfect, but it’s well crafted, and it’s sort of fun to try to look for that when you’ve seen a movie that has a shocking ending, to go back and watch it to look for the clues and hints of the end of the story. Now imagine if someone told you, I’m gonna go back. I’m gonna go back and watch one of these movies as if it were the first time. I’m watching it as if I’ve never seen it before. Well, that’s not even possible. You can’t unsee what you’ve seen. It doesn’t make sense. But if someone said to you, I’m gonna go back and watch the Sixth Sense, and I’m gonna have the same experience as if I was watching for the first time, as if I don’t know the end of the story, it’s a futile effort. You’re not actually going to be able to pull that off. And more than that, not only is it impossible, but you would actually be missing out on something quite interesting and super fun. And that is going back and seeing the hints and clues that were put there to foreshadow that which was to come. That’s much more enjoyable.   Read the Old Testament Knowing the Outcome I think sometimes, we often read the Old Testament as if we don’t know the end of the story. It’s a futile effort. That is far less interesting. It’s far more interesting to read the Old Testament knowing the end of the story and looking for the clues in the Old Testament that foreshadow that which was to come. The end of the story of the Old Testament is that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, came to planet Earth, rescued us from our sins, and then inaugurated a new covenant. That’s the end of the story of the Old Covenant, that there was a superhero who came to give us a new covenant. It would be really odd to try to go back and read the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, as if you don’t know that there’s a new Covenant. You’ve already seen the end of the movie. He’s already come, he’s already died for your sins and risen from the dead. Pretending that you don’t know what happened when you read the Old Testament is sort of odd. It misses the point. Instead, we should read through the Old Testament looking for the hints, the Easter eggs, the clues that give us an understanding of what is to come. And if you think M. Night Shyamalan, Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan are really good at crafting movies, watch the Old Testament unfold. The writer of that screenplay is far greater than any of those Directors. We ought to read the Old Testament and look for Jesus.   Read the Old Testament and Look for Jesus What are things in the Old Testament that point forward to the New Covenant? Christian theologians throughout the centuries have referred to these little clues as ‘types’. That’s the word that theologians use. So anything in the Old Testament that gives us a hint or a clue of what’s happening in the New Testament is called a ‘type’. There is a sub-genre within Christian theology called typology that literally just studies types. If you go to a theological library, like if you go over to RTS on the east side of town, or if you go to a couple of the different theological libraries in the state of Florida, there are about five or six big ones. If you walk into the systematic theology section, there will be an entire section just devoted to typology. I looked it up this week on Amazon. On Amazon right now, books just in English written by American authors on typology, available right now on Amazon, there are 528 books just on this one topic. Studying the types of the Old Testament. It’s this whole thing. There are guys getting PhDs just in this. It’s nerdy and glorious all at the same time. Why do I start talking about the Sixth Sense and clues of the Old Testament and this thing called typology? Well, the reason I mention that is because in our passage this morning, we’ve been going through the book of Hebrews, and now we’ve come to Hebrews chapter 8. In Hebrews chapter 8, the writer of Hebrews will comment and will give us some sentiments where he clearly states that we should look back at the Old Testament, looking for these things we call types. He will use in verse five the word ‘shadows’. Sometimes theologians use the word echoes. There are these different words we may use. We say we ought to read the Old Testament a particular way. The writer of Hebrews is modeling for us how to read the Old Testament properly. He is, in essence, telling us, look for the types of Christ and learn from them. That’s how we ought to look at reading the Old Testament. We ought to read the Old Testament looking for types. And then we say to ourselves, What does this teach me about Jesus? How can this Old Testament thing stoke my affections for Jesus and cause me to love Jesus more? Many Americans read the Old Testament, trying to get moral lessons on, here are three steps on how to be a better x, y, z. That’s the wrong way to read the Old Testament. I tragically think this is one of the biggest failures of modern American evangelicalism: we don’t know how to read the Old Testament properly. I think this is one of our biggest flaws as an American evangelical ecosystem. Either there are lots of American evangelicals who totally ignore the Old Testament. It is totally neglected. A few years ago, there was a really well-known pastor who famously said from the pulpit, It’s time for us to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament. This intentional effort to say let’s distance ourselves from that thing and let’s focus on the love and forgiveness that Jesus offers. Not realizing that you cannot understand the love of Jesus apart from understanding the screenplay that’s unfolded over the course of thousands of years. Or sometimes people read the Old Testament, and they simply misunderstand it, or they over-apply it. There are segments of Christianity where American Christians take the Old Testament and apply it in a way that was never meant to be applied to those of us who are not Jewish in the ancient Near East world. Or some people read the Old Testament, I apologize in advance if this offends you, but some people read the Old Testament as if it is just for the Jews of that day, and just for the Jews of our day. This is another way that American Christians read the Old Testament that I think is outside of what the writer of Hebrews is modeling for us. The writer of Hebrews is saying that when you read the Old Testament, you should look for Jesus. Then you learn stuff about Jesus, and you allow the stuff you’ve learned about Jesus to stoke your affections and love of Jesus. Because it’s all about Jesus. He’s the hero of the story. The Old Testament comprises about 75% of the Bible. 75%! That’s a lot. And so we want to make sure we understand it. Do we know how to apply it to our lives? And do we know how to allow it to usher us toward a better understanding of Christ?   A Look at Typology Over the next two weeks, God willing, we’re going to talk about the Old Testament. So next week, I’m going to get a little more practical. We’re going to talk a little bit more about the Sabbath. Does the Sabbath apply to Christians? How about the dietary restrictions? Can I eat shrimp? Can I eat pork? Does that apply to me? How about the promises of Abraham? Are those just for Jewish people today, or are those for Christians? For both or neither? What about baptism? How do I take these things in the Old Testament? How does it shape how I live my life? We’re gonna get to that more practically next week. But this morning, I want to specifically look at Hebrews chapter 8 and understand this thing we call typology. There’s our plan for this morning. We’re gonna take three steps. I’m gonna make a case for why you should embrace typology. I think I’ve already done that to some extent, but I want to do a little more. Why should you be a typologist? Why is that a good thing? I want to give you some examples of types. I want to look back at the Old Testament, give you some examples on how to do this.  I want to answer the question, How does this shape how I live my life today? Why does this matter today as a 21st-century American Christian? So that’s our plan for this morning. Why should I embrace typology? What are some examples? Why does this matter for me today? Those will be our plans for this morning. Let me pray, and then we’ll look at Hebrews 8 together. God help us. Help us as we look at your word to understand it and apply it well, may it stoke our affections for Christ. I pray. Amen.   Embrace Typology Hebrews, chapter 8. The writer of Hebrews is talking about the Old Testament priests. As we talked about last week. Daniel took us through the latter section of chapter seven. We looked at the sacrifices, the new priesthood. That Jesus is a better priest of a better covenant. He’s talking about the sacrifices of the Old Testament and he says this, Look at Hebrews chapter 8, verse 5. Speaking of the sacrifices. He says this. “They serve as a copy and shadow of heavenly things.” The Levitical priests and the sacrifices that they offer serve as copies and shadows. They point to heavenly things. That’s the first point we want to think about this morning. Why should you embrace typology? Well, because the writer of Hebrews is telling us that these things are types, they are shadows, and they point to something greater. Imagine you’re sitting on a beach. You’re in a chair on the sand. Maybe you’re at Cocoa Beach. You are sitting on the beach and imagine you’re enjoying yourself, you are watching the waves. Then imagine you can feel the sun hitting the back of your neck. Then, all of a sudden, you feel someone walking up near you. All of a sudden, someone walks and stands close to you so much so that they block the sun, so the sun is no longer hitting your neck. You can’t feel the rays of the sun. There’s now a shadow casting over you. So you’re sitting on the beach and you can now see a shadow in front of you being cast over you, right? What you would not do is I wonder what the shadow is. Let me focus on this shadow. Let me think about this shadow. Let me study the shadow. That’s not what you would do. In all likelihood, what would you do? You would turn around, right? You would go, someone is walking near me. There’s a shadow being cast over me. You would turn around to see who it is, right? The Old Testament is a shadow, and it should cause us to look at the one who casts the shadow. The Old Covenant is a shadow being cast by the New Covenant. So when we read through the Old Covenant, we should look back. It should cause us to look at the New Covenant. Now, if someone were standing over you and casting a shadow over you, you would instantly learn some things about the person who’s casting a shadow. The shadow would tell you a little bit about how close that person is, how tall that person is. Maybe if that person is a male or a female. The shape and size, you could kind of guesstimate in some ways. Now, you might get it a little bit wrong, but there’s some general sense of what you would know. But ultimately it would spark in you curiosity to want to engage with the one who cast a shadow. The writer of Hebrews is telling us that’s exactly what the Old Covenant was designed to do. It would cast a shadow that would give you some understanding of the New Covenant, the shape, the size, the closeness, the proximity of it. There are things about the Old Covenant to help you understand the New Covenant, but ultimately, the hope would be that it would point you back to Jesus. Everything in the Old Testament, all of this, is about the New Covenant. The Old Covenant is the shadow. The New Covenant is the real deal. You would turn around, and you would engage that. The hope is that we would do the same. When we read the Old Testament, it would cause us to look to Jesus. When reading through the Book of Hebrews, you get the sense that everything that happened in the Old Testament, particularly all the things that happened in the Exodus and coming out of the Exodus and in the wilderness, God has been talking about these things over the last few chapters. All these events that happened in the year 1400 BC, approximately, in that time period. All these things that happened. God was doing all of these things, orchestrating the events of these people’s lives, because he wanted to show a picture of what was to come. The things that God was doing with the Jewish people, the Israelites in 1400 BC, wasn’t even primarily about those people. It is primarily about those who would enjoy the new covenant he’s pointing toward. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, the apostle Paul says, ‘Those things happened and they were written down for our instruction.’ What a remarkable thing, the Apostle Paul writing to the church of Corinth. Remember all that stuff that happened? There’s a reason why it happened, and there was a reason why it was written down. And you know, the reason was so that you could be instructed on how to live and love Jesus. That’s the instruction. That’s why. That’s why all this happened. And this is the reason why it was so important that in the Old Testament, the Israelites did exactly what God told them to do. Look at the second half of Hebrews 8, verse 5. The second half of verse 5 it says this: “For 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.” When Moses is up on the mountain, God is giving him instructions on how to set up the tabernacle and exactly how to set up the priesthood, and exactly what sacrifice means. The Old Testament system is incredibly nuanced and detailed. It’s elaborate, it feels legalistic, and hard to follow. It’s so, so precise and feels persnickety to some extent. It’s so overwhelming and so detailed. Why all of this stuff? And the writer of Hebrews said, Listen, remember all that stuff? Remember that it happened a long time ago. God told Moses, Do it exactly how I told you to do it, because everything I’m doing is gonna give you a picture of who I am. If you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, it’s gonna give people the wrong picture of me. This is the reason why there are moments in the Old Testament where people are executed or they fall down dead, and it doesn’t make sense to us. God tells people to do certain things, and they don’t do it. And God kills them. And it seems harsh to us as 21st-century Americans. So why would God do these things? This guy accidentally touches the ark of the covenant, and he’s dead, man. It feels so wrathful. The world needs a picture of God that is accurate. So God takes it very seriously that we give the world an accurate picture of God. This is a side note. God gives us expectations that will help other people see Jesus in us. And we must do exactly what he tells us to do. Moses didn’t understand all that was happening, and yet he obeyed. We, as American Christians, so often take obedience very lightly. We think we are entitled to understand what God has taught us. No, no, no. You are not entitled. Do what God told you to do, whether you understand it or not. And if you refuse, may God be merciful to your soul. In Hebrews chapter 10, he makes it very clear to us, for those who refuse to obey him, you should expect nothing but the fiery furnace. Those are harsh words from the writer of Hebrews. So I implore you, when the Bible tells you to do it, do it. Do not disobey, whether you understand it or not. Back to typology. Hebrews 8 models for us how to properly read the Old Testament. But it’s not the only passage of scripture that teaches us that. There are lots of passages of scripture; there are several we can go to, but my favorite comes from John, chapter 5. Jesus is having this conversation with Old Testament Jewish leaders in Israel. They’re interacting with him. Jesus is teaching them some things. They’re refusing to listen to him. This is John, chapter 5, verse 39. He’s talking to guys who, many of them had the entire Old Testament memorized. These were Old Testament scholars, way better than any of us. John, chapter 5, verse 39. Jesus says to these guys, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but they bear witness about me.” Jesus said, You’re studying the Old Testament, thinking that you’re an expert. You missed it. You have read the Old Testament. You think that’s going to rescue you, but it doesn’t. I’m the one who rescues you. Being an Old Testament scholar doesn’t rescue you from the flames of hell. Reading the Old Testament and allowing that to point you to Jesus and allowing the Old Testament to stoke your affections and love for Jesus, that’s where you find eternal life. So why should we embrace it? Typology? Well, because Jesus is telling us all of the Old Testament. It’s all about me. So when we read the Old Testament, we should look for him. He rebuked the religious leaders. You’re reading the Old Testament, and you don’t see me. How much more would he rebuke us? We should be great typologists.   How to Properly Read the OT and Look for Typology Number two. Let me give you some examples of typology. How to read the Old Testament. Let’s start with one He’s already used in chapter 7, the last chapter. Two weeks ago, we preached on Melchizedek. Melchizedek, this mysterious character in Genesis chapter 14. When you read Genesis 14, you read Melchizedek. This guy is a type of Christ. So we should read, look at Melchizedek, study him, and he gives us insight into Jesus. That’s a type. He resembles Jesus. There are others throughout the Old Testament. The life of Joseph is another one. Joseph, betrayed by his brothers, stood before the judge between two criminals. One criminal is forgiven, one criminal is condemned. And then Joseph becomes second in command of all of Egypt. And people from every nation are saved through him. Does that remind you of anyone? Jesus, betrayed by his brothers on a cross between two criminals. One criminal is forgiven, one is condemned. Jesus is the one who then goes to the right hand of the Father. Through Jesus, people from every nation will be saved. The life of Joseph is not about Joseph. The life of Joseph is about Jesus. Joseph is not the main character of Joseph’s story. The last 13, 14 chapters of Genesis are all about Jesus. They are about Jesus, about the Old Testament sacrifices. The entirety of the Old Testament sacrifices gives us insight into Jesus. People say, How is it possible that Jesus dying on a cross on a hill called Golgotha 2000 years ago can impact me? God says, Look back at the Old Testament to give you a picture of what Jesus did in the New Testament. They would bring an innocent animal, they would put the animal on the altar, they would pray, and God would do this supernatural thing where he takes the guilt of the person and he puts it on the animal. And then we would kill the animal. It would be bloody and gross, and the animal would die. And the sin, the guilt that was on this person was transferred has now been punished. Well, that’s a picture of Jesus. Jesus is on a cross. God Supernaturally takes the sins of those who believe and puts them on Christ. Then God kills his son, pours out his wrath. It’s a picture of that. Jesus is the sacrifice. This is why John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus in John chapter 1, he says, Look, it’s Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. John the Baptist is calling Jesus the Lamb. He is the animal that was in that picture. So when you go back and you read Leviticus, you see the animal sacrifices, then it points you back to what Jesus has done on our behalf. It’s a type of Christ. I also think the Old Testament sacrifices give us a great picture of how sinful we actually are. If you’re an Old Testament Israelite and you’re standing there watching this animal being slaughtered, this is a gruesome scene. It’s messy, it’s gross. This animal is squealing. There are kids around that are horrified, maybe adults that are horrified by the blood splattering all over the priest. Then this animal, this burnt offering, is set on fire. You smell the rotting flesh of this creature, filling the area. You stand there watching, saying to yourself, That should be me right there. This animal taking the punishment should be me. I deserve that. It gives you a picture of what you deserve because your sin is that bad. So often, American evangelicals, who attend church regularly, will say, We’re sinful, but is it really that bad? Or people will say things like, Would God really condemn people to hell? Like, it just seems so harsh. You’ve got it backwards. Rather than hearing about the judgment of God and saying to yourself, Man, God is so harsh, what you should say is, That seems so harsh. How bad must I be? That’s the sentence that God has proclaimed for me. Rather than judging him for being too harsh, you should look at yourself and realize, I am worse than I thought, and I desperately need a savior. The good news is that he has provided the lamb. Christ is our lamb. A couple of other types. In Romans, chapter 5, the apostle Paul uses Adam as a type of Christ, which is interesting because we think of Adam as a sinner who blew it, who ruined the world. But Paul says, no, Adam is a type. Just as Adam made one decision that impacted all people and all of creation, similarly, Jesus made one decision that impacts everyone and all of creation everywhere. For all Time. His decision, of course, was to die in our place. Adam is a type of Christ in that regard. David is a type of Christ. When you read the story of David and Goliath, this is the one that we just get wrong all the time. Sunday school classes. Remember, if you grew up in an old-school Sunday school class context, you probably heard David and Goliath taught something like this. This teaches us that good things come in small packages. Or the moral of the story is you are David. You can be courageous and take on the Goliath in your life. No, that’s not the right way to read David and Goliath. David is a type of Christ. Think about it. David is far away from the front lines with his father. He comes near to the front lines where the battle is happening, steps onto the battlefield to fight Goliath when the scared Israelites would not do it. And he beats Goliath on their behalf. That is Jesus. He’s with his father, seemingly far away from us, and yet he becomes a human, lives near us. We are scared and incapable of taking on Goliath, our great enemy. The giant called sin, death, and the grave. Jesus steps onto the battlefield in our place, beats sin on our behalf, and we benefit from his victory on the battlefield. We’re the scared, cowardly Israelites. We’re not David. Jesus is the great warrior on the battlefield, taking on the giant. When you read David and Goliath, that’s the way to read it. And you think, Jesus, my champion, who stepped in on my behalf! Allow that to cause you to love him more. There are so many more we could go through this morning. Abraham, Isaac, Joshua, Boaz, Jonah, Elisha, Hosea. They’re all types of Christ, all of them. There are events in the Old Testament. Objects, creation, the Garden of Eden, the institution of the Sabbath, Noah’s Ark, the Passover, the Exodus, the Ark of the Covenant, the priestly robes in Zechariah, the building of the temple, the destruction of the temple, the rebuilding of the temple, all of it. It’s all about Jesus. There are little clues and hints, little Easter eggs throughout the Old Testament. Pointing, casting a shadow of that which is to come. When you are reading the Old Testament, look for Jesus. It’s the best way to read the Old Testament. In fact, it’s the greatest way to read the Old Testament. It’s the way that the Bible teaches us to read the Old Testament. Two quick side notes. One. People will say, Don’t you get bored reading the Old Testament? Just looking for Jesus all the time. You haven’t met the Jesus I’ve met. Like, you can watch The Sixth Sense three or four times and get all the Easter eggs, and by the fifth time, it’s boring. Oh, not with Jesus. Jesus is like the great diamond, the perfectly cut diamond with hundreds of facets. You’re examining each one. Did you see this one? Did you see this one? Look how radiant. Look how beautiful. You’ll never get bored looking for things about Jesus. You could read the entire Old Testament every day, all the days of your life, and still not see all of the types that point us to the beauty and goodness and righteousness of Christ. Second side note, people will sometimes then ask, does this mean that the Old Testament is just allegory, like myth? I want to make it very clear. The answer is no. The Bible is historically accurate. It all actually happened. Adam was a real human being. He actually lived. It was real. Side note to the side note, the archaeological evidence for that is overwhelming. Noah was a real human being who really did build a really big boat. God really did send a flood that killed hundreds of millions of people. Except for Noah and his family. That’s an actual true story, not a metaphor, not a myth. It actually happened. It’s historical. God orchestrated those real events with Jesus in mind. So the Bible is both typological and historical. We read it with typology and historicity, not one or the other. So those are our first two. Number one was that you should be a typologist. You should embrace typology. Number two, there are some examples, by the way. This is like a fun little game I’ve played with my nerdy, Bible scholar friends. Just, like, throw a story from the Old Testament and try to find Jesus in it, like, to see how good. It’s really good. It’s really fun. I did this recently. I threw someone the story of Elisha being made fun of by the teenage boys, and then he calls the bear. The bear comes out and kills the teenage boys for mocking the prophet. You’re like, where’s Jesus in that? It was so good. Okay, we can talk about it later.   How Does This Apply to Our Lives Now? Number three, how does this apply to our lives in the here and now? How does it apply to our lives? There are a few practical implications for this. Number one is this. I’ve already said this, but number one is when you read the Old Testament, you should look for Jesus. Look for Jesus. And specifically, you’re looking for things about Jesus that will stoke your affections. What will cause me to love him more? The number two greatest implication for our lives is the truth that God has orchestrated the entire events of human history with the goal of revealing Jesus. We could be so impressed with the directors who could pull it off. Well, we should be more impressed with the God who’s done it. God perfectly put together the pieces of human history with the goal of revealing Jesus. Here are some implications of that if you are here, if you don’t believe in Jesus. If you’re here and you say I’m not a true follower of Jesus, I’m not all in on Jesus. I want to make it very clear to you. If the God of human history and the God of creation orchestrated the entire events of human history, sovereignly, providentially orchestrated the lives of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people. If he did all of that to show Jesus, seeing Jesus is a big deal to him. Therefore, we must look to Jesus. If you do not believe, if you don’t trust in Him, I challenge you, look to Christ. There is no other way to be saved. If you have friends and family who don’t love Jesus, who are not all in, if they’re 98% all in on Jesus, 98% in on Jesus, that’s not enough. Jesus orchestrated the entire events of human history to reveal Jesus. He’s not just gonna go, well, you didn’t believe in Jesus. Well, yeah, but you were a nice person. You gave that homeless guy money once. You never murdered anyone. You didn’t believe in Jesus, you didn’t really believe in the Bible the way you’re supposed to. But, eh, we’ll just let it slide. We’ll let you into heaven. That’s not how it’s gonna go. If you have friends and family who deny the basics of the Christian faith, who are not all in on Jesus, they are going to face the wrath of God. I implore you to pray for them and to tell them about Jesus. That should shape how you think about Jesus. Revealing Jesus is such a big deal to God that revealing Jesus to others should be a big deal to us. Last implication, how does it apply to our lives? The first one was to read your Bible, look for Jesus. Number two, if you’re not a believer, believe in him. If you have family members who don’t believe, implore them to believe. Number three, the third implication of how it impacts your life is this: There will be moments where you are tempted to forget that God sovereignly orchestrated the world to reveal his son. There will be moments where you are tempted to forget that, and I want to encourage you to remember. There will be moments when you are tempted to feel anxious or concerned. Maybe you’re facing difficulty in a marriage, or maybe there’s some financial situation, or things are tight. Maybe you’re dealing with a broken immigration system. You’re trying to figure that out. Maybe you’re facing some sort of problem in your business. Maybe you’re dealing with taking care of a parent who’s nearing the end of life. There are these moments in our lives, these moments where we are tempted to be concerned and allow anxiety to flood our souls. In those moments, it is so helpful to pause and remember that the God of the universe sovereignly orchestrated everything so that we could see Jesus, so that we could see Him. He did all of that for our instruction. Does that sound like the kind of God who’s going to just forget about you now? Does that sound like the kind of God who’s going to let you face difficulty on your own? Does the God of the universe sound like the kind of God who will stop being faithful to you and his people? Does he sound like the kind of God who has ever failed anyone? Does he sound like the kind of God who will ever begin to fail anyone?   Closing He’s never failed You, Church, and he never will. He’s never failed his people, and he’s not about to start now. The God who sovereignly orchestrated all of the events of human history so that you would see Jesus is the same God who has promised to be faithful to you. If he could do all of that for you to see Jesus, then He will take care of all of your needs on this day and all of your days. He has been faithful to generations, and he will be faithful to you. Let’s read the Old Testament and let’s look for Christ the Savior, who has been faithful to us and has promised to be faithful to us for all of our lives. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, we thank you. We thank you for the theologians who could teach us things like typology. We thank you for the writer of Hebrews to tell us that these things are shadows. Help us to read the Old Testament well. May we learn who you are. May we learn things about Jesus, and may it stoke our affections for Christ and Christ alone. May we read your Word and see you. May we put faith in Christ, in Christ alone. May we implore those we know who do not believe to believe, and may we know, may we remember, that you have been faithful through generations, and you will continue to be faithful to us in the moment and the hard moments of our lives, when we’re facing difficulties. May this truth come to our memory. May the truth, that you sovereignly orchestrated everything so that we could see Jesus. May that truth, may that reality comfort us all the days of our lives. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.   Communion Now we come to communion as we do each week. Each week we pause and we take communion to remember Jesus, our great superhero, the one who is the center of the story, old and new, the one who established a great new covenant on our behalf. If you’re here this morning, you are a Christian. You are a follower of Jesus, you say, Kenny, I’m all in on Jesus. I’m so glad you’re here. I want to invite you to participate in communion with us this morning. To remember Jesus with us this morning. If you are here this morning, you’re not a Christian, you would say, Kenny, I’m not really all in on Jesus just yet. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for being here this morning. If that’s you, I’d love to talk to you after the service if you’re available. Or if you’re available, go grab lunch with us. If you want to, I’d love to sit with it, have a taco, and talk about Jesus with you. I’d love to tell you about the one who sovereignly orchestrated all things to reveal himself to you. But if that’s you, if you would say, I’m not a Christian, I’m not all in. If that’s you, I would ask you not to participate in communion with us this morning. Communion is for Christians only, so in just a moment, we’re going to pass the baskets. If that’s you and you’re not a believer, just let the basket pass. But I implore you, don’t let the moment pass. In this moment, believe in Christ. Take Christ this morning. And again, if you have any questions about that, I’d love to talk to you about it after the service. But for those of us who have taken Christ, for those of us who have put our faith in him, which I know is most of the people in this room, for you, let’s pause as we take communion and remember the one who has been faithful to us, the firm foundation of our faith. In just a moment, we’re going to pass the baskets. For those of you who are new with us. If you’re with us for the first time, you have two options. There’s a small cup here. This is a gluten-free bread and grape juice. You can grab one of those. And then there’s a little mini chalice, what I call it. And there’s a little W on that. This is real wine and gluten-free bread. Grab whichever one’s your preference. Hold onto it. I’ll come back and lead us together. Let’s remember Christ together.  

  Introduction: Paris Olympics Good morning. This past summer, I watched a ton of the Paris Olympics. I can’t remember if I’ve always watched this much of the Olympics when they’re on, or if this was just a nervous thing that I did because my son was going to be born at any moment. But when you’re watching the Olympics, you’re watching these master athletes competing against each other, and the margins between them are pretty tight, pretty small. No one is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else. And that starts to make the sport look easy. You take for granted how masterfully these athletes perform. Then I start to think, I bet I could do that. I bet I could swim like that. I bet I could bike the way they’re biking, they make it look so easy. There needs to be an average Joe who competes with them. And this isn’t my own thought. Others have said this before. There really should be an average person who competes in every Olympic event. That way, you can compare these master athletes and see how much better they are than the average Joe. It gives you a baseline, a point of comparison, so then you can truly see how much better they are at their sports. The comparison that these next-level athletes have in comparison can be a helpful thing. It’s often said that comparison is the thief of joy, and in many cases, that’s true. We don’t want to compare ourselves to others, and we don’t want to justify our actions based on what everybody else is doing.   Jesus Is Better However, comparison is not the thief of joy. In the Book of Hebrews, quite the opposite. Comparison is the fuel of joy. The comparison Hebrews make should ignite your joy and passion, stirring up excitement and worship in your hearts. Hebrews is going to compare and contrast the Old Covenant priesthood with Christ’s New Covenant priesthood. In our passage, we’re examining this morning, a covenant is the promises and commitments made between God and his people. Throughout this book, so far, we’ve seen that Jesus is the perfect revelation of the Father. He’s better than the angels. He’s better than Moses. He’s the more perfect sacrifice. And we’re going to learn today that he is the better High Priest than any who came before. One of the major themes of the Book of Hebrews can be summed up simply in the word better. Jesus is better. The New Covenant is better. And our text reveals the better priesthood of Jesus. And it does so, as we’ll see this morning, in three ways. The priesthood of Jesus is better by an oath. It’s better by stability, and it’s better in its sufficiency.   Better By An Oath The first comparison made between the two, shows Jesus’ priesthood is better because of an oath. In Hebrews chapter 7, starting in verse 20, the author of Hebrews gives us that comparison between the Old Covenant priesthood and the priesthood of Aaron. And it says in chapter 7, verse 20 of Hebrews, “It was not without an oath, for those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath. But the one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever. This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.” We have the first comparison the author of Hebrews makes between the Old Testament Aaronic priesthood (that’s the priesthood of Aaron, not the ironic priesthood). It compares that priesthood to Jesus’s priesthood, the New Covenant priesthood. This passage follows the arguments made in chapter 7 that the weaker priesthood of Aaron was put aside, making way for the perfect to come. The Old Covenant was made obsolete by the arrival of the New Covenant. And in this comparison, the lack, the deficiency of the Old Testament priesthood, is revealed to us as an aside. We are not saying that the Old Testament priesthood was meaningless or evil, or bad. That is not the judgment the author of Hebrews is making on this priesthood. Instead, he was saying it was lacking. It wasn’t the fullness, it was a shadow. It was all along pointing forward to Christ’s priesthood. And you need to be very clear here that you don’t misunderstand the author of Hebrews. He’s not disparaging the priesthood of Aaron. He’s revealing that it was purposely temporary, and it was deficient. And when the fullness came, the obsolete priesthood was meant to pass away. This was the plan from the beginning. God delighted to make his saving plan and then reveal it progressively over time, giving more detail as each biblical book was written. So what’s the first deficiency? Hebrews points out that the Old Testament priesthood was deficient because the Old Testament priests were not given an oath for their priesthood. Their priesthood lacked an oath. If you go back to the Torah and you read, God tells Moses to set the Levites aside as priests. That was their portion, that was their inheritance, to serve as priests and to serve in the temple. God sets up Aaron, Moses ‘ older brother, as the first high priest, and all of Aaron’s descendants would be priests after him. But God didn’t give Aaron a promise or an oath. He didn’t swear the priesthood of Aaron, he gave it to him for a time. This is not the case with the New Covenant priesthood of Jesus. This one was given an oath. Hebrews highlights that in our passage, and he backs up his argument, quoting Psalm 110, verse 4, we read, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever.” This is the oath that God gives to Jesus’ priesthood, the promise that he will be a priest forever. And it says that the Lord will not change his mind. And that’s something we know about God. He doesn’t change his mind. There’s no variation or shifting shadow in him. He does not change. Remember that before the foundation of the world, the Lord had planned to set in place the Old Covenant Priesthood for the purpose of training the people about redemption, about their need for intercession, and about sin, to prepare the way for when Jesus’ perfect priesthood was set up. This was all God’s plan from the beginning. He’s not changing mid-course here. That’s very important for you to see in this text. This priesthood is not a course correction for God. He’s not changing up his plan because something went wrong in the Old Testament priesthood. Rather, the entire point of the Old Testament priesthood from the beginning was to prepare for the coming of Jesus’ priesthood. The Old Testament priests were the shadow of Jesus and His priesthood is the reality. So in light of the promise, the oath that God makes, the author of Hebrews goes on to say, this makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant, the new covenant. God has promised the new covenant, and Jesus will secure it. He will make sure that this covenant comes in its fullness, that every promise made in this covenant will be fulfilled, and all at the right time. Now, maybe this example is on my mind because my wife and I are in the process of buying a house, and it is a lot. When you go to apply for a mortgage or an apartment, the bank or the property manager investigates you like a hawk. Not from some morbid curiosity, simply because they’re trying to see if what you’re promising, you’re going to be able to do that. You’re going to be able to execute all the payments that will be required. You’re committing by contract that you have all the funds that you can manage this. So they’re examining your records, your past history, anything they can get a hold of to see are you really going to be true to your word? Do you really have the resources to fulfill this contract? Let’s say I’m filling out a mortgage contract, and they look at my background, and they say, we don’t think you have the resources for this. You don’t have the credit history. We are not going to give you this mortgage. And as they’re explaining this, billionaire Warren Buffett walks in the door with all his billions, and he says, I will sign Daniel’s mortgage as a guarantor. Which means I promise that Daniel will be true to his word. And if he isn’t, I will hold myself personally and financially liable on his behalf. I, billionaire Warren Buffett, will be responsible for him and his mortgage. No mortgage company or bank in their right mind is going to turn away Warren Buffett. He has way more financial power behind him than it takes to fill my measly home loan. Even more so with Jesus. He can do far more than is required to guarantee the new covenant. If you ever questioned your salvation, and I’ll admit at times I have too. So you are not alone if you have, but if you have, you struggle thinking maybe you’re not a good enough Christian. Maybe you don’t do all the right Christian things all of the time. Maybe you just don’t measure up. Or maybe do you over-commit yourself to do as many projects as possible, thinking that maybe God will love you more if you sacrifice more and more, thinking that burnout will somehow earn you a place in God’s kingdom, or at least cover up some of your sins. If you’re thinking along those lines, I would encourage you gently to turn away from that damaging thinking and instead remember this. Jesus is the guarantor of the covenant. He is the Savior. The work of redemption rests on his shoulders, not on your work or performance. Keep it close in your mind that if salvation were up to you, then it would never happen. Instead, be assured and be ever thankful that Jesus is the One who secures your salvation and guarantees that he will keep you to the end. If you are in Christ, it is based on his work that redeems and restores, and saves you. He is the guarantor of the covenant. And he will guarantee that any and all who come to him in faith, all that the Father has given to him, will be saved. He won’t lose one of them. Jesus is the guarantor of the covenant. He holds Himself personally responsible to make sure that this covenant comes to its fruition, that all of God’s promises and obligations that he has made will be fulfilled. You don’t need to sweat for even a second because Jesus has far more power and ability to secure this covenant than is needed. He is the guarantor of our better covenant, and that should cause us an extreme amount of peace this morning. Well, the first comparison between the Old and the New Covenant priesthood has been made. The Old did not have an oath. The New was made with an oath. Jesus is the guarantor of that better covenant. Being an Old Testament major, I’m always concerned that people understand the Old Testament well. There are a lot of pitfalls you can fall into. There are a lot of errors you can fall into. There are a lot of ways that we can misunderstand, misinterpret, or misapply the Old Testament, and Hebrews stands out for us as a tool to help us understand the Old Testament rightly. How does the Old relate to the New? And how does the New relate back to the Old? The author of Hebrews is exhorting the reader not to go backwards in the saving plan of God. You are part of the New Covenant. You have been given the complete revelation of God. Unlike those in the Old Covenant. You’re not anticipating more revelations to come. Further details on God’s saving plan. You now have the complete full revelation of God in the Bible, and you have access to it anytime you want. Don’t trade the perfect for the imperfect. Don’t go back to the obsolete. But perhaps the audience of the Book of Hebrews was tempted to stick with the Old Covenant. After all, the Old Covenant was familiar. It had been around for many, many years. They were comfortable with it. The old was familiar. The new was harder. And it called them to learn more and to meditate. I’m wondering if there are ways that maybe you’re wanting to go backwards or wanting to stay where it’s comfortable. The Book of Hebrews has already exposed this warning before, and it’s a warning that’s going to continue throughout this letter. Spoiler alert. Are you wanting to stay with the easy milk of simple things instead of moving on to the meat of maturity? Do you only want to focus on the basic doctrines of Christianity because they’re easier to understand? Because they don’t take as much time and effort, and meditation to process through? Are you tempted to go backwards? Don’t be lured into settling for what comes easily in your faith. Don’t be lazy. The New Covenant has difficulty. There’s more gray area. There’s more required meditation and maturity. It calls us to suffering and persecution. But you have a helper. The New Covenant gives you the Holy Spirit to help train you up into maturity. So don’t neglect him and don’t neglect his training. We’ve often quoted C.S. Lewis in this church, and I hope this practice continues. He has a wonderful way with words. There’s a quote from Lewis that’s always stood out to me that I love, and I think it fits well here about how we often settle. We don’t push on into maturity out of a wrong kind of contentment. And Lewis said that “so often we are like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”   Better By Stability The second way that Jesus’ priesthood is better is that it’s better by stability. We continue in our passage in Hebrews as this letter gives us the Comparison between the two priesthoods in Hebrews 7, verse 23. The Scriptures say the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office. But He holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. The next weakness of the Aaronic priesthood, the priesthood of Aaron, is exposed. It was weak because they were many in number. There were many high priests. Over time, Aaron might have been a wonderful high priest, but over the course of time, hi,m being mortal, he passed away, which means the job has to go to the next guy. Aaron’s son now has to take over, and that could be a good thing. Maybe Aaron’s son will be just as devoted to the Torah, just as devoted to his duties as priest. He might be a gifted administrator. He might be dedicated with all of his heart to serving the Lord. But maybe he won’t be. Maybe the new high priest will be a dud. He might lead the nation into idolatry or syncretism, blending the worship of God with the worship of false gods. Or he might just be lazy and negligent in his duties, and there’s nothing that they could do to change what the next person would be like. Since it’s a hereditary office. A historical podcast says this wonderfully. I love the term that they use for this. The hereditary office is a role of the genetic lottery, and the podcast was referring to monarchs, but it fits the same here. Whoever the son is, whether he’s gifted or not, you’re stuck with him. You just have to sit back and take the role of the genetic lottery. The dice may come up good, and you’re fine. Or you might get stuck with someone who’s a bad administrator, an idolater, or who might, through his wickedness and idolatry, lead the people away from God and right into the jaws of exile. There’s a lot of stress that came with the passing of each high priest. The high priest is not going to live forever, even the good ones. You’re not going to be guaranteed that the next one will be good. We have a similar situation for us that comes up every four years. As an election cycle hits us, it generates a lot of anxiety and fear and nervousness in us, worrying will the right person be elected into office? Worrying, will there even be good candidates to choose from in the first place? We might, for a time, have a good person in office. But what will happen when the cycle hits us in the face again and they leave office? Will the next person elected mess it all up? Or will they be just as good an administrator? This is a great weakness of the priesthood of Aaron. The priests were many in number because they died and had to be replaced. Who knows the quality of the replacement. With that in mind, we now move on to Jesus’ priesthood. It’s superior because Jesus is eternal. His office of high priest is never vacated. It’s never given over to the next guy. He is the most perfect high priest that ever lived. No one was more holy, more spotless, or blameless than Him. We couldn’t hope for a better high priest to hold the office than Jesus. And we don’t ever have to fret that he’s going to leave that office because he lives forever to make intercession for us. He’s never going to leave his office. I wonder how many of you have thought of that, that you’ve never had to be anxious or worried about who your next high priest was going to be. You’ve never had to think about that because you’ve had one high priest and will always have one high priest forever. And that high priest is the best one you could hope for, better than you could have dreamt up. An ample burden and anxiety have been lifted from the believer’s soul by this great gift of Jesus’ priesthood. It has become so familiar to us that we don’t even realize there would have been anxiety and burden to begin with. We’re so used to this blessing that we don’t really reflect on how wonderful it is that we have one less thing in life to worry about. Jesus will never be replaced. He will function in his role forever. The author of Hebrews here has given you an antidote to your anxiety and worry. You have been given a steadfast high priest who will always be your high priest, never leaving you, never forsaking the duties of his office. Jesus is the perfect high priest. He is the guarantor of your salvation, who always lives to intercede for you. And if you cling to him, he will always be there. He is stability itself.   Better By Sufficiency The third comparison is going to flow straight from that, showing that Jesus has this perfect resume as High Priest. His priesthood is better by its sufficiency. Reading on in Hebrews 7, starting in verse 26, the Scriptures say, “For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest. Holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.  He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifice daily, first for his own sins and those for the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests. But the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.” Jesus, as we read, is holy, perfect, unstained, and innocent. He’s not like sinners. None of the high priests that ever were could compare with this perfect resume, these outstanding character qualifications that Jesus can present as our high priest. He is the most capable high priest to ever hold that office. And as our passage says, he lives constantly making intercession for us. He is steadfast, he is committed. He is zealous for his role as high priest. But what about the priesthood of Aaron? Well, the Aaronic priesthood was entirely composed of sinners. Every high priest under the high priesthood of Aaron was a man born in sin, carrying a sin nature and sinning throughout their lives. They were all stained by this. And that means for them to be a good high priest and intercessor, they needed to do the work of caring for their own souls first, before making intercession for others. They had to clean themselves up. Their focus would always be split. This reminds me of when the security announcements go on before a plane takes off. You probably all memorize them. You hear them so often. They talk about if the oxygen masks come down from the ceiling, there’s a warning given to you to secure your mask before helping others. So if you’re a parent, you need to put your mask on before you put your child’s mask on. Why do they have you do this? Doesn’t it seem random? Because you need to make sure you get oxygen, otherwise you’ll pass out, and you can’t help either one of you. The priests of the priesthood of Aaron had to work first in getting their own masks secure before they could turn around and help the Israelites. And to continue to stretch my illustration here, Jesus is not like that. He does not need an oxygen mask. Jesus has no sin to atone for first. The millisecond that Jesus is appointed as our High Priest of the New Covenant, the millisecond that happens, he is ready to intercede for you. There is nothing he has to work on himself first before he can help you. That alone makes him so much better of a high priest than all that came before him. Think for a moment about the Old Testament sacrificial system that the priesthood of Aaron was in charge of overseeing. There was so much work to be done. There were grain sacrifices and peace offerings and burnt offerings, and festival offerings. There were personal offerings. On the Day of Atonement, there was a scapegoat and the sin offering. All of these animals, goats, sheep, doves, bulls, grain oil. Year after year, month after month, week after week, offering all of these sacrifices continually. They’re busy at their work, busy with all of these animal sacrifices, all of these offerings, all of these grain offerings and festival days and purifications and washing. Go read Leviticus. I want you to get bored reading all of the obligations in the Torah. Overwhelmed by how much they had to do, busy working to fulfill the Old Covenant Law. Vividly picture in your mind all of these sacrifices, all of these priests running to and fro, constantly busy with sacrifices for the sins of people. Hundreds of thousands of animals constantly sacrificed year after year after year. Picture in your mind, and now Jesus has sacrificed his sacrifice as High Priest once. He sacrifices himself once, and it covers the sin of all people, past, present, and future. That is the comparison that shows the mighty power and sufficiency of Jesus. For hundreds of years, year after year of sacrifice and offerings in the Old Covenant and in the New, by Jesus, over one day, one sacrifice, he pays for everything. That is what it means that Jesus is the all-sufficient sacrifice. That is the power of his priesthood. When you come to him, you don’t have to go and make a new sacrifice. He doesn’t have to go and make a new sacrifice for you, he intercedes on your behalf using his completed work of redemption on the cross.   Summary These are the three comparisons that are made between Jesus’ priesthood and Aaron’s. And Jesus’ priesthood is better because of an oath. It’s better because of stability, since Jesus is eternal. And it’s better in its sufficiency, since Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, and he can intercede for us without having to cleanse his own sins first. When we understand this, it’s no surprise that the Scriptures call us to rejoice in all seasons, to be grateful in all things, without grumbling. Why complain in light of all that God has done for us? Why be bad-tempered if Jesus is for us always? Through Jesus, you have been given peace with God, who the Scriptures tell us is really the only person you’re supposed to be afraid of anyway. Now, through Jesus, you have peace with God. Why then should we, as people who have been given this great High Priest, this blessed assurance, this impregnable stability, this steadfast love purchased by Jesus, be afraid or lack confidence in our standing? You have access to God directly in prayer. The love of Christ holds you fast to Himself.   Be a Different Kind of People This means we should be a different kind of people. You shouldn’t be marked by constant complaining. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, things are too expensive, Life is too unsure. Man, things aren’t going my way. Instead, always hold before your eyes that whether famine or persecution or sword, Jesus will fulfill his promise to you. He will save to the uttermost. He will be the guarantor of the covenant. But if we’re no different, if we’re not different people, after knowing Jesus, after experiencing this great gift of God, then the author of Hebrews says rather pointedly, examine yourself. You don’t receive this kind of love and blessing, and security. You don’t receive a great high priest like this. You don’t get the anxiety removed from your shoulders, this heavy yoke of sin removed from your shoulders. And then you’re the same person you were before. When you meet with the living God who has sacrificed himself for you while you were in your lowest estate, mired by sin and shame, and he reaches down for you and saves you and gives you a new heart and a sure hope, you are never going to be the same person again. You can’t help it, you will never be the same after receiving this from the living God. Bask in the glory of Jesus’ priesthood. What a gift and privilege it is that God has given it to us. Because this is a gift that has been sworn by an oath by God and secured by the guarantor, Jesus Christ Himself. There is nothing that we need to do to earn it. Take time this Lord’s Day to sit back, relax, and rest in the better priesthood that has been given to us.   Rest in the Comfort of Jesus’ Priesthood Life is going to be very hard. I was unfortunately not with you all the past two Sundays. Molly and I missed you all dearly. But we were up in Oxford, Ohio, and I was performing the funeral for my Gram. Life is really hard, and there are a lot of challenges that often hit us, and we’re completely unaware that they’re coming. I can only imagine and guess the numerous hardships facing each person here this morning. But I can say this for the believer, for those in Christ, you can find such a great source of comfort in his high priesthood. He is stable. Be comforted that your high priest is your high priest and he always will be. There’s no need to worry about who the next guy will be. There’s no worry about his adequacy for the office or his zeal to intercede for us. You can be comforted that your souls are secure because of Jesus’ never-ending priesthood. Rest. Rest this Lord’s Day in that comfort. As we look at the better priesthood of Jesus, there should be excitement. The Christian beauty and glory of our God is on full display in our text this morning. Jesus is being lifted up and compared against the old covenant so that, by comparison, he looks so much brighter and more glorious. Aaron’s priesthood is that average Joe compared to the Olympic-level priesthood of Jesus, running far past him. The author is lifting up Jesus to your gaze this morning so you can see how glorious and bright he is as our perfect High Priest. If that seems boring to you, if that doesn’t stir much in your heart, if it’s quickly forgotten, that is a litmus test, a diagnostic of where your heart is at. Those who have been redeemed by Christ get excited by the things of Christ, and there is nothing more paramount to be excited about than Christ Himself. Examine your heart if Jesus doesn’t seem that exciting, if the deep and mature things of Christ aren’t stirring up your heart. This is a warning the author of Hebrews has been given throughout this book when he holds up Jesus to your gaze. If the reader is unaffected by this vision of Jesus, then be warned. Hebrews says you may have a hard and unbelieving heart.   Closing: Nothing Can Separate us From Christ’s Love I will close this morning with the words of Paul in Romans 8. After Paul has reflected on the tribulations and hardships that we face as Christians, and that despite all that, if God is for us, we do not need to fear or worry. So at the end of all of that reflection in Romans, he shares this in Romans 8, starting in verse 38. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God that he has pointed towards those who are his. Because of the finished work of Christ, he now mediates for us, interceding for us every moment of our lives. We are now secured in God and his love, now and forever. All praise to our great and faithful High Priest. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, you have been abundantly kind and gracious to us. And when we examine our lives and we took a moment earlier to confess our sins to you, we realize that there was nothing in us that would cause you to delight in us, to be merciful towards us. But you did it anyway. Because you’re good, you’re faithful. Lord, you gave us the Old Testament priesthood of Aaron to train us, to tutor us, as the scriptures say, so that when the perfect came, we, we would be ready. Lord, help us to be a people who are eternally thankful, Lord Jesus, that you are our great High Priest, you are faithful, and you are always our High Priest or Jesus. We love you. Help us to be excited about you and about the glory that is in you. Soften our hearts from being hard-hearted or unbelieving. Help us, Lord, in our unbelief. May we all grow in knowing you better, Lord God, delighting more in you. And may we take time this Lord’s day to have our gaze fixed upon you so that we see the glory and brightness and beauty that is your majesty. Lord, we thank you this morning. We thank you for the gift that it is to be your church. We thank you for your gospel. May our lives never be the same after meeting with your gospel. Lord Jesus, we pray all of this in your name. Amen.

  Introduction: Don’t Stop Believing We have finally gotten to Melchizedek, this mysterious character from the book of Genesis. He has been alluded to multiple times. Multiple times in the Book of Hebrews, as we’ve been going through, the writer of Hebrews has alluded to this character. He’s mentioned this guy. In fact, at one point, the writer of Hebrews says, The thing he’s most eager to talk about is Melchizedek. He’s like, I’m so excited. But then he tells them, but I can’t talk about Melchizedek because you guys are too immature. You can’t handle Melchizedek. He goes, you guys are still in the basics of the Christian faith. He’s like, you haven’t understood the basic doctrines yet. How can I talk about Melchizedek? So then he goes and he talks about a bunch of other stuff, but he comes back and talks about Melchizedek anyway. He’s like, I want to talk about it, but I can’t because you can’t handle it. But I’m going to talk about him anyway. He’s so excited about Melchizedek. The reason why he’s so excited to talk about Melchizedek is that he sees Melchizedek as a picture of Christ. When we look at Melchizedek, we see an example of what Christ is like for us. And so he wants to look at that. Remember those who’ve been with us for the last few months as we’ve been traveling to the Book of Hebrews, the main point of this entire book is don’t stop believing. That’s the main point. The writer of Hebrews says, I want you to believe on Jesus and I want you to keep believing on Jesus. Keep believing. Keep believing. Don’t stop believing in Jesus. That’s the main point of the Book of Hebrews. As we examine the Book of Hebrews, we realize what we can piece together. There are people in his audience, people he is writing to, who apparently are seriously considering walking away from the Christian faith. They are these Christians, they’re part of a church, and they are wrestling with whether or not they should abandon the Christian faith to go back to Judaism, the Old Testament. Religion. And he wants to exhort them, don’t go back. Keep believing in Jesus, don’t abandon Jesus. He knows the best way to keep someone with Jesus is to reintroduce them to how great Jesus is. So that’s what he keeps on doing. All throughout the Book of Hebrews, he continues to do this. This is not all that different than what we do when there are marital disputes. As a pastor for my last 15 years of my ministry, one of the significant things in pastoral ministry, one of the things you deal with the most, is marital conflict. If you count up all the minutes as a pastor, if you’re a preaching pastor, the two things you spend the most minutes doing are preparing for sermons and doing marital counseling. That makes up about 97% of all the minutes in pastoral ministry. One of the techniques in marriage counseling that marriage counselors will often use is to sit down, when they sense that there’s contempt growing between a couple, sit down and try to remind them of why they fell in love in the first place. What was it about this person that made you want to be with them in the first place? And to try to go back to that and try to remind them. It’s one of the most effective tactics, or techniques, to get people to not abandon their marriage. It doesn’t fix the problems. There’s still conflict that has to be worked through. But one of the ways in which marital counselors try to keep relationships together is to remind each other what they like about each other. It’s not always effective. Sometimes one partner or both choose to exit the relationship anyway. That does happen, tragically. Some. I know some of you in the room have walked through that. That is the sentiment, the tactic that the writer of Hebrews is sort of using here. He’s saying, you guys are in a relationship with Jesus. You’ve got a covenant with Jesus, and some of you are thinking about leaving him, abandoning him, divorcing him. You’re thinking about that. Let me remind you about how awesome he is and why you got into this in the first place. And that’s what he’s been doing throughout the book of Hebrews. He’s been trying to point out these things about Jesus that make Jesus worth following and loving, and adoring. Here, he pauses to utilize this mysterious Old Testament character named Melchizedek. He’s like, I want to remind you why you love Jesus by pointing out something in Melchizedek that helps us understand Jesus.   Melchizedek: Christ Type Now, Melchizedek was sort of popular in the first century. Melchizedek lived about 2,000 years before Jesus. About 2,000 years before the Book of Hebrews was written, approximately. But for some reason, scholars and historians don’t fully know why, in the first century, 2,000 years after Melchizedek lived, there’s sort of a resurgence in popularity in Melchizedek. There are a bunch of people living in the first century who are thinking about and talking about Melchizedek. He’s kind of a hot topic. He’s the lead on the news in the first century. There’s all these theories. You can read about them if you want to. You can find online 1st-century Jewish theories of Melchizedek. And they are so goofy. There are dozens of them that are so wacky. They were all floating around. This was my favorite one. I’m just going to share just one because it’s so wacky. The belief in the first century was that Melchizedek, 2000 years earlier, was born. His mom died tragically in childbirth, and they left the baby on the bed. Then some of the religious leaders went to another room. When they came back, Melchizedek had grown up into a teenage boy in the 10 minutes they were gone. That he was like a 14-year-old boy, and that he spoke multiple languages perfectly, and that he started to preach oracles of God. He started to preach to them. That was the belief of Melchizedek. This was very popular. And there are others. That one is the wackiest one in my opinion. So the writer of Hebrews knows, I want these Jewish Christians to stick with Jesus and not go back to the Jewish faith. To not abandon Jesus. Stick with Jesus. He also knows that they have all been discussing Melchizedek. They’re kind of in the know of all the weird things going on around. It was sort of, if you were living in the first century, there’d be a red hat. Like it would be MMGA rather than MAGA. It would be ‘Make Melchizedek Great Again’. That was happening in the first century. So the writer of Hebrews is like, wait a minute, you guys are into Melchizedek, but you’ve missed the point. You’ve buried the lead. You’ve missed the forest for the trees. You’re worried about all these weird little things about who Melchizedek is, and you’ve actually missed a point. Take a step back and you’ve got to look and see. Melchizedek is the one who shows us about Jesus. You guys are misunderstanding it. Melchizedek is all about Jesus. So this character you guys have been all up in arms about gives us an understanding of Jesus.   Questions About Melchizedek And so this morning, our plan is for us to look at how the writer of Hebrews uses Melchizedek to highlight elements about Jesus. I want to answer three questions this morning. 1. What is the history of Melchizedek? Where does this guy come from? 2. Who is this guy? 3. Why does he matter? How does Melchizedek impact us? I’ll give you three practical observations as to how Melchizedek impacts us. So that’s our plan for this morning. Three questions. What’s his history? Who is he really? Why does he matter to us? I’ll answer those three questions for us this morning. Let’s pray one more time, and then we’ll look at the text together. So, God, thank you for the writer Hebrews, thank you for Melchizedek. Help us understand and help us see you better. I pray. Amen.    History of Melchizedek Okay, first question. What’s his history? Look at Hebrews chapter seven, verse one.  If you have your Bibles, you can turn there or scroll there, whatever your preference may be. Hebrews chapter 7, verse 1. The writer of Hebrews says this, “For this Melchizedek, King of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.” If you are not familiar with what he’s alluding to, let me pause and give you the gist. The writer of Hebrews was writing about 2000 years ago, the first century, but 2000 years before him in 2000 BC. So Melchizedek lived 4000 years ago. 2000 years ago is the book of Hebrews. So the writer of Hebrews is looking back 2,000 years earlier to a moment that is recorded in Genesis 14. In Genesis chapter 14, Abraham is living in the land of Canaan, the land we might call Judea or Palestine today. In that land, Abraham is living. There’s a bunch of these cities in the region, and Abraham’s nephew Lot is living near one of the wicked cities in the region known as Sodom. Some of you may be familiar with Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis. So Lot is living near the city of Sodom, and Abraham is sort of a little further away, more in a wilderness around these cities. In Genesis 14, we learn that in the land of Canaan, four cities in the north band together, and then they travel south to attack the cities in the south. They raid them, they attack. They kill a bunch of people. They plunder, and then they steal a bunch of stuff, they kidnap people as slaves, and they take them back to the north. Well, one of the people who are taken as slaves from the south up to the north is Lot, Abraham’s nephew. So Abraham gets wind of this. This moment where the kings and military leaders of the northern cities attack the southern cities. And he hears that his nephew is one of the slaves they have. So Abraham, in Genesis 14, tells us that he pulls together 300 skilled men. Now, the word skilled there is intentional. It’s a Hebrew word that sort of alludes to military training. These aren’t just regular dudes that Abraham got together. These were like the Navy SEALS of his entourage, right? So Abraham has an entourage of hundreds, maybe into the thousands of people, and 300 of them are these bad dudes you would not want to mess with. He gets his skilled dudes together, and they go north, and they make war against the leadership of the northern cities. They fight and kill a bunch of guys, and they take all the stuff that was plundered and stolen from the southern cities. They get all the stuff and all the people who had been kidnapped, including Lot, and they bring them back down into the valley, in between all the southern cities. When Abraham gets down into that valley, it’s known as the Valley of the Kings, where the different kings from the different cities would come out and meet. When Abraham gets down there, the kings of the cities in the south come out to meet Abraham. They’re very thankful that Abraham and his skilled men have brought their stuff and people back. The first guy to interact with Abraham is the king of Sodom. And Sodom says to Abraham, Abraham, thank you. As a reward, I want to give you a portion of all the stuff you recovered for us. Abraham says to the king of Sodom, No, thank you. I want no part of your stuff because you’re a wicked king in a wicked city. And I don’t want anyone in the world thinking I’m associated with you. I don’t want anyone in the world thinking I got rich off of you, you wicked man. I want no part of that. Side note, that’s a really good model for us today. We should be very, very cautious who we are making money with and off of. There are wicked practices we should be very, very careful that we’re not profiting from. We want to take a step back and go, no, no, no. And Abraham says this. Abraham says, I know that one day I’m going to be rich and famous and influential. And I don’t want anyone around here thinking it was because of Sodom. I want them to know it was because of the one true God. I want to live for his glory. A moment ago, Leon took us through the fourth question in the New City catechism. It is only right that we were created and would live for his glory. We want to live in such a way that He will get the glory. That’s how Abraham lives.   Abraham Meets Melchizedek Abraham then continues through the Valley of the Kings, and the next king that comes to interact with him is the king of the city of Salem. His name is Melchizedek. He is the king of Salem and the priest of the Most High God. Abraham comes to Melchizedek, and Melchizedek blesses him. He blesses him both for his valor, his actions to save Lot and the others, and blesses Abraham because of his refusal to associate with the wickedness of Sodom. Both of these, he blesses him, and Abraham then responds by tithing to Melchizedek. Look at Hebrews 7, verse 2, it says this, “And to him, Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything.” So Abraham takes a tenth of everything he’s got, and he gives it to Melchizedek. Abraham pays a tithe. This is an interesting thing. Why would Abraham the great, Abraham, the friend of God, the founder of the Jewish faith, the founder of the Christian faith, the great patriarch, why would he feel the need to tithe to someone else? Why would he be receiving blessings? It should be the opposite. He’s the great one. He should be the one doing the blessing. But, interestingly, he is receiving blessings. Later in Hebrews chapter 7, the writer of Hebrews says this, In verse 4, he says, “See how this great man was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth.” How great must Melchizedek be that Abraham, who we think is great, tithes to him. Then, in verse 7, he says this. “It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior.” He’s saying, the fact that Melchizedek is blessing Abraham and not the other way around tells us that Melchizedek is superior to Abraham. If you’re a first-century Jewish person reading this, you love Abraham. This would indeed be a mind-blowing thing. Why did he do that? Abraham is the man. Why is Melchizedek getting a tithe and doing the blessing? It is because Melchizedek is greater than Abraham. Why is he greater?   Who is Melchizedek? That leads us to our second question this morning. Who is this Melchizedek guy? That’s the second question I want to answer for you this morning. Well, throughout church history, there have been some Christians who have argued that Melchizedek is actually the pre-incarnate Jesus. That it’s Jesus showing up in human form hundreds of years before Jesus was born as a man. We call that a Christophany. So there are moments in the Old Testament where we see a person in human form, but it’s actually Jesus showing up. He’s not actually human. He just looks or appears to be human. That’s called a Christophany. There are several of those in the Old Testament. The most famous comes in the Book of Daniel. There’s a moment where three young men in Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar tells them to bow down and worship, and they say no. So King Nebuchadnezzar has the fiery furnace turned up to the hottest it can go. It is so hot that the guards get near it and they burn up. They take these three young Jewish boys who refuse to worship the God of Babylon and bow down and worship King Nebuchadnezzar, and they throw them into the fiery furnace. They’re walking around. And King Nebuchadnezzar yells out as he’s looking into the flames. He goes, didn’t we throw in just three men? Why do I see four men walking around? And the fourth one looks like the Son of God. This is an incredible moment. True story. It actually happened. Three men are thrown into the fire, and Jesus shows up, appearing to be human. He’s not actually human, but he appears to be human. He rescues these three young men from the fiery flames, and he comes out. There are these other Christophanies in the Old Testament. So there have been moments throughout church history where various Christians, pastors, and scholars have argued that Melchizedek is one of those. It’s a Christophany. Scholars are kind of split on this today. But I would say I do not think Melchizedek is actually a Christophany. And most of the scholars that I trust the most would say, no, he is not a Christophany. There certainly are great Christians who would say, he’s a Christophany, and that’s fine. But when interpreting the biblical data, I don’t think that is the best interpretation. Now, I’m not going to explain that this morning. I was going to give you all the biblical reasons why Melchizedek is not a Christophany. But it’ll make the sermon go way too long. So, as painful as it was, I had to cut it from the sermon. But if you care, if you want to know, I’ve got the notes and I’ll be glad to share them with you. I’m going to say this morning, my understanding of the biblical data. I think Melchizedek is not a Christophany. However, he is a type of Christ, meaning he foreshadows Christ. Melchizedek. God put him in place. God put him where he is, specifically to point forward to Jesus, or give us a foreshadowing of Jesus that we can look at. Melchizedek, who lived 2,000 years before Jesus, we could say, we think he gives us some understanding of who Jesus is. He is, I think, not a Christophany, but a type. Look at verse three. He says this, Hebrews seven, verse three, Speaking of Melchizedek, “He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life” So some people say, Melchizedek doesn’t have a father, doesn’t have a mother. He must be Jesus. Well, that doesn’t quite make sense because Jesus does have a father and does have a mother. His father is God, the first person of the Trinity. His mother is Mary. So I don’t think he’s pointing out that Melchizedek literally didn’t have a mother and father. The point here is there’s no genealogy. That’s very unique because if you study through the book of Genesis, every major character in the Book of Genesis has a genealogy. We know exactly where he came from and where he died. Every major character in the Book of Genesis has a genealogy, with the exception of Melchizedek. The writer of Hebrews is making a point, saying that it was intentional. When the Book of Genesis was written, his genealogy was intentionally left out. Why? Because he resembles something. We’re trying to send a message. Look at the end of verse 2 there. Hebrews 7, verse 2. Speaking of Melchizedek, he resembles the Son of God. He continues as priest forever, but resembling the Son of God. So the point the writer of Hebrews is saying, we look at the Book of Genesis, we see no genealogy. There’s no end to the ministry of Melchizedek. Similarly, because we don’t see an end to the ministry of Melchizedek, we will never see an end to the ministry of the Son of God. That’s the picture he’s pointing at. He’s like Melchizedek. That gives us a glimpse of what Jesus will be like. His ministry will never end. The word resembling here basically can be translated as a good copy. Melchizedek is a good copy of Christ. Christ is the original. Melchizedek is the copy. Jesus is the real deal. Melchizedek is the photocopy, the Xerox. So we can look at the Xerox and have a good understanding of what the original was like. But Jesus is the real deal. Melchizedek resembles him or points to him, giving us understanding of the real deal, Jesus. Look at the second half verses. Skip back up to verse 2. If Melchizedek is not the son of God, who is he? What is he all about? Look at the second half of verse two. It says this. “Melchizedek is first by translation of his name, King of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, peace.” So he’s highlighting two things. One, his name, Melchizedek, gives us insight into who he is. And two, his title gives us insight into who he is. So his name is Melchizedek, which literally means king of righteousness. He is the king of a city called Salem. Salem means peace. Salem is the city that will later become known as Jerusalem. So he’s the king of the city that would become Jerusalem. Jesus will be the king of the New Jerusalem. So there are these parallels between Melchizedek and Jesus. There are these two things about Melchizedek. He’s righteous and he’s peace. He’s the king of righteousness. So he’s the king of a city. He’s bringing law and order to society, as he should. He’s a good judge, making sure criminals face justice. He’s all about righteousness, the right things being done simultaneously. He is the king of peace. He is the one who advocates for peace to make peace. Remember, we as humans are born sinners, and we choose to sin. We are sinners by choice and by birth. In our natural state, we are at odds with God. You are hostile toward God. You are on God’s naughty list. When you are born and throughout all the days of your life, you are on the naughty list. You deserve the wrath of God. But we have an advocate named Jesus who shows up, and he advocates for peace between us and God. So Melchizedek is both of these. He’s righteous. Criminals must be punished, and he advocates peace. We want to find a way for peace to be had between Criminals and the judge. He is these things. He is both the king and the priest who advocates for peace. Side note. This would be shocking to a first-century Jew because the idea of somebody being both a king and a priest was a big no, no. Every time Melchizedek is mentioned in the Bible, he’s mentioned as being a priest and a king. In Genesis 14, in Psalm 110 and he’s mentioned here in Hebrews. Every time he’s mentioned, he is mentioned as both a king and a priest. That would have been incredibly uncomfortable for a first-century Jew because that was against the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant separated kings and priests. When the kingship is established and Saul becomes the first king, it is very clear. The priests are to be from the line of the Levites, the tribe of Levi. The kings are to be from the tribe of Judah. There’s a separation. The reason why there is the separation is that if you have one man doing both roles, he’s the king and he’s a priest. If he were to fail, if he were to sin and blow it, you’d have too much of the covenant being broken. So we want to separate the powers, give some group of people, the Levites, power over the priestly duties, and then give the tribe of Judah the kingly duties. You separate those because inevitably, those men are going to fail. So if the priests fail, the entire covenant’s not broken, only a part of it’s broken. And if the kings fail, well, at least only a part of the covenant is broken. The separation of powers sort of gives us a little bit of latitude, there’s some room for error. So you would never want anyone in your covenant to be both king and priest. That’s way too much power in one person. If he fails, the entire covenant breaks. And in the Old Testament, God made it very clear that the Old Covenant was actually conditional. He told the Jews, I will be faithful to you only if you are faithful back to me. There are these laws, he gave them more than 600 of them. There are these clear expectations. If the Jewish people broke those laws, God told them, I’m going to divorce you. I am not going to be with you forever and ever. If you are not faithful to me, I will not be faithful to you. So the Jews are thinking, we have got to make sure we don’t break too many of the laws, so let’s separate the priest and the king. So if you’re a first-century person reading this, and you go, Melchizedek is the king. And the priest, yikes. There’s too much power in one person’s arms. The covenant’s too weak. But the writer of Hebrews is going to make a point. No, no, no. When you have the right king priest, you want all authority on that one priest, that one king. The covenant we have now, the covenant that we have as Christians with God, is conditional as well. God has promised to be faithful to you, but here’s the condition: not your faithfulness. God has promised to you as believers. I will be faithful to you so long as the king priest is faithful to me. Our king priest, whose name is Jesus, he is always faithful. A Jewish person had to live in angst. What if we blow it? That’s the Old Covenant. The new covenant says it’s conditional, but it’s conditioned on someone else’s efforts, not yours. And that king priest, he’s never failed and he never will fail. This is why the writer of Hebrews thinks it is maddening that you would leave and abandon the New Covenant to go back to the Old Covenant, the weaker covenant that was so fragile, so much so where we had to separate the powers, this conditional covenant that was conditioned and dependent on our ability to be faithful. Why would you abandon Jesus to go back to that? So when we look at Melchizedek, he gives us a picture of what Jesus is like as King Priest. All the chips have been moved to the center of the table. We are all in on Jesus, and he will never fail us.   Why Does This Matter? Last question for this morning: Why does this matter? The fact that Melchizedek is like Jesus, why does this matter to us? I think there are a few things I’ve already said, probably kind of alluded to, but let me give you three reasons why this matters to us. 1. Melchizedek stood for righteousness and peace. This shows us that Jesus stands for both righteousness and peace. Jesus wants criminals punished for their crimes. Jesus wants peace to be advocated between criminals and the court. He wants both, and therefore we ought to want both as well. John, chapter one, says this about Jesus: that he was full of grace and full of truth. Both. We, in our modern society, tend to err on one or the other. Some of us are all about truth. We want the righteous thing to happen. We don’t care about anything else. We’re just righteous. And righteousness is good. Then there are other people who lean toward peacemaking or advocating for peace, or being gracious and merciful. No, we should let this person off the hook. Let’s be gracious. Let’s not hold this against them. We kind of ping off the extremes. Ask yourself right now, which one are you? Just ask yourself, am I more likely to want to stand for righteousness and hold people accountable, or do I want to be gracious and peaceful and advocate for people? There’s a spectrum, and everyone is on this spectrum. I think American politics is largely governed by where you are on the spectrum. If you’re someone who’s all about righteousness, you’re going to lean toward being more conservative. If you’re someone who’s all about peacemaking and being gracious, you’re more likely to trend leftward in your politics. There are caveats, but that tends to be the case right now. Full disclosure, I’m going to show my cards. I am very conservative. I’m all about righteousness. Yes, we need rights. We need law and order. This is right. This is good. And I see in myself, in my own heart, sometimes the tendency to not advocate for those who might be seeking peace. I find in my own heart that sometimes I lack sympathy for people. That’s not good. Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong to have strong political opinions. I have strong conservative ideas. If you want to argue about that, we can do it another day. But that’s where I’m at. I don’t think that’s wrong or bad to have strong political opinions. But we want to pause and ask Where am I on the spectrum? Take inventory. Where are my pitfalls? If you’re over here, if you trend more leftward, you have to ask, am I being so sympathetic that I’m not standing for righteousness? Melchizedek was both the king of righteousness and the King of Salem. Jesus is both the king of righteousness and the king of Salem. He is full of grace and full of truth. We also should seek to be like Jesus. Now, of course, we’re all going to fail. We’re never going to get it quite right. Jesus always gets it right. But we want to pray. This should be a frequent prayer in our lives. Melchizedek is righteousness and peace, and we should seek to be both to the best of our ability. 2. Just like there’s no end to the priesthood of Melchizedek in Genesis, there will be no end to the priesthood of Jesus. I’ve already said this, but it’s worth saying again. We don’t see an end to the ministry of Melchizedek, and we will never see an end of the ministry of Christ. He will advocate on our behalf forever. First Timothy, chapter 2, verse 5. The apostle Paul says this. “For there is only one God, and only one mediator between God and man. That is Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” There’s only one mediator between God and man. His name is Jesus Christ. Later, in Hebrews chapter 7, verse 25 says that Jesus makes intercession for them. He lives to make intercession. Church. Can I tell you something? Jesus is praying for you right now. Jesus, the Son of God, the Creator of everything visible and invisible. He is praying for you by name. I want to guarantee you the Father is listening to his son in John 10. My lovely wife read it for us earlier. John 10. Jesus says, My sheep, hear my voice. I give them eternal life. They will never perish. No one will snatch them from my hand. The reason why you will stick with Jesus forever and ever and ever and never walk away from him, and spend eternity the way the angels did, is not because of you. It’s because the priest will be advocating for you and holding onto you forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. I can tell you, if you are a believer in Jesus, you will be with him forever. I can guarantee you that. Not because of you or what you have done, but because of Christ and what he has done. His priesthood goes on forever. 3. Melchizedek enjoyed communing with people. That is a picture of the fact that Jesus loves to commune with his people. In Genesis chapter 14, when Abraham comes back from the battle and he’s in the Valley of the Kings, he rejects the King of Sodom. He comes out, he sees Melchizedek, the King of Salem. Melchizedek blesses him, and Abraham tithes to him. Then Melchizedek does something absolutely beautiful. He brings out some bread and some wine. He sits down on the battlefield there in the middle of the Valley of the Kings with Abraham. He says, let’s commune together with some bread and some wine. Does that remind you of anyone? After the battle is won, the King Priest sits with some bread and wine. Jesus makes that offer to us today. Here’s what Jesus says in Revelation chapter 3, verse 20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.” Church, Jesus loves you. He invites you to come eat with him. The picture we see of Melchizedek, of all the things going on in the Valley of the Kings, there’s this war. Melchizedek pauses and says, Wait. Eat together. That’s what Jesus says to you this morning, in the midst of all the craziness of the world. Let’s pause, let’s eat together. I want to eat with you. I want you to eat with me. I want to enjoy you. I want you to enjoy me. Jesus says to his people, Let’s have some bread. Let’s have some wine. Find your rest in me this day and all your days, forever and ever.   Communion That brings us to communion. That’s why we take communion every single week. We take some bread and we take some wine. Not because it’s some random ritual that we came up with, but because our great King Priest has said, Come to me. Let’s have some bread and wine together. Each week here at Horizon City Church, we pause and we take communion to remember our great High Priest, our King, who forever lives to intercede for us. The one who stands for righteousness and stands for peace. The one who loves us and invites us to commune with him. In just a moment, we’re going to pass the baskets as we do each week. Grab whichever one is your preference.  Hold onto it. I’ll come back and lead us. If you are a believer here this morning, if you are a genuine follower of Christ, if you would say, he’s my King Priest, if that’s you, I invite you to take communion with us this morning. This is open to you. But if you are here this morning, you would say, Kenny, I’m still not sure that I’m all in on Jesus. I’m not sure that I am thoroughly committed and love this King Priest named Jesus. I’m not sure that’s me yet. If that’s you, I would say I’m thankful that you’re here. I’m thankful for your willingness to be honest with yourself this morning. When the baskets come, I’d encourage you to let the baskets pass, but don’t let the moment pass. May today be the day you say to Jesus, I take you to be my King Priest. If you have any questions about what that means, what does it really look like? How do I do that? I’d love to sit with you after the service and have a conversation with you. But for those of us who love Christ, who are all in on this great King Priest, I encourage you to come. I invite you to participate in communion with us this morning. Let’s remember what he has done on our behalf.    

  Introduction: The Gift of a Church Plant Well, good morning. It is great to be here. As Kenny said, we started as a church eight years ago so it is a joy to be back in a new church. It brings me right back to the days when we first started at Grace Claremont over at Grassy Lake Elementary School. It is an incredible gift. There’s a certain gift that new churches have that, as the church becomes more established, you have to work harder to grab hold of. I just want to remind you of that gift. I can remember a few months in, I got up at the very beginning of the service to do the announcements, and announcements can be very formal, it’s very professional. I got up, and there were three people seated as the service began. I went, I can either act like there are a lot of people here, or I can just look at Abel, Cynthia, and Katie and tell them what we have going on this week. I ended up doing that instead. I had to wrestle early on with why I was doing what I was doing and where worth and value came from as a church. Jesus just threw in front of my eyes at that moment the challenge. Do I find my worth, value, and significance in how many people are here? Is that who I’m doing this for? Or am I doing it for an audience of one to be faithful to him and allow him to be able to build his church? I was faced with that early on. One of the things I felt early, as a church plant, was the unique gift which every person who came had a missional edge to them. You know that this church rests on your shoulders, right? You’re not bringing somebody to this huge show with these programs and systems that are just gigantic and massive and incredible, and you can bring all these people to it. No. You know that you and your relationships and your ministry with where you are, with your neighbors, your family, your friends, your coworkers, you’ve got to go bring the gospel to them. That missional edge is what’s going to bring them to Jesus and ultimately to this church as it continues to grow. And that, friends, is a tremendous gift. Because as a church grows, there’s a tendency for a church to begin to become focused on the maintenance of the church and on how those systems and programs can draw people in and lose the fact that the greatest power a church has is spirit filled and empowered members acting as ambassadors on behalf of their King in their lives. That’s the missional edge of the church. Always has been, always will be. A church plant has an incredible gift to know that so particularly. So it’s wonderful to be back here in that setting again. It’s something that even this year at the Grove, we’re trying to remind ourselves that we are the ambassadors. We’ve been entrusted with the message of reconciliation. Paul says, ‘for us individually, as members, then to go’. That’s the mission that we have. It’s wonderful, and it’s great to be able to be here and preach.   A Greater Picture of Who Jesus Is Last night, Kenny sent me a video of his daughter, Letty. She challenged me last night. She said, ‘Here is what I want to hear in the sermon. ’ ‘Pastor Caleb, I want to make sure you cover these four things. Strollers, princesses, mermaids, and koalas.’ And friends. It was as if she were reading my notes. This is really what I had hoped and had already written down. Before she even said that, I said, Here’s my hope. My prayer today is that we can have a greater sense of who Jesus is. My kids, I’ve got three kids. They’re eight, six and three. At the end of a long day at Disney, you know what they do? They are exhausted. And my three-year-old, he doesn’t want to take another step. He falls into that stroller as we carry him home. And friends, is that not what Jesus does for us when we are tired, when we can’t take another step, when we fall into his arms, he then carries us home. He’s the true and greater stroller as we rest in him. And when we rest in him and believe in him, do you know what we become? We become sons and daughters of the King. Do you know what a daughter of the King is called? They’re called the Princess. And our identity and our worth is not like how Disney paints princesses based on how we look or our marketability. No, our worth and our value is in our union to the King. Our union in Christ as we are now co-heirs with him and this king. Some people may think that he was part God and part man. Kind of like a mermaid is part fish and part man. No, no, no. This king is fully God and fully man, as we trust in him and we cling to him like a koala clings to an eucalyptus tree. We cling to Christ as we look to him. Amen. Let’s pray and let’s end the sermon today. It is a joy. Letty, I mean, again, that was already in there. I don’t know how the Spirit moves in mysterious ways. But in all seriousness, my hope for today is singular. And it’s not dissimilar from some of that stuff, but it is singular. That is, that we would have a greater picture of who Jesus is, what he’s done for you, and that your affection for him would grow. I know you’re going through Hebrews right now. The name of the sermon series is, Don’t Stop Believing. The point of Hebrews is, the author is pointing out all these ways in which Jesus is better and greater than all these things in the Old Testament. He is the greater prophet. He’s the greater priest. He’s the greater sacrifice over another greater tabernacle. He’s better. He’s better. He’s better. So while we’re not in Hebrews, Matthew here in his gospel is making the same argument. He is pointing to the Old Testament and saying, Jesus is better than Israel. He is the greater Israel. That’s his main point. Here is when we will rest and see what Jesus has done for us, in what ways he is the greater and better Israel. So let me pray one more time, and then we’ll jump in. Lord, thank you for your grace as we gather here today. Would you help us now as we come to your word? Would you open our minds to be able to see and comprehend its truth? Would you open our hearts to embrace its beauty? And would you open our hands to be able to take hold of and cling to his commands. We love you, and we need your grace now. We know that you will give it. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.   The Active Obedience of Christ If you were facing your own death and you could write a letter to a friend, what would you write? In a note to someone that you love, knowing your death was imminent? What would come to your mind? J. Gresham Machen was a Presbyterian theologian and scholar in the late 1800s, early 1900s. He was a professor at Princeton Seminary and would later found Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929. As he faced his death, he wrote a note to a friend that had just 13 words. Here’s what came to his mind. January 1, 1937. He dictated this final telegram and said this. “I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.” It’s a bit of an odd thing to come to your mind there as you come to the end of your life, isn’t it? Some of us may be scratching our heads. What does he mean by the active obedience of Christ, and why is that on the forefront of his mind as he faces death? Well, the act of obedience. Theologians have often categorized Jesus’ obedience in two ways. His active obedience is passive obedience; his active obedience being the ways in which he positively obeyed all of God’s laws and righteous expectations, never once sinned, and actively obeyed. So not only did he not sin, but he always obeyed. This is active obedience accruing then, this purity, this spotlessness, this righteousness. His passive obedience on the cross is when he received the sin of all those who trusted in him, and the judgment and wrath of God was poured out on him on the cross. So it was passive, not in the sense that he had nothing to do with it, but that he received that. There was an act of obedience whenever he obeyed. So why again would that be what comes to his mind? R.C. Sproul, pastor here in Orlando for years and years, author and theologian, would describe it like this, “The grounds of your justification, the grounds of your salvation, are the perfect works of Jesus Christ. We are saved by works, but they’re just not your own.” We begin to see that as Christians, we need not only for our sins to be forgiven, but we have to be perfectly righteous to be reconciled to God. In order to have a relationship with him, to enter into his kingdom and live forever. We have to be a perfect, spotless, obedient child of God. And we’re like, oh, I can’t do that. If you feel that gnawing weight of expectation, that sense of helplessness, oh, you’re right. In that place, then, we need to see the great gift of the gospel that Jesus has given us. This is where we get to our text in Matthew chapter four, as Jesus enters the wilderness and is tempted. Here’s the main point of this text: that in this fight against sin and temptation, Jesus stands, even though we’ve all fallen. That’s the main point from our passage today. Matthew, chapter 4, verses 1 through 11. I want to walk through this in three different sections. First, we’re going to look at verse 1, and we’re going to see Jesus picks a fight in verse one. Second, we’re going to see Jesus in the fight in verses two through ten, that’s where we’ll spend the majority of our time looking at the nature of these temptations. Then, third, we’ll see Jesus wins the fight. In verse 11, Jesus picks a fight, then Jesus is in the fight, and Jesus wins the fight. That’s what we are going to be walking through today.   Jesus Picks a Fight So first, in verse one, Jesus picks a fight. You heard, as Kenny read earlier, this introduction to our text. It is right on the heels of Jesus’ baptism, the beginning of his public ministry as he’s been affirmed by the Father. This is my beloved Son, with whom I’m well pleased. He’s anointed by the Spirit as the Spirit descends like a dove on him. Then he enters this public ministry. This is now the first act that Matthew records as Jesus enters into this public ministry. There can be a temptation, I think, to read this text as though it’s a temptation of Jesus and we’re kind of on the edge of our seats. What’s going to happen? Who’s going to win? Satan comes at a very opportune time. We see in other Gospel accounts, he had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights without food. He drank water, but he hadn’t eaten for 40 days and 40 nights. He’s in the wilderness. Prime time for Jesus to fall. And now Satan shows up. He’s so clever. Is Jesus going to make it? Is he going to be able to withstand temptation, to withstand the accusation of the great accuser, the deceiver? Friends, if we read this passage in that tone, I think we’ll have missed the tone of the text. Verse one gives it to us. Jesus was not on his way to another town, cutting through the wilderness on his own, and he was ambushed by Satan. Look again at verse one. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness.” This is right on the heels of his baptism. His entrance into public ministry, in which Jesus publicly associates himself with sinners. This was the point of his baptism. He has been led by the Spirit into the wilderness. God is like, okay, this is where I want you to go. Now, why would he go into the wilderness? Well, we don’t have to ask that, because we see the purpose there in the rest of verse one. He’s led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Why? Here’s the purpose statement: “to be tempted by the devil.” So we’ve got to make sure we understand here. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for the purpose of temptation. He was not aimlessly walking along and out comes Satan trying to tempt him and get him to fail God in his foreknowledge. In his divine will at the very beginning of his ministry, he goes, first things first. You’ve got to go and face the enemy that my people can’t defeat. You’ve got to go into this temptation. You’ve got to go and face temptation. You must stand where my people have fallen. Friends, we have to make sure that we do not confuse, in this passage, who is the hunter and who is the hunted. Jesus is the one here who’s on his way as our great champion to defeat our enemy. It’s the first act of business for him as the Messiah. You see, even how Matthew is showing us something so particular here. If you flip back a couple of chapters to chapter two, you’ll see in verse 15 that he’s referencing when Jesus had to move down. When Mary and Joseph had to take the young Jesus to Egypt and live there until Herod died. Matthew goes, Yes, this happens. So the prophecy might be fulfilled. Out of Egypt I called my son. What Matthew’s doing here is connecting the Son there in the Old Testament reference to Israel. Now what Matthew’s doing is setting up this parallel between Jesus and Israel. See, Israel was called out of Egypt, led by Moses out of slavery. They then walked through the waters of the Red Sea and were led into the wilderness. That was their path and their journey. But what happened to them in the wilderness? They failed. Over and over and over and over again. Now you look at Matthew’s Gospel and you see in chapter two, here now is Jesus led up out of Egypt. What happens in chapter three, through the waters of baptism, and now in chapter four, into the wilderness. Matthew is structuring his gospel. So the reader might see that in all the ways that God’s son, Israel, in the Old Testament failed his greater son, the greater Israel, the true Israel, would stand. Going into the wilderness, He would then stand. Jesus picks this fight. This is not accidental. He was looking for a fight.   Jesus In the Fight So this is what we see here in verse one. Now we see Jesus in the fight, verses two through ten. There are these three temptations that Satan brings. Jesus is hungry. I mean, he hadn’t eaten for 40 days. I haven’t eaten for 40 minutes, and my stomach starts to grumble a little bit. He’s hungry. It says here in verse 2, that’s exactly what it says, He was hungry. So then the tempter approached him and said, if you’re the son of God, tell these stones to become bread. I want to stop for just a second. It’s a little bit of an odd temptation, isn’t it, on its own? What would even make that so sinful? You’re the Messiah. You created the stones, just make them bread. You’re hungry, get a snack. It’s not a big deal. But Jesus, what we’re going to see throughout this, especially in these first two, they are a little bit harder for us to see. Jesus’s response, I think, will help us see the nature of what Satan’s trying to do. See, it’s hard to see in the temptation, which is just what Satan does. If temptation were easy to spot, it wouldn’t be hard to resist. But often he disguises the temptation. So we go, this isn’t so bad, is it? And we step into it without seeing the hook that’s set inside the bait. Jesus sees through it, though, and what’s his response to turning these stones into bread? He says, no. Verse four, “It is written, ‘Man must not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’.” Now, here’s a good tip when reading or studying your Bible. When you see the Old Testament referenced, go back to that reference and look around at the context to see what is going on. In my Old Testament, references are bolded. Sometimes it’s slanted, sometimes it’s set off in quotations or italics, whatever it might be. It’s going to help import the meaning of how the New Testament author is using it. The First Temptation So Jesus here answers this, and he’s quoting then, from the Old Testament. He’s quoting Deuteronomy 8. What we’ll see here is that Satan, in his temptation, this first one, is he’s pressing on Jesus this question. He’s looking at Jesus and going, Will God really come through for you? That’s the temptation. He’s guising it in the sense of like, hey, you’re hungry, just turn these into bread. Underneath it, though, here’s the temptation, will God really come through for you? Can you trust him to provide? Just take matters into your own hands. Jesus sees through it. And he quotes again, Deuteronomy 8. What’s the context of Deuteronomy 8? Here’s verses 1 through 3 of Deuteronomy 8. God’s telling the people in Israel: “Carefully follow every command I’m giving you today so that you may live and increase and may enter and take possession of the land. Swore to your ancestors, remember that the Lord your God led you on the entire journey these 40 years in the wilderness so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you by letting you go hungry. Then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your ancestors had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” See, the Israelites had gotten out of Egypt. They’re in the wilderness, and they’re going, we’re hungry. I don’t know if God’s going to give us food. We at least had steaks and food back in Egypt. I wish we could just go back there. God begins to provide for them, right? But first, he lets them go hungry. Did you hear that? In Deuteronomy 8? He lets them go hungry so that he would see and test to know what was in their hearts, whether or not they would keep his commands. He gave them manna, this bread from heaven that he provided every single day for them. When they woke up, there it was scattered on the ground. They had to go and collect it. They couldn’t store it, it would spoil overnight. But God provided for them the next day. That manna was a picture of God’s provision. God wanted them to know, hey, it’s not food that you can gather on your own that causes you to live. It’s on my promises, my faithfulness, every word that comes from my mouth, you can trust me to provide. You don’t live on the bread that you can make yourself, but on every word that I’ve given you. Trust in my provision. Jesus hears in Satan’s temptation this, this hook to go, Can you really trust in him to provide? Just do it yourself. Just bypass the process. He won’t give you what you really need. You’ve been waiting too long for him to provide for you. You just have to fend for yourself. Now we’re starting to hear the nature of that temptation, which begins to hit home in our lives. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever hear the voice of the accuser in your life going, Is God really going to be able to give you what you need, what you really need. You’ve been waiting so long for him to provide for you. Just fend for yourself. Take matters into your own hands. You can’t trust him to provide. Will God really come through for you? And often we listen to that voice. Or maybe we’ve been waiting a long time for a relationship, when waiting for children, or when waiting for a new job. Waiting for your body to stop hurting all the time. Waiting for your brain to stop hurting all the time. Wanting depression, anxiety to be something you never have to think about again. Friends, whatever it may be, our waiting can lead to our grumbling. You’ve got to see part of what God may be doing in your waiting is humbling you and revealing what’s in your heart. Did you hear that? Deuteronomy 8? Because in his grace, he wants to show you that he is all you truly need. You can truly trust him to provide. He wants you to find true contentment in him, trusting him in all he does. Despite what you may have, having him is enough. Jesus knew he didn’t need bread. He had God. What a temptation. Will God really come through for you? Jesus stands, even though we’ve all fallen. He knows the answer is yes. God will come through. He doesn’t have to misuse his powers, the Messiah, to sidestep the provision of the Father in a way that’s inconsistent with his mission. Instead, he trusts and he stands where we have all fallen. The Second Temptation Second temptation, Satan then turns, pivots. He goes, okay, let me take you to the holy city, take you to Jerusalem, verse 5. And let’s stand on the pinnacle of the temple. And you’re looking down over this ravine, looking down deep, then off the side of the temple. And he says, “If you’re the Son of God, throw yourself down.” And then look at what Satan does. He quotes scripture, you see that? He quotes Psalm 91. And he says, “Look, it’s written. “He will give his angels orders concerning you, and they will support you with their hands so you will not strike your foot against a stone”.” Now, here’s what’s amazing. Satan only knew Scripture. He knew that Psalm 91 rightly applied to the Messiah. He had a good understanding of biblical and systematic theology. He knew that it was pointing to him. Now, what he did, though, was twist the meaning and misapply it. And again, Jesus knows exactly what Satan is trying to do. And he answers and responds. In verse seven, he says, “It’s also written, do not test the Lord your God.” Just a brief aside, you notice every single one of Jesus’ responses to the temptations is what? It’s the Bible. Every single one. Jesus didn’t need to do that. I think part of what he’s doing here is an example for us, to show us how to be able to stand in the midst of temptation. Because he’s Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. He is God. He sneezes, and it comes out in red letters. But yet he answers with scripture, I think, to show us then the importance of hiding that word in our heart. To know God’s word and respond to it. So Satan here quotes Psalm 91. Hey, just throw yourself off the temple here. The angels will catch you. That’s what they’ll do for the Messiah, support you with their hands. You’re not going to strike your foot against a stone. You’ll be fine. Jesus responds, Oh, no, do not test the Lord your God again. You see, this is a reference to the Old Testament. This comes from Deuteronomy 6, verse 16. “Do not test the Lord your God as you tested him at Massah.” So then, as you’re reading it, you look back at that, and then your mind asks the question, well, what happened at Massah? What did they do there? How did they test God there? Well, this is a reference back to a story in Exodus 17, verses 1 through 7. Israelites were walking through the wilderness. They had nothing to drink. So first temptation, they got hungry. This temptation, they got thirsty. And as they are walking through the wilderness, they continue to complain. The people complained to Moses, Give us water to drink. Moses replied and said, Why are you complaining to me? Why are you testing the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water and grumbled against Moses. They said, Oh, Moses, why did you ever bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? Oh, I just wish again. Yeah, I mean, there was the whole slavery thing in Egypt. Oppression and injustice, but at least we weren’t thirsty. Oh, man, I wish we could be back there. Why did you bring us out here? Us, our kids, our livestock. Sounds like Dumb and Dumber. We’ve got no food, we’ve got no water, we’ve got no jobs. Our pets’ heads are falling off. The Israelites in the wilderness are just complaining. They’re grumbling. Listen to how Moses responds. This is just if you put yourself in Moses’ shoes and you’re like, dude, we just walked through a sea a second ago. You remember that God miraculously led you out of slavery. He saved you, he redeemed you. Look at what Moses says. Moses cried out to the Lord, What should I do with these people? It’s so good. Oh, man, in a little while, they’re going to kill me. They’re going to stone me. So God tells Moses, again, You see God’s compassion. You see that he’s slow to anger because God doesn’t get annoyed with them. What’s he do? He tells Moses, Go on ahead, take your staff, hit this rock. When you hit the rock, I’m going to cause water to come out. I’m going to provide for you. You can have as much as you want now. In the New Testament, this is crazy. This again doesn’t have anything to do with the sermon. It’s just so good. In the New Testament, in First Corinthians 10, he says that the rock was Christ. That’s so good. All right, keep going. So Exodus 17, verse 7. Moses then named that place Massah. So this is what we see. This is where this was referenced. Because the Israelites complained and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? That was the test. They grumbled and complained, and they said, God has left us. We’ve got no water, therefore God’s not with us. They grumbled and complained, and that was the nature of the test. So here again, Jesus cuts through the noise of Satan’s temptation, the guise of the Messiah, the Messianic Psalm of 91, and he goes, no, I know what you’re doing. Set behind the bait is this hook. That’s really asking this, is God really there for you? Jump off this temple and we’ll see. Is he really there for you? Is the Lord among us or not? It was the nature of the test. It was the nature of the temptation. The Israelites didn’t believe that God was still with them because they were struggling.They required miraculous protection and provision in order to believe that God was really there. Friends, have you ever walked through a difficult time in your life and raised a grumbling voice to God, saying, If you would just end this, just remove me from this situation, then I’ll know that you’re real and that you care for me? I put it this way. Have you ever equated your comfort with God’s care? Meaning if you struggle, if you suffer, then God must not care about you. He must not be there. Jesus knows the true meaning of Psalm 91. Psalm 91 is a promise to God’s people and ultimately a fulfillment of the Messiah of Jesus. The promise of Psalm 91 is not that God will keep you from the storm, but that God will keep you in the storm and through the storm. That’s the promise of God’s protection. Not that he will never allow you to go through difficult moments. But that in every fire, he’s there beside you. In every flood, he’s there beside you. In every valley, he’s there beside you. Not only is he beside you, we see in Psalm 23, he’s in front of you, leading you through it as our good shepherd. This is the promise that God has given to us. It’s a promise not to keep you from the storm, but to keep you in the storm. Oh, what a temptation! Is God really there for you? Jesus stands even though we’ve all fallen, and he knows the answer is yes, God’s here. I don’t need to throw myself off the temple to know that, to see that. I don’t have to test him. He is among us. He doesn’t need miraculous proof or easing of suffering to know the Father’s there with him and for him. He doesn’t need to test him because he trusts him. The Third Temptation The first temptation is pressing on whether or not Jesus trusted God’s provision. Here he is pressing on whether or not he trusted in God’s presence. Third temptation. Satan then turns, and now he goes right to the heart of it again. “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all these things if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Go away, Satan, for it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.’” Now there’s some debate over whether or not this is physically that Satan took Jesus to a mountain, or if it’s more of a vision. I tend to think it’s in a vision because there’s not a mountain in Israel that you go to the top of and see all the kingdoms of the world. So I think this is a vision similar like Daniel 7 or some of Paul’s visions, where here Jesus and the devil go up to this high mountain and they’re looking at all the kingdoms of the world. Here’s what he says, Hey, I’ll give you all of these if you just fall down and worship me. So what’s happening here? Jesus responds with scripture, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him. This is his response. You’ll notice, too, that each of these responses comes from within three chapters of one another. Deuteronomy 6, 7, and 8. So I don’t know if you’ve ever done a Bible reading plan before. Started in Genesis, like, okay, this is going. Okay, you get Leviticus. It’s like, oh, man, okay, this is a lot harder. You get to Deuteronomy. It’s like, this is just the same thing as Leviticus. But look at the utility of Deuteronomy, that when Jesus is tempted by Satan, it’s Deuteronomy chapter six, and then two references from chapter eight that he goes, Oh, I’m going to hold on to these to fight this temptation. All of God’s word it’s profitable. It’s breathed out by Him. It’s useful. Even Deuteronomy, especially Deuteronomy. And so he responds. He says, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him. Here’s what Satan is doing. I think we went through the Book of Daniel last year in our church. In Daniel, Chapter 7 is this monumental chapter that really all the apocalyptic literature in the Bible is based on. Really, in a lot of ways, the book of Revelation is an exposition of Daniel chapter seven, some commentators have noted. And in it, you have this incredible vision where these four beasts that rise out of the ocean, this little horn that pops up, that’s worse than all of them. Then this incredible moment where all these beasts that are representative of these kingdoms of the earth are cast into this river of fire. Then here comes this One, like a Son of man, coming on the clouds. That image, One like the Son of Man on the clouds, is referenced in Revelation. We see this to be Jesus. And this One, like the Son of Man, comes to God himself, the Ancient of Days, whose hair is white, seated on this throne. There’s this exchange from the Ancient of Days and the One like the Son of Man. And this One, like the Son of Man, is given all the kingdoms of the Earth. He’s given dominion, and authority and power is given to this One, like the Son of Man. This is the promise to the Son of what he will receive. So what Satan is doing is coming to go, hey, I can give you the same thing. I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the Earth, all the dominion, all the authority, all the power. But my way is going to be so much easier. It doesn’t involve a cross. It doesn’t involve suffering, doesn’t involve judgment and wrath. All you’ve got to do, small little caveat, just bow down and worship me. It’s a lot easier. Oh, and friends, I think what Satan is doing here, we see how masterful he is. What is the moment of greatest anguish for Jesus in his life here, where he is sweating drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane before the cross? What is his prayer in that moment that’s causing him so much anguish? Oh, God, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Not my will, but yours be done. That cup was an image we see in the Old Testament as the cup of God’s wrath. He knew what lay before him on that cross. Not the physical torment of the Roman judicial process of a crucifixion, but on the spiritual reality that he is the representative of sinners. He was going to go stand in their place and take on their sin and absorb on their behalf the just and righteous wrath of God. He was going to drink that cup down to the final drop. Friends, this is the reality of what we see on that cross in three hours. How this is possible, I don’t know. We’ve got to feel the weight of what happened on that cross in those three hours. Jesus suffered more than any sinner ever will in hell. As he took on the judgment of God for all those who’ve trusted in him. He paid it all, and he took that cup. As he thought about that reality, as he thought about that cup, he began to sweat drops of blood, knowing this was the path. This is the way to redeem my people. This is the only way. And yes, glory and kingdoms are on the other side of it, but it goes right through the cross, and it causes incredible anguish. Satan knew it. Here at the beginning of his ministry, he said, Listen, let’s just bypass all of that. No drops of blood. No cups of wrath. Just bow down and worship me. And he gets right to the heart of the great anguish of Jesus himself. Friends, we’ve got to understand how deceptive Satan is. How well he knows human nature and our hearts. He knows the nature of the temptations that are going to get us. We have to make sure we are rooted in happiness and satisfaction in Jesus and holding on to the promises of his word to be able to stand against it. It sounds like a roaring lion. If we think we can just walk out here on our own in the midst of the battle without any help, we are very, very ignorant. So he comes right at it. Doesn’t this help us make sense, too? If this was the nature of Satan’s temptation, this third question, as he comes to Jesus, he asks this: Does God really have good plans for you? Look at the pain in front of you. I can give you all this stuff, and it’ll be a whole lot easier. Does he really have good plans for you? Doesn’t the nature of that temptation make more sense in a later account in Matthew’s Gospel? If you’ve grown up in church, you may have heard this. Matthew 16. Jesus begins to point out to his disciples, it’s necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and be raised on the third day. So he’s telling them, hey, I’ve got to die. You know what Peter does? One of his disciples, Peter, took Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God incarnate, the One who made and created all things, who sustains all things, who holds all things together by the word of his power, and he took Jesus. Peter began to rebuke him. Way to go, Peter. Wonder how that’s gonna turn out for you. Here’s what he says. Oh, no, Lord, this will never happen to you. You won’t die. You won’t have to suffer. You won’t have to do this. And here’s Jesus’s response. He turned and told Peter, ‘get behind me, Satan.’ I don’t know if you ever read that and were like Jesus, a little bit of an overreaction there. Like Peter, he doesn’t understand it all. He’s looking at his friend, his rabbi, and thinking, I don’t want you to die. No, no, no. Far be it from me, Lord. I will stand by your defense. You’re not going to have to do this. Why does Jesus respond so harshly? See, it’s the same nature of this final temptation of Satan. You won’t have to die. There’s got to be another way. There in the voice of Peter, Jesus again hears that voice of Satan in the temptation. You can have the kingdoms without the suffering. You can have the dominion without the pain. You can have the crown without the cross. Does God really have good plans for you? Jesus knows that the answer is yes. He can’t sidestep God’s plan and purposes so he can avoid the hard and necessary parts. Friends, do you ever try to avoid the hard and necessary purposes of God in your life to try to bypass what God has for you? You think, I don’t think this is good. I’ve got some better plans here to get to my desired destination. Or do we trust him, even in the suffering, even in the pain, to know that he still has good plans for us? Jeremiah 29:11. A verse Christians love to put on a coffee cup, love to put on a T shirt, love to sell it at bookstores, love to sell on Amazon, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you.” Oh, good plans. You know the context of that verse. Jeremiah 21:11. God’s people are in exile in Babylon. But God says, even in exile, I have good plans for you. Because even exile is the good means of trying to reveal in your heart the way that you’d wandered off into idolatry and to bring you back to me. God had been long-suffering. He had been patient. He told them over and over again, Stop doing this. And they didn’t. So finally he goes, all right, in judgment, I’m bringing Babylon to carry you off, to hopefully bring you back to me. Even in his hard and necessary purposes, do we trust him? Well, what a temptation. Does God really have good plans for you? Jesus stands, even though we’ve all fallen. And he knows the answer is yes. He trusts God’s plans. He knows the path before him is laid out by a loving Father, and he joyfully submits to his will. He trusts in God’s provision. He trusts in God’s presence, and he trusts in God’s plans. How often have we fallen? But every single time Jesus stood, He won. He stood where Israel had fallen, in the wilderness. He stood even though we’ve all fallen. He is the true and faithful son of God. He is the better Israel.   Jesus Wins the Fight We see finally in verse 11 that Jesus wins this fight. Three things we see that show he wins the fight. First, he commands; second, Satan flees, and third, God provides. You see, up in verse 10, Jesus commands, Go away, Satan. Be gone, Satan. And what does Satan do? He has to obey him. So again, you see the dynamic here. You have Creator versus created being. Jesus created Satan, a fallen angel. That’s the dynamic here. This isn’t yin, yang. Good, evil, light, dark. What’s going to happen? Is he going to make it? This is Creator speaking to his created thing and saying, It’s time for you to go now. And Satan listens. He obeys and he leaves. He has won the fight. Jesus commands it, and Satan flees. The devil left him. Then God provides. Angels came and began to serve him or minister to him. That word minister is the Greek word Diaconos, where we get the word deacon from. One of the offices of the church. This ministry, this service, is often used to describe waiting tables, bringing food. I think what happens here is that God does actually provide then. Sending his angels to bring Jesus food. They served and ministered to him here at the end. Jesus trusted in God to provide, and what we see here at the end, Jesus wins the fight.   Jesus our Champion So, what do we walk away with in this passage? Well, friends, if you’re here and you’re a Christian, if you’ve trusted in Jesus, you see your champion, go to battle in your place. We’re not as familiar with champion warfare. It’s not a common tactic in warfare today, but it was common here in ancient Israel. It would have been common in the first century. Maybe you’ve seen it in movies. In Dune 2, we see this. The House of Harkonnen and the House of Atreides both send out their champions to fight. Whoever wins, that’s the house that wins. I’m not going to tell you who wins. In case you haven’t seen Dune 2. Who knows? Maybe you’ve seen it in Homer’s Iliad. This is what the great Achilles would do. He’d go out and fight as a representative of Troy. Whoever their enemy is, they’d send their champion out. They would fight. Whoever wins, their victory would be credited to their people. Or in the Old Testament, David and Goliath. That’s what happened. You send out your champions, and they fight. The victory is credited to their people. Friends, what we see here is the champion of the city of God and the champion of the city of man going head to head here in the wilderness. It is no battle. It is no fight. We see our champion, Jesus, go out on our behalf, and he defeats our enemy. He stands defeating sin, temptation, hell, the grave, once and for all. His victory is then given to us, his perfect righteousness. You see, he doesn’t fall into sin, but he actively obeys, trusting in God, in his protection, in his provision, and in his presence and in his plans perfectly. That record of righteousness we see is then given to every single person who believes in him. So if you’ve trusted in Jesus, here’s what you need to see. Jesus’s obedience here is now been given to you. It’s been credited to you. To use New Testament language, it’s this accounting term, like if you were to write a check and deposit it in your account, those funds get transferred to you. The righteousness of Jesus, his active obedience, his purity, like a check is written to you, and you now have access to it through faith. You don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. God doesn’t go, man, they’ve been doing a pretty good job. Let me give them a little righteousness. No, it’s. Anyone who believes in Jesus is then given this righteousness in its totality. So then, as you stand, Christian, even whenever you fall into sin, remember this reality that you have been wrapped in the righteousness of Jesus, and your standing before God is not dictated by how good you’re doing today. It is dictated by how well he did 2,000 years ago. It has been secured, it is finished, it is wrapped up and kept in heaven for you. That is the hope that you have, and you can rest in that righteousness. So we understand the need for our sins to be forgiven. It’s a beautiful thing, lots of songs about it. One of my favorites, It Is Well, I don’t know if you have heard that hymn. I love that one stanza. “My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part but the whole. Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul.” Oh, our sins need to be forgiven, and that’s what happens. Our sin, not part of it, not the decent parts of it. Our sin, not in part, but the whole, is taken and given to him. Passive obedience. It’s nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. But friends, what I hope we begin to see is not just that we need to be forgiven, but we need to become a perfect, spotless, righteous child of God in order to have this relationship with God. And we go, I can’t do that. Friends. Enter Jesus. This is the good news of the gospel. This salvation is not through your self-effort. This is every world religion. Salvation through self-effort. Whether it’s Islam’s five pillars, whether it’s the Eightfold path of Buddhism, or whether it’s Hindu reincarnation. Your salvation is dependent on your effort. Work your way up to God. Christianity is fundamentally different. That it is then given to you even though you did nothing to earn it or deserve it. That God came and he sent his son to die for you while you were still sinners. That’s where he demonstrated his love. Oh, and we rest in that righteousness as we not only have our sin forgiven, but his righteous record is given to us. So were we to rewrite that stanza of It Is Well, it doesn’t flow as well, but we begin to see the importance of this act of obedience as we can now sing. Oh, his obedience, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. His obedience, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to my life, and I bear it forevermore. Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, oh my soul. As we see his righteousness given to us, that’s what we walk away with.   Closing: The Invitation of Christ Maybe you’re here and you’re not a Christian. Again, I hope you hear the invitation of Jesus. This is the unique invitation of the gospel. I’ll just use his words later in Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 11, that because he has secured your salvation on your behalf, if you would believe in him, here’s his invitation to you: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I’m gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” You can rest in him if you’re tired, if you’ve been trying to save yourself. Hear the invitation of Jesus to come to him. Again, in the words of my good friend Letty, he can be a stroller to you. If you are tired and heavy laden, come and rest in him. This is the incredible invitation. You have been saved by works, they’re just not your own. That truth should cause a song to start welling up in our hearts. Our hearts, begging our tongues to begin to sing. That’s why so many songs have been written about this very fact. Thanking Jesus and praising him for his unbelievable and amazing grace, this righteousness that’s been given to us. Maybe you’ll start to sing these songs in a different way. “Rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath (passive obedience) and make me pure (active obedience)” “Behold him there, the risen Lamb, My perfect spotless righteousness.” “When I stand before the throne there dressed in beauty not my own, Then, Lord, shall I fully know not till that day how much I owe.” “All sufficient merit, Shining like the sun. A fortune I inherit of no work that I have done. My righteousness I forfeit at my Savior’s cross. Where all sufficient merit did what I could not.” “No condemnation now I dread. Jesus, and all in him, is mine. Alive in him, my living head. And clothed in righteousness divine.” “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.” “Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.” “Praise the Lord, Oh, my soul, praise the Lord. Now and forevermore, my heart confess that Christ is all my righteousness.” When that begins to settle down into our hearts, then maybe on that day when we’re facing our death, we may bring to mind this reality. Because then we’ll sing a song like this. Boldly, I approach my Father, clothed in Jesus’ righteousness. There is no more guilt to carry because it was finished upon that cross. So who knows? Maybe one day, as you face your own death, you may write a similar note. I am so thankful for the active obedience of Jesus. No hope without it. Let’s pray. God, thank you so much for your grace to us. Would you help us see the finished work of Jesus on our behalf? Would we find rest in him to see that truly it was finished upon that cross. May we rest in him. Trusting in your provision, in your presence, and in your plans, we pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.

  Introduction: Dr. Seuss, Bumps and Slumps Well, as a father of little kids, over the last few years, I have read my fair share of the great philosopher Dr. Seuss. This morning I’m going to read from the good Doctor one of the greatest books ever written in the English language, known as “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” “Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best. Wherever you go, you will be top of all the rest. Except when you don’t, because sometimes you won’t, I’m sorry to say, but sadly it’s true. The bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you. You can get all hung up in a prickly perch, and your gang will fly on and you’ll be left in a lurch. You’ll come down from the lurch with an unpleasant bump, and chances are then that you’ll be in a slump. And when you are in a slump, you’re not in for much fun. Unslumping yourself is not easily done.” I think these are profound words from the good Doctor. Sometimes in life, things go well. You’re flying at high heights, you’ve got a gang flying with you, you’re accomplishing great things, you’re at the top. You’re the best, better than all the rest. Then there are moments in life when it all comes crashing down. You get stuck in a prickly perch, and you’re left in a lurch. In those moments when you experience those difficult times, when you are left with the unpleasant bump, you will be in a slump. We all experience these slumps. Emotional slumps, spiritual slumps, relational slumps, slumps in our work life, our marriage, our parenting, our physical health, we all have moments. Sometimes these slumps are minor and they’re brief. Sometimes they’re long and devastating. They last for months or even years. When you’re in a slump, as Dr. Seuss says, unslumping yourself is really hard to do. In fact, apart from the help and grace of God, I would argue that unslumping yourself is impossible. So what do we do? How do we navigate the moments of slump? The moments where we feel like life has been hard, we’ve been beaten down, things have not gone the way we hoped or expected. What do we do in those moments? Or more importantly, how do we stay encouraged so we don’t give up on the most valuable things in life? How do we keep going and keep flourishing in the midst of a slump? How do we do that? One of the reasons the writer of Hebrews has written this book, this letter, this transcribed sermon that he sent to this local church, One of the reasons that he has written this letter is to encourage them in the midst of their slump. He recognizes that many of them are in a slump. A chunk of them are in a slump, and he wants them to keep going in the faith. He wants them to keep believing in Jesus, to stick with the Christian faith, and to flourish as God would have them flourish. So he writes this letter to encourage them. Now, for some of these Christians, as we’ve seen in the Book of Hebrews, some of them are in a slump because of their own laziness. They’ve just been lazy, sinful, stubborn, sluggish, as we talked about a few weeks ago. They’ve refused to dig into the living and active Word of God. They’ve refused to graduate from the milk to the meat, as we talked about a few weeks ago. And they are in a slump because of their own doing. Their own sinful, lazy choices have led them into this slump. But as we continue through the Book of Hebrews, we will see that some of them are in a slump because of the things that have been done to them by others. It’s not necessarily only their own laziness or their own sin. But sometimes the sin of other people against you can also throw you into a slump or create a slump in your life. We notice in the Book of Hebrews, as we travel through over the next few chapters, that there’s actually some growing persecution that this church is facing. These particular Christians that he’s writing to are experiencing some pretty significant hostility. There’s a lot of hostility towards Christianity growing in this region. In Hebrews chapter 10, we will read that these Christians, several of them, have had their houses and their property plundered, broken into, destroyed, and a bunch of their property stolen by people in their community just because they were Christians. We see that in Hebrews 10. Then in Hebrews 12, he’s going to say to them, Listen, none of you have gotten to the point where you’ve shed your blood yet. No one in this particular church has been killed for Christ yet in this season in this particular church. But it’s pretty obvious he’s alluding to the fact that it’s on the horizon pretty soon. None of you has died for Christ just yet. You’ve experienced being ostracized, your homes being broken into, having your property stolen, being alienated from your friends and family, and there is a growing hostility. You may not realize it, but very soon, aggression and violence are coming. He’s warning them about that. He’s alluding to that in Hebrews 12 and 13, and he wants them to be prepared for that. He’s like, you’re currently in a slump and you’re being persecuted, but the persecution is about to get worse. And I’m concerned that this slump you’re in is going to cause you to walk away from the faith when things get really hard. These Christians are facing, as Dr. Seuss would say, some pretty significant bang-ups and hang-ups. They’re going through it. Life has been hard for them. The writer of Hebrews, in the two verses we’re gonna look at in just a moment, gives them some encouragement in the midst of the slump. He alludes to one particular reality. There’s this one particular true thing about Jesus that will give you great encouragement when you’re going through the slump. In Hebrews 6:19 and 20, he highlights this one particular truth. This morning we’re going to look at this. We’re going to want to highlight it, and I want us to examine, think about, and reflect upon this particular truth, this one particular thing that Jesus has done on our behalf. So that when you are in a slump, when life has been difficult, when you’re feeling lonely, when you’re feeling or rejected or abandoned, when you feel like you’ve experienced disappointment or betrayal, when you’re experiencing suffering or death, disease, abuse, anxiety, when you’re facing hostility or aggression, or maybe even feeling the pressure to abandon Jesus. When you’re in those moments, there is a great hope that we have that we see in these two verses that will steady our souls in the midst of the slump. Here’s the truth, here’s what we’re going to see in these two verses: Our greatest hope is that Christ has gone before us into the heavenlies, and there will come a day when he brings us with him into the presence of God. That’s the hope that we have. Jesus has gone before us into the presence of God, and there will come a day when he brings us with him into his presence. That’s what we’ll see in these two verses this morning. So before we look at these two verses, let’s pray again and ask God for help. God, as we look at Hebrews chapter 6, verses 19 and 20, help us understand, help us see the truth that you have gone before us, and may this truth steady us and strengthen us in the midst of slumps. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.   Jesus Our Forerunner Look with me at Hebrews chapter 6, verse 19. The writer of Hebrew says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” It’s like, all right, listen up. This is what we have. Do you want your soul to be anchored? Do you want your soul to be steadied so that you don’t drift away? He goes, Here, this is what we have. Then in the second half of verses 19 and 20, he tells us, “This is the anchor, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.” There are two things in this phrase that he highlights that are of immense value to us. Jesus went into the inner place behind the curtain. That’s the first thing. Jesus went somewhere, the inner place behind the curtain, and he went there as a forerunner on our behalf. He went behind the curtain as a forerunner. That is the concept being unveiled here. If you understand how a first-century Hebrew Christian would have understood this, this is instantly mind-blowing. But for those of us who are 21st-century Christians divorced from 1st-century Jewish culture, this might not necessarily immediately be obvious to us. So I want to take some time this morning and I want to unpack, what is this phrase behind the curtain, and what does it mean to be a forerunner? I’m going to take that last one first. What does it mean to be a forerunner? A forerunner, Someone who goes ahead and sort of blazes the trail, makes the way possible. The person who goes ahead of you. A few months ago, my wife and I were looking for a house to buy in the area, and we were down in the Sawgrass Bay neighborhood. If you’re in the Sawgrass Bay neighborhood, way down South Clermont, the south end of 27, there’s a road that goes all the way over, going toward Disney Flamingo Crossing. The road goes for several minutes, and then it comes to a stop, and there’s a big sign that says, ‘Road will be opened and completed by January of 2024.’ And so there’s this big blockade there. If you come from the other side, if you come from Orange County, the Disney side, Flamingo Crossings, you could take that road. It goes for a little distance, and it comes to another blockade. But on either side, on the blockade, you can actually see. And in theory, Orange County and Lake County are supposed to connect these two roads. They’ve been saying they’re going to do this for several years now. If you’re in Claremont, Lake County side, you go, you go, you go. And then there’s a blockade. If you’re coming from the Orange County side, from Flamingo Crossings, you go down the road, and there’s a blockade. And it’s like 60 yards. It’s like several miles of road. And you can see it. It’s right there. Well, you can also then see there was dirt there and grass, and stuff. But then you begin to see, over time, tire tracks begin to go. So then a road was sort of made there that wasn’t supposed to be there because someone had blazed the trail. So some people started driving over this road and clearing the way. Then Orange County and Lake County decided to come along. They put up the big blockades. So now you can’t do that. But the point is, when you first get there, there might have been a bunch of grass. It would have been hard for your car to get there. But someone with a big truck, someone with some abilities or some equipment, some large vehicle went through that area and cleared it, making it possible for someone else to then follow along. That’s sort of what the concept of a forerunner is. Someone who goes ahead and clears the road so that someone behind can easily follow. That’s what the writer of Hebrews is saying Jesus has done for us here. He’s our forerunner. He went to a particular place, cleared the path so that we could then follow him into that particular place He went.   Behind the Curtain Well, where’s the place? He went well into the inner place. Behind the curtain. That’s the key term, behind the curtain. If you are a really good Old Testament student, you know precisely what he’s referring to. But most of us are not really good Old Testament students. That’s okay if you’re not. You’re not crazy. So we do a little bit of study, and it doesn’t take long for us to realize, this phrase behind the curtain is alluding to something from the Old Testament tabernacle. If you’re not familiar with the Old Testament tabernacle, let me give you a quick explanation. The Jewish people, the nation of Israel, were slaves in Egypt for 400 years under Egyptian tyranny. God then rescues them and brings them into the wilderness. They’re wandering around the wilderness for a period of time. This is right around the year 1400 BC. This has actually happened. It’s not a myth or a metaphor. It’s a real moment of history. The Israelites are pulled out of Egypt, and they’re wandering around the desert, and then God gives them this thing called the Tabernacle. These very clear instructions are to build this kind of portable house of worship, where God’s presence would be. He gives us very clear instructions. God’s presence is in one particular place in their tabernacle behind a particular curtain. That’s the language there. And so when the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus went behind the curtain, he’s saying Jesus went into the place where the glory and presence of God exists, and he clears out a path so that we can follow him into the presence and glory of God.  That’s, in essence, what’s going on here. In a few weeks, Lord willing, when we get to Hebrews chapter eight, we’ll look at this in more detail, because in Hebrews chapter eight, he explains why the tabernacle instruction and the blueprint were so particular. People will ask, Why does God give these instructions in the book of Exodus? It’s so particular. It’s so elaborate, it seems so detailed, and it seems unnecessary. And so we’ll get to that. In Hebrews chapter eight, he explains to us why the blueprints had to be so specific and so detailed. So we’ll get to that in a few weeks. But this morning, what I want to do is pause, and I want to look at a little bit of the design of the tabernacle to make sure we understand the incredible reality that Jesus went behind the curtain, that one day we will go with him. It’s a remarkable reality, but I think we often don’t fully understand. So what I want to do this morning is I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the design of the tabernacle. It’s a little bit nerdy. I apologize in advance, but I want to talk about the design of the tabernacle. Then I want to give you some observations, specifically five observations, as we examine the design of the tabernacle. There are five observations that I think will be helpful to us as believers this morning. So I’m gonna do something that I rarely ever do. I’m gonna put up a picture. So this is a kind of a modern-day replica of what the temple, what the tabernacle may have looked like. It may not be perfect. I looked at a bunch online over the last couple of days, trying to find one that I thought was good. But this is the closest one. Not perfect, but relatively close. You can see there’s an electrical box tied. They didn’t have that. That wasn’t in the book of Exodus. There was no electrical box. So ignore that.     That gives you an idea of the tabernacle. There’s this big area with an outer court boundary and then a big tent in the middle where the presence of God lived. So you see here, the outside was basically like pipe and drape. You know, it was basically like a church plant 3,400 years ago. Anyway, so they had some pipe and drape like we have here this morning. Of course, the outside drapes there. Then they have a gate where you can enter into hat was facing the front of the tent. There’s a gate there or an opening area there. Then there’s the outer courtyard. That’s the area that’s outside the tent, but on the inside of the boundary, it’s called the outer courtyard. The outer courtyard was about 150ft by about 75ft. So about from the gate to the back of the tabernacle, you have about half the size of a football field. Lengthwise, when you first walked in, there was the bronze altar. On the bronze altar, animals would be burnt up in the ascension offering, or they would be dismembered and slaughtered for the sin offering. God would take the guilt of the person or the peoples, and put it on the animal. The animals would be slaughtered, suffering the punishment of that person. The visual you would get when you watched an animal being slaughtered on the altar was, that should be me. My sin deserves that. The blood was messy. The blood would be splattering. The priest would have blood on him, it would be dirty. You would smell the dead animal that was being burned up. You would smell the burnt flesh. It was a picture of what sin deserves. Beyond the bronze altar, there would be a basin of water. That’s where the priests would wash themselves. The Israelites were not allowed to go beyond the bronze altar. That was the barrier. You couldn’t go beyond that. Only the priests could go, the Levites. It’s only a handful of the Israelite people out of almost a million people. Only a handful of them could ever go past the bronze altar. So they would go beyond the bronze altar to the little basin of water. That’s where they would wash themselves. There was a particular ritual they would go through to wash themselves properly. And then they would go into the actual tabernacle, the tent. When they first went in, the first half of the tent was called the Holy Place. In the Holy Place, on the right-hand side, was a table with the showbread. On the left-hand side, there would be a lamp stand, a menorah. There in the middle of the holy place was another altar where they would offer the incense. So that’s the holy place. Then, at the back of the holy place, about halfway through the tent, there is a dark purple curtain that separates the front half of the tent from the back half of the tent. There was a dark purple curtain. On the other side of the dark purple curtain, we called that the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies initially was just the Ark of the Covenant, this big golden box, for lack of better terms, that had the Ten Commandments, the tablets in it. And only one priest, not all the priests, only one priest could go into the Holy of Holies. Only once a year, he could go in. In the Holy of Holies, behind the curtain, you could call that the most glorious place on earth. The most glorious spot in all of the universe. The presence of God was with the people of God in the Old Testament. You could sense the presence of God in the outer courts, for sure, but there are different degrees. So where the bronze altar was, the people of God would walk into the tabernacle, they’d walk into the outside boundary, and they could sense the presence of God. Then, when you got beyond the altar, you could sense more of the presence of God, to a greater degree. Then, when the priests would go into the Holy Place, the front half of the tent, they would experience even more of the presence of God. So there are these degrees or zones of presence. But once you got beyond the curtain, that’s where the fullness of the glory and presence of God was manifested, in the Holy of Holies. On the other side of the curtain, that’s where you have the maximum amount of God’s power being displayed. You have the maximum amount of joy that could ever be had. The maximum amount of happiness that could ever be had was there in that moment, in that place. The maximum amount of pleasure and rest and peace and supernatural warmth, and love. That’s what was happening in the Holy of Holies. When you crossed into the Holy of Holies, that was happening in that place. This is how the Psalms express the presence of God. When you go into the fullness of the presence of God, Psalm 16:11 says this, “In your presence is the fullness of joy.” All of the joy there is to be had is had in the presence of God. At your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That’s the presence of God. The maximum amount of that is what the priest would experience once per year, just one day a year, for one moment a year. The high priest, when he went behind the curtain.   5 Observations about the Tabernacle When we think about the design of the tabernacle, there are five observations that I want to give you this morning. Five things that I think will be interesting and helpful to us as we think about the tabernacle. Here’s my first observation. 1. God wants to dwell with his people. The entire structure of the tabernacle would be put right in the middle of the Israelite camp. The 12 tribes of Israel, all the people, were to camp in a big circle around the tabernacle. The tabernacle was right in the middle, the epicenter of the Israelite people. All of the people were around them, and all their tents faced the tabernacle. God is shouting to us, I want to be with my people, and I will come with them and be right in the middle of them. The very existence of the tabernacle is evidence of God’s kindness. He didn’t have to. He could have stayed up on the mountain, Mount Sinai. He could have stayed there, and Moses could have come up and experienced the presence of God, and no one else. But God says, No, I want my people to experience me. So I will go down to them. I will put a tabernacle right in their midst. Like a good father, God longs to be with his children. I am a sinful man and a mediocre father. I feel like sometimes, if I’m honest. But I tell you, I love being with my kids. There are very few things in life I prefer to do more than hang out with my kids. A couple of nights ago, Lettie (Lettie’s our three-year-old) and I were playing Connect 4. She doesn’t really understand the rules of Connect 4. She put three red, and I put my yellow to block her. She got very angry that I blocked her. Like that’s the point. She goes, no, Dada. No, you go in this one, Dada. She was very angry that I blocked her. We’ve been playing bingo. She doesn’t really understand. We’ve been working on it. We’re learning. We love bingo. Playing bingo and Connect Four with a three-year-old did not seem appealing to me as a single man. When I was single, I did not think that was an exciting Friday night. But I gotta tell you now, Friday night rolls around and there are very few things I’d rather do than play bingo with my 3-year-old daughter. Saturday morning, she gets up, Dad, Dad, you want to play bingo? Absolutely. Because I want to be with my child, and I’m a sinner. How much more does the perfect heavenly father want to be with his children? He loves us way more than I love my kid and longs to be with us. The very existence of the tabernacle is the evidence that God wants to be amidst his people. It shouts to us the kindness of God that he invites us to experience him. In the Gospel of John, in chapter one of the Gospel of John, the Greek word used when Jesus becomes flesh and he dwelt among them. The literal Greek word there is the same Greek word used when we translate the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek. It’s the exact same word for tabernacle. So the literal translation would be Jesus became a man, and he tabernacled amongst them. That’s the literal translation. When Jesus came, He dwelt with us. He was with us because he loves us. God wants to dwell with his people. 2. God is unapproachably holy. While God wants to dwell with us, he is unapproachably holy. The Israelites in the Old Testament were terrified to approach God. In fact, in Exodus 19, God invites all of them up the mountain. Rather, it wasn’t just Moses. He invites all of the people, and they’re terrified of him. They go, we don’t want to go anywhere near you, Moses, you go. They don’t want to come. So God says, okay, I’ll come down the mountain to you. But they know that because of their own sin, they can’t come to him. Exodus 33, verse 5 says this. This is God speaking to Moses: “You are stiff-necked. If, for one single moment, I would go down to you and be among you, I would consume you.” So God wants to dwell with his people, but because we are so sinful and so stubborn, because we are so stiff-necked, if he actually did show up in his full presence, it would burn us all up; we’d be consumed. Because he is holy. If someone approaches him in sin, God demands that that be dealt with. 3. God hates sin, and he demands that it be dealt with before we enter his presence. He hates sin, and he demands that it be dealt with before we enter his presence. God did not merely wipe sin clean and forget about it. So God created a system where sin could be properly dealt with, properly addressed, properly navigated, and punished. God hates sin. And because we are sinful, if we come right into his presence, it would burn us up, it would kill us. But God wants us to experience him. He wants us to come to Him. So he has made a way for our sin to be dealt with so that ultimately we can come to Him. This is why the tabernacle is structured the way it is. As soon as you walk in, immediately there’s a sacrifice to be made. Then the priest would go a little further into the presence of God, and they would wash themselves properly. Then they would go into the holy place more the presence of God. And there’s another altar there for another sacrifice to be made before they could enter into the fullness of God and the Holy of Holies. In the design of the tabernacle, God is telling us, before you can come and experience me, your sin must be punished. Your sin must be dealt with, atoned for, and eradicated. On the day of atonement, once per year, the high priest, the great high priest, before he entered the Holy of Holies, would make extra special offerings on that day before he would enter in. God is making it clear, you cannot just waltz into my presence with your sin, undealt with, and expect that’s going to be okay. It must be properly dealt with. In the Old Testament, it was dealt with through animal sacrifice, where the animals, the guilt of the person, would be put on the animal. Those of us who are Christians living now after the cross, the cross is where our sin is dealt with. Your guilt, your shame, if you are a believer, is put on Jesus at the cross, and he is punished. He is the sacrifice. 4. The tabernacle helps us understand how Jesus dealt with our sin. The design of the tabernacle helps us understand how Jesus dealt with our sin. Jesus dealt with our sin very similarly to the way the priest dealt with the sins of the people. However, there’s a massive difference in impact. The Old Testament system, where the priest is sacrificing animals in the tabernacle, could deal with sin temporarily. The sins, the sacrifices, only lasted for a year, every year. They had to keep making sacrifices year after year after year after year after year. And the Old Testament system only dealt with sin so much that only one person could experience the presence of God for one day a year. That’s it. The Old Testament dealt with sin temporarily, and the only access it gave was one person for one day into the presence of God. But the sacrifice of Jesus is permanent. It doesn’t purchase access to the presence of God for one person for one day a year. Oh no. The sacrifice of Jesus purchases permanent access for all who would believe forever. Praise be to God. The sacrifice that Jesus made was way better. Hebrews 9 says this. Hebrews 9:13: “If the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could sanctify, how much more will the blood of Christ purify our conscience?” If animals could do a few things for some people, how much more will the sacrifice of the Son of God be? Jesus purchased much more for us than animals could purchase for the Israelites. Joyce read from Ephesians chapter two for us. Earlier, the apostle Paul says to the Ephesian Church, “We were once far off, but now we have been brought near to God by the blood of Christ.” 5. Jesus will bring us into the holy of holies. We will enter into that place where the maximum amount of joy and happiness and peace. Peace. Where the maximum amount of love and power could ever be experienced, where the fullness of the presence of God. Where we experience him and find our pleasure and Satisfaction in him and he in us. This incredible joy-filled experience that will go on forever and ever and ever. We will go into the Holy of Holies because Christ was our forerunner, has blazed the trail, and made it possible for us to enter in.   The Glory To Come The Old Testament did that temporarily for one person, one day a year. The New Testament system, the new covenant, the better covenant, deals with our sin permanently and gives all of us permanent access to his presence forever. Jesus has gone behind the curtain, and we, too, will go behind the curtain with him one day. That’s the main point of Hebrews chapter 6, verses 19 and 20. He is our forerunner. We will go into the holy of holies. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, in the moments where you face difficulty, in the moments where you are in a slump, in the moments where you face the bang-ups and hang-ups of life, let this truth be the thing that strengthens you and encourages you, solidifies and steadies your soul. May this truth, may this reality, may this particular thing that Jesus did, that he went behind the curtain, may that be your encouragement in this life and into the next, forever and ever. Church, one day we will experience the fullness of the presence of God. We will go behind the curtain. One day, when this sinful and broken world passes away, we will walk into the presence of God, and we will look back on the suffering of this life, and it will feel small. The Apostle Paul says this to the Corinthian Church. Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 17 and 18. Paul says this: “For this light and momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison.” Paul’s saying, the things you face in this life, they’re hard. The suffering you face is real. It’s difficult. But there’s going to come a day in glory. When you look back at this and go, you know, compared to how great this is, those sufferings actually feel pretty small. That’s not to make light of the suffering you experience. The suffering we experience is real, it’s grand, it’s significant. But the glory that is to come is so much more grand, so much more amazing, so much more awesome than anything we can experience in this life, that the sufferings of this world will feel very light. Paul says to us, This will feel light and momentary. There’s an eternal weight of glory awaiting us beyond anything you can ever compare it to in this life.   Closing: Holy of Holies The Book of Revelation. Last thought for this morning. The Book of Revelation, toward the very end. The last few chapters give us some description of what it will be like when we enter glory. If you take the dimensions of the new Jerusalem, the city that we will all end up in glory when we’re all there in the new city. If you take the dimensions, the shape, and the material that that city is made of, and you compare it to the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament, they’re identical. If you take the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle in the Old Testament 3,400 years ago, and you make it really big, you scale it up, you get the new Jerusalem. It’s exactly the dimensions, the shape, the material. When we read Revelation, we see, oh, that the Holy of Holies was simply a foreshadowing of what we will experience forever and ever. What the priests experience momentarily once a year is what we will experience forever. We will be in the Holy of Holies. That’s our final destination as believers. Here’s how the Apostle John describes it in Revelation 21. He’s looking upon this grand holy of holies. Revelation 21. He says this. “Behold the plate. The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. 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.” We will be with Him. His dwelling place will be with us. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. We will experience him forever because Christ, our Forerunner, went before us. This is possible because of what Jesus has done on our behalf.   Communion That’s why each week we pause and take communion here at Horizon City Church. Each week, we pause to take communion, to remember what Christ, our Forerunner, has done on our behalf. That he has made it possible for us to enter into the Holy of Holies and enjoy him forever. That we will go into, as the Psalms call it, the house of Zion, where we will feast with him. Where we will feast on the abundance that he provides. We will weep no more, and we will cry out with shouts of joy forever and ever and ever. Church, we will go into the house of Zion, into the Holy of Holies, into the full presence of God, and we will experience his joy forever and ever and ever.  

https://youtu.be/emGoSP-K_o4?si=s-wCzCmXUgIpdPxk   Introduction: Friend from Chicago Well, there are a lot of people in the room who have never been with us. So typically, I start sermons with some illustration or funny story or some insight from my life. Usually some ridiculous thing I’ve done recently. That’s typical in a lot of ways. But this morning I want to start with something a  little more sobering. I want to talk about a friend of mine who lives in Chicago, just a few years younger than I am. I did ministry with this man many years ago, back in 2009, 2010, and 2011. He and I were friends, and he loved Jesus. In fact, I would tell you, man, I was more confident that this guy loved Jesus more than I love Jesus. I was more confident in his salvation than my own. I was so confident that he was more committed to the mission of God than even I was. But over the last several years, over time, he started to question elements of the Christian faith. He started to voice some concerns or thoughts. He had some doctrines that he wasn’t sure he quite believed in. Over time, he began to sort of shift away from Christian practice and began to neglect being around other believers. Then Covid hit, and that made it pretty easy for him to stop connecting with believers, and he never really reconnected to church after that. Then he started to dabble with some pretty gross sins, particularly when it comes to sexuality. Over the last few months, he began to post some things that raised the eyebrows of many of us. And just a few weeks ago, he announced on Instagram that he had left his wife and his two kids to go live with another man, to be in a same sex relationship. He says he’s no longer a Christian. He still holds to some elements of the Christian faith, or there are some elements of the Bible he thinks are valuable. But functionally, he’s not a believer. For the friends who have been in our friendship circle with this guy over the years, this has been immensely painful. And more than that, this is immensely painful for his wife and kids. Heartbroken. So I’m concerned for his family and their welfare, and what’s going to look like for them in the coming years. But I’m also incredibly concerned for my friend’s soul. I’m heartbroken because I know that the trajectory he is on, he will one day stand before the living God in judgment, and he will experience the full wrath of God. That makes me really, really sad. So I’ve had to grapple with this question all over again. As I’ve been thinking about the situation with my good friend in Chicago and I’ve reached out to him over the last few weeks, and he wants nothing. He’s like, no, I don’t want to talk. Because he knows that I’m not going to just let it slide. I’ve got a reputation. So he basically just ignored me and ghosted me a couple of weeks ago. I thought about looking on Priceline.com, and seeing what the tickets to Chicago cost. I thought about just showing up one day at his house. So we’re going to grapple with this all over again. Lord, was he ever really a Christian, or was he a fake, or was he genuine and then somehow lost his salvation? That’s the grapple.   Can Christians Lose Their Salvation? This question has been hotly debated amongst Christians for pretty much the last 300 years. There are certainly moments in Christian history where this debate has come up throughout the last 2,000 years of Christian history. So it’s not a new debate. But the debates around this particular question have been particularly acute over the last 300 years or so. The question is, can a genuine Christian lose their salvation? That’s the question. Let’s frame the debate properly. When a person comes to faith in Christ, when someone says, I believe in Jesus, we believe that that person is then ushered into a friendship with God where they can have a genuine, joy-filled, intimate friendship with God. Their sins are forgiven, and then the Holy Spirit comes into that person’s soul and transforms their soul. There’s this supernatural, mysterious thing that the Spirit of God does in the life of the genuine believer that can’t even really be articulated or fully explained. It allows us to enjoy the happiness and joy of God. And this transformation gives us the power to fight sin. So there’s an expectation that we will be able to say no to sin. Over the course of time, that power in our life, it grows. So we should expect that someone who’s a believer, over the course of time they will sin less than they did earlier in their faith. They’re never going to be sinless. We’re always going to have sin in this life until we are fully in glory. But we should expect that over time, there should be less sin in our lives. If someone is sinning the same amount for decades, you have to question whether or not the power of God is really at work in that person’s life. But the question becomes, is it possible for that to all be undone? A person who comes to faith is forgiven; they’re transformed with the Holy Spirit. If they were to die at that moment, they would go to heaven. But could that be undone? Could they say, I choose to reject Jesus, I no longer believe in Jesus, and now I used to have a ticket to heaven, and now that’s been taken from me, and now I’m on my way towards judgment. Is that possible? There are two camps throughout church history. Two groups. There’s more than just two, actually. The conversation can be a little complicated. There’s some nuance to it, there are variations of it, but generally speaking, there are two big camps to this question. There’s one camp that says yes, one camp that says no.   Two Viewpoints So, group one, these are the Christians that would say, yes, that a genuine Christian can lose their salvation. They would say that this person, who was a believer, had they died while they were still believing, while they were still living for Jesus, they would have gone to heaven. But now, since they’ve stopped believing, since they’ve walked away from faith, now if they die because of their unbelief, they would face the wrath of God. This group would say to me, Kenny, yes, your friend in Chicago was indeed a genuine Christian. And had he died back in 2010, he would be with Jesus. But over the last decade or so, he has made some choices where he has now lost that promise of heaven. If he were to die today, he would be, unfortunately, tragically, in hell. That’s group one. Group one would say, yes, you can lose your salvation. Then there’s a second group. The second group would say, no, a genuine Christian cannot lose their salvation. That group would say that a professing believer, someone who claims to be a Christian, but later walks away from the faith, was actually never truly a believer. They may have believed some elements of Christianity, but there was still in their harder hearts, some level of unbelief, some seeds of doubt that they never really dealt with. That over time, those seeds can grow, causing the person to outright reject the Christian faith. So group two would say to me, Kenny, your friend, no, he was never a genuine believer. All along, those seeds of doubt were there. The unbelief was in his heart. Maybe it was small, maybe he didn’t realize it. Certainly, you didn’t realize it, but it was there all along. He was never genuinely saved. He may have convinced himself he was a Christian. He may have fooled you, he may have even fooled himself, but he never fooled God. Eventually, inevitably, for maybe a myriad of reasons, the unbelief took root, grew, and this person walked away from their faith, but they were never genuine. That’s the idea. That’s group number two. Had he died at any point in his life, his trajectory would have been the wrath of God. His trajectory would have been hell. He was never truly ever headed for heaven. That’s what Group 2 would say. Now, I want to make it very clear. I believe there are faithful Christians on both sides of the debate. I think there are people who love God, who love the Bible, who genuinely love Jesus with all their hearts, who disagree on this issue. And that’s okay. I think there are faithful Christians in both group one and group two. There’s this element of American culture that’s evolved over the last 20 to 25 years, where anyone who is not like us, anyone who disagrees with me, is awful and terrible. That has seeped into evangelicalism. So, anyone who disagrees with you on any issue, that person is a heretic. That is not at all what this debate would be about. There are genuine Christians on both sides of the debate. However, one of them is wrong. They can’t both be right. It doesn’t work. No, they are fundamentally at odds. So I am in one of these two groups. Many of you may already know which group I’m in. That’s all right. I think the other one is wrong. But I don’t think they’re heretics. There are still a lot of great friends. I know a lot of people who love Jesus that I trust who disagree with me on this issue. And it’s okay to be friends with people who disagree with you. Can I get an Amen? That was an amen moment. That was a good one. Anyway, so here’s our plan for this morning. For the next few moments, we’re going to look at this passage of Scripture, Hebrews chapter six, that Daniel just read for us. Because this passage, Hebrews chapter six, really is sort of at the heart of the debate. For those of you who have not been with us for the last few months as a church, we’ve been traveling through the Book of Hebrews. We believe in expository preaching. We’re going through the Book of Hebrews chapter by chapter, section by section, over the last few months, and we have finally come to the middle section of Hebrews chapter six. This particular passage is really at the heart of this debate. When group one and group two are debating, this is the passage that many of them are looking at. There are certainly others, but this is typically the most common or the most controversial one that people look at. So we’re going to look at this passage. I’m going to tell you: Here’s how group one interprets it, Here’s how group two interprets it. Then I’m going to tell you what group I’m in, although many of you already know. Then what I’m going to do is we’re going to end the morning with just some pastoral insights, I think, on how to use this passage in our everyday lives. How does this passage actually apply to me? Right, so that’s the plan. How does group one interpret this? How does group two interpret this? What group is Kenny in and why? And more importantly, how does this passage apply to our lives? That’s the plan for the next few moments together. Before we do that, let’s pray and ask for God’s help one more time. God, as we look at this passage, would you help us? Help us to understand it? And I pray that every single one of us will walk out of this place loving you more than we did when we came in. In Christ’s name, I pray these things. Amen.    Deeper Look at the Two Viewpoints If you have your Bibles, look at Hebrews chapter 6, verse 4 says this, “For it is impossible in the case of those who…” Let’s stop there. No, he didn’t get very far. He’s about to tell us that there’s a group of people, a category of people, that cannot do something. It is impossible. There’s something that’s impossible. For in the case of those who. There’s a particular group of people, he’s like, there’s a category of people who can’t do something. That’s what he’s about to tell us. He’s going to explain to us who this is. But before we look at who the category is, I want to highlight what they can’t do. Look at verse six. He says this “To restore them again to repentance.” So there’s a category of people for whom it is impossible to restore them again to repentance. There’s a particular category of human Beings that are so lost, so far from God, their hearts are so jaded that they’ve actually lost the ability to repent and ask God for forgiveness. Yikes. I do not want to be in that category. That would not go well for us. So, who are these people? Who are these people that have seemingly reached a point where they are now incapable of asking God to forgive them; therefore, they will never be forgiven of their sin. Who are these people? Look at verse four, the middle part of verse four, he says “It’s those that have once been enlightened who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the ages, of the age to come, and then have fallen away.” So these people who were once enlightened, their minds understood something. They tasted the heavenly gift, they tasted the goodness of the word of God, but for some reason, at some point, they fell away. My friend in Chicago is in this category. These are people who seemingly have tasted in some genuine or profound fashion the goodness of God. Look at how each group, group one and group two, thinks about this category. So, group one would say this clearly describes a genuine believer. Group one would say, Hebrews 6 is talking about Christians who are headed for heaven but then reject Jesus and walk away and lose their salvation. And now they’re headed for hell. Isn’t that obvious? They were enlightened. They tasted the heavenly gift, they shared the Holy Spirit, they tasted the goodness of the word. Like that’s clearly describing Christians who have then fallen away. That’s how group one would describe these people. However, group two would say, this does not describe a genuine Christian. It describes the person who has gotten really, really close but never truly believed. If that is right, that should frighten us. Group two would say, yes, these people in Hebrews 6, this category of person that Hebrews 6 is talking about, these people, yes, they’ve come so close. They went to church, they did the Christian stuff. Maybe they were super generous and hospitable. They got baptized, and they went to Bible study. They may have even done some supernatural miracles at some point in their life. They came oh, so close, but never truly digested the glory and goodness of God into their souls. That’s how the two groups would interpret this passage. Group one would say, Hebrews 6 is talking about Christians who have then fallen away. Group 2 would say, no, Hebrews 6 is talking about this group of people who looked like Christians. They were in church every week. They did all the Christian stuff. But down deep in their heart, there was still a significant unbelief that kept them from ever really fully experiencing what God has for them.   Pastor Kenny’s Viewpoint So that’s how these two groups interpret this passage. Which group am I in? I told you I would tell you what group I’m in. I don’t think it’s a shock to anyone. I am in group number two. If you disagree with me, we can still be friends. I think you’re wrong, but we can still be friends. I would say that my friend, who lives in Chicago, who has walked away from his family, as shocking and as disorienting as it is for me, was never truly a believer. I’m going to tell you why I believe that. There are some clues in the text that I think give us that. Then there are some other passages elsewhere in the New Testament that I want to look at as well. So we’ll look at that. Skip down with me in Hebrews 6 to verses 7 and 8. He’s going to give a farming analogy, which is an analogy as far away as my brain can understand. My idea of farming and fishing is walking down aisle three of Publix. But he gives a farming illustration here, verses seven and eight. Look at verse seven. He says this, “For the land has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those whose sake it is cultivated, and receives a blessing from God.” So he’s like, there’s a plot of land and there’s rain that’s falling on it. And the plot of land produces good crops, fruit. That’s useful. Then he says this in verse 8, “But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.” So he’s like, imagine a bunch of plots of land and there’s rain falling on all of them. All of them, it seems like, are being watered well, and the rain is getting into the land really well. There looks like there’s some action in all the plots of land. There’s some greenery popping up, and there’s some animals running through, and there’s some flowers. It seems like all these plots of land are receiving the rain, which is a symbol for the Holy Spirit. They’re all receiving the Holy Spirit, and they’re all doing good, they’re all about to grow up. Then all of a sudden, after a lengthy period of time when they all look like they’re all doing good, some of them produce good crops and some of them produce thorns and thistles. This would be a shock. All of these plots of land look like they’re all doing well. There’s action, there’s stuff, there’s foliage, there’s stuff growing, there’s stuff happening. But all of a sudden, one of these is producing. Some of these plots of land are producing fruit, helpful, beneficial crops. And some of them are producing thorns and thistles. That’s the illustration. When you’re interpreting Hebrews 6, this is the illustration I want you to think about. The plots of land that eventually produced thorns and thistles. They were always going to produce thorns and thistles. They were never going to produce good fruit. The seeds that are in that dirt were not for good crops. It was always going to produce bad crops. So to us, we thought good crops were going to come of this. But then, eventually, the things that were truly planted in that dirt come to fruition. So the person who looks like they believe in Jesus, but then some thorns and thistles, some, metaphorically speaking, some things come from their life that are negative. That was planted in their heart all along. They were never going to produce fruit. They were never a plot of land that could be relied upon for a crop that would be helpful. Here’s what he says about those plots of land, worthless, near to being cursed, will be burned. God, I don’t want that to be of me. Please, God, would you root out the seeds of thorns and thistles in my heart? If you are a plot of land, spiritually speaking, where thorns and thistles are planted and may grow, you are close to being cursed by God, and you will face being burned. I didn’t write it. Don’t get mad at me. It’s there. He wrote it. That should make every single one of us shake in our boots just a little bit this morning. I love preaching on the goodness of God, the grace of God, the love of God, the mercy of God; it’s like my favorite things to preach on. So when I get to this kind of passage, I gotta be honest, I wish I could tell you I’m like, you know, so thick-skinned that these passages don’t bother me not at all. These passages sit in my soul. They’re hard pills to swallow. I’ve been hanging out in this passage all week, and it’s been heavy. The reality that there are people in my life that I think are good plots of land, but inevitably, eventually are going to bring forth thorns and thistles. That haunts me. So this is the imagery of Hebrews, chapter six. I don’t think, again, with all due respect to my friends who disagree with me on this, I don’t believe that a genuine Christian can lose their salvation. But it is possible for someone to think they are genuine and not be. It’s possible to fool yourself into thinking these people who have been enlightened there’s some understanding of scripture. They share in the Holy Spirit. They taste the goodness of God. They’ve tasted the powers of the age to come in the future, the perfect age. There’s power in that age that is seeping back into this age. And sometimes we can taste them. Even these people they can taste that they come oh, so close, but never cross over into true belief. How tragic. Earlier, I mentioned that I think some of these people can even do miracles in moments. And that may be shocking to some until you hear the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 7. Jesus is talking about this exact group of people, this category of really close people, and they come to him on judgment day. In Matthew 7, verse 22. This is what it says. “On that day, many will say to me, (this is Jesus speaking.) Many will say to me, lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name?” Didn’t we do all the great Christian stuff? We cast out demons. We were prophesying Jesus. We were miracle workers on your behalf in heaven with you now. And Jesus says to them, “I never knew you. Depart from me.” There are people who have done all the Christian stuff really well. People who’ve even done miraculous things that stand before Jesus, and they’re like, Jesus, look at my resume. All the good stuff I did. And he’s like, I don’t know you. We’ve never been friends. You came oh, so close. But you never genuinely allowed my goodness to get into your heart. The seeds of thorns and thistles, the seeds of unbelief, were still there. Depart from me, he says to them on that day, and we should beg God that that not be us.   Additional Scripture References There are a few other passages of scripture. There are dozens in the New Testament that we could go to, but there’s one clear one. This is the verse that I think most clearly answers the question, Can a Christian lose their salvation? That’s First John 2:19. He says this, He’s speaking of people who were once a part of the church and then walked away from faith. He says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out for us. That it might become plain that they were not of us.” These people who were with us they went out from us. They rejected us. They no longer believe in Jesus. But I want you to know they left us because they were not of us. How do I know that they were not of us? Because if they were of us, they would have stuck with us. The reason why this was made plain, the reason why Jesus allowed them to be exposed, is that we would know which were the good plots, which were where. The plots with thorns and thistles. Genuine Christians will stick with Jesus all the days of their life, but it’s not because of your effort or what you have done. If you could lose your salvation, you would. If you could walk away from Jesus, you would. But you can’t because he has promised to keep you. Listen to God’s word. Isaiah 41:13 says this, “I am the Lord your God. I will take hold of your right hand. Do not fear, I will hold you.” Isaiah 46:4. “I will be your God throughout your lifetime. I made you, I will care for you.” I made you, I will care for you. He says. Psalm 37:28, “The Lord will not forsake his saints. They will be preserved forever.” If you are truly one of his, you will be preserved forever. There ain’t nothing you could do about it. Philippians 1:6 says this, “I am sure of this. (The Apostle Paul speaking.) I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will complete it to the day of Christ Jesus.” He, the one who started it. Jesus. He started the work. He’s going to finish it. You didn’t start the work that made you a Christian, so you’re not going to end the work that keeps you a Christian. He started to work in you, and he will bring it to completion as he sees fit. You will not be able to get away from him. Jude 24 says this, “He is able to keep you from stumbling.” He is able, not you are able to keep yourself from stumbling. Not, you are able to figure out a way to stop stumbling. No. No. He. He. He will keep you from stumbling. John 10, Jesus speaking. John 10: 28-30 says this, speaking of true believers, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them from my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, He is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them from my Father’s hand.” There’s a group of people, genuine Christians, that the Father has given to Jesus. The Father said, Jesus, they’re yours. This is my gift to you, son. And the Father says to Jesus, You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make sure that none of them gets lost. So if you’re a genuine believer, the reason you will stick with Jesus is not because of what you can accomplish, it is because of what the Father has promised to his Son.   How Do We Apply This Passage to Our Lives? One of the things that I’ve noticed amongst those of us who are in group two, those of us who would say genuine Christians cannot lose their salvation. One of the things I’ve noticed is that, while I believe it to be true, God will hold us fast, He will hold us strong. He will hold us tight. He’s never going to let us go. That is true. So sometimes what we do is we see passages like Hebrews chapter six, and we go, whoo. Glad that doesn’t apply to me. We ignore it and move on to the next chapter. We functionally render the entire chapter obsolete. If you rightly interpret a passage, the response ought not be, I guess I could ignore that one and move on to the next one. That’s totally illogical. So, what do we do with this passage, this warning in chapter six? Of course, there are many other warnings, as those who’ve been traveling with us through the Book of Hebrews, there’s almost every chapter, there’s some significant warning. There are multiple warnings throughout the Book of Hebrews. What do we do with this passage, then? It’s our last thing to hit on this morning. I told you. How do we apply this passage to our lives? There are several moments in scripture that I think we could look at, some narratives that help us understand how to use some of these passages. But we only have time for one this morning. So my favorite passage, I think, models for us how to use a warning passage like Hebrews 6. If this passage is not talking about us, genuine Christians, how does it apply to our lives? Well, the best narrative I think, models this for us is in Acts, chapter 27. If you want to turn there, you can. In Acts chapter 27, the apostle Paul had just been on trial in Judea, and he ends up being put on a ship to head to Rome because he’s going to be on trial in front of the Roman Emperor, in front of Caesar. So he’s traveling there. While he is traveling, He’s on a ship traveling across the Mediterranean Sea. There’s a massive storm that hits, and there are choppy waters and multiple storms happening in Acts chapter 27. An angel of God, the angel of the Lord, comes to Paul and gives him a vision and tells him that not one of the men on your ship is gonna die. 100% of them are gonna make it. There are 276 men on board, Acts tells us, and they’re all gonna make it. The boat’s gonna make it. Everyone’s gonna survive. Great. That’s really good. God has sent a message so these men can feel secure and know, I’m going to make it. Several days pass by, and there have been several bad storms, multiple near misses. So around the 14th day, around midnight, late at night on the 14th day of the trip, they are getting really close to some rocks. Some of the men on the ship are going to jump ship. So Paul goes to the Centurion. He’s the leader of the crew. He’s the highest-ranking official on the ship. You would expect that these men who are about to jump ship, you would expect that Paul might say something like this, I heard an angel, that all of us are going to survive. So it doesn’t matter if they jump or not. They can jump. It doesn’t matter what they do. Everyone’s going to survive. That’s not what Paul says. It’s a little odd, actually, at first. He says to the centurion, Unless these men stay on the ship, you cannot be saved. If any of these men jump off the ship, the ship’s not going to make it, and we’re all going to die. Well, Paul, that seems contrary to what the angel of the Lord told you, that everyone was going to survive. That doesn’t make sense. So Paul tells the Centurion and all the men stay on the ship. Here’s what we see: God makes a promise, you’re going to survive, Christians. Then, later, he issues warnings. Our obedience to the warning is the thing that keeps us close to him to fulfill the promise he gave us, right? So he says the angel said, Paul, all 276 men, they’re all going to make it. 14 days later, he’s like, guys, if you jump, we’re all gonna die. And they go, whoa. No one jumps. And they all live. By obeying the warning, the promise is fulfilled. I think that’s precisely what we get in the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 6 and elsewhere in the book of Hebrews, elsewhere in the New Testament, there are these warnings for Christians, and it would be easy for us to go, well, I know I’m gonna get to heaven no matter what, so I can do whatever I want. Sometimes people live that way. Well, I’m a believer. I know I’m going to heaven. And they go live like hellions. No, no. The warning of scripture is to obey Jesus. That’s the warning. Although I know I’m going to heaven, I know I’m saved. I know I will be with him and that I cannot walk away. The warning of scripture tells me, Kenny, if you disobey God over and over and over and over and over again, you should expect to be thrown into hell. That’s a warning. I’m going to obey the warning. I’m not going to sin over and over and over and over again. I’m going to obey what he tells me to do, and that will keep me close to him. The warnings of scripture, when we obey them, are the very mechanism that God uses to keep us close to him. But if you are a Christian, you are a professing Christian, and you hear God give commands in scripture, and your response is, I don’t know if I really need to obey that one. Yikes. You might be a plot of land with some seeds of thorns and thistles in your heart. The genuine believer will want to obey small commands of scripture or big commands of scripture. When God makes commands, even if you don’t understand it, even if it doesn’t make sense to you, even if you can’t articulate it, just do what he tells you to do, obey him. In your obedience, that will keep you close to him. I’ve been asked this before. How do I know if I’m a legit Christian? How do I know if I’m really headed for heaven? Your heart’s response to the warnings of scripture will expose where your heart truly is. When I read these commands, these warnings, I go, whoo. I want to run back to you, Jesus. I want to run away from my sin and towards you.   Closing: He Will Hold Us Fast If that’s a humble, genuine response of your heart, if that’s you, that is the evidence that there’s a true work of the Spirit of God in your heart, and you can take heart in it. You can be comforted by that you are genuinely his, that you will be with him forever and ever and ever, that he will hold you fast, that he will finish the work in you that he began, and that you will enter into that eternal rest and experience the joy and happiness of God forever and ever and ever. If you are here this morning, though, and you would say, Kenny, I’m not sure that’s my heart. I’m not sure I’m the person that, when I hear the commands of Scripture, I’m like, yes, I want to obey that. When I hear the doctrines of the Christian faith, do I embrace them wholeheartedly? Yes, I believe that this is what the Bible teaches. Yes, I believe it. I may not understand it, but I believe it. Is that your heart? If the answer is no, then I want to challenge you this morning. If your heart’s response is not immediately, yes, embrace what the Bible says. If that is not you, this warning is for you. You might have some seeds of thorns and thistles in your heart, and you might be headed on a trajectory that will not go well for you. This morning, I implore you, repent of your sin, ask God for forgiveness, and allow him to wipe you clean. You may have gotten oh, so close, but allow him to usher you over that threshold to truly experience the glory and goodness of God. I challenge you this morning: Repent of your sin and come to him. If you have any questions about what that means, what does that really look like? I’d love to sit down, have a conversation with you. I’d love to, while we have barbecue later, talk about that. Or we can grab lunch or coffee later this week. It would be a joy of mine to sit with you and discuss that with you. I’ll rearrange my schedule to make that happen. But for those of us who love him, for those of you this morning, you’re like, Kenny, you know, I do blow it a lot. I sin a lot. But, you know, my heart’s desire really is to want to obey him. I really do love him. I really do. I’m listening to this going, I think I’m one of his. I sin a lot. I make mistakes every single day, but I know that I’m one of His. That he has started to work in me and he will finish the work for you this morning. I want you to be comforted to know that he will hold you fast. We’re going to sing a song in just a moment together. It was originally written back in 1906 by a woman by the name of Ada Habershon. We’re gonna sing the modern Shane and Shane version. There are some lyrics from this song. He will hold me fast. It’s so great:   For my life, he bled and died Christ will hold me fast Justice has been satisfied He will hold me fast Raised with him to endless life He will hold me fast Till our faith is turned to sight Until that day I see him He will hold me fast When he comes at last He will hold me fast He will hold me fast For my savior loves me so He will hold me fast   Would you pray with me? Father in heaven? We thank you for the promise that you will hold us fast. For those who know you, for those who believe on you. You’re going to hold us fast. You’re going to hold us tight, strong, close. You’re never going to let us fade away. God, I pray that you would continue to strengthen us and comfort us. And I pray if there’s anyone in this room who’s not a genuine believer, maybe they’ve convinced themselves, but they’re not. I pray that today would be the day that Holy Spirit, you would truly open their eyes. May they see it. May today be the day they choose to believe on you. May today be the day they whisper. Yeah, I want to believe with all my heart. God, would you grant them the gift of repentance? I ask all these things in Christ’s name. Amen.    

  Introduction: Mike Tyson Scripture text this morning is Hebrews chapter 5, verses 11 through Hebrews chapter 6, verse 3. If you have your Bibles turned there or scroll there, whatever your preference may be. Reading from the ESV this morning, these are the words of God: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instructions about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.” We have come now to the end of Hebrews chapter 5, going into Hebrews chapter 6. Quick reminder, many of you probably already know this, but the chapters and verses in our Bibles weren’t there in the originals. So we Christians throughout the centuries added those later. And so when we’re going through the book, we want to use the natural movements of the original author, which may not necessarily match up with our chapters and verses. Before we look at Hebrews, I want to tell you a little bit about something from my childhood, and that is this. When I was a kid growing up way, way back in the 1980s, I grew up in a household that was a heavy sports household. Not a total surprise to anyone, right? My dad loved basketball, baseball, football, and boxing. Those are the four big ones in our home. So my dad didn’t watch college sports at all. Later in life, I added my love of college sports because I needed to figure out more ways to waste time. So I added that to my life. But we grew up watching those sports. We watched a lot of boxing when I was a kid. We watched the no-name guys, we watched the famous boxers, and everything in between. My parents were big boxing fans, and in the late 80s and into the early 90s, as I was a kid watching lots of boxing, there was one particular figure who was most dominant in that era, and that was Mr. Mike Tyson. We were big Mike Tyson fans in the Ortiz home, like, maybe a little more than we should have been. We loved Mike Tyson. The thing that made Mike Tyson so devastating was a combination of speed and power that we’ve never seen in boxing, either before him or after. The combination of speed and power for Mike was unreal. And the move that he would do, his original manager called the 6-4 combination, was the right hook to the body, followed up with a right uppercut. You knew it was coming eventually, but even though you knew it was coming, the opponents were still never fast enough to defend it. They’d watch film of Mike Tyson. They’d watch the video to figure out when it was going to come, but they could rarely ever defend against it. So he would give a right hook to the body, and the person, the opponent, would get hit and would lean over. Just as they leaned over, he was so fast, he would bring his fist underneath and quickly come with the right uppercut, the 6-4 combination. Again, even though they would look for it, they could never defend against it. He was just too quick. It was too strong, it was too harsh. In some ways, that’s exactly what we see here at the end of Hebrews, chapter five. As we’re traveling through the opening chapters of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, we’re going through. We know that this is coming. We know that in a moment, he’s going to turn his attention and he’s going to issue a harsh rebuke. The right uppercut is coming for the writer of Hebrews, but even if you look for it, you don’t really quite realize it until it’s there. You’re going through chapter five, through chapter four, chapter five. It’s so encouraging. Jesus is great. He’s greater than Moses. He’s greater than Aaron. He’s our great high priest. He sympathizes with us. He understands us. He welcomes us to come to him with kindness, confidence. It’s encouraging. It’s loving. He’s drawing you in. Right before you know it, verse 11 comes. Bam. It’s the right uppercut. But if you’re looking for it, you knew it was coming. See, up to this point, throughout the first opening chapters, he’s been giving these encouraging insights, but he’s been weaving in these warnings. Throughout the book of Hebrews, there are these warnings being woven in. But they’re kind of broad. They’re for all Christians. All of us should be concerned about these things. All of us should be concerned that we pay close attention to the things we’ve heard about Jesus. Like we see in chapter two. All of us should be concerned that we’re not disobedient like the generation in the wilderness. As he says in chapter three, all of us should be leery of the fact that we do not have to ensure that we don’t have unbelieving hearts. As he says in Hebrews chapter three. There are these broad warnings that all of us would be concerned about. But you knew it was only a matter of time before he honed in on this particular church, and he gave them one specific rebuke that was applicable to where they were. He’s been talking about this, and all of a sudden it’s going to come. The right uppercut is going to come. And there it is in verse 11. He lays it on him, and he lands it cleanly. Because it’s in the midst of a teaching that would have been drawing them in. He’s saying, yes, there is potential judgment for all of us, generically speaking, if we do not believe in him, if we do not keep on believing in Him. But there’s a specific thing that he has for them that we’ll see in verse 11. I’m going to pray one more time, and we’ll look at it together. God, Father, in heaven, would you give us understanding? And may the writer of Hebrews, may his right uppercut land on us this morning as well. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.    Graduating to Solid Food Throughout the course of chapter four, he’s been talking about Jesus, our high priest. Then, throughout chapter five, he begins to unpack the priesthood of Jesus. In verse 10, he tells us that Jesus is like Melchizedek. He’s not like Aaron in the Old Testament. He’s like someone who lived hundreds of years before Aaron, this guy named Melchizedek. And then he says this in verse 11 about Melchizedek. “About this we have much to say.” He’s like, there are so many things to say about Melchizedek. Jesus was a great high priest, not like Aaron, he’s like Melchizedek. I want to tell you about Melchizedek. There are so many things we can learn about Jesus by studying and looking, and examining the ministry and life of Melchizedek. But here’s the uppercut. He says this in the second half of verse 11, speaking of the things about Melchizedek, “But it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing.” Bam, there it is. I want to tell you, you know what the problem is? You’re dull of hearing. Lands it clean. The English word dull, the Greek word that we translate, can also be translated as sluggish or lazy. Typically, when this word is used, it’s used elsewhere in the Bible and classic Greek literature. When this word is used, it’s most often referring to someone who is stubborn and refusing to do what they ought to do. So these readers, they should be sharp of hearing, they should be clear in their ability to hear, but they have stubbornly refused to do what needs to be done, to be able to hear from God properly, to learn the things that God would want them to have them learn. They’ve been sluggish. They’ve been lazy, and they are unskilled. They ought to be skilled, but they are refusing to do what needs to be done. They have refused to do what needs to be done for them to get good at obeying God. That’s the rebuke he lands here. He continues to describe them. Look at Hebrews 5, verse 12. He says this, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.” By this point, you guys should be teaching the things, but you still need someone to teach you the basic principles of the Christian faith. You still need someone to teach you that. Although by this point you should be an expert and you should be teaching other people these things, because you guys still haven’t even mastered the basics of the Christian faith. Then he says this, the last phrase in verse 12, he says this, “You need milk, not solid food.” You should be eating steak, but you’re still drinking milk. You need me to give you milk. I can’t give you the meat that I want to give. I want to tell you about all the great things about Melchizedek, the glories of Christ we see in Melchizedek. But you’re so dull of hearing, and that’s meat. You can’t handle solid food. You can’t handle Melchizedek because you still focus on the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. When are you going to grow up? This is not the harshest moment in the Book of Hebrews, but pretty close. It’s very pointed. He’s like, I want to give you something. God wants to give you something. And yet you haven’t moved on from the basics. Now, milk is not a bad thing. Milk is actually good. In fact, back in the 80s, there was a slogan, ‘Milk does a body good’. A lot of 80s references this morning. Early in my marriage, I came to dinner. I came to the dinner table one night with a tall glass of milk. My wife said to me, my lovely bride, Malaina, she said to me, You’re going to drink milk with dinner? Yeah, because milk is delicious. So it’s not unusual for me to drink milk with a meal. Oh, white milk, almond milk, soy milk, chocolate milk, strawberry milk. Doesn’t matter. I like it. It’s delicious. Milk is a good thing. But if all you drink all the days of your life is milk, you’re going to miss out on the nutrients that are available in other things. It’s good to drink milk, but you need to add some meat to that, right? He’s like, you know, the only people who go their entire life only consuming milk, you know what they are? The very last phrase there in verse 13, the person who only drinks milk, he says this about him. “He is a child.” So the Christian who only consumes the basics of the Christian faith and never moves on is like a child who only drinks milk. That would be weird. Can you imagine a high school boy who still breastfeeds? We would all think that’s really weird and gross. That’s how the writer of Hebrews feels. You guys are still on the basics of the Christian faith. What’s wrong with you guys? When are you going to move up? When are you going to grow up and do? When are you going to get to Melchizedek? But these Christians refuse to grow in their faith. They refuse to put the work in, to do what it takes, so that they can grow up in the faith to get better at obeying. Our obedience to God is kind of like a muscle. You’ve got to strengthen it, and you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to do something to strengthen that muscle. You need to work it out. You’ve got to do what it takes to make your muscles strong. Similarly, the spiritual muscle of obedience has to be worked out. And he’s saying, guys, there’s so much to tell you, but you’re still a bunch of children drinking milk. I want to tell you, the glories of the priesthood of Christ, we can’t get there. He continues, he says this. Look at verse 14, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” You notice who are the ones capable of eating milk? It’s those who have trained by constant practice. You don’t learn to eat the meat of the Christian faith by accident. You have to train. You have to have constant practice. You’ve got to work at it. It takes effort. There are teachings of the Christian faith that so many American Christians I’ve interacted with over the years don’t understand, and are not willing to engage with. They often blame the teachers or the preachers. Oh, those preachers, they just talk that theology stuff. It’s over my head. And, you know, to some extent that’s true. Preachers and teachers, we have to work hard to make it accessible for people. That’s on me. That’s on us. Most of the time, I want to just say to the person, like, have you done what it takes to work hard to be able to learn from those kinds of preachers? Like, if the only kind of preachers you can learn from are the ones that craft the sermons perfectly and use the perfect vocabulary and the perfect accessibility, you’re not going to learn much in the Christian faith. I remember years ago, I interacted with someone, and they said to me, I was so encouraged. I said, Kenny, you’re easily edified. You listen to even bad preachers, and you still get something out of it. I just said, honestly, that is the grace of God in my life. It’s like, you gotta work at it, man. Then, once you work at it, he says, you’ll be able to distinguish good from evil. This is remarkable. Spiritual growth doesn’t just happen. If you don’t work at your spiritual growth, you will not be able to distinguish good from evil. Remember last week, I was at an event, a pastor’s training conference in San Diego. I lived in San Diego over 20 years ago. I lived on a little island called Coronado Island, right across from San Diego. I would drive over the bridge every morning from Coronado over to San Diego. Into the mainland. When I was driving over the bridge, you could see the training facility from the bridge of the Navy SEALS, one of the primary training facilities. So it was not unusual to be driving over the bridge, you can see in the distance these dudes training out there. Sometimes they would be in the ocean, swimming and training, and doing various exercises. I remember just always thinking to myself, those are the best of the best. Like in the crazy situations we send those dudes in, and they’re training. Those guys don’t become the great Navy SEALS that do all the awesome things by accident. Those guys are out there every morning in their full gear in the ocean, running up and down the beach, doing all sorts of training exercises. It doesn’t happen by accident. I remember last week, I was driving around San Diego, being a little nostalgic, and I drove over the bridge and looked over. There was no training that day. But I remember thinking back to those Navy SEALS and thinking to myself, this is what you’re calling us to be. You’re calling us to work hard. Spiritual growth doesn’t just happen. It has to be cultivated. That’s what he’s calling us to do here. The writer of Hebrews is saying, You guys haven’t done the work. You’ve been lazy, you’ve been sluggish, you’ve been stubborn, and you’ve refused to do what you need to do. You’re reminding me of that generation in the wilderness who came out of Egypt but refused to get good at obeying God. So they never entered the promised land. Let’s not be like them.   Milk: The Basic Doctrines With this idea in mind, he gives them this exhortation. Look at Hebrews 6:1. He says this, “Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.” So what is this milk? Milk is elementary doctrines. He says earlier, the basic principles of the oracles of God, the basic teachings of the Christian faith. Kind of the entry-level teachings. That’s the milk. And it’s good. We like milk. It’s really helpful, right? When a child is born, the milk is extremely helpful. Toward the end of verse one, he actually lists what some of these doctrines are. He says the repentance from dead works, faith toward God, instructions about washing, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. These are all the elementary entry-level doctrines. Those are great. They’re important. They are foundational to our faith. They are the fundamentals. If you don’t get those down, you’re going to struggle in the Christian faith. But at some point, we should master those, and we should master those so well that we can teach them to others. Now he’s not just talking about head knowledge, he’s not just talking about understanding the doctrine, the data. The doctrine is saying you should understand these teachings and understand how they apply to your life, so that you can teach others how they apply to their life. These basic doctrines, these basic principles of the oracles of God, we should master them, we should train in them, we should constantly practice them. That, as we do, will transform us into people who can genuinely distinguish good from evil. Then he says this, he tells us that it’s that kind of person, the person who’s been transformed, the person who can distinguish good from evil, that’s the person who will be ready for the meat. The concept of being able to distinguish good from evil is interesting to me. It’s actually remarkable because I’m always a little bit shocked when I interact with some Christians. Over the course of my life, I’ve interacted with believers who sometimes will say things or do things that just sort of shock me. You’re like, you’ve been a Christian for 20 years, and you still believe that? You’ve been a Christian for 15, 20 years, and you think that behavior is still okay? Like that’s the paradigm you’re working under. Like, wow, yeah, I can’t give you any meat because you’re not able to distinguish good from evil. I’m always shocked in our society how frequently I see Christians post things on social media, and I think to myself, you think that’s okay? You think that’s acceptable for the Christian? You can’t distinguish good from evil. You haven’t done the work to understand the basic doctrines and how they apply to your life, you’re never going to get meat. We’ve got some work to do. And although my initial reaction in the moment is usually surprise, my follow-up reaction, emotion, is almost always sad. So many believers are missing out on the glorious meat that God has for you. Church, I implore you, for all of us, myself included, let’s not be that. Let’s do the work, let’s train, let’s constantly practice the basic principles, and make sure we are applying those to our lives so that we can then move on to the meat that God has for us. So here’s the process of the Christian life. God gives you milk. The basic teaching of the Christian faith, we consume that, we work really hard to understand that, and make sure that we’re applying that to our life, that we’re living that out. As we do that, we grow spiritually. The Holy Spirit grows us and develops us. Then once we get strong, we get so strong that we’re able to genuinely distinguish good from evil. That moment, that’s the moment that we are then ready to move on to the next stage, where we get the meat, the glorious meat. The meat is the rocket fuel to the Christian life. The meat is the thing that propels us.   Applying Advanced Doctrine to Our Lives So, what is meat? What is the meat? If milk is the basic doctrines that lead us to have the ability to distinguish good from evil, milk is the basic doctrines that helps us understand, gives us discernment. Well, then that’s milk. Basic doctrines lead to discernment. Then, meat is the advanced doctrines that lead to even greater discernment. Milk, basic teachings. Once we understand that, it gives us discernment, and then we move on to deeper things, more complex doctrines. We apply those to our lives, and it gives us even greater discernment. What does this practically look like? How do we actually do this? What is training in this? Let me give you a couple of things, give you five quick things that I think are helpful. None of these are going to be brand new. None of these are going to be profound. 1. Be excited and prepared to hear preaching. One of the best examples of this, in my opinion, I’ve used in a previous sermon, mentioned this in Acts, chapter 17, the Bereans. Paul goes into the city of Berea, and it says that the people who were there welcomed his teachings with eagerness. They were enthusiastic. Then they went home and they studied the Scriptures to make sure what Paul was teaching was in line with what the Scriptures teach. The Bible says that they are nobler than the others. God thinks it’s noble to hear preaching enthusiastically. Not hostile, not critical. Not with the side eye wondering, is the preacher gonna get it right? No. Enthusiastic. I’m eager. Come on, Kenny, give us what you got. Come on, Daniel, give us that exhortation. Eager. I’m enthusiastic to get the teaching. I can’t wait to do what needs to be done so I can be enthusiastic and eager to hear your teaching. Then I’m going to go study the Scriptures, and I’m going to study what you said and make sure it lines up. I’m going to be excited to do that. That is a noble thing. One of our three core values is that we make much of teaching. We make much of teaching. In the 1950s, the average American evangelical received approximately eight hours a month of preaching and teaching from a local church. Today, it’s about an hour and 15 minutes a month. The average American evangelical today receives approximately an hour and 15 minutes. That’s a big drop. It was 8x that in the 1950s. We shouldn’t be surprised if the theology and the lifestyle of our Christians have run amok. Shouldn’t shock us. All right, be excited, welcome preaching, eagerness, and then study it. 2. Pray and read your Bible every day. Pray and read your Bible every day. I know that sounds simple, I know that’s obvious. But if you’re not praying and reading your Bible every day. The idea of having a Bible in your home has only existed over the last 140 years. If you go back 150 years ago, no one had a Bible in their home. Like very few people, the very wealthy had Bibles in their homes. I’ve got 67 English Bibles on my phone right now. We have no excuse. 3. Memorize scripture. This is something I’ve really been convicted of recently. Going to try to memorize some scripture, you know, I think it’s about memorizing scripture. Psalm 119. The Psalmist says, “I have hidden your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.” I took your word, O God, and I put it in me.  And that’s going to keep me from sinning against you. 4. Prioritize corporate study. We have a small group that’s running on every other Friday night. We’re going to launch some more, God willing, in March. Prioritize corporate study, getting together with other people, and studying the Bible. Don’t wait for us to do it. You don’t have to wait for me. You can call up your buddy and say, Hey, I want to study Revelation. You want to study with me? See you tomorrow at Starbucks, 7 am. Be there and just get together with someone. Let’s study. Maybe not Revelation, maybe don’t start there. Grab lunch with someone and say, Let’s study the Scriptures together. Prioritize it. 5. Find good resources in your life. The number of podcasts and YouTube channels, things that are available to us. Feel free to come up and ask me. Hey, I’m looking for a good resource on this. This is why I’m really big on the resource table. We put a lot of energy and money into giving resources. We’re giving books. We do this because I want to give good resources. I do this every week, I send out the Looking to Sunday email. Most of you are on my email list. So I sent out an email, Looking to Sunday, and here are the scripture verses that we’re gonna look at. Then every week I try to find at least one or two good articles that I found online that I think are helpful and think apply to the sermon. I put that in the email. Our average click rate on those is about 13%. 13% of the people who get the emails click on the links. But I’m thankful, you know, we got 300 people on the mailing list. A lot of people who don’t even attend here click those links regularly. The reason I do that is, I really believe it’s on you to do some work. I’m gonna make it as easy as I can for you. I went and found the good articles I think are helpful. Check them out. I went and I’ve done a lot of the work for you. You’re like, what book should I read? They’re right there. They’re free of charge. Take them and we’ll get you more. We want to make it as easy and accessible as possible, but you’ve got to do some work as well. Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke, to whom much is given, much is commanded, much is expected. There have been more Christian books written from World War II to today. So from the mid-1940s till today, more books have been written in that period of time, that 70-80 year period, than all of Christian history before that combined. So you got almost 2,000 years of writing versus 70, 80 years of writing. There’s in this time period that we live in than all before. The vast majority of that is in English. Church, we have no excuse. We should be expert theologians, and we should know how to apply every doctrine to our lives. This church in Hebrews, they’re about 15 years old, ish. He’s expecting that, without 21st-century resources, within 15 years, they should be teaching these things. How much more would he expect of us? Let’s put in the work. Let’s be Bereans now. Just to be clear, we’re not talking about just head knowledge. We’re not talking about just data. We don’t want to just be theology nerds to win a debate on Twitter. That’s dumb. That’s not what we want. All right? We want to understand the doctrines and understand how they should transform our lives, how they practically apply to our lives. How do they practically apply to our marriage, our relationships, our generosity, our hospitality?   Renewal of Our Minds We don’t merely want head knowledge. However, true long-lasting Christ-exalting maturity starts with the head knowledge. That’s where it starts. If it ends there, we’re not doing it right, but it certainly starts there. Matthew 22. Jesus says this, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” Use your intellect to show God’s love. I quoted Psalm 119 a moment ago. Later in that same chapter, he says this. The psalmist says, “Give me understanding, O God, so that I may keep your law.” I need to understand because that will help me be more obedient. If I’m not understanding, I’m not going to be obedient. Colossians, chapter 3. The apostle Paul says this. “You have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge.” We have this new self, this born-again spirit that has been given to us. It’s new. You know the way it’s renewed? The way it’s strengthened, the way we continue that. The strength of that spirit is through knowledge, biblical knowledge, and theological knowledge. Romans chapter 12. Leon read it for us earlier. Romans chapter 12, verse 2. The apostle Paul says this. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.” So don’t do what the world is doing. Don’t live like them, but be transformed. And here he tells us how we are transformed “By the renewal of your mind.” That is a remarkable thing. You know how you transform your life? Step one, change the way you think. Get more theological biblical knowledge into your brain. That’s step one. It’s not the last step, but it’s the first step. We renew our minds. Then he says this later in the verse. Once we’ve renewed our minds, we’ll be able to do this. We’ll be able to “Discern what is good and acceptable to God.” Going back to the idea of distinguishing between good and evil. If you’re not renewing your mind, growing in knowledge and understanding, you will never be able to genuinely distinguish what is good and acceptable to God. This is why so many Christians struggle to understand what is truly right or wrong. So, Church, I exhort you this morning, do whatever must be done in your life to ensure that you are growing in your knowledge of God, you are growing in your understanding of the Bible and its doctrines, and that you are growing in your understanding of applying them to your life. We want to acquire more biblical knowledge, more theological knowledge. We want to have a thorough mastery of the principles of the Christian faith. As we do that, that will be a part of God strengthening us and giving us the ability to be better at obeying him. I want to be better at obeying God today than I was a year ago. I want to be better at obeying God a year from now than I am today. I want my obedience muscle to get stronger day by day by day. If my ability to fight sin is the same as it was five years ago, what have I done the last five years? If my understanding of how the Gospel transforms my marriage is the same a year ago as it is today, man, what I’ve been doing the last year. I want to grow continually in my knowledge, and I want to grow stronger in my ability to obey him. Do whatever needs to be done in your life to ensure that’s true for you. Whatever needs to be done in your life to ensure that you are growing in the knowledge of God, do that. Don’t wait till tomorrow. Do it today.   Closing: God, Permit Our Souls to Grow Last thought this morning. Now we know that sometimes the more we learn, that can make us prideful. In fact, the apostle Paul specifically calls us out. First Corinthians 8, verse 1. The apostle Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up.” It’s a strong warning. It’s a very real problem. The more we learn, the more the potential to be prideful or haughty could step in. Rather than allowing doctrine to fuel our love and our good deeds, that doctrine could fuel a know-it-all all attitude. We become a bunch of arrogant jerks. Those of us in the Reformed world are experts at being arrogant jerks with our doctrine. Sometimes this is particularly true for those of us who are in Reformed circles. How do we stay humble? How do we not take pride? How do we not boast well? The writer of Hebrews gives us the antidote to that in the last verse we’ll look at this morning. So he starts by saying, I want to tell you about Melchizedek, but I can’t because that’s meat. You can’t handle meat. You’re still drinking milk. Milk is good. There are lots of great doctrines, but we need to move on from them. Let’s move on from them. Let’s do what it takes. And then he says this in verse 3, Hebrews 6: Verse 3 says this, Speaking of moving on, “This we will do if God permits.” You could do everything right. But if God doesn’t permit the growth, it doesn’t happen. Ultimately, you can only grow if God sees fit to say yes. If God gives permission for your spiritual growth to happen. The best illustration I can come up with is that of a farmer. A farmer could do everything right. A Farmer works the land. Whatever farmers do. I don’t know what they do. I should have googled it. They till the soil, they prepare the stuff and get the seeds in, get the fuel, the food, and they can do everything, all the things that a good farmer can do. But at the end of the day, the farmer needs rain. The farmer needs the land to do what only the land can do. There is a process outside of the farmer’s control. That’s sort of the lifestyle we all have. That’s how we look at it. I’m going to do everything I can to cultivate the farm of my heart. I’m going to till the soil. I’m going to get the seed, I’m going to get the food. I’m going to protect it from the enemies. I’m going to get all the work that I can do and that needs to be done. Then I put it before the Lord, saying, Lord, I can’t make myself spiritually grow. This is the work of the spirit. I know this will only happen if you permit. So, God, would you permit my soul to grow? Would you permit this work I’ve done, that’s so minuscule compared to what you’re capable of? Would you take my fragile work and the work that feels so futile sometimes? Take my finicky heart, my overly emotional, irrational heart? Would you take it? Would you grow it? Would you permit it to grow as you see fit? We can do all that we can, but ultimately it is a work of the spirit. So that when I grow, I can’t boast, I can’t brag, and say, look what I did. I can only say, look what God has done. Because, yeah, I tilled the soil. I did the stuff. But without God shining down, it would have meant nothing. It would have accomplished nothing. I am who I am today because he permitted me to be who I am today. So he gets all the glory for that Church. Let’s do our part. But ultimately, we rely on him to do what only he can do. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the book of Hebrews. I love this book. I love the right uppercut from this author. I pray it will land on us this morning in a profound way. Would you help us? Would you help us, Lord, as we take inventory of our own lives? I pray that we will do that this afternoon. Over the next few days, may each one of us just pause and take inventory of our own life and examine where we are? Am I really doing the right stuff? Am I doing all the things I know to do?  Am I reading my Bible? Am I excited about teaching? Am I putting in the extra work like those Bereans? Am I receiving the teaching with eagerness? Am I checking it in the Scripture to make sure it aligns with what you’ve taught? Am I doing those things, Lord? If I’m not, would you forgive us? And would you give us the grace and the confidence, the boldness to do it?  Lord, if anything is in the way, I pray you would give us the courage to get rid of the stuff in our lives that is getting in the way. Sports, Netflix, or certain friendships or certain things we’re a part of, whatever it may be. If there’s something getting in the way of us engaging with you so that we could grow and mature, that we could go from milk to meat, if there’s anything getting in the way of that, Lord.  Would you, Holy Spirit, would you gently point that out to us this week and give us the courage to get rid of it? Give us the grace we need to grow in those ways. I pray. Would you say, Lord, we want to be like you? We want to be all that you called us to be. Would you help us? And, Lord, I ask that you would permit us to grow. We ask for your permission and for you to do what only you can do in us and through us. In Christ’s name, I ask all these things. Amen.    

  Introduction: Our Souls at Rest Well Goodmorning.  Last week, we dove back into the Book of Hebrews after a short hiatus. Last week, I did a recap of the first three and a half chapters of the Book of Hebrews. So I did in eight minutes what took us eight sermons in the fall. I got an amen there. That was good. The passage we looked at today is quite extensive. I mentioned this several months back. I have a friend of mine who’s a pastor in the Memphis, Tennessee area, and he preached through the Book of Hebrews at his church. It took him seven years to get through it. The text that we’re going to look at this morning, he preached 10 sermons from this text. I was like, Jordan, I love you, bro. But that’s a lot of sermons from that text, bro. He’s like, there’s just so much there, man. How can you skip it? Well, because we want to get to other books of the Bible at some point, we’re going to have to skip some things. That’s just the nature of it. So I will attempt to serve, to give you what God is saying in this passage to the best of my abilities, in one sermon, not 10 in this particular passage. As we looked at last week in the Book of Hebrews, as we’re coming up to this passage, the writer of Hebrews in this book, this sermon. It’s a transcribed sermon. In this sermon, he has made mention of this idea of rest that those of us who are believers are on a trajectory to experience a glorious, forever rest where our souls will be at peace, where we will be satisfied. Think about the busyness and craziness, and anxiousness of our world. The idea that we will be at rest forever is a glorious proposition. So there is this glorious, joy-filled, loving, powerful, happy, intense, restful eternity awaiting us. The day where we join the resurrection, those who have gone before us, where we stand side by side with the heroes of the faith, and we shout the hymn of Heaven, glory to our God. I look forward to that day. I look forward to that rest. The writer of Hebrews is trying to cultivate in us a desire, a hopeful expectation. We’re going to be in that rest one day, strive toward that. Do everything in this life that you know to do so that you are not disobedient or hard-hearted and that you miss out on the rest that God has for us thus far in the Book of Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews has also alluded to judgment. He’s made it very clear that not every human being will enter that rest. For those who do not genuinely believe on Jesus, there is judgment and wrath awaiting. For those who do not truly, wholeheartedly cling to Christ, rest does not await them. Wrath awaits, Hell awaits. It’s a serious reality. Later in chapter 10, the writer of Hebrews will come back to this concept, and he’ll say that those who do not strive to enter the rest should expect nothing but a consuming fire. That’s the language he used in Hebrews chapter 10. So for all of these reasons, the writer of Hebrews is telling us, stick with Jesus. Look to Jesus. Trust in Jesus. He is better than anything or any person in all of creation and beyond. Keep believing in Jesus, and you will enter into his rest. As we talked last week, the primary way that we strive to enter that rest is to seek to live by God’s word. The Scriptures, the truth revealed in the Bible. As we looked at last week, the word of God is living and active. It’s sharp, it cuts us, it judges our hearts, our intentions, our thoughts, and all of our ideas are measured against God’s word. When we realize that we are wrong, as we often do, we ought to repent of that and bring our minds in line with what God has said thus far in the book of Hebrews. His primary point has been, Jesus is better. So don’t stop believing in Jesus. The way you keep believing in Jesus is by submitting what you think under God’s word, because God is always right. Now he’s about to have a slight pivot here. He’s about to start talking about Jesus as the great High Priest. He’s going to spend the next five and a half chapters unpacking, What does it mean that Jesus is the great High Priest? What are the implications of that for our lives? So it’s a slight pivot, but it’s an extensive pivot throughout the book of Hebrews. So before we look at that, I want to pray one more time and ask the Lord for help. God, would you help us as we look at your word this morning? Help us to understand, and I pray again that you would use your word to cut us, to expose us. May nothing be left as the song we sang earlier, may there be no stain of sin left. May there be nothing in me that seeks to fight against your Holy war. May there be nothing in me remaining that continually says no to your will. Rip that out of me, God, rip that out of us. Cultivate in us a love for you and a commitment to strive to enter your rest. And now, God, as we look at the next few verses here in Hebrews 4 and 5, help us understand it. May it transform us. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.   Jesus, Our Great High Priest This is not the first time he mentions the idea of great High Priests. In fact, twice early in the book of Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews, in this sermon, has already mentioned this. In Hebrews chapter 2, verse 17, he calls Jesus the “Faithful high priest in the service of God.” In Hebrews chapter 3, verse 1, he calls Jesus: “The apostle and high priest of our confession.” But he doesn’t unpack that at all. It’s kind of like a side comment. It’s a big comment, but sort of a side comment. But then we get to the middle part of chapter four, and this is where he begins to unpack this idea of the high priest. He says this. Look at verse 14, chapter 4, verse 14. He says, “Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God.” Jesus is our High Priest. He’s passed through the heavens. He was in heaven, in glory, stepped off his throne in glory, became a human being, exposed himself to all of the pains and ills of this world, and experienced the human experience. He dies a brutal death, resurrects from the dead, and then goes back to sit in glory. As we saw in Hebrews chapter one, sitting at the right hand of majesty. He is a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens. He uses the word since but it could also be because. Because we have this great High Priest. I’m about to give you some exhortations because Jesus is such a great High Priest. There’s something I’m about to tell you to do. There are some things I’m going to challenge you with. But before I really challenge you, let me tell you the kind of High Priest Jesus is. Look at verse 15. He says this: “We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” This is a remarkable reality. We don’t have a God who doesn’t understand what we’ve been through. We have a God, a Savior who can sympathize with us. He understands what it’s like to be human, to experience the Human condition, to experience death, to experience the death of loved ones, the death of a parent, the betrayal of a deep friend. Jesus experienced these things. He understands. He gets you. He gets you. He can truly sympathize in every respect. He knows how hard it is to say no to sin, and yet he says no to sin over and over and over again. For those of us who know how hard it is to say no to sin, and we regularly say yes to sin, we are blown away by this. You said no to sin every single time. Every time you were tempted to be prideful, every time you were tempted to get revenge on someone unjustly. I mean, you could have done any of those things at any time. Jesus, you get us far beyond what we realize. Sometimes I think that we think that God’s just waiting to drop the hammer on us. He’s just this big, mean God just ready to catch you. You get one little thing wrong, bam, he’s on you. That’s not how our God is. In fact, this is Psalm 103. It’s one of my favorites. It’s hard to narrow it down, but I love Psalm 103. Psalm 103, verse 13. It says this, speaking of our God, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. (And then he says this,) For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.” Like when I struggle and I’m feeling insecure, I’m tempted to think God thinks I’m a loser. He’s saying, Come on, Kenny, get with it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going. When I’m feeling insecure, he says, I was there when you were made. I remember you’re dust. You’re weak. You’re fragile. I totally get that you’re insecure, I get it. I was there when you were made. I remember your frame. I remember that sin has plagued you. I remember that you were created with finitude. I remember that you get tired and cranky. I know. I know you. He shows compassion to us. So the writer of Hebrews is saying, since we have that sort of High Priest, that sort of Savior who remembers who we are, we should do some things. This is what he says in verse 16. If you’ve been around church for any length of time, you’ve probably heard this verse at some point in some fashion, because we have a great High Priest. He says this 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.” He says this great High Savior, High Priest, who knows you, who sympathizes with you, loves you; therefore, draw close to him with confidence. Christians, you can have confidence. In our house, we have a guest room slash my office, and it’s right next to Lettie’s room. Lettie is our three-year-old daughter. So, Lettie will sometimes burst into my office. She’ll just burst the door open. There have been multiple times I’ve been on Zoom calls, and I’ve been on meetings. Let me tell you, Lettie doesn’t care at all who I’m talking to. She didn’t care at all. She busted through that door with confidence because that’s my Daddy. I know I blow it all the time. I know he has to, you know, discipline me regularly, but I still know I can burst through that door. I know there’s nothing that’s going to stop my Daddy from loving me. So I’ve made it a habit. I know that as a father, how she views God will largely be shaped and informed by how I interact with her. So I have made it a habit that no matter how annoying it is, no matter how inconvenient it is, no matter how frustrated I am in the moment, no matter what is going on, when she bursts through the door, I turn and say, Come on, jump on up. And she jumps up on my lap. Whoever’s on Zoom, they’re gonna meet Lettie that day. If I’m on the phone, they’re meeting Lettie that day. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made it a priority because I want her to know that’s what God is like. In fact, he’s way better than me. You can burst through his door anytime. He welcomes it. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Go to him with confidence. Kenny, I blew it this week. You don’t know what I looked at online. You don’t know what I did. You don’t know how harsh I was. You don’t know what pride I demonstrated. You don’t know what lust I have. You don’t know what I stole this week. You don’t know the things I did. You’re right, I don’t. But you know what I do know? That we have a great High Priest who can sympathize with us. So we go to him with confidence. With confidence. I love that phrase. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for putting that phrase in there. With confidence.   Old Testament Priest Aaron Over the next five and a half chapters, he’s going to continue to unpack. What does it mean that Jesus is a great High Priest, and what are the implications of that? Now, in chapter five, he will begin to compare Jesus to the Old Testament priest Aaron. Look at verse 5, chapter or chapter 5, verse 1. He says this “For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God.” It’s Super Bowl Sunday, so it’s appropriate to use a football analogy, right? Most athletes have an agent. A lot of celebrities do. Actors and actresses, lots of people will hire an agent. The agent’s responsibility is to negotiate on behalf of the client, right? So every player who plays today in the Super Bowl has an agent. That agent’s job is to negotiate with the team to get the most amount of money and benefits for that particular player. That’s the agent’s job. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but that’s sort of the idea of the High Priest that we get here in Hebrews chapter five. He’s appointed among men to act on behalf of men in relation to God. So the High Priest is sort of the agent on behalf of humanity going to God, seeking to negotiate on behalf of human beings. That’s what the Old Testament priest Aaron did. The other priests in the Old Testament were negotiating with God on behalf of the Jewish people. That was sort of the idea. But they didn’t have much to offer in negotiation. In negotiations, you only win if you have some leverage. There’s nothing to offer there. Similarly, we don’t have much to offer. But Jesus is our great agent. He’s our advocate. He goes to the Father, and he advocates on our behalf. He negotiates with the Father. He says to the Father, This one, he’s mine. This one, she’s mine. So I want them to inherit all the good things that you have given me. Not because we deserve it, not because of what we have done, but what Christ has done on our behalf. If you were a first-century Jewish person, you would totally understand what this is talking about here. But if you’re here, if you’re not familiar with the Old Testament, there’s gonna be a brief look back. Most of us are familiar with the story of the Exodus. Many of us have seen the movie The Prince of Egypt. So the Jews are in Egypt under Egyptian tyranny. God sends Moses to rescue the people out of Egypt. They wander around the desert for several years. While they’re in the desert, God says to them, I’m going to come and dwell with you. I want you to experience the glory and joy, and the rest of my presence. So he brings them to the wilderness, and he tells them to come up a mountain. As you come up the mountain, I’m going to meet you there. You’re going to experience this incredible supernatural rest. But the people disobey God because of their disobedience, because of their fear, because of their guilt, because of their sin. They disobey and they do not come up the mountain. So God then sets up a structure where the priest could come up the mountain, experience God’s presence, and then go back to the people and bring what God had given him. Moses is the first one. So Moses comes up the mountain, experiences the glory of God. In fact, in one instance, when he comes down the mountain, Moses is literally shining this supernatural shine coming off of him. God is saying to his people, I want you to experience my presence. But because of your disobedience, because of your fear, because of your sin, you can’t come up. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to come down to you. He begins to structure the people of Israel in such a way that his presence could come down to them. Of course, this is a foreshadowing of the cross. God saying, I want my people to be with me, but because of their sin, they cannot enter. Therefore, I will come down to them so that they can experience my presence. That happens, of course, in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ, the God man, the Son of God. Coming down, becoming a human being, living among us, making it possible for us to experience the presence of God. God wants to dwell with his people. He wants his people to experience the joy of his presence. However, he hates sin. He demands that sin be dealt with. So we can’t just waltz into the presence of God. I remember when I was a kid, I was terrible at wiping my shoes. I’d run around and do crazy stuff, and I’d run into the house, and I’d trek mud in. My mom would get so frustrated with me, and she’d be yelling. I remember she yelled at me once, Kenny, I love you, but I can’t stand that mud coming into my house. Not a perfect metaphor, but I think there’s a sentiment there that represents God. God will say, I love you, but I hate the sin that you’re dragging around with you. And I refuse to have that spiritual mud, my presence. I’m repulsed by it, just like my mom was disgusted by the mud. God is disgusted by our sin. It makes him want to throw up, metaphorically speaking. And yet simultaneously, he is tender and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. God wants to dwell with his people, but he demands that sin be dealt with.   The Old Covenant So he comes up with this elaborate priest system in the Old Testament to begin to deal with the sin of the people. God establishes this covenant, a very serious, sacred contract between Israel, the Jewish people, and God. Then God establishes one of those Jews, the first one being Aaron. You’re going to be the High Priest. There are going to be several priests. What the priest will do is they’re going to do various religious duties to sort of mediate this covenant between the Jews and God. They’re going to do all the religious duties. But there’s going to be one particular priest, a High Priest, starting with Aaron. He’s going to do some really serious things. He’s the one who will represent God, represent the people to God. He will be the agent on behalf of humanity, looking to God. So God gives Moses this very detailed blueprint for how Aaron is supposed to behave, how he’s supposed to dress, and the rituals he’s supposed to perform. There’s this incredible Tabernacle, this very, very detailed, elaborate blueprint for how the Tabernacle was, where people would worship and sacrifice. In the Tabernacle, there are the outer courts, then there are the inner courts. All the priests could go into the outer courts and the inner courts. Then in the center of the Tabernacle, was the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could go in and only once per year. That’s where the presence of God dwelt. So they built this elaborate Tabernacle. The presence of God comes and dwells. Only once per year can the High Priest go into the Holy of Holies. For 1400 years, this has been the case. Anyone in the line of Aaron was a part of the tribe of Levi. So the High Priest had to be of the tribe of Levi. Whoever the High Priest was, once a year, would go into the Holy of Holies. He would experience the presence of God, the glory and the joy, and the rest that God has for his people. He would experience that. He would make a sacrifice for the sins of the people, and then he would exit. This is the covenant that God establishes. So if you’re a Jewish person in the first century, reading the book of Hebrews, and you hear the writer of Hebrews say, Jesus is our great High Priest, there’s all this imagery that starts flooding your mind. The Old Testament covenant had some great value to it. There’s still great value to the Old Covenant. We can look back and learn from and glean elements of it that can shape us as Christians today. But the Old Covenant was incredibly limited. The Old Covenant protected Israel from experiencing the wrath of God. What God should have done to Israel is to cast them all into hell immediately. That would have been the righteous, right thing to do. That would have been perfectly appropriate. But the sacrificial priesthood system that God created protects them from God’s wrath. The wrath of God can be dealt with once per year. On the day of Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday. It could be dealt with there. So it protected them from the wrath of God, but only for one year. They could never enter into God’s rest. They could never experience the presence of God. If they went one year without making the sacrifice, then they would not be protected from the wrath of God. So the Old Covenant, while it was immensely valuable to them, was extremely limited. It only protected them from the wrath of God for a year. It never allowed them to enter into the presence of God.   Jesus the Better High Priest What we see in the book of Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews is saying, the New Covenant that Jesus established, oh, it’s far greater. It protects us from the wrath of God. Not for a year, but forever and ever and ever. It does more than just protect us from God. It actually ushers us into the glorious prayer presence and rest of God. So we, as Christians, will experience things that the Jews never had the opportunity to experience. Now, if you’re a Jewish person in the first century, a Jewish Christian reading the book of Hebrews, reading this, hearing this sermon, and you hear that Jesus is the High Priest. One of the immediate things that would stick out to you is, but wait a minute, the priest is supposed to be from the tribe of Levi. I mean, it’s a law that God gave us. The priest is supposed to be from the tribe of Levi. Jesus is from the tribe of Judah. That didn’t make sense. In fact, the tribe of Judah was the kingly tribe. That’s where the king came from. The priest came from the tribe of Levi, and they were never to intermingle. There was never to be a king who was a priest or a priest who was a king. That was absolutely forbidden. That was a capital crime. So if you’re a Jewish Christian living in the first century and you hear that Jesus is a great High Priest, you instantly will think to yourself, but he’s not a Levite. That doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t fit. The writer of Hebrews, over the next five and a half chapters, will begin to explain two things. One, he will begin to explain that the priesthood of Aaron, the Levitical priesthood, actually wasn’t that impressive. He’ll begin to explain that Jesus is a different kind of priest because he mediates a different type of covenant. He will say here, as you heard Leon read at the very end of the passage, you’ll say that Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek. He’ll say, Jesus is not a priest the way Aaron was a priest. He’s a priest, the way Melchizedek was a priest. We will get to Melchizedek in just a few weeks. Today I have to skip him. It would be too long. That’s why Jordan Thomas, my friend, preached 10 sermons here. That’s why he did this. We’re gonna get to Melchizedek in just a few weeks. The writer of Hebrews will spend significant time talking about Melchizedek in chapters 7, 8, and 9. He’ll allude quite a bit. So we’ll come back to Melchizedek. But for our purposes this morning, the writer of Hebrews is simply pointing out that Aaron was a priest mediating an Old Covenant. You think that the Old Covenant is still potentially in play, but it’s been rendered obsolete. That covenant is not the covenant you actually want to follow. There is a newer covenant, a better covenant, because Aaron was good, but Jesus is better. That’s the theme of this sermon, of this book. Jesus is better. Whatever you think of that, no matter how good you thought that was, there is something better in store for you. Jesus is better. So we actually don’t want him to be like Aaron. We want him to be like someone else. By the way, there’s an example in the book of Genesis, this guy named Melchizedek, he’s actually the example that we will look to, and we’ll get to that in just a few weeks. One of the problems with Aaron as a High Priest and all of his lineage is that he’s a human being. So he actually has to do sacrifices for his own sin. Every year, on the day of Yom Kippur, before he would enter into the Holy of Holies, he would have to make two sacrifices for his own sin. Then he would make two sacrifices for the sins of the people. Look at Hebrews 5, verse 3 says this, speaking of Aaron: “He is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins, just as he does for those of the people.” Not only is Aaron sinful, but his sons are sinful as well. His sons are to be the ones who inherit the priestly duties. They administer in a way that offends God, so God strikes them dead. The Aaronic priesthood starts off on a really bad foot. The writer of Hebrews is going like that’s actually not the one we look to. There’s a different type of priesthood because we don’t want that kind of covenant. We have a better covenant. Side note, side note, really important side note. Aaron’s sons decided to make sacrifices in the way they thought was best, rather than the way God told them. God had given them very specific instructions, very elaborate, very detailed, very nuanced. I mean, if you read through Exodus and Leviticus, there are these very particular instructions. God said, Do exactly what I have told you to do. These priests did mostly what God told them to do, but then they also did some other stuff because they simply thought they knew better than God. Christians, for you today, this is an incredible exhortation. God has given us some very specific instructions. Do what he tells you to do. Whether you understand it, whether you like it, or whether you think it’s necessary is irrelevant. Do what he tells you to do, because he has shown that he is a God that will not be messed with. He is loving, he is kind, he can sympathize, he is tender, and he is holy and righteous, and just. He demands obedience from his people. So, since this priesthood from Aaron on is defective, it’s got incredible limitations to it. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Remember all those years where the priesthood seemed defective and limited? There’s someone else who’s come along who’s been appointed. Just as Aaron didn’t appoint himself, he was appointed by God, so Christ has been appointed to be a better type of priest. Look at verse five, he says this. “So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by Him. Who said to him, You are my son, today I have begotten you.” The writer of Hebrews is saying, Do you know who appointed Jesus to be that great High Priest? The same one who told him, You are my son. Which is a quote from Psalm 2, which we’ve already seen in Hebrews was a quote in chapter one. In chapter one, the writer of Hebrews quotes from Psalm 2 where God says to his son, You are my Son, today I have begotten you. So the writer of Hebrews is saying, listen, remember back in chapter one, God was the one who called Jesus his Son. That’s the one who appoints Jesus to be the great high priest. Jesus didn’t appoint himself. Then in verse six, it says this, and he says also in another place, “You are a priest after the order of Melchizedek.” This is a quote from Psalm 110. In Psalm 110, it’s a foreshadowing that there would be a greater priest, a greater priest than Aaron. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Remember that. Remember, a thousand years ago, in Psalm 110 when there was a prophecy about a greater priest that would be like Melchizedek, not like Aaron. He’s come. His name is Jesus. Jesus is establishing a new covenant. This will lead us to great rest. It’s a covenant that does not merely protect us from the wrath of God temporarily, but it ushers us into the glory and joy of his rest forever. Then he gives us some additional insights into this, into the work of Jesus. Look at verse seven. Just a few verses left here says this: “In the days of his flesh, (when Jesus was on earth,) 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.”   Obedience to God Jesus prayed. The reason the Father hears him is because of his reverence. There’s a respect, there’s a healthy fear, a righteous fear of God that we ought to have. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. So Jesus offers up these prayers with loud cries and tears. There’s a passion, there’s a soul-filled lament and outcrying to God in his prayers. Although he was the Son, Jesus is the Son of God. He doesn’t rely on his sonship to accomplish the work that needs to be accomplished on our behalf. He is willing to suffer. They are suffering, so I will suffer. I want to identify with them. I want to sympathize with them. He’s God. He could have commanded from the heavens all sorts of things, but he chose to come and be one of us. He gets us. And in verse nine, it says, “He became the source of eternal salvation. (For whom?) For all who obey.” There’s this theme that keeps popping up about obedience throughout the book of Hebrews, and I mentioned this last week, but then we’re tempted to think, I must obey to earn my way into heaven. We want to be careful to push back on that idea. It’s not that we obey to earn our way to heaven. It’s those of us who genuinely believe we will want to obey. This is what Jesus says in John 14, verse 21. He says, “Whoever keeps my commandments, he is the one who loves me.” How do you know that you love God? It’s because you’re willing to obey him. That’s it. That’s how you know you love God. You’re willing to obey. You don’t obey to earn your salvation. Salvation is given to us as a free gift from God through Christ. But when we receive that, it causes us to want to obey. So, friends, I pause and ask you this. If you are not willing to obey, in fact, if you are willing to blatantly disobey, it’s fair for us to question whether or not you really love God. That’s a fair question to ask. If you are not willing to obey Jesus, it might be a sign that you’re not really truly saved, that you’ve duped yourself. You think you’re headed for that rest, but you’re actually headed for judgment. That is a scary proposition. That is a scary reality, that there are people who think they’re headed for rest but are headed for judgment. If you hear the commands of Scripture and you’re willing to say to yourself, yeah, but I don’t think that’s necessary, or I don’t think that’s right, or I’m just going to ignore that. If you’re willing to do that, you’re in a dangerous place. Your soul is in a precarious place. I would encourage you lovingly, I want to exhort you. Repent of that sin today, I beg of you. But for those of us who do seek to obey God daily, you’re not perfect. Maybe you blow it regularly. I know I do. But you genuinely do want to obey God. I’m genuinely striving to obey, to the best of my ability, even though I fail multiple times a day. If that’s you, then you’re headed for that rest. If you were to say, yeah, I really do trust the Bible. I believe it and I try to obey it, but I just fail so often. He would say to you, You’re one of mine. I remember your frame. I love you. I can sympathize with you. He doesn’t drop the hammer on you. For those of us who truly love him and demonstrate that through a willingness to obey him, that’s you. Then you’re headed for that great rest. Oh, and that will be a glorious day, friends, a glorious day. For those of us who genuinely believe in Christ, we have a great High Priest. We have an advocate, an agent, someone who goes to the Father and says, make sure he gets everything that we want him to have. Make sure she gets all the benefits of being in our family. Just like Aaron made sacrifices for ethnic Israel, Jesus makes sacrifices for spiritual Israel, Christians, the Church. But he accomplishes so much more, and it lasts forever.   Closing: The Throne of Grace Last thought this morning, I want to go back to chapter 4, verse 16. Let’s read it again because I think it’s such a helpful exhortation for us. We have this great High Priest, this great Jesus, the God man who loves us, who can sympathize with us, because we know that to be true. In verse 16, he tells us, “Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.” At the throne of grace, we will find mercy. At the throne of grace, we will find help. In our time of need. Church, in your greatest hardships, in your biggest weaknesses, in your darkest moments, when you blow it the most and you think, that’s it, I have now finally blown it so much where there’s no more forgiveness for me. In those moments, draw close to him with confidence. He will sympathize with you. Church, before the throne of God above, before that throne, we have a great High Priest. He forever lives and pleads for me and for you. We have this great High Priest who advocates for us, who sympathizes with us. Your name is graven on his hands. Your name is written on his heart. He was our sinless savior. Because the sinless Savior died, our sinful souls are counted free. Because of what Christ has done. No one can tell me, Kenny, depart from God’s presence. No one, no one, no tongue can bid me thence depart. Not because of what I’ve done, but because of what Christ has done on my behalf.   Communion That’s why we take communion every single week. Every single week, here at Horizon City, we come to the communion table. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He grabbed some wine and some bread, and He established a New Covenant. Later that night, he would be arrested, he would be put on a sham trial, he would be brutally beaten, and he would die an unjust death. But he would take on the sins of the world. That night, through his death, through his suffering, he establishes a covenant that every week we pause to remember. A New Covenant, a better covenant, mediated by a better priest. On that night, he grabbed wine and bread, and he said, Tonight I establish this covenant for you. In just a moment, we’re gonna pass the baskets. We’re gonna take communion together in just a moment. If you are a believer here this morning, I want to invite you to take communion with us this morning. We’d love for you to remember Christ with us. But if you are here this morning, you are not a believer. If you would say, Kenny, I’m not 100% sure that I’m genuinely in on Jesus. I would say, I’m glad you’re here this morning. I’d love to meet you and talk to you about what it means to follow Jesus. But this morning, if that’s you, I would ask you that when the baskets come, just let it pass. Communion is for Christians only. But don’t let the moment pass. Instead of taking communion with us, I implore you to take Christ for the first time this morning. Again, if you want to talk more about that, I’d love to have a conversation with you. But for those of us who follow Jesus, who love him, who seek to obey him, who know that he is our great High Priest, if that is you this morning, let’s pause and remember what he has done for us. If you’re new with us, we have two options. When the basket comes, we’ve got a little cup. It’s got juice and gluten-free bread. Then we have these little mini chalices. It’s got real wine and gluten-free bread. It’s got a little W on it. So, W is real wine, no W is juice. Grab whichever one is your preference, hold on to it, and then I’ll come up and lead us. He has established a new covenant. Let’s remember him together this morning. Leon and Daniel, brothers, come, let’s serve God’s people together.    

  Introduction: Recap of Hebrews Welcome back to the Book of Hebrews. For those of you with us in the fall, we spent October and November in the Book of Hebrews, and we took a break in December for Advent. Then in January, we were in the Why series, and now we are back in Hebrews for the next several months. I’m very excited. Yesterday morning, Daniel and I spent about two and a half hours on Zoom and went through the Book of Hebrews and planned out the summer with Hebrews and our Psalm series. So we have our preaching schedule planned through August, and I am very excited. As I was looking ahead in some of the passages in Hebrews, thinking, oh man, I can’t wait to get to that one. Oh, I can’t wait. I want to get to that one. I want to get to that one. Oh man, we’ll get there. We’ll get there. For those of you who were with us back on October 6th, our very first Sunday gathering together, by the way, that sermon is now available online. We have been in the process of getting our old sermons back. So we have several, not all of them, but several of our sermons are now available online. You can find them on our YouTube channel. Just search Horizon City Church on YouTube or go to our website. Scroll to the bottom, there’s a little YouTube icon. It’ll take you to our page. So the first two sermons of the Hebrew series are now online, and hopefully, we’ll get the rest up in the coming weeks here. So in the very first sermon back on October 6th, we looked at the opening verses of Hebrews chapter one. I began that sermon, if you remember those who were there, by quoting the lyrics from that well-known Journey song, Don’t Stop Believing. It’s a great theological resource. You know Journey, the rock band. So those of you who were there, you remember, I opened by quoting the lyrics from the song, and I talked about the overarching encouragement or exhortation from that song is don’t stop believing. That was the sentiment. Journey, the rock band, wants its audience to keep on believing. Don’t let the belief stop. Well, that’s the writer of Hebrews’ exact same exhortation. The writer of Hebrews, whoever he happens to be. You guys know that I’m Team Luke, but you may not be Team Luke. I know Mike is Team Apollos. That’s fine. Well, we can debate that later. But whoever the writer of Hebrews happens to be, his sentiment is Don’t stop believing. That’s the goal. That’s what he wants. But as I noted back on October 6, the writer of Hebrews does something very different than the writer of the song. The rock band Journey, in the song Don’t Stop Believing, they make this incredible error. In the song, they never tell us what they want us to believe in. Don’t stop believing. I want to shout back, Stop believing in what? What is the object of the belief? Well, the writer of Hebrews is not bashful. He makes it very clear what the object of our belief ought to be. He makes it very clear what he wants us to believe in. Or should I say who he wants us to believe in. Of course, it’s Jesus. The overarching message of the entire book of Hebrews is that Jesus is better, so don’t stop believing in Jesus. That’s it. That’s the exhortation. No matter what you compare Jesus to, Jesus is better than that, so you should keep on believing in him. That’s it. That’s the exhortation. Throughout the course of the early chapters of the Book of Hebrews, when we were traveling through in October, November, we see that in the earliest chapters, the earliest verses of chapter one, the writer of Hebrews makes the case that Jesus is divine, that he is the one through whom all things were created. He is the one who has received a particular privilege, a status from the Father. He’s unique in that way. So the writer is telling us, look to him. He is special. He is glorious. More than a dozen times throughout the Book of Hebrews, we are told to look to Jesus. Other times, we’re told to consider Jesus. We’re told to pay close attention to what we’ve heard about Jesus. That’s the message. That’s the focus. Keep your eyes on Jesus. That’s it. That’s the entire point of the book of Hebrews. He wants you to know Jesus is God. He’s the creator. He’s amazing. He is the one who stepped off his throne, became a human being, lived among us, experienced the human experience so that he could make purification for sins. After he had done that, after he had done what needed to be done to make purification of sin, namely die in our place and die and rise from the dead. After he had done that, he ascended to heaven, marched back into the throne room of God, and sat at the right hand of majesty. He has a privileged position. He is the Son of God. There is no one like him. He is better. So don’t stop believing in him. That’s the writer of Hebrews. Throughout the course of the early chapters, he then begins to make specific points about Jesus. He begins to say Jesus is better than the angels. Jesus is way better than the angels. There are certain things that God has said to his son Jesus that he never said to the angels. That’s what we see throughout the course of Hebrews chapter one. Then, as we travel into Hebrews chapter two, we see he’s saying that Jesus is the greatest human to have ever lived. Jesus takes on flesh and bones. He takes on human emotion. He experienced the array of the human experience, and yet he comes out on the other side having defeated death, sin, and the grave. He is tempted in every way, and yet without sin, he is triumphant. He’s the greatest human ever. He is truly human and truly God. He is the God man. He experiences everything we have experienced, and yet he still says no to sin.   Strive to Enter into the Rest Jesus has for Us Then in chapter three, we see the writer of Hebrews begin to compare Jesus to Moses. Moses is loved and revered by the Jewish people, and it makes it clear that we love Moses. Moses is great, but Jesus is better. In chapter three, he makes this allusion. He sort of alludes to the fact that there’s going to be a New Covenant that’s established and that the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant. Later in Hebrews, he’ll spend a lot more time unpacking that. As we went through chapter three, we see that the writer of Hebrews then begins to talk about a particular group of people who were a part of Israel’s history. There’s a group of people who were rescued from Egypt. The Jews had been under Egyptian tyranny for several hundreds of years. They were under Egyptian tyranny. God raises Moses up, and he rescues the Jewish people out of Egypt and takes them into the wilderness. They’re wandering around the wilderness, but because of their disobedience, they never enter into the promised land. The writer of Hebrews talks about the glory that would have been, and he uses the word rest. He said God had a rest set aside for the people of Israel, for the Jewish nation. They were to enter into the promised land and experience the rest that God has for them. But because of their disobedience and their lack of faith in God, God refuses to allow them to enter into that rest. They wandered around the desert wilderness for 40 years. The older generation die off, and their children grow up, and they would be the ones that God would then allow to go into the promised land. But the older generation that came out of Egypt, they never entered into God’s rest because of their own disobedience, because of their own lack of faith. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Listen. They did not keep believing. God told them, Don’t stop believing. But they didn’t listen. They stopped believing in Him. They stopped being focused on him. The writer of Hebrews is saying in chapter three and into chapter four, Don’t be like them. God has a rest for us as well. We are in a desert, a wilderness, and God has set us on a trajectory to experience a glorious rest one day. The writer of Hebrews is saying, We want you to enter into that rest, so don’t stop believing. That’s the trajectory thus far. The first three and a half chapters of the Book of Hebrews. Like Kenny, that took you eight minutes. Why did you have to preach eight sermons? Then we come to Hebrews, chapter four, verse eleven. In light of all that he has told them, he gives them this exhortation. If you have your Bibles, look with me at Hebrews chapter 4, verse 11. He says this. “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by some sort of disobedience.” Because of all that we know about Jesus, let’s strive to enter into the rest that he has for us. Well, there is a glorious rest coming. A moment where we enter his presence and see him in all of his glory. Where we experience the kindness and love and mercy and joy of God in a profound way, far beyond anything that we’ve experienced thus far in this life. That we will experience his glory and his presence and his power in a way far grander than what we’ve seen thus far on this side of eternity. It will be a grand moment when we experience that. And when our souls enter into his presence, our souls will be at rest. I love the language he uses. rest.   Choosing God’s Rest over the World’s Anxiety Now, we live in such an anxious world. So much busyness, difficulty. I don’t know about you, man. I know not every culture in the world is like this, but lots of cultures around the world are similar. The United States, we’re not unique in this fashion, but we have such a fast pace. Everyone is busy all the time. Everyone’s anxious. I feel like sometimes I talk to people, and the number of unread emails to have is like a badge of honor. So, I got 5,000 emails, I haven’t read. I’m so busy and we’re so anxious. I’m sort of a political junkie and so I used to listen to political talk radio a lot. So from about my early twenties, about 2003 up until about 2011, I listened for about an eight-year stretch. I would listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and crazy Michael Medved and Michael Savage. You know, these are these hot take far right wing. They’re not all far right wing necessarily, but I listen to a lot of guys. I just remember how angry I was all the time. I was just angry. It got me anxious. I remember the moment when I just said, I’m just gonna stop watching the news. I went through like a five-year stretch where I was really ignorant of the news. I’ll tell you, I was just way more peaceful. Maybe I was a worse citizen of our country, I don’t know. I was just way more joyful. Over the last few years, as I’ve kind of reintroduced some political talk radio and things of that nature, I’ve reintroduced some stuff, but I try to limit it in my life. I try to limit how much I listen to because it’s just so anxiety-inducing. It just is. We live in a society that cultivates anxieties and frustrations and worries, the need to keep up. It’s exhausting. You add to that our own battles with sin, my battles with sin, daily fighting my own gross desires to sin, my own prideful selfishness, constantly looking in the mirror and realizing I’m not the husband and father and man and pastor and leader and friend and neighbor that I ought to be. I regularly feel this civil war going on inside of me, and it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting. So I look forward to the moment where I step into glory, and we will experience his rest. What a glorious promise. I love that imagery. The rest that he has waiting for me. So he says, let’s strive in this life to ensure we enter that rest. Let’s do whatever needs to be done to ensure that we keep on believing so that we enter that rest. Now, just in case you’re tempted to ignore his exhortation, just in case you want to, you go, ah, I don’t really want to strive that much, I don’t really want to do all that needs to be done to ensure I enter that rest. Just in case you think, well, Kenny, you’re exaggerating. It’s not going to be, you know, it’s not going to be that great.   The Active and Living Word of God I don’t know if you’re, if you’re tempted to think that the writer of Hebrews follows this. He follows up the exhortation with a reason as to why you ought to take the exhortation seriously. So he tells us in verse 11, Strive to enter the rest. Then he says this in verse 12, Here is the reason why we should take this exhortation, this challenge, seriously. He says this in verse 12: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Why should you take this challenge seriously, to strive to enter his rest? Why? Because the word of God is living and active. That’s what he says. Now, at first, it may not make sense. Wait a minute. What’s the reason why I should take your challenge seriously? Because the word of God is living and active. At first glance, that might be a little bit confusing. But remember, up to this point in the book of Hebrews, for the first three and a half chapters, he has been utilizing the Old Testament extensively. He quotes over and over again throughout the first three and a half chapters; he’s quoting extensively from the Psalms, but also from some prophets, and from Exodus. So he’s quoting from the Old Testament, and he’s basically implying that this exhortation I’m giving, this challenge to enter into his rest, to strive. I didn’t come up with this on my own. This wasn’t random, it wasn’t arbitrary. I got this exhortation based on what I’ve seen in the scriptures that I’ve been sharing with you all along. Listen, I’m challenging you to do something that I learned from the Scriptures. So if you’re tempted to ignore the challenge I’m giving you, you’re not ignoring me. You’re ignoring the scriptures. They are living and active. So you don’t want to ignore them. That’s the sentiment on display here. Strive to enter his rest. Why would you want to do that? Because the word of God is living and active. He got this idea from the Scriptures. Now, when you study this particular verse in Hebrews chapter 4, in the Greek, when you look at the original Greek text, the structure seems to be what a lot of scholars say is that the main description for the word of God being given here is living and active. Then the other clauses we see after that are simply unpacking how the word of God is living and active. So the writer is saying the word of God is living and active. Let me show you in what ways it’s living and active. That’s the rest of what we see in that verse. The description is that it’s a two-edged sword, that it’s piercing between division of soul and spirit, that it divides between joints and marrow, that it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The word that we use there, the phrase in the Greek for the two-edged sword, basically imagine a piece of metal that’s the sharpest metal you’ve ever been in contact with. You know, it’s so razor thin that if you barely touch it, you’ll cut open your finger. That’s the imagery he’s giving there. Also, we think of ‘sword’ like a big army sword or a big warrior sword. That’s actually not the language in the original Greek. It’s more like a dagger or a scalpel. That’s how the word is most often used. In the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. In the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In the book of Joshua, this exact Greek word is used, and this is the tool that is used to do circumcisions. So they’re not using swords to do circumcisions. If you think about the tool that would be needed for circumcision, very precise, razor sharp, right? That’s the language there. This word was regularly used in the first century by medical doctors, like maybe a guy named Luke. I don’t know. That’s a different conversation. We can, we’ll come back to that. A different day. Yesterday, Daniel sent me a text message. He said, hashtag keep Hebrews anonymous again or hashtag make Hebrews anonymous again. Anyway, the idea that the writer of Hebrews is giving us is that the word of God cuts right to the place where it needs to cut. It’s razor sharp, it’s precise, it’s detailed. It’s not random. It’s not really chopping, it goes right to it. It divides between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It is sharp and it goes right to the place where it needs to go.   God Judges our Thoughts and Intentions Then the last phrase he gives us in verse 12, the last part of verse 12, he says this, “The word of God it judges the thoughts, intentions of the heart.” It judges the thoughts and ideas rolling around in your mind. It judges the desires that are cultivated in your heart. Imagine you’re in a courtroom, and you walk into the courtroom, and all of your thoughts and ideas and all of your heart’s desires and intentions and motivations, everything is pulled out on display. The judge stands before you and says, We’re going to judge all of your ideas and intentions by this rubric over here, this standard. It’s God’s Word. That’s the standard by which we are measured and judged. So God’s going to take your thoughts, your ideas, and measure them to his thoughts and ideas in His Word. And he’s going to see where they match. Where they don’t match, it’s going to highlight that you are wrong. God’s heart, God’s intentions, and God’s moral inclinations are on display in the Word of God, in the Scriptures. God’s going to take your desires, your inclinations, your intentions, and he’s going to measure them and go, yours don’t match mine. Friends, when we don’t match God, it is not God who is wrong. When we disagree with God, it is not God who is in error. The Word of God is the standard by which we will be measured and judged. It is powerful. It is living and active. Listen, here’s how God talks about his own word. The prophet Isaiah says this. Sarah read it to us a little bit ago. Isaiah 55:11 says this, (God is speaking through the prophet Isaiah.), “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty. It shall accomplish that which I purpose.” What a great word. It shall accomplish what God has purposed. One of the doctrines that modern evangelicals hold to dearly is the doctrine of infallibility. That the Word of God is incapable of failing. It does not fail in any way. It will always accomplish that which God has designed for it to accomplish. We believe the Bible is inerrant. We hold to the doctrine of inerrancy, that the Bible is without error, that whatever the Bible seeks to communicate is always accurate, true. We can trust the veracity of the Scriptures, Jesus says this. In Matthew 24, Jesus said this. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Heaven and earth, they’re going to pass away. There’ll be a new heaven and a new earth. But my words, they will never pass away. That is remarkable. I remember when I first came to faith back in 1996. My youth pastor, Rob, would regularly say to us, There are only three things that last forever. God, the word of God, and the souls of men. He would say it all the time. There are only three things that last forever. Live your life accordingly. He would say that to us. The Apostle Paul says this to his protégé. 2nd Timothy, chapter 3, verses 16 and 17. The apostle Paul speaking, “All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable.” All scripture is breathed out from God. Scripture contains the divine exhalings of a Holy God. Scripture, the words of Scripture, are the divine exhalings of a Holy, Almighty God. And then it says, Paul tells Timothy, “These scriptures, they are profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” The Scriptures are useful. The sentiment I’ll display in Hebrews 4, the writer of Hebrews is saying, I’m giving you an exhortation. I got this exhortation from the Scriptures. If you are tempted to ignore this exhortation, you are flirting with something different, dangerous. Because the Scriptures are living and active. When we examine the Scriptures, they have the ability to cut us in a good way. It may hurt. We may feel exposed. We may have our feelings hurt. Or we may be offended. We may have our modern sensibilities shocked. We may feel dumb because we realize how wrong we’ve been or how stubborn we’ve been. But these are all good things. It is good to be cut by God’s word, to allow that scalpel to cut away the dross, the things that get in the way. This is why we preach every week. This is why preaching from God’s word is powerful. The preaching event is valuable. We live in this weird, egalitarian society where that guy up there, who is he to say he knows anything? I don’t know anything other than this. This right here. This is all I have to offer you. This is why we get up. We proclaim this each week. Acts, chapter 2, verse 37. Right after the apostle Peter preaches this great sermon on the day of Pentecost. Acts chapter 2, verse 37, it says this: “Now, when they heard this, (the sermon that Peter preached) Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?” What a response. They hear the word of God preached, they hear a sermon from Peter, and they are cut to the heart. The response is, What do we do? You’ve cut us now, what do we do? How do we live in light of this? That’s the right response to the preaching of God’s Word. We live in a society, though, where people want to respond to preaching by saying things like, Did God really say that? Is that really what he said? Be careful, if you ever respond to God’s Word with, Is that really what it says? Because it’s exactly what Satan said in the garden. You want to be careful that we don’t respond the way Satan responds to God’s word. Want to be very careful.   Don’t Ignore God’s Word That doesn’t mean there’s not an opportunity to have a conversation. If someone has talked about the Bible and you think maybe they’ve misunderstood it, it’s perfectly appropriate to sit down and have a dialogue about that. It’s totally appropriate. But when we know that God has spoken on something, our response should be, What do we do about it? God, how do I change my life to be in line with you and what you’ve called us to be? I fall back to the last 90 days of my life. Just back to early November. The conversations I’ve had with people questioning things in the Bible. In the last 90 days, I’ve had someone say to me, I don’t really know about LGBT issues. Someone questioned me on sexuality. Is it really that bad if two men want to have a relationship? Like, love is love? I had someone say that to me recently. I want to be kind. We want to be loving to those who are wrestling with sexuality. Absolutely. But we want to stand very clearly for what we believe to be true. Yes, we believe that. We believe that God has a particular order for sexuality. Absolutely. I’ve been questioned on the statements I’ve made about abortion. People have said, Is it really that bad? Well, yes, I do think it’s really that bad because of what the scripture says. I’m not making this up. I’m not getting it on my own. You’re welcome to ignore me, but I would challenge you. Don’t ignore what the scripture says. I was questioned not long ago on the role of the church. Someone on social media said something like, You know, the primary purpose of a church is to do charitable things in a community. Well, charitable things in the community are good. We should do some of those things. Absolutely. That’s not the primary role of a local church. No, it’s not. They’re like, well, how do you know that? Well, because, like, I’m looking at what the Bible says, and the person was like, well, I don’t know that that book was written 2,000 years ago. We need to get up with the times. No, I don’t need to get up with the times. I trust that this book is inerrant, infallible, and the Word of God sufficient for all times. I had someone question me about excommunication. I can’t believe a church would kick someone out. And I go, well, the Bible. She goes, I can’t imagine any Christian would do that. I said, well, First Corinthians 5 and Matthew 18. There are some things in the Bible. She’s like, that’s not in the Bible. Yes, it is. And she read it. She thought, Oh, wait a minute, that can’t be right. She had an opinion, an idea that churches would never discipline a member. But the Bible says that’s right and actually, good. Now there’s a wrong way to do it. Certainly. There have certainly been churches that have done it in a way that is abusive or unnecessarily judgmental. Certainly, there’s a wrong way to do it. But just because some churches do it wrong doesn’t mean we ignore the commands of Scripture for us to do it right. So sometimes we have these ideas, we have concepts rolling on our minds, we have intentions of our heart, and we want to measure them against what the word of God says. The word of God is a judge, a scalpel, cutting right to the moment, coming right to the part of our heart that needs to be judged. I had someone recently who professes to be a Christian who says they don’t think it’s a big deal for men to look at pornography on the side. You can look, but don’t touch is what he told me. Are you out of your mind? Let me see what the word of God says. Let me show you what the word of God says. He’s like, I don’t know. Is it really realistic that a guy’s not going to do anything? Well, yeah, it is. I’ve been married for five years. I’ve never done anything outside of my marriage. Yes, it is realistic. I know lots of men for decades who have been faithful to their brides. Absolutely. The word of God demands that of us. The power of God enables us to walk that out. Hey, man, this thing is going to judge you, brother. So I told him, in every case, when I’m having a conversation with someone, when someone disagrees with me, what I want to do is I want to make it very clear, you’re not disagreeing with me. You’re disagreeing with what the Bible says. I want to come back with what the Word of God says. If there’s an opportunity for interpretation, maybe there’s a passage of scripture where we might not interpret it exactly the same, I want to be honest about that and say, hey, you know what? I want to be careful that I don’t come down too hard and say, thus saith the Lord. If there’s maybe some way to maybe look at this passage. But the reality is there are very few passages of scripture where there’s not some clear exhortation that we can say, thus saith the Lord. This is what God says. When God says it, I don’t give a rip what anyone says. If you disobey, you are at risk of not entering the rest. So do not disobey. The writer of Hebrews would tell us, Do not disobey. Then in verse 13, he follows up with this. Just in case anyone is tempted to think they’re going to escape the judgment of God. He wants to make it very clear, right? So his sentiment is to strive to enter the rest. Why? Because the word of God is living and active. It’s going to bring judgment to you. Just in case you think you’re going to escape judgment, just think you’re going to escape standing before God and being judged. Look what he says in verse 13, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” What a great verse. This is not a verse you see on a coffee mug often, right? There is no creature, no, not one person, not one creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him, the one to whom we must give account. The Word of God is living and active. It has given us exhortations. I implore you, I challenge you, I encourage you. Obey what he has commanded. Look forward to the rest that he has for you.   Looking Ahead: Can Christians Lose Their Salvation? Two last quick thoughts. One, I’m going to give you a cliffhanger. The other, I’ll give you all the final thoughts. So, cliffhanger is this: Some people may ask Kenny, Are you saying that we have to obey and earn our way into that rest? Is that what the writer of Hebrews is saying? That’s not what he’s saying. We believe on him, and he empowers us to continue believing and enter into that rest. Later in the Book of Hebrews, he will talk more about that. Sometimes people will argue it’s possible for someone to be a genuine Christian and then choose to disobey God, and then lose their salvation. Some people have used the Book of Hebrews to make that case and say, Are you saying that people can lose their salvation? I promise, three weeks from today, God willing, we will tackle that head-on when we get to Hebrews chapter six. Spoiler alert. No, I do not believe that Christians can lose their salvation. I do not believe that. I think that’s potentially a misunderstanding. I understand why people say that. I get it. I don’t think that’s what the Bible teaches. I promise that in three weeks, we will get to Hebrews 6 and we will deal with that head-on. I’m excited. I was, like, tempted to skip to it today anyway. But we’ll get there. In three weeks, we’ll get there. Once we come to faith in Christ. I do believe that if you are a Christian, a genuine believer, you will remain with him forever. I believe that. Okay. But that doesn’t mean we also ignore the exhortations we have in this life. The exhortation to you is, do not disobey. Keep on believing so that you will enter that rest. What we don’t want to do is, well, I already believed once, so I’m fine. No, no, no. I’ve already believed once, and because I believe on Him, I want to obey the command to keep on believing. Because I believe on Him, I want to obey all the things that he has in His Word because I believe on Him. I want him to judge my ideas, my thoughts, my intentions, and I want him to root those things out of me that are not of him, because I believe in Him. I want God’s Word to work in my life. I know that His Word will be the means of him drawing me into that great rest that we will enjoy forever and ever. So we’ll get to Hebrews 6 in a few weeks.   Closing: To Know God and be Known by Him Last thought this morning, last thought I have for you this: When I think about the Scriptures, God’s revelation to us in His Word, I can’t help but pause and ask myself, Why do the Scriptures exist? Why did God give us the Bible? Why are these words from God? Why did he give us these? There are probably several reasons. We could go around the room, and we could probably come up with a long list of reasons as to why God gave us the Bible, and lots of good reasons. But there’s one reason that, I don’t know if it’s the greatest reason, but it’s my favorite reason of all the reasons. God gave us the Scriptures to tell us that he is knowable, that he wants to be known. He wouldn’t have given us this book and invited us to read it, to consume it, to listen to it if he didn’t want us to know Him. The God of the universe, who was far. Who seems far away to so many people, seems unknowable and confusing and mysterious, that God says to you, No, no, you can know me, and I want you to be known. I want to be known by you. The Scriptures exist. The Word of God exists because the very existence of the Word of God shouts to us that intimacy with the Almighty is possible. That is an unbelievable reality. God, the God of the universe, who is Holy and good, who would have been well within his rights to cast all of us into hell, every single one of us. Because of our sin, we deserve the full wrath of God. He was under no obligation to save us. There’s no cosmic law that says Jesus had to come to Earth to make purification for sins. He chose to do that because he loves us. Then he gave us His Word, revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. Revealing his ways, revealing himself, revealing his character, his attributes, his thoughts, his intentions, so that we can know him. Revealing to us how we can receive mercy. Mercy. Several months ago, I had a conversation with a woman whom I met at a coffee shop. She said to me, I told her we were launching a new church. She said, maybe, I’ll come and check it out. So she called me on the phone the next day and said, Pastor, I have a question for you. I could hear her voice break. And she said, 30 years ago, I actually had an abortion. I could hear the heartbreak in her voice. She said, Do you think God really forgives? Do you think God will ever really forgive me for the choice I’ve made? Do you think God will forgive me? And I said to her, You say you’re a believer. Yes, I believe. Can I read to you? From Romans, chapter 8, the verse that Daniel read for us this morning, assurance of pardon. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” I said yes. The God of the universe will forgive. He forgives. As we sang a moment ago, our sins they are many. His mercy is more. We are great sinners. He is a greater Savior. We would not know that without the Scriptures he reveals to us in the pages of Scripture. The words of God reveal to us, shout to us that the Holy God has made a way, that he has made purification for sins, that he is better than anything else or anyone else, that he is worthy of our love. We are sinners by nature, and by choice, we betrayed him. We deserve the full wrath of God. But God, who is rich and mercy abounding in steadfast love, intervenes in the human story and makes a way for us to be saved through faith in Jesus. All of that truth is revealed in the pages of Scripture. Without Scripture, we would not know those things. We would have no hope. We would not know. We would know that our sins are many, but we would not know that his mercy is more. We would know that we are great sinners. But we would not know that he is an even greater Savior. We would know that we are worthy of condemnation. But we would not know that in Christ there is no longer any condemnation. The very existence of this living and active word shouts to us that he is merciful, that he is knowable, that he invites you to come and to know Him. The Scriptures tell us that Christ has done what needed to be done so that we can be reconciled to God, so that we can enter into his rest forever and ever and ever.   Communion That’s why each week we take communion. Each week we come to the Lord’s table, we pause, and we take juice, wine, and some bread. We remember what Christ has done on our behalf. If you are here this morning and you are a follower of Jesus, we invite you to take communion with us this morning. If you would say, Kenny, I’m a genuine follower. I’m all in on Jesus. If that’s you, we would love to invite you to come and take communion with us this morning. If you are here, though, and you would say, I’m not sure I’m really all in on Jesus. I’m not really sure if I’m really committed to Him. If that’s you, I’m glad you’re here. But I would ask you not to take communion with us this morning. Communion is for believers. The baskets will come. If that’s you. If you’re not a Christian, if you’re not all in on Jesus, when the baskets come, just let the basket pass. But don’t let the moment pass. Instead of taking communion with us this morning, I implore you, look to Christ this morning. Take him on for the first time. If you have any questions about what that means, what that looks like, I’d love to talk to you about that after the service. I’d love to have a conversation with you. But for those of us who follow Jesus, for those of us who love him, who have placed our faith in him, for those of us who know that he is better, for those of us striving to enter into that rest this morning, I invite you to remember what Christ has done for you in communion with us this morning. As a reminder, we have two options. We have juice, gluten-free bread, and we have wine. Real wine. Gluten-free bread. The W is the real wine, the other is juice. Grab whichever one you want as the baskets come. Grab. Which one’s your preference? Hold it. I’ll come back and lead us in a moment. Let’s remember Christ together. Leon and Daniel, Brothers, come. Let’s serve God’s people together.    

  Introduction: Why Does God Allow Bad Things To Happen? Well, good morning. It is great to have you here with us at Horizon City. Most of you in the room know me, but if you don’t, my name is Kenny. I have the privilege of serving as pastor here. A few weeks ago, we looked at John, chapter nine, back on January 5th. So this morning we will look at John 11. This morning is a little bit of a part two to that sermon on John, chapter nine. So January 5th, we looked at John 9. A week later, Liam Garden was here from Scotland. He preached. Then last week was Sanctity of Life Sunday. We spent time talking about the image of God. This morning, we will jump into John chapter 11. Again, a little bit of a part two to that sermon that we had a few weeks ago. Then, God willing, next week when we gather, we’ll be back in the book of Hebrews. So we were in the book of Hebrews in the fall for two months. Then, Lord willing, for February, all the way through May, we’ll be back in the book of Hebrews. I am very, very excited to be in Hebrews. As I’ve been studying, there is a lot of good stuff. A lot of good stuff. Daniel is very excited. He’s like, let’s get the milk. Let’s go. We’re excited. This morning, there is a question we want to answer. We’ve been answering various questions over the last few weeks. The question we want to answer this morning is Why does God allow bad things to happen? We sort of already answered this question back on January 5th. Back in January, a few weeks ago, when we looked at John 9, I said, There are a few reasons why bad things happen in our lives, why we experience suffering. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes a bad thing happens or there’s some suffering, and we can sort of figure out why it’s happening to us. But that’s actually pretty rare. Most of the time, when we’re experiencing some form of suffering or difficulty, we don’t know why. There are a few different reasons. When we look at scripture, there are a few categories of reasons as to why suffering happens. I mentioned this a few weeks ago. One reason Suffering happens because sometimes we sin, sometimes we make foolish choices, and we end up suffering the consequences of our own sin, right? If I eat two dozen donuts in one sitting, my stomach’s gonna hurt. It’s a consequence of my own choice. I can’t look at God and say, How? How can you make my stomach hurt after I ate 24 donuts in a row, Lord? That would be silly. But oftentimes we face suffering, and it’s totally unrelated or unconnected to our sin. Sometimes we face suffering because of other people’s sins. That’s hard. Sometimes we ask God, Why would you allow that? A few weeks ago, I made the point from John 9 that one of the reasons why God allows suffering is for the good of others who are watching us. God allows us to experience suffering for a period of time, for a season, and then God will intervene in our lives in that season, and other people will see the glory of God in us, and it will cause them to believe. That’s another reason why suffering is allowed in our lives. But this morning I’m going to give you a reason as to why God allows suffering from John, chapter 11. In John chapter 11, as we look through this passage, this is a moment, very famous, well-known moment of scripture where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. In this passage, the reason we see that Jesus allows suffering is because he loves us. Now that seems counterintuitive, but as we’ll see in a moment here, God allowing suffering in our lives is one way God allows us to experience his love. While we suffer, the apostle John will help us to see. Because he loves us. Because he loves you. So let’s pray briefly again, and then we’ll look at John 11 together. God, would you give us understanding, give us ears to hear, minds to understand. May we be encouraged by what we see in your scripture this morning, I ask, Amen.    A Message from the City of Bethany If you remember in John chapter 9, Jesus was traveling throughout the Judean region. Before John 9, most of Jesus’ ministry was in the region of Galilee. That’s the region he was from. Galilee was sort of separated from the main downtown or crossroads of society in Jerusalem and the central parts of Judea. So Jesus had done a lot of ministry in Galilee. There were rumors of Jesus spreading throughout the Judean region. Most people in Jerusalem or near Jerusalem had never experienced Jesus firsthand. In John 9, that was a little bit of a coming-out party for Jesus. That was kind of the moment where he is on the map in a significant way, where lots of people in Jerusalem firsthand get to experience the ministry of this man they’ve heard of, that some say is the Messiah. This man named Jesus. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man, a man probably in his early 20s who had been born blind. Jesus heals him. This caused an incredible buzz, a stir throughout the city of Jerusalem. Jesus stays there in Jerusalem through John chapter 10. He’s traveling around, preaching and teaching, and the Jewish leadership starts to get concerned. They begin to say to themselves, this Jesus character, he’s starting to get a lot of attention, a lot of following. If we kind of allow that to continue, it’s going to kind of upset the apple cart. Like, we kind of like what we’ve got here with the Romans. They’ve given us a lot of, a lot of autonomy. We want to kind of run the show. If Jesus comes in and people start following him, that could kind of cause a stir. And the Romans might not like that. We might lose authority or power or influence, we might lose money. So we probably should kill this Jesus. That’s going to begin to plot. Eventually, his disciples are victims of a potential plot. The Jewish leadership is trying to kill Jesus, so they flee the town. In John chapter 10, verse 40, it tells us that Jesus flees to the other side of the Jordan River. Jesus ends up in a place probably about 20 to 25 miles north and east of Jerusalem. 20 to 25 miles in the ancient world would be a several-day journey. Some time passes, maybe a few weeks go by. Jesus is in the region on the other side of the Jordan River. He’s doing ministry, he’s preaching, he’s teaching, he’s healing the sick, casting out demons. While he’s there, he gets a message from the city of Bethany. The City of Bethany is actually pretty close to Jerusalem. It’s just under two miles. The New Testament tells us it’s 15 stadia, which is just under two miles away from downtown Jerusalem. So pretty close to where there are people plotting to kill Jesus. Jesus gets this message from the city of Bethany. In the city of Bethany, there are a few of his friends. Jesus has friends. There’s one particular family that’s really special to Jesus. This family has three siblings, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. A message comes from Bethany to the area where Jesus is, and the messenger says, Jesus, you gotta come to Bethany, the one you love, Lazarus, (how he’s defined). The one you love is sick. It’s very serious, he’s going to die. Mary and Martha, by the way, are known to us; many of us are familiar with them. There is a well-known narrative in The Gospel of Luke. In Luke, chapter 10, Mary and Martha are the ones who are hosting Jesus. Famously, Mary is the one hanging out with Jesus, and Martha is the one working hard to serve Jesus. What we learn from that narrative is that Jesus is interacting with Martha, and Jesus says to Martha, Martha, you don’t have to do a bunch of stuff for me. You’re working yourself up. You’re feeling so anxious. Martha, what I’m really concerned about is for you to do what Mary’s doing. Just be with me, hang out with me, commune with me. Let’s be friends, let’s have a conversation, let’s love one another. Mary was sitting with Jesus. Martha was busy doing a bunch of stuff for Jesus, and Martha got frustrated with Mary. You just sit in there, and Jesus says, No, no, no, Martha, you missed it. Mary’s doing the right thing. I think it’s a great lesson for us. God doesn’t demand we do a bunch of stuff for him. God will not love you more just because you do a bunch of stuff for him. No, he will love you because you are his, and he loves to spend time with you. You’re busy doing a bunch of stuff. Could you just sit with me this week? This kind of hit me a couple of days ago. I have a tendency to just want to do a bunch of stuff for God. You know, we’re Horizon City Church, about three months old now, and I have this tendency to be like, we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to launch the groups. We gotta get our website better, we gotta do our social media. I’m busy doing all this stuff. This week, I just felt the Lord tell my heart, Can you just be with me, man? I’m not impressed by your ability to do stuff. I’m not impressed with you, Kenny. I was there when you were made. I’ve seen all the sins of your life. I know your resume, it’s not that impressive. God, could you just be with me? I love you. Not for what you can do, not for what sermons you can preach, not for how many lunch meetings you can have, or how much money you can raise. Kenny, I love you because you’re mine. I resonate with Martha so much, but he calls us to be Mary. So Mary and Martha have this moment with Jesus, and they develop a sweet friendship.   The Story of Lazarus So here Jesus is on the other side of the Jordan River, several days’ journey away from where his friends are. He gets this message that Lazarus is seriously sick and he’s about to die. Here’s what the apostle John writes for us under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Look at John, chapter 11, verse 5. Such an interesting verse. Verse 5 says this: “Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” He loves them. Then verse six it says something I would not have expected. He loved them so. Verse 6. “So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” What? That doesn’t make sense. That’s not what I expect the verse to say. It should say he loved them. So he got up immediately and he rushed over to Bethany to make sure he healed Lazarus. That’s what it should say from my human perspective. So what it says, because he loved them, so he intentionally waits two more days. The word ‘so’ here is a little Greek conjunction. Some English translations translate it as ‘yet’. So he loved them, yet. That’s a terrible translation. With all due respect to those Bible translations, it is not an accurate representation of the Greek. The word there should be ‘so’ or ‘therefore’. Or in light of so. The better English translations will use either the word so or therefore. God loves them. Therefore, he intentionally waits two more days. He waits two more days. That is so confusing to us. For those of us who experience difficulty, if God didn’t love us, pain would be easy to understand. Why am I suffering? Well, because God doesn’t love me. Okay, well, duh, He hates me and he wants me to suffer. But that’s not the case. God does love us, so it’s confusing. God, wait a minute. You see the suffering. You see Lazarus dying, you know what’s happening, and yet you intentionally wait, and that is somehow the evidence that you love him. God, that does not make sense to my human brain. So if you are here this morning, if that’s confusing to you, I’m with you. You’re not crazy. He intentionally waits longer. He waits and he tells his disciples, after two days, hey, disciples, we’re going to travel to Bethany. We’re going to heal him. Some of the disciples actually give him some pushback. They’re like, well, if we go to Bethany, that’s really close to Jerusalem, and they were just trying to kill you there. So if we go to Bethany, we might die. Jesus says, Don’t worry, we’re gonna go. We’re gonna be with Lazarus. They’re like, well, he’s probably dead by now. He’s like, don’t worry. He’s like, I know what’s going on. Then Thomas speaks up. Thomas says, Guess we’re gonna go die. Let’s go. Thomas, the one who gets dogged on for being doubting Thomas, he’s like, all right, guys, let’s go. Jesus said, We’re gonna go. If this is the time to die, let’s go. We’re gonna go. We’re gonna die. Jesus then says to him, verse 14. Jesus says, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe.” What an unbelievable statement from Jesus. He’s like, I waited two days because I wanted to make sure the Lazarus was dead. I’m glad I was not there when he died. I’m glad because this is going to be for you, speaking to Thomas and his disciples. I’m about to do something in front of you, in your eyes, and it’s going to be good for you. It’s actually good that Lazarus died because something good is going to happen for you. It’s going to help you believe. Very similar sense of what we see in John chapter nine, when the young man is blind. Jesus, when his disciples asked, Why was this man born blind? Jesus said he was born blind because the works of God could be displayed. So they travel to Bethany, 20ish miles or so. It would have taken them at least a few days. They get there, and after they get there, Lazarus has been dead for four full days. This is important because there was a rabbinical tradition in the first century that when a person died, their soul would remain somewhat connected to the body, maybe hovering over the body or floating over the body. There was a belief that there was a possibility that the soul could then re-enter the body, reanimate the person, could raise. So they weren’t really officially considered dead. But the belief was that at the end of the third day, the soul would then completely leave the body. On day four, the person would be officially dead, and their body would begin to rot, and then they would stink. The body would begin to smell. So this is important because if Jesus had shown up on day two of Lazarus being dead or day three, someone could say, well, that wasn’t a real resurrection for the dead. His soul was still right next to him. Well, how hard is it to get the soul to go down a few inches? That’s how people thought in the ancient world. So Jesus waits till day four so people know for sure. Later in the text, it tells us that there was a great odor coming from the tomb, so he stinketh. At this point, the old King James says Jesus intentionally waits until Lazarus is dead for four days. Verse 18 tells us that they get to Bethany. Which is about two miles away in your English Bible. The Greek actually is 15 stadia. That’s the measurement they used in the ancient world. It’s close enough for Jerusalem. We see in verse 19 that there are several Jews from Jerusalem who come to visit Mary and Martha. It appears this family had a lot of friends in Jerusalem. They were probably wealthy, probably well-known. So a bunch of people from Jerusalem come to console Mary and Martha. No doubt many of the people who come to Bethany to console Mary and Martha are people who have heard of Jesus or maybe were familiar with Jesus. In fact, later they will make some comments and make it clear that they were very familiar with, maybe even there when Jesus heals a young man in John chapter 9. Jesus is becoming pretty famous now, or in the mind of some people, infamous in the minds of some Jewish leaders. At this point, Jesus is sort of public enemy number one. No doubt some of those people were in Bethany. Jesus is potentially walking right into the hornet’s nest. When he arrives, Martha comes up to meet him first. She says to him, basically, Jesus, if you had been here, you could have healed my brother and you wouldn’t be dead right now. Only if you had shown up sooner. How many times have we felt this in our lives? So many times in our lives, I’ve had these moments of difficulty and pain, and hardship. I’ve said, God, if you had just stepped in in this way, this thing wouldn’t have happened. God, why? You say you love me? Why didn’t you show up? Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you intervene? If you ever thought those thoughts or felt those feelings, experienced those emotions, you know exactly what Martha is feeling in this moment. In verse 23, Jesus looks at Martha and he tells her, “Martha, your brother’s going to rise again.” She tells him, but she doesn’t realize what he’s actually referring to. The text says she thinks he’s referring to the future resurrection when all of us will be raised from the dead. She goes, well, yeah, I know in the resurrection of the dead, he’s going to rise. She misses what Jesus is actually telling her. Later in the text, Jesus meets up with Mary, the other sister of Lazarus, and she says the same thing as Martha. Verse 32, Mary says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Surely many of us have felt this emotion. God, if you had only shown up in this moment, then we wouldn’t be experiencing this thing. Why didn’t you show up? I felt this emotion so many times in my life. The next few verses, in my opinion, are some of the sweetest verses in Scripture. So sweet. Jesus sees Mary in her confusion, in her frustration. She’s crying. Jesus looks at her. And in verse 33, it says this about Jesus. “He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” He sees his friend Mary, whom he loves. She’s weeping, and he’s deeply moved. He’s troubled. It bothers him that she’s crying, that she’s weeping. Friends, Church this morning, know you have a savior when he sees you weeping, when he sees you mourning. He’s moved in his soul, his spirit. He’s bothered. He’s troubled. And in John, chapter 11, verse 35, the shortest verse in the entire Bible. Two words. One of the most profound verses in Scripture, in my opinion. “Jesus wept.” The God of the universe became a man, and he sees the suffering of the one he loves. And he wept. In the Greek language, there are multiple words for crying and lamenting. The word here is actually uncontrollable weeping, is sort of the word. Jesus is not just crying. There is this deep lament. We might call it an ugly cry. He’s so moved and troubled. Deep weeping because his friend is hurting. He wept. When Jesus comes face to face with the death and the pain of those he loves, his response is to weep. Some people may ask, Wasn’t this intentional? Didn’t Jesus intentionally orchestrate this whole thing? Well, he did, yes. But it doesn’t make the pain of the moment any less. Jesus is not going, I know what I’m doing. I’m orchestrating this. I know it hurts, but I’m about to raise him from the dead. You don’t know. It’s fine. No, it’s not how he functions. That’s not how he responds. Yes. I’m orchestrating all of this because I’m going to raise him from the dead. You don’t know that yet, Mary. All you know is that he’s dead, and you are in pain, and your pain causes me to weep. Pain is an interesting thing in the moments when we experience great pain. It’s the moments where God tends to get our attention the most.   Responding to Suffering The National Institute of Health Organization in the United States unit, they’ve done some extensive studies over the last few years. There’s an incredible connection between people who experience chronic physical pain and people who are labeled as empathetic and humble. People who have experienced significant chronic pain in their life, they are more likely to be labeled as empathetic and humble by their friends. It seems that pain, when we experience pain, it causes us to be more compassionate toward others. It causes us to walk with more humility. Walking with compassion and humility is a good thing. C.S. Lewis, it’s been a few weeks without a C.S. Lewis quote; you need one, right? At least three weeks. That’s way too long. You can’t go that long. It’s unacceptable. C.S. Lewis says it this way. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. Pain is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, shouts in our pain. Whenever someone who’s a believer and loves Jesus experiences pain, you usually get one of two responses. Most of the time, one of two responses. We actually see those two responses, right here in verse 36. Some people say this.  They look at Jesus, they see him weeping, they see him and Mary together. And they say this in verse 36, “See how he loves them.” There are people in your life who will see you going through pain. They will see you experiencing the comfort of Christ, and they will say to themselves, God loves you. It’s one of the reasons why God allows us to suffer pain, because as he comforts us, it will show others the glory of his love. The other reaction you might get, we see here as well in this text. Verse 37 says that certain people responded this way: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” So the first category of people that are going to go, wow, look how much Jesus loves them. He’s helping them in their pain. Then there are others who say, Couldn’t he just stop the pain altogether? Couldn’t he have protected you from this? Who is this guy? He claims to love you. They’re referring back to John, chapter nine, when he healed the blind man. Couldn’t this Jesus character have also healed Lazarus before he died? You will get both of those reactions when you experience suffering. Some people will be attracted to Jesus as He works in your life through your suffering. There will be others who are repelled and are frustrated, even more so, or become more hostile toward Jesus because they see you suffering. Their response is not your responsibility. That’s between them and the Lord. The Lord will see fit to use your suffering in whatever way will most glorify Himself. That’s between them and God.  When I read this passage, I can’t help but pause and think, so, Jesus, you love them. I would have expected you to heal Lazarus and get there sooner. But Jesus knows that something greater is coming. You see all of these people, they seem to have some amount of confidence in Jesus because they’re all saying, well, couldn’t he have healed Lazarus? They could have healed him, right? So they’re all confident that Jesus could heal the sick, that Jesus could heal the blind man, that Jesus could heal someone before they died. They all have some level of confidence in Jesus. Mary and Martha have some level of confidence in Jesus. The people from Jerusalem, there’s some level of confidence. But in the sentiment, when you read the text here, there’s a sense of finality. Like they seemingly think, well, the window of opportunity for Jesus to do something has now passed. It’s been four days. The soul has left the body, There’s an odor. He stinks. Nothing can be done. So they have some level of confidence in Jesus, but they don’t really understand what Jesus is capable of. That’s what this moment is all about. Jesus is like, you guys have seen me heal a blind man. You have some confidence in me, but you actually don’t realize what I’m capable of. And because I love you, I want you to see all that I’m capable of. Mary and Martha, because I love you, I want you to be a part of the story of bringing other people to faith in me. Because I love you, I’m going to do something bigger than you could have ever imagined. You expected me to show up on time and heal Lazarus. I’m going to do something better than that.  Because I love you. Now, those of us who know the end of the story, that’s easy to say when you’re in the midst of the suffering, when you’re in the moment of difficulty, gosh, it’s hard. Know this: Jesus will allow you to suffer in this life, and he will withhold his intervention. It will pain him, it will bother him. He will be troubled in his spirit because he loves you and would love to intervene and take away that pain. He loves you so much. But he knows if I take away the pain now, they will miss out on the greater thing. So I will allow them to suffer because I love them, and I don’t want them to miss out on the greater thing. We think the immediate healing, the immediate deliverance, well, that’s the best thing that could happen. Jesus says, You don’t realize there’s a greater thing about to happen. Jesus goes down to where the tomb is with a crew of people following him. Right before he does anything, he prays his prayer. In John 11:42, Jesus says, speaking to the Father: “I know that you always hear me, but I said this on the account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me.” He prays to the Father, I know you’re always listening to me, Father. The reason I’m praying to you right now is because all these people are watching, and they’re about to see something they could have never imagined. And in verse 43, Jesus shouts to the tomb, “Lazarus, come out.” Lazarus rises from the dead. Several early church fathers noted that Jesus had to say Lazarus’ name. If he had just said, Come out, all the dead would have come out. They all would have been raised from the dead. This was about Lazarus. This is about one family, one moment, one group of people. So he says, Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus comes stumbling out, hobbling with bandages wrapped all up, probably disoriented. I don’t know what that would have been like for him. What a moment this would have been for those watching. What? I mean, preaching with authority is one thing, giving us insights that we’ve never heard before, casting out demons, healing the sick, maybe raising someone from the dead within the first three days. All of that we can understand. But even after four days, he still commands the dead to rise. Who is this guy? John tells us that many of those who had come from Jerusalem believed. Mary and Martha. This is hard. I love you. So I’m going to allow you to suffer because I love you enough to allow you to be a part of the story of bringing others to faith. What a moment this would have been.   Closing: He Will Restore You How would this change the life and faith of Mary and Martha, or those who watched? I think it’s interesting that John highlights in verse five. All of this happens because Jesus loved them. Had Jesus gotten there sooner and healed Lazarus before he died, there would have been some amount of impact. But Jesus knows there was a greater impact on those people in that region, and that’s why Jesus did it. So sometimes you will experience hardship and suffering and difficulty in this life. It will be confusing. But know this, Christian, know this: It’s because he loves you. That will seem counterintuitive. It will be confusing. It doesn’t make sense. But he tells you the reason why I allow this is because I love you. I love you. He promises that nothing will ever happen to you in vain. Every moment of pain you’ve ever experienced, he will use for your good. So if there’s some pain in your life, it’s because God has ordained to allow it. If God is ordained to allow it, it’s because he has a purpose for it, and nothing will ever go to waste. Romans chapter 8 famously says, “All things work together for the good of those who love him.” All things. He does it because he loves you. Psalm 36, verse 7. “How precious is your steadfast love, O God, the children of mankind. We take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” First John 4:16. “We have come to know this, that the love of God is for us.” He has love for us. God is love. God is love. So when the cancer is still there, when the illness is still there, when the diagnosis is confusing, when the depression keeps coming back, when the headaches won’t stop, the migraines won’t go away, when the person that made commitments to you betrays you, when all of the suffering continues, Christian, you can know this. He is allowing it because he loves you. If God is allowing it, then you can know there’s a greater future moment coming where he will intervene. Think to yourself, if God were to intervene right now, it would be this amount of awesome. If he refuses to intervene right now, then I know what’s coming in the future is an even more amount of awesome. He wants you to experience the more amount of awesome because he loves you. In the meantime, while you suffer, it will be hard. It will be painful. Jesus will see your suffering. He will be troubled. He will be bothered by it. He will be heartbroken on your behalf. He will want to intervene, but he will not, because he does not want to short-circuit what the Father is doing in your life. So he will lament with you and he will comfort you. Earlier in our service, my lovely bride, Malaina, read for us. First Peter 5, verses 10 and 11. The apostle Peter says this. “After you have suffered a little while” The suffering of this life seems significant. But remember, 50, 60, 70, 90 years of suffering compared to billions and billions of eons in eternity. We’re going to suffer in this life, but it’s just a little while. Hang in there, Christians. We’re going to suffer for a little while. After that, after this suffering is done, here’s what Peter promises under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Peter says this: “The God of all grace.” He’s the God of all. The grace that exists is in him, comes from him, the God of all grace. This is what he will do. “He Himself will restore you, confirm you, strengthen you, establish you.  The God of all grace. He Himself will make sure you do not fall away.” When you’ve gone through this life, he was the One who will strengthen you and establish you. In the meantime, he will keep us. Sometimes at the end of our service, we sing. We sing a Chorus from Jude 24 down to him. Jude 24 says this, speaking of our God. “He is able to keep you from stumbling, to present you blameless before his presence.” So, as you go through this life, as you suffer, how are you going to stick with Him? How are you going to survive it? How are you going to get all that God has for you? Because he’s going to keep you. He’s the One who will keep you from stumbling. He’s the one who will guide you in this life and ultimately present you to the Father blameless. After you’ve suffered for a little while, he will restore you. He will establish you, and he will take you to the presence of the throne room to His Father. Jesus will say, Father, look, it’s one of ours. He will present us blameless to our Father, not because of what we can do, but because of his strength at work in us. In just a moment, we’re going to take communion. During communion, we’re going to sing one of my favorite songs, which I’m sort of surprised, how did we get this long in the life of our church and not have sung this song? It’s one of my favorites. He will hold you fast. We’re going to sing one of the lines. My favorite line from the song is, ‘I could never keep my hold. I could never keep my hold on him through life’s fearful path, for my love is often cold. He must hold me fast.’ In the suffering of this life, I’ve never been able to hold on to Him. I’m not capable of that. I love God. My love for him is so small and so fragile, so fickle, so irritable, and so easily annoyed. I’m so sinful and prideful, there’s no way I can hold on to Christ in my own ability. But he will hold me fast. He will hold you fast. He will hold you fast. Christ has promised to hold us tightly and to keep us from falling. It’s just another one of the most amazing reasons to love our Jesus. There are many reasons to love Jesus, but here’s another. One of the reasons to love Jesus is that he loves you. He loves you enough to allow you to suffer so you would experience the greater intervention. He promises that through the suffering, he will cry with you, he will comfort you, he will hold you, he will keep you, and in the end, he will present you to his Father. Blameless. This is all because of what Christ has done on our behalf.   Communion That’s why we take communion every single week. Every week here at Horizon City, we come to the Lord’s table to remember Christ and what he has done for us. In just a moment, we’re going to pass the baskets. If you are a believer here, you are welcome to take communion with us this morning. We invite you to remember Christ with us. If you are here, however, you are not a genuine follower of Jesus. You would say, Kenny, I’m not 100% sure that I’m all in. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so thankful that you’re here. I would just say, when the basket comes, if you’re not a genuine follower of Christ, then I would just ask you to let the baskets pass. Don’t take communion with us this morning. But as the basket passes, don’t let the moment pass. If you are not a believer in Christ this morning, I implore you, instead of taking communion with us this morning, to take Christ instead. If you don’t, you know what that means. You want to have a conversation? I’d love to sit with you after the service. Or we can go grab tacos at Torchy’s. I’d love to talk about Jesus with you over some tacos if you like. For those of us who are followers of Christ, we invite you to participate in this thing we call communion. To remember Christ, the one who loves you enough to allow you to suffer. The one who loves you enough that he promises you will not suffer alone. The one who says, I will hold you fast, I will be with you, I will cry with you, I will sustain you. If you have not worshiped with us. When the basket comes, there will be two options. There’s a little one that is juice and gluten-free bread. The other one is a little mini chalice, has a W on it, that’s real wine, and it’s gluten-free bread. So, two options. When the basket comes, pick whichever one is your preference, the juice or the wine. Hold on to it, and then I’ll come out and we’ll partake together. Believers, let’s remember Christ together. Leon and Daniel. Come, let’s serve God’s people together.  

  Introduction: Liam & the Pillar Network Partnership Well, good morning, everyone. I’m really honoured by the opportunity to come and preach today, not least to be the first guest speaker at Horizon. I’m very privileged by that. Thank you to Kenny. Thank you for just being in church here. Thank you for having me. I bring greetings from Charlotte Chapel, a Baptist church in the heart of Edinburgh. It’s about 220 years old, so it’s been around for a wee while, and I’m praying that you guys will be around for just as long and have a great impact on the world, even as you have been praying this morning. I’m so glad that we get to be partners together through being members of the Pillar network. Over 550 churches in 43 different nations, and that’s growing. It’s a great joy to see churches in one place partner with the church in another place, even internationally, to see God’s Great Commission work being done. It’s a privilege and a joy to be here. Even more of a privilege and a joy to have a weighty responsibility of contributing to your series, as you’re thinking about suffering, it is weighty.  I’m feeling the pain of it even as I prepare to preach it. So let me pray once more. Ask for God’s help as we come to open up his word together. Father, we praise you for your sovereign care, your loving compassion. It’s truly great. You’re gracious and your compassion, you’re kind, and you move towards us in love. You feel deeply about us in our suffering and our struggles. Indeed, you sent your son to enter into it to pull us out of it, and we praise you for that. Thank you that in these moments now, both preachers and hearers can be fully dependent upon you and your Holy Spirit’s help in moments like this. According to 1 Corinthians, these spiritual things are spiritually grasped with the help of your spirit. And we pray that as we cover a big chunk of text today, that you might give us grace to understand it well, to your glory through our sanctification and our gospel witness, in Jesus’ name, Amen.   What Do You Say to Those Who Are Suffering? You’re going to be really helped to have your Bibles open in front of you today because we’re going to do a flyby of the book of Job to answer the question, How do we help people in their suffering? Let me start with a couple of examples. I stood three years ago around an open grave. We were burying my aunt. She had struggled for a significant amount of time with alcoholism and had died after a brief binge. She was only 62. As the purple cord slipped through my fingers and her coffin descended into the dirt, I looked up at Richard at the head, her 26-year-old son, and thought, he’s distraught. How is he going to make sense of this? He’s not a Christian. My aunt wasn’t a Christian. I’m the only Christian in my entire family. How are they going to make sense of this? What do you say to an unbeliever in their suffering? Then, six months ago, I stood at the head of another open grave. This time we were burying my big brother, and he was only 53. He died in his sleep one night suddenly. It’s completely torn 2024 apart from me. He wasn’t a Christian. My heart was like a lead weight in my chest on that day. Heavy with grief. Heavy with guilt. My question is, what would you say to someone like me, a sufferer like me, with the pain that I feel? What do you say to each other? We all suffer, we all carry burdens. We’ve all lived long enough to experience some kind of suffering of some kind. I don’t know what it is for you. For me, these two examples are the sufferings of grief. But it could be all kinds of sufferings, relational struggles, it could be long-term illness, it could be abuse of any kind, it could be anything. What do you say to each other as a church? Because suffering is experienced within the context of a local church. You not only rejoice together, you mourn together, you weep together. My prayer is that as we work through this today, you’ll be helped to do that better. Because we ought to prepare ourselves to know what to say to each other in our own suffering for three reasons. One, suffering is inevitable. Don Carson is very famous for saying, ‘Live long enough and you will suffer.’ It’s true. Two, the world’s contribution is fundamentally worthless. They’ve got nothing to say. Conventional wisdom, the kind of wisdom gained just by living life and seeing life, won’t help anyone make sense of suffering. I experienced it at both of the wakes after my aunt’s funeral and my brother’s funeral. You know the kind of stuff that people say, there’s nothing you could have done. Thirdly, suffering together in God honouring ways is not only one of the things that will strengthen this church in terms of your own sanctification, but it’ll also strengthen your witness. It will make your love, and therefore Christ’s love through you, much more attractive to the people around, who, Lord willing, will find the twee and the useless encouragements in their suffering to be empty. So I want to go through three things with you today. So, three things we’re going to look at. One, move towards each other in your suffering. How do we help each other in our suffering? Two, help each other, and talk honestly about your suffering. Thirdly, speak God’s word to each other very carefully in your suffering. These are the lessons I believe we learn from Job, chapters 2-37.   Move Towards Each Other in Our Suffering Number one, the encouragement I want us to see from this first section in Job is to move toward each other in our suffering. Let me just give you a recap. How many of you have read the book of Job? How many of you get a little bit confused as you read the book of Job? Let me just give you a quick recap of the story so far. Go back with me to chapter 1, verse 1. Now, chapter 1 introduces this man called Job. Verses 1-5 are all you get in terms of a bio for him. But three things stand out. One, he’s a godly man. Verse one. “Blameless, upright, feared God, shunned evil.” Aim for that, brothers and sisters. What a great testimony of a life. He’s a godly man. Secondly, he’s a family man. He’s got 10 kids, that’s amazing. You just think, I bet they’re thumping each other and they’re falling out and winding each other up all the time, like my three kids do. But no, verse 4 is a picture of absolute household harmony. Cultivated, I believe, by a proper dad, who, as you see later on in the text, prays for his kids, offers sacrifices as they did back then, praying for forgiveness for his kids. He was concerned for their souls. Men, husbands, take notes, be good dads. Thirdly, godly man, family man, wealthy man. If you want to know if someone’s rich nowadays, what do you look at? Their bank balance. If you want to know someone’s rich back then, in those days, where do you look? Their fields. Count their animals. Job is a godly man, a family man, and a wealthy man. Now this is important because secondly, we see in the rest of chapter 1 and into chapter 2, verse 10, Job has suffered the stuff of nightmares. He lost it all. His wealth and then his kids. Soon after that, his health in round two of the suffering. Now, there are reasons for that, and we can get into that. Of course, there is this heavenly reality of the spiritual realm where the Lord, in his sovereignty, takes this one. Even Satan himself, the accuser, who has been dishonorably discharged from his heavenly responsibility and even within his demonic activity, is still called to account in the heavenly courtroom, the heavenly throne room. Job’s name comes up. Godly man, wealthy man, family man. God permits the suffering. You guys are thinking about this already in your series so far, and you will continue to think about it, and we will shortly as well. But let me just major on the fact that, feeling the impact of what Job himself has suffered, he has suffered the stuff of nightmares. That kind of suffering can make people like us, I want you to realize, really reluctant to get in touch with the people who are suffering, can’t it? I mean, have you ever heard of a friend suffering and just felt so worried? You’re like, I need to call. But I’m feeling anxious at the prospect of even picking up my phone. You know, I feel like I want to speak to them. They’re going to come to church for the first time after suffering this loss or this difficulty of some kind. Then, you know, you find yourself pottering about cleaning the toilets or something like that. You’d rather do anything than go and speak to the person because you’re worried about knowing what to say. You all feel that you may be worried that you won’t be able to hold it together yourself. Your heart is so entwined with that person. But we need each other, and suffering is hard enough for people. But if we leave people through our anxieties to suffer alone, then that’s worse. So move towards sufferers, but take care how you do. This is what I want to take into account as we quickly dash through this. Remember Job’s wife and Job’s friends in this first point. Don’t be like Job’s wife. This is the negative example, the bad example of how to do things. I mean, Job responds to his suffering at first, as you know from chapter one, with a God given incredible faith. This is the kind of thing that someone would say when their hearts are entirely wrapped up in devotion to God. Remember, he does not know, by the way, what is going on in the heavenly throne room.He only knows what’s going on on Earth. Yet, despite his heart being rendered and broken, in chapter 1, verse 21, he says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” What does his wife say? Chapter 2, verse 9. After the second round, after his health has been taken, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.” Friends, if that’s all you’ve got in terms of counsel, stay in the restroom. Keep cleaning. Don’t move towards sufferers with that kind of counsel. Run as fast as you can the other way and find a quiet place to pray and be sorry. She is not a great example of how to help Richard, my cousin, in his grief. She is not the kind of person I want coming and talking to me as I mourn the death of my brother. She’s not the kind of person that you, as sufferers, want to come with consolation. No, best to be like Job’s friend, at least at the start. We read from this passage in chapter 2:11-13. Let’s read it just briefly again. “When Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him. They came from each from his own place. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar. They made an appointment together to come show his sympathy and comfort him.” In Scotland, we wear black suits and black ties as a mark of communication of our mourning. Well, they wore dust and ashes. It was just the dress of grief. They go to him, they weep with him. For a whole week, all they do is sit with him. They don’t utter a peep, not a word. But in itself, their action said, we’re here for you. So important. Now, there’s a lesson in this for both the comforter and the sufferer. Now, to the anxious comforter, the ones who are afraid to go and speak. I don’t know how it will go. I might make it worse. Who knows? This passage says, move towards your brother and sister in their suffering. Let it be true of Horizon City Church that no one in this church ever suffers alone. Mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep. There’s a biblical commandment. But let this be the rule. If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. You don’t have to. The best thing Job’s friends did was be with him. It all went pear-shaped when they opened their mouths. We’ll get to that in a second. But the lesson for the sufferer as well in this is to let your brothers and your sisters serve you in their suffering. Minister to you. Notice that Job does not send him away. He doesn’t request privacy, doesn’t turn them away. He lets them come and he lets them speak. One of my biggest regrets when my brother died involved one of my closest friends, Scott. I became a Christian when I was 19. Scott was very key to my becoming a Christian. He’s a pastor now in a church in Glasgow, one of the bigger cities in Scotland. When my brother died, he called me and said, I’m coming to see you. He just said it like that, I’m coming to see you. Where do you want to meet? I said, I appreciate that, but I really just want to be alone. Now I was wrong. I was wrong to rebuff that love. I was wrong to deny him that opportunity to help. And worse, I denied God’s help through him because he, in God’s eyes, was a means of grace to me. I rejected that kindness. So I think it is okay to be on your own. I’m not saying just gather lots of people around you to sit around and say nothing. That’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is don’t rebuff the kindness God shows you through the means of grace that is your local church family. Let them come. Don’t make the same mistake. But move toward each other in our suffering. In doing so, we follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ himself into a world of pain and suffering. God sent his own son, moved with compassion. He came towards us to enter into our suffering, to sympathize with us in our suffering, and indeed, who suffered himself to end all suffering one day. Praise God. So feel deeply and move towards each other. That’s the first thing.   Help Each Other Talk About Our Suffering The second, let’s help each other talk about our suffering. Have a quick look with me at Job chapter 3. I think sometimes we’re a little afraid to be honest about what we’re feeling when we’re suffering. That’s one of the reasons why I’m very glad that Job chapter 3 is in our Bibles. It sits there in the company of the Psalms of Lament. It’s just so real. We didn’t read it, but let me just give you an overview of it, because Job speaks very honestly and openly about his experience and how his suffering is making him feel. So in verses 3-10 in particular. Let me just read the first two verses: “After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Let the day perish on which I was born and the night that said a man is conceived. Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it.” You get the gist of how that’s going. Goodness, Job, what has changed? Verses 3-10 are basically him saying, I wish I had never been born. That’s a strong thing to say. He even goes as far in that section as to say, I wish my mum had been barren. Goodness Job. Then verses 11-19, he says things like, I wish I had died in infancy. It would be better than experiencing all the suffering that I’ve experienced just now. What happened to the Job we met in chapters 1 and 2? “The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Where’s that Job gone? Well, you should be glad that this Job’s here, because as is often the case with those who suffer, there are initial faithful, adrenal responses that give way to the experience of the pain and the depth of pain initially unfelt. Initially did not feel the ache and the loss and the pain and the prospect of a future that doesn’t have the thing you want in it or has the thing you definitely don’t want in it. You’ve heard stories, I’m sure, of people breaking their ankles on mountain hikes and trekking home for hours and then, eventually, collapsing in pain at the end. Well, spiritually speaking, I think that’s what’s happened to Job. He’s been feeling for a week the ache and the pain of the kids he’s not going to be able to embrace, and the loss, and how he’s going to provide for his family. But Job is still mindful of God. He’s not lost his faith. He’s just trying to figure it all out, because as you keep reading, in verses 20-26 of chapter 3, and verse 23 in particular, you find that he’s actually conscious of God hedging him in. Even in his suffering, God is actually providing a kind of protective fence, a barrier that protects him. In chapter 1, that hedge kept Satan and evil, and suffering out. But in chapter 3, the same hedge is keeping Job in. Protecting him. Throughout this whole book, Job is asking about his suffering. Why the whole book? What’s going on? That’s what’s going on in chapters 4 through 37. Before 38, when the Lord himself finally interjects and speaks. Job thinks what is going on? Why did this happen? He’s not doing it out of fizzing rage. He’s not furious. But it’s pure lament. It’s a man talking honestly about the things that he’s facing. By the end of the book, God does not despise Job’s lament. He doesn’t despise his pain. He doesn’t detest his experience of it. I mean, if you heard the way Job was talking, what kind of thing would you say to him? You’d probably say, the things I was saying a few minutes ago, like, shut your face, Job. You’re overstepping the mark. This is The Lord of heaven and earth you’re talking to right now. As we say in Scotland, haud your weesht, just a way of saying, button your lip, just get a cup of tea, calm down, don’t say any more. Job’s friends think he’s out of line. By the way, that’s what the middle section of the book is all about as well. Like Job, what are you saying? While indeed Job does repent at the end, for not thinking as clearly as he ought to about everything that’s been going on, God thinks that Job’s wrangling lament is perfectly fine. As you read in Job 42:7, It says, “After the Lord had spoken these words” In other words, all these questions, do you know where the mountain goats give birth? You know, all those lovely little questions that demonstrate God, who sees all and knows all and does all things well. “After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My anger burns against you and against your friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, my servant Job hath.” Job was not rebuked for his honest, out-loud processing of his suffering. So in all that Job says in this book, whether he’s expressing his faith at the start gloriously or honestly pouring out his heart in the middle, or recognizing at the end that he foolishly misspoke, he’s affirmed by God at the end. Now don’t misunderstand me. You can absolutely overstep the mark in what you say to God or about God when you’re trying to make sense of suffering. Chapter 3 is an example, but it’s not a license for you to say anything you want to the Lord God himself. That is not what’s been said. So what should we say? This chapter is inviting us to speak honestly about our struggles to God and with each other as a church family. My question is, do you do this? I think I don’t know what it’s like here, but certainly where I’m from, we can be far too private, far too tight-lipped about the real things that are going on in your life. You know, in church we often joke, How are you doing? Fine. But no one’s fine. Nobody actually thinks you’ve got it together, even if you say you’re fine. But there’s a danger in this, even for your church at this stage, in your infancy. I think it was David Powleson, a biblical counselor, who said that you become co-conspirators in your own culture of superficiality. In other words, you don’t talk openly enough with each other and honestly enough in a way that inhibits your life together. That goes for all situations and subjects, but especially for suffering. Does anyone know you? Really know you? Not knowing just about your suffering, what are you afraid that people are going to find out? That you’re not as well maintained and altogether as you like to think that you are? Nobody thinks you are. I am definitely not. I think about the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus’ prayer there. It is one of the key markers for me in my own conversion. That’s when I saw Christ for who he was and my sin for what it was. But I reflect on that passage often. It’s so special to me. Even as I was thinking about it in relation to this sermon, I thought about Jesus in Gethsemane, that garden of tears and anguish. Amazingly, he wasn’t afraid to say to his dull friends, I’m overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me. Even if Jesus himself isn’t afraid to talk about how overwhelmed he felt with his dull friends, how much more should we be unafraid of talking to each other about the things that we’re going through? As a Church, do you create a culture that says it’s okay to talk? Or do you create a culture that says, No, we don’t want to talk? One of those is a beautiful thing. One of those is a problematic thing. Nobody will ever be helped if you create a church culture where everybody’s okay. Cultivate instead the atmosphere where it’s okay to do like Job does in chapter 3, and suffer out loud. So first, two things. Let’s move towards each other. How do you help people who suffer? One, you move toward each other in our suffering. You don’t retreat. Two, you help each other talk about suffering. You let people be open and honest with God and with you.   Speak God’s Words in Suffering Thirdly, we speak God’s word to each other in our suffering. This is the problem with atheism or any other worldview. Nobody’s got anything good to say about suffering. The atheists think there’s a random collection of atoms that happens. Good stuff, bad stuff. None of it makes absolutely any sense. It’s just stuff, and it just happens. How helpful do you think anybody finds that when you’re before the doctor and they’ve just said, I’m sorry, there’s nothing else we can do, it’s useless. Or other religions that say, well, inshallah, it’s just fatalistic. Or somebody else says, You must have been a terrible person in a previous life. Nobody’s got anything near the kind of goods and glorious things to say like we do, brothers and sisters, based on the gospel. So speak God’s word into each other’s suffering, but do it carefully. That’s what you learn when you read the back-and-forth discussion between Job and his friends here in chapters 4-37.   Overview of Job Here’s the key to understanding what’s going on. Job’s friends, after they sit for their week-long silence, talk some good theology. They say a lot. You could read through chapters 4-37, and you could underline little bits. You might even be able to buy, you know, a coffee cup in Walmart that’s got one of these Bible verses on it, ripped, kicking and screaming out of context, but still sounds like this is glorious. But the problem is, they’ve got good theology, but they’re absolute blunderers in their application of it. They try and take these good things that are in other parts of Scripture absolutely true or taken on their own merit, totally fine in and of themselves. But then you try and rub it in to console and to comfort the person’s wound that they’re experiencing, and it’s like rubbing sand into it because they’ve just taken what God’s word says and tried to apply it in a sense where God never intended it to be added. That’s why it’s dangerous. So let me give you a flyby overview of the shape and content of the book. In Job chapters 4-22, you’ve got three cycles of discussion. There’s Job, chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 is Job’s lament. Then it goes into this first cycle, second cycle, third cycle, before Job talks again. Then Elihu speaks, and then God speaks. Then it ends. That’s the overview of the book. That’s the shape of the book. Now you have these three cycles of debate, and they’re largely repeated. Each cycle goes Eliphaz, Job, Bildad, Job, Zophar, Job. They are his pals. As the conversation goes through each cycle, the conversation intensifies. Job’s friends, initially, after hearing Job talk, the way he talks, they say, the Lord is good and the Lord is sovereign. He does what he does. Job, for God to have allowed this to happen to you, there must be something that you’re hiding. They think Job has done something wrong. He’s sinning in some way. Job says I’m not. Job’s friends find Job’s defense unbelievable. Job then finds his friend’s words painfully unhelpful. In the end, Zophar gives up, says, I’ve nothing else to say. Then in chapters 27-31, Job offers some final protests about his innocence and the unhelpful chat from his friends, where he cries out for wisdom, and cries out for a mediator. If only there were somebody to speak on my behalf, somebody to demonstrate that I’ve done nothing wrong in this instance. Of course, we know fine and well from chapters 1 and 2 that this experience of Job suffering is not in the slightest bit down to any sin that he has committed. It is not discipline. It can be. But if we’re going to have a biblical understanding of what suffering is, we need to have a biblical understanding of the different reasons why suffering comes. Sometimes it’s completely related to something sinful. There are consequences to sinful acts. But we live in a broken world, and sometimes we suffer the consequences of other people’s sinful acts. Sometimes we just experience the rubbish of living in a broken world. Well, Job offers this protest, crying out for wisdom, crying out for a mediator. Then, eventually, in chapters 32-37, young Elihu pitches in with a rebuke for Job’s friends. The young guy waited to speak. You’re not being very nice. There’s a paraphrase. But he has a little rebuke for Job as well, where the man with his youth, maybe, should have held his tongue. Let me give you a flavour of how that goes, though. Let’s concentrate on that first cycle. Let me just give you insight into how this goes very quickly before we come to apply it. In Chapter 4, Eliphaz comes in. In chapter 4, verses 7-8, it says, “Remember who that was innocent ever perished.” In other words, Job, you’ve done something, you’re hiding something. “When were the uprights ever cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” Job, these kinds of things don’t happen for no reason. You must have sinned to have been punished this way. Trouble and hardship equate to punishment in Eliphaz’s mind. See his dodgy theology from the start. Job says, no. Bildad weighs in not so carefully as Eliphaz, as we see in chapter 8, verses 2-4, where he says, “How long will you say these things, Job, and the words of your mouth be a great wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right? If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hands of their transgression.” The first guy, Eliphaz, is like Job; you’re hiding something. You’ve sinned. Job says, I haven’t. The second guy comes in and says, No. But your kids must have done something wrong. Goodness, how not to say something to someone who suffers. Then Zophar’s turn in chapter 11 in verses 14-15 of that chapter says, “If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away. And let not injustice dwell in your tent. Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish. You’ll be secure and will not fear.” In other words, you’re blemished now, Job. But if you just repent before the Lord honestly, then you might be okay again. Job says, Honestly, I’ve done nothing wrong here. The cycle is then repeated. The cycle is repeated another two times, in which it intensifies both times, until Job, in chapters 27-31, insists on his innocence.  He says, Listen, guys, neither wealth nor women have drawn my heart. I’ve remained steadfast in my faith. I’ve been devoted to doing God’s will. That’s why in chapter 31, verse 35, he cries out for vindication. “Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my signature. Let the Almighty answer me.” In other words, I need the Lord to help me. As the flow goes, you’re asking the question. Well, is Elihu that guy, the young man who’s not spoken yet? Is he the advocate that Job really needs? No, Elihu’s main contribution is, Job’s friends are wrong. God does permit suffering not to punish, but to purify and to sanctify, so that there is purpose in it. Yes, and amen. Just like 1 Peter 5, Romans 8, and James 1 say. It’s good theology. But then he also turns to Job and says, Job, you’re wrong. Because his own wondering is no better than his friends. God isn’t unjust, nor is God Job’s enemy. It doesn’t explain it. I mean, Elihu has not drawn a line under the whole debate at all. It sounds close to the truth. Like I said, everything he says sounds like, oh, suffering. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint. Yes, amen. Brilliant. But as close as Elihu is, he’s still actually speaking out of ignorance. Remember, Job 1 and 2 are the lens through which you view the entire book. In Job 1 and 2, it tells us that God did not explicitly allow Job’s suffering in order to strengthen or to purify his faith, even if that did become a byproduct of it. But God permitted this suffering to befall his servant Job, to prove that God is worthy in the eyes of those who are devoted to him in love and faith. To prove that Job does not worship God for nothing, as Satan himself accused. Does he worship you for nothing, Lord? Satan accused, spouting his black filth, his putrid lies, his snarky dagger-like words. Job doesn’t worship God for nothing. That’s what this whole episode proves. Because even in the end, Elihu isn’t rebuked along with Job’s friends, but neither is he congratulated. God actually doesn’t even mention Elihu at all. That’s the overview. What does God teach us in that? About how carefully to speak to each other. Two things when helping each other in our suffering. Make sure that your theology is thought out. Your understanding of what the Bible says about different teachings is thought through. At the same time that you’re careful in your handling of the Bible. So Job’s friends, as I said, didn’t say unbiblical things; they just misapplied them. The author, Christopher Asch, in his commentary on Job, says that ultimately Job’s friends hold to this four-part doctrine of suffering. There are four parts to their understanding of suffering. God is in control. God is just and fair. God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous. Therefore, if you suffer, you must have sinned. Slow down a bit because all four of those things independently are true. But care needs to be taken when you piece them together. If you walk in the ways of the wicked, what do you expect to reap the consequences? Psalm 1 is straightforward. That’s not all the Bible says about this, because the Bible also talks plainly about how sometimes reward and punishment are actually withheld until later, for eternity even. In fact, the reward of the righteous and the justice of the wicked are most often spoken of in relation to the final judgment. Meaning that it’s entirely plausible for someone to suffer innocently something that is not tied to something sinful in their lives. Don’t make judgments. Just take great care to show great care without being that kind of narky, judgmental person. So you can’t say to someone that your appendicitis is down to your sinful anger. There is certainly lots of claptrap on your TV that will say things like that. Do not watch those things. It’s drivel, it’s nonsense, it’s an aberration, and you should be mad about it when you see it on your TV.   Closing: Make the Most of Grace Take care to say biblical things in properly applied ways. How do we do that? Make the most of the ordinary means of grace. Just do the things that God has given us to do as part of the church. It’s really simple in God’s eyes. It’s as you do these simple things that God has said for you to do, in the company of others who do the same thing in your mutual devotion to the Lord God of Heaven and earth, that you become more Christlike. Not just in your character, but in your mind and with your words, helping each other. So read your Bible every day and do it when you gather. Pray and ask for understanding in things you don’t understand. Listen to your leaders, pray, and follow their example. Hear God’s word read and preached regularly. Sunday is the best day. Read books that help you understand it. Whether it’s the little books or the thicker ones that might take you a little bit longer to read. These are all good things. Do these things and you’ll save each other from the stupidity of Job’s friends, the well-intentioned blunderers who sought to soothe Job’s suffering with their sandy misapplied theology. May God keep this church from offering nearly true explanations and consolations in suffering. May He have mercy on all of us if we have maligned God and mistreated his people by what we’ve said to them in their suffering. God is gracious, friends. You know Christ died for all our sinful misapplications of His Word, for making people think that God has done something in someone’s suffering, when in fact he hasn’t. The Lord is gracious to forgive us all of our sins. The cross, as Romans 5 tells us, is the ongoing demonstration. The present and continuing demonstration. That forgiveness for us. If you’re here today, you’re not a Christian. I’m glad you’re able to hear something like this. I hope you heard me earlier when I said that the conventional wisdom of the world that’s offered to me and my cousin Richard, to mourners and sufferers who struggle with all kinds of things, is completely unsatisfactory. It will leave you empty. It won’t console. The only consolation for every single person, including you, is through Jesus Christ. The one who, in compassion, moved towards us in order to die for us and to pull us out of the suffering and promise an eternity with him in Heaven, where there is no more suffering or dying, no mourning, no pain. In order to receive that blessing and gain from that wisdom, you don’t need to go away for a week and scrub yourself up, spiritually speaking. You don’t need to do lots of good deeds in order to get yourself into God’s good books. That’s not the way this works. It is through faith and faith alone that you receive this free gift of life and all its comforts and blessings, and consolations from Jesus Christ. Faith. If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You will be saved. So, how am I going to help unbelievers like my cousin Richard? I’m going to move towards him in his suffering. Let him talk honestly about his suffering. I’m going to do my best to speak God’s word carefully into his suffering and commend the suffering Christ to him. How is my church family going to help me and my suffering? They have been. They’ve moved towards me. They’ve helped me talk honestly about my grief and my suffering. I’m a pastor, for goodness sake. I mean, pastors aren’t supposed to feel like this. But they’ve helped me talk about it. They’ve spoken God’s word well into my suffering. I’m consoled. When I gather now with the saints at Charlotte Chapel, I can sing again. There was a time when I couldn’t. I would cry through every single song. Songs I’ve loved singing with all my heart for years. But I can sing again because of them and what God has done through them. I can see again that even in my pain, God has proven to my church family and my unbelieving family the same thing that was proved through Job’s suffering. The worth of my faith in God, who is sovereign over all things, good in all things, and gracious in all things. Some of you will have known very dark days. Some of you will move toward each other in your suffering, help each other talk about your suffering, and speak God’s word carefully to each other in your suffering. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let’s pray together. Maybe just take 20, 30 seconds in the quietness of your own heart, to pray in response to what you’ve heard. Ask God for help. Ask God for consolation. Whatever it is, just pray it. Our Father, Romans 8 tells us that we live in a world that groans because of the brokenness of it. It’s a world broken by sin. And even it awaits that full redemption to come. We groan for many reasons. There are things from outside of us that cause us heartache. There are things within us that cause us heartache. There are things that have happened to us or things that we’ve done that create this sense of suffering in us, and our hearts are heavy and weighed down, and things in life feel hard.  How we praise you for your consolation, for your comfort. Goodness, without it, Lord, I don’t know what we would do. A despairing world careering towards an eternity with no good wisdom. But where do we look? We look to Christ, who is himself wisdom from you. We look to the one who died in our place and suffered in our place and redeems and rescues us from our suffering. And we pray that we would not only be refreshed by these great truths, but be helped to put these things we’ve looked at today into practice.  Indeed, I pray that we would go away and read the rest of the book this afternoon to hear that long list of questions that you pose, Lord God, which underline your greatness and your majesty, your supremacy and your sovereignty. In ways that help us see things clearly with the right perspective, even on our sufferings. Help Horizon be the Church family that you would have it be. To be made up of people who are not co-conspirators in a superficial culture where everybody’s just okay, but are open, honest, moving toward each other in Christlike ways with compassion and care. Saying good things about you, our good and gracious God. We ask it in the name of your Son, whom you love and whom we love, Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.    

  Introduction: Alexander the Great In the ancient world, there was a man by the name of Alexander. He was so great, they called him Alexander the Great. He was from Macedonia, which was perceived to be one of the weaker Greek city-states or Greek regions. From Macedonia, Alexander would rise and take over all of the Greek world, and then would set his sights outside of the Greek world. Eventually, conquering much of what is modern Eastern Europe and all of what we would look at as the Middle East region today. As well as Palestinian-Israeli regions, and all of or much of Northern Africa. He was one of the greatest conquerors in human history, this man, Alexander the Great. He loved himself and his own name so much that he would go into a new region, his armies would take over, and they would rename the cities Alexandria. By the time Alexander died, there were at least 14 cities across his empire known as Alexandria. The largest still exists today in Egypt. Alexander’s armies would roll into town to take over a particular region and would stay there for a while before moving on to the next region. Alexander would leave a few of his military forces in each region, in each city, and he would erect a statue of himself in the town square. It was a viceroy statue because he wanted everyone in the community to remember who was in charge of this region. Alexander would be gone, but he wanted the people to see an image of who ran the show. If they ever forgot, he would come back to remind them. Which he had to do multiple times. In some parts of the empire, there would be uprisings or people attacking Alexander. There was pushback on Alexander as well as protests. One of the common ways to protest was to attack the viceroy statues in the town square. So Alexander eventually gave an edict that it would be punishable by death to attack a statue of Alexander. He said, Attacking my image is like attacking me. That gives us a brief insight or snippet into this idea of the image of God in human beings. God created the world, the cosmos, the universe, and all that is within. He creates the earth, he fashions it, and he creates the beasts, the animals, and then he creates human beings, and he puts us right in the middle. In Genesis, chapter 1, it says that God made us in his own image. We, in some ways, resemble God, so that the rest of creation would look at us and remember who’s in charge. God’s image is imprinted on these humans. We are like the statue of Alexander. People are to look to us to see the likeness or resemblance of God. That way, it would remind them who is really in charge. The God of our universe created everything. The galaxy in which we live, the solar system, the planets, and the stars. He created the natural order of all things. He created the laws of physics, gravity, and the forces of creation. He created the animals of the land, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the big fish of the deep. He creates everything, and he says it is good. But then, toward the end of creation, God does something unique. His masterpiece, humanity. He takes human beings, and he doesn’t create us ‘ex nihilo’, meaning from nothing. That’s how he creates the cosmos and the beasts. But he doesn’t create us that way. He takes pre-existing materials, he puts them together, and then he breathes his own life, the essence of God, into humanity. He doesn’t do this with any other beasts, any other creatures, any other things he makes. We are unique in that way. When God was creating the beasts, the animals, he was showing off his creativity. Look what I can do. A kangaroo, a dolphin, a platypus. God was saying, Look what I can do. But when he creates human beings, he’s not saying, look what I can do. He is saying, Look who I am. We as human beings are made in the image of God to reflect him to one another and the rest of creation. We’re going to look at a couple of verses here in Genesis chapter 1 together. But let’s pray again and ask the Lord for help. God, we ask you, as we look at a few verses here in Genesis and elsewhere, help us to understand your word. Help give us a vision for the image of God in humanity and help us to understand why that leads to an understanding of the sanctity of human life. I pray in Christ’s name, Amen.   Made In The Image Of God If you have your Bibles, look again at Genesis chapter 1, verse 26. Moses is writing Genesis, and he gets to Genesis, chapter 1, verse 26. This is a conversation amongst the Godhead. The members of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, are having a conversation. Here’s what they say amongst themselves. Verse 26: “Then God said, let us make man in our image.” Let us make man in our image. We are not just another species. I know the general biological taxonomy is that humans are in the primate category. We are alongside chimpanzees, gorillas, or other types of primates. But I would push back. I would urge you to resist identifying as a primate. From a secular, progressive worldview, it makes sense to say, we’re just another animal. We’re just a better-evolved animal than the rest. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible talks about animals as beasts, and talks about us as having the image of God. For those of you who were with us back in November, we were looking at Hebrews. We see a pecking order. We see God, we see the angels, we see humans, and then we see the beast. We’re above the beast. We’re currently lower than the angels. But there’s going to come a moment, Hebrews tells us, that we’re going to catapult ahead of the angels. We will outrank them. The beast will never rise above the bottom ranking. You are not just a beast. You’re not just another species. We are made specially in the image of God. Dogs don’t have this. Zebras don’t have this. Crocodiles don’t have this. They are not made in the image of God. This is a uniquely human thing. Later in Genesis, chapter 1, verse 28, Moses writes this for us: “And God blessed them. And then God said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.” Theologians refer to this as the Creation Mandate. This is the first command that God gives humanity. He says, Man and woman, go have a lot of babies. Having lots of babies is a good thing. Go fill the earth with a bunch of little images of Me. I want no place on earth to be a place where anyone could go and not see the image of God. Then he says, Have dominion. Take control of everything. Take ownership of this world. You be the boss of this world and take control. Be a good steward of the creation that I have made. So clearly we are very different than the beast. What does this mean, to be made in the image of God? Throughout church history, there have been various opinions and interpretations. There’s not one passage of scripture that explicitly defines the image of God for us. But throughout the centuries, there’s one prominent view that most quality theologians and pastors over the last 2,000 years, held the one major view. There are some other views, but there has been one major view throughout church history that the Bible teaches. We’re gonna lean into that this morning. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? That when God created humans, he took a portion of himself and put it in human beings. He didn’t do this with any other animal, any other creature. God endows humanity with his own divine attributes, his own divine essence. Dolphins don’t have this. Whales don’t have this. Horses, kangaroos, and bacteria. None of these creatures is made in the image of God. When you examine the rest of the cosmos and the rest of creation, you see how creative God is. But when you look at humans, you see His essence, His character, His nature. He’s put it inside of us. When God creates the cosmos, he’s showing off what he can do. When he creates humans, he’s showing off who he is. Each one of us possesses divine attributes endowed in us by God. Now, there are different attributes accentuated in different people. Not every person is the same. It seems that every single person is unique in some way. Every single person seems to have a unique combination of the divine attributes of God. There’s also an element that we see here with the sexes, with gender. There are some divine attributes that God has put in men and he’s accentuated in men, but is muted in women. Men have this more than women do, and vice versa. There are some divine attributes that God has put in women and accentuated or amplified in women that he has muted in men. So that where men are strong, women are weak, and where women are strong, men are weak. and that we complement one another in that way. God distributes his divine attributes into humanity as he sees fit for his glory. Again, it appears that each one of us has a unique combination. No two people are exactly endowed with God’s attributes in the same way. We work together to display the fullness, the full tapestry of the goodness and beauty of God. When we work together in harmony, we see divine attributes in one another. The last few weeks, our kiddos have been pretty sick. Josiah, our one-year-old son, has had some gross runny noses of all sorts of various colors. My wife has been so good at taking care of them. I mean, I get the paper towel and I wipe his nose and I rip his nose open. I’m not very gentle with them. My wife is so nurturing and seems to know what he needs at the exact time. I see in my wife that ability to nurture so well, that’s an attribute of God. I look at my wife and think, that’s what God must be like. Now, the reality is that in God it is amplified. It’s far greater. In each other, we just get a taste. Look how good it is in one another. It must be so much greater in God. A few nights ago, Malaina and I had the privilege of invading the Murphy home for dinner. Jerry and Bridget had us over, and Bridget cooked us a wonderful meal. So we’re going home and we’re talking about it, about how it was so good. I thought to myself, that’s a divine attribute of God in Bridget. The ability to take ingredients and then put them together and create a masterpiece. That creative power is an attribute of God on display in Bridget. We praise God for that. These good and beautiful things in humanity are designed for us to see them, and go, that’s what God must be like. When I walk in here on Sunday mornings, between 7:30 and 8 am, some guys and ladies show up to help set things up and get things ready. Sacrificial, selfless people are showing up regularly. Much of this room is here early. I think to myself, the sacrificial nature of this group of people, that’s what God must be like. Man, I see him in you. I praise God for that. This is the reason why God says that human life is sacred. We are not merely the product of a divine mind. We are the possessors of divine essence. We possess rationality and mental faculties and goodness, and beauty that no other creature has. That’s why God values us above the beasts. Which is why God has set on us a trajectory to outrank even the angels, because the angels are not made in the image of God. The very best of God is in us.   Every Person Is Worthy Of Respect So often, when we think of humanity, we think of mistakes. People say this regularly. People make a mistakes, well, you’re only human. Because to be human is to err. To be human is to make a mistake. I think sometimes we have a low view of humanity. I love going into big cities. I love seeing new stuff. When I first moved here in 2013, most of Claremont was nothing, and whole chunks of Winter Garden were nothing. Everything south of here was nothing. Then I came back, I moved away for six years, and I moved back, and Horizon West went from 2,000 people to 65,000 people, and these new houses and new developments. Look what humans have done. We shouldn’t be surprised that humans can pull off great stuff because we are endowed with the image of God. It’s one of the reasons why I love Disney World. I love going to Disney. I love seeing the stuff that Disney pulls off. The buildings, the new rides. People, humans, pulled that off. You shouldn’t be surprised, because you’re only human. Of course, you’re gonna pull off good stuff. God sees humanity as valuable, so valuable that he became a human to rescue us from our own sin. God thinks human beings are really valuable. Therefore, we should think human beings are really valuable too. This is why God takes it personally when human beings are attacked. When you attack another human being, you are not just attacking a human being, you are attacking God himself. That’s how God views it. Now, some have asked, Doesn’t sin ruin the image of God? Adam and Eve were created in the image of God. They’re perfect. But then they sin. They disconnect from God. Their souls are corrupted because of this. Sin does impact the image of God. The image of God is greatly impaired now. Tarnished, blemished, corrupted, poisoned, but not eradicated. It is still there. Very clearly, multiple times in the New Testament, post-fall and post-sin, humans are still talked about as being sacred because we’re made in the image of God. This is most clear in Genesis, chapter 9, and James chapter 3. When we look at those passages, we see that whenever you attack humans, God sees it as an affront to himself. So while the image of God is tarnished and blemished, now we look at one another, and we don’t always see God. Sometimes, what we see are attributes that have been corrupted. We see sin or wickedness. But the beauty of God has not been stripped away from us. It hasn’t been taken from us. It may be blurry, but it’s still there. What are the implications of this, the idea that we are made in the image of God? Theologians sometimes refer to this as the Imago Dei, which is Latin for image of God. What are the implications of this Imago Dei, this image of God implanted in him? The fact that God has taken himself and put himself in us. Well, this should greatly impact how we treat other people, fellow image bearers, and how we talk about other people. I’ve been guilty of this. Every time we gossip about someone, God takes it personally. In James, chapter three, verse nine, the little brother of Jesus is writing. He says this: “With our tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with our tongue we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.” He’s calling out the hypocrisy. Sometimes we use our mouth to praise God, and the next instant we use our mouth to start to damage people. That is wrong because they’re made in the likeness of God. Why is it wrong to speak ill of someone, to gossip about someone, to speak judgmentally to someone, to speak harshly unnecessarily, to say mean or rude things to your spouse or your family members? Why is it wrong to be unnecessarily critical? The reason why these things are wrong is that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. God takes it personally. I would caution us to be careful. Sometimes you may see something in someone and you don’t like it, you may think it’s a flaw, but it might be an attribute of God that you’re missing. It’s possible that you see someone, you don’t like them, and you’re taking a shot at them, you’re making fun of them, and what you’re doing is taking a shot at God. He doesn’t take that lightly. We must be very careful that we don’t gossip, make fun of people, or be rude to people, rob people of dignity with our mouths, the way we talk about them, or talk to them. Because every person possesses the image of God. Every single person is endowed with divine attributes. I’m not saying that there’s never a time to talk tough to people. There are absolutely moments where that’s appropriate. There are moments when someone is sinning, and we need to call them out on their sin. Most American Christians don’t do that nearly enough. But we want to be careful that we attack behaviors, not the person. Behaviors, not their ontology, not their essence. We want to be careful. Even when we are expressing frustration or anger, when we’re rebuking someone, even if we are right, we still want to be very careful, to be gracious, to be kind, because there’s a thin line that we might unintentionally cross from righteously rebuking someone to unintentionally now attacking the image of God in that person. Every person is worthy of respect and dignity. There is no sin that a person can commit that would cause them to no longer be worthy of respect and dignity. Even when they have not treated others with respect and dignity. So if someone were to murder, we put that person on death row to face the death penalty. Even while they are facing the death penalty, we want to treat them with respect and dignity. I think in the United States, by and large, we do that well. We give people ample opportunity for appeal, maybe too much opportunity in some ways. We give lots of privileges to those on death row. We give them a final meal. We make sure that when they are executed, it’s done humanely. So while it would be appropriate, as Scripture tells us, to execute someone who commits murder, even in the process of executing them, we still treat them with respect and dignity. That’s what the Bible commands of us. Many theologians have written about this concept of Just War Theory. Augustine wrote significantly in the 400s about this. Thomas Aquinas wrote a lot about this in the High Middle Ages. They wrote a lot about the fact that even when you are in war, there are still lines that you should not cross. There’s still a just way, a righteous way to fight war. Even if you’re going to kill soldiers in battle, those soldiers you’re about to kill are still worthy of some level of respect and dignity. Therefore, the way you wage war must be respectful and dignified. We must treat each other with respect and dignity. Every person is a fellow Image bearer. The person who cuts you off at work, the boss who treats you meanly, the person who is unkind to you, the person who says something stupid on Twitter. Every single one of them is worthy of respect and dignity.   Defiling The Image Of God I think there are some ways in American society in which we esteem the image of God well. Where the sanctity of human life is esteemed and valued in our culture, I’m thankful for that, we should praise God for that. In ways where human beings are treated well and are esteemed, we should praise God for that. But of course, in American culture, there are ways in which we do not esteem the image of God, where we do not appreciate or esteem the sanctity, the sacredness of human life. In the early days of our nation, as well as the years immediately after the American Revolution, the way in which we violated, defiled the image of God was through race-based chattel slavery. There have been a lot of different types of slavery in human history. Chattel slavery was the form of slavery that existed here. It was based on skin color or continental descent. Those who were from Africa, black people, were treated as if they were property. This was a disgusting violation of the image of God. It’s just one historic example. If we went around the room, we probably could come up with a pretty long list of examples in American history and ways in which American society, American government, and American citizens have defiled the image of God in humans. In my opinion, in our contemporary context, the greatest and most egregious way in which we defile the image of God in our country is through the allowance of what we call abortion on demand. It is the most disgusting way we defile the image of God every day. I’m not sure there’s a close second at this current time in our culture. Since the pandemic, the average number of abortions in America has been close to 1.1 million babies every year. In the time that we’ve been here, from the time of the welcome to this moment right now, in our country, approximately 130 babies have been killed in the womb. In most cases, this is sanctioned and in some cases even funded by the American government. We should be heartbroken by this. This should make us sad, and it should inspire us to pray. We should pray every day that God would stop the horror that we call abortion on demand, elective abortions in this country. It should make you angry. If it doesn’t make you angry, you’re not responding appropriately because it makes God angry. We should respond the way God responds. God is angry when 130 babies are slaughtered every hour in our country. Now, in a room this size, statistically speaking, there’s probably one or two people in this room who have either had an abortion or fathered a child that was aborted. If that’s you, I want to just speak to you for a moment. If there’s anyone in this room who falls in that category, I want you to know this: that while you desecrated the image of God in human life, there is forgiveness, there is grace, that God is merciful and kind. There are people in the Bible who took human life. Moses killed a man, but still found God’s grace and mercy. The apostle Paul killed many people and found God’s grace and mercy. King David conspired to have a man killed and found God’s kindness and mercy. There are these stories in scripture that are evidence of God’s grace and mercy to you. If that’s you this morning, I want you to know that God’s grace and mercy are available to you. He can wipe clean the stain of sin, and you can experience his grace and kindness. Earlier, we sang a song with the lyrics, magnificent, marvelous, matchless love. That’s the kind of love that God has for us. It’s magnificent, it’s marvelous, and it is unmatched. It’s extended to you this morning. Church, your sin is great. Your Savior is greater. Our sins, they are many. His mercy is more.   What The Bible Says About An Unborn Person Now, I’ve been asked multiple times how we know that people in the womb should be treated like people. Obviously, we shouldn’t kill someone who’s outside of the womb. But are we sure the unborn are in the same category? I think it’s a fair question, and I want to give you what the Bible says. I could give you the biological data that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the unborn baby meets the requirements of a human life. Or I could give you the philosophical and logical arguments that show that every unborn baby meets the requirements of personhood. I could give you the legal arguments. I could quote the Declaration of Independence, the 14th Amendment, the Federalist Papers, and American case law. I could give you strong legal arguments as to why unborn babies should be considered citizens of the United States. Considered full persons and should have their lives and civil rights protected. I could make legal arguments this morning. However, I would prefer this morning to give you what God says. If you want to hear those other arguments, I would love to do that. I was a professor for six years. Five of those years, I taught ethics. I would sit down over lunch with students and have these conversations regularly. I would welcome and love that conversation if you would like to have the biological, philosophical, or legal arguments. But this morning, I want to give you the biblical data. What does the Bible say? How do we know that God counts the unborn person as a person? I’m going to give you several passages of scripture. The first is Exodus 21. God is giving case law to the Jews. So he’s saying, if this situation happens, here’s how you apply my law, my wisdom. In Exodus 21, he talks about the situation. If two men are fighting and one of them accidentally strikes or hits a pregnant woman. This is what God says. Exodus 21:22 to 23. God says this: “If there is no harm to the baby in the womb, the man who hit her shall be fined.” He’s supposed to go to a judge, and the judge will determine what the fine will be. That man then pays it to the husband of the wife. So if a man hits a pregnant woman and the baby is unharmed, he’s fined. But verse 23 tells us: “If there is harm to the baby, the unborn child, then he shall pay life for life.” God says, if you strike a pregnant woman and the life inside of her dies, we should execute you, because that is a life, and therefore life must be paid for with life. God very clearly doesn’t equivocate here. The unborn child in the pregnant mother’s womb is a life. If that life is killed, the person who did the killing, God says that person should be executed. In Proverbs, chapter 6, God is telling us there are seven things that he says are abominable. Things that he finds are an abomination. These are things that God hates, that God finds repulsive. Metaphorically speaking, these seven things make God want to throw up. That’s what he says in Proverbs 6. Amongst those seven things in Proverbs 6 is this: “Hands that shed innocent blood.” Anyone who kills an innocent person sheds innocent blood. Makes God want to throw up. That’s harsh language from the God who loves us. But I think it’s appropriate. I’m going to quickly go through some other passages of scripture. I want you to hear how the Bible talks about unborn persons in the womb. We should talk about them this way. Jeremiah, chapter 1, verse 5. This is God speaking to the prophet Jeremiah. God says this to him: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations before you were even born.” Jeremiah, I knew you, I was intimate with you, I loved you. I was already determining which combination of divine attributes was going to be indwelled in you, Jeremiah. The prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 44, verse 2, speaking to God’s people, says this: “The Lord made you. He formed you from the womb and he will help you.” God made us while we were in the womb. Later, Isaiah 49, verse 1 says this, this is Isaiah speaking of himself: “The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother. He named me my name.” In Job 31, Job says this: “God made me in the womb. He fashions us in the womb.” The last verse I’ll read is Psalm 139. This is King David speaking. Very famous verse. Psalm 139, verses 13 and 14. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He says this, speaking to God: “For you formed me in my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Friends, the little people in the womb, like that little person growing in my wife’s womb right now, that little person is fearfully and wonderfully made. Not being knit together by accidents, as the reaction of chemicals bumping together. Not the result of random evolutionary processes. No, God is knitting together that child in my wife’s womb. Every little person in the womb is fearfully and wonderfully made. See how the Bible talks about the unborn. The Bible doesn’t say things like it’s just a clump of cells. Church, we must oppose abortion on demand because it is an affront to God. It is a violation of the image of God endowed in man. Opposing and stopping abortion is a cause worthy of our time, prayer, energy, money, and resources. There’s an organization locally here, Choices Women’s Clinics. It’s one of the more well-known women’s clinics around the country. They’ve got three locations in the Orlando area. They come alongside women who are in jeopardy or currently in a high-risk category and likely to have abortions. So we’ve committed a portion of our budget every year, which goes right to the Choices Women’s Clinic. This year, we plan to do some service days with them. They’ve got lots of opportunities for work teams to show up on a Saturday to help them do stuff. I’ve already communicated with Choices and said, Horizon City is in. How do we help you? This year we’re going to be a part of that. I would challenge you to make that a priority when that comes on the calendar to say, yes, we’re going to help Choices because they are helping to fight this atrocity called abortion in our community.   Advocating For The Unborn Now, typically, whenever the conversation of abortion comes up, immediately, people want to ask about the unique cases, the unique situations. What about women who have been violated or assaulted and become impregnated? What about the situations where the woman’s life is in danger? What do we do in those situations? I think that is a fair question and is well worthy of discussion. We don’t have enough time this morning to tackle all of those. It is a thorough, nuanced conversation, which I am glad to have at a later time. I will simply say, there is no situation in which the baby loses its image of God. None. So even if the baby is the product of an assault of a woman who’s been violently violated, that is a horrendous, horrific situation. We should do all that we can for those perpetrators to have the full wrath of the law come down on them. That baby is still made in the image of God, deserving of respect and dignity. And the situation doesn’t undo that. Here’s what people in our country want you to do. They want you to go, there are these rare situations, and therefore we need to have abortion, totally legal, to make sure this situation can be taken care of. Like the woman in New York who has been violated and is now pregnant and is dealing with this horrific situation, and her family is trying to figure that out. Because that exists, that means that tens of millions of pregnant women across the country should have the right to end the life of their unborn children. On face value, that’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s evil and wicked. Like the woman in Minnesota who’s pregnant and her pregnancy is putting her life at risk. That means that every woman in California should be allowed to kill her child. On its face, it’s absolutely absurd. You should call it out when you hear it. In those situations, when there’s real danger to a woman’s life or there’s some other unique situation. There may be some nuanced approach, but it’s important to note that the highest estimate of all the abortions in America, of the 1.1 million abortions that happen every year over the last few years, less than 2% of them fall into any of those categories. Less than 2%, that’s the highest estimation. Some estimations say it’s less than 1%, which means 98 to 99% of all the abortions in America are just someone doesn’t want to have the kid, and they want to use the 1% as an excuse to kill their kid. Sometimes women have abortions because they’re evil. We’ve seen online the shout your abortion movement. Disgusting, vile, wicked. Other times, women have abortions because they feel like they have no other options. They feel trapped. They’re impoverished, they live in a poor community or high crime, or they’re a single mom and they feel love and they’re sad, they’re heartbroken, and they don’t want to do it. But they feel like they have no options. So we don’t want to assume why a woman would have an abortion. That would be unhelpful. But we want to be kind. We should treat every person with respect and dignity. For the women who feel like they have no options, that’s why Choices exist. That’s why we want to help organizations like Choices. We want to come alongside those women and say, No, you do have an option. I remember being a professor in class teaching on the sanctity of life. I remember telling the students every semester, if you ever find yourself in a situation, if you’re pregnant and you’re considering abortion, or you’re a young man, you fathered a child, you got a girl pregnant. Do not abort that child. This goes for the women in this room as well. Malaina and I will adopt your child. We will cover the cost. I made that offer every semester for five years when I was a professor. Maybe one day someone will take me up on it, and I’ll have to put my money where my mouth is. I make that offer today. If you are in this room or if you’re reading this. If you are in a situation where you are considering abortion, Malaina and I will cover the cost, and we will adopt and take care of your child. Lord willing, in the weeks and months to come, we want to have some equipping classes and Sunday school classes where we dive into deeper topics. I think they are helpful conversations to have. We want to give opportunities for us to connect with things like the Choices Women’s clinic. Friends, human life is valuable, sacred. So we’re dealing with things like IVF or embryonic stem cell research or genetic splicing, or whatever new robotic thing Elon Musk comes out with next month. We must remember that human beings are sacred, made in the image of God. God takes it personally when we attack. God says he takes it personally when we speak badly about someone. What do you think he feels when we slaughter 1.1 million babies across our country every year?   Conclusion: Valuable And Made In The Image Of God Last thought for this morning is this: I mentioned that chattel slavery was the original gross defiling of the image of God in our country. Today, it’s abortion on demand. These are, in my opinion, these are the two most egregious examples in American history of the violation, the defiling of the image of God in humanity in our country, sanctioned and funded by the American government. You know what the crazy thing is? The idea at the heart of the ideology defending these two egregious things is actually identical. Think about it. In the 19th century, white slave owners were looking at black people, saying, black man, you don’t count as a real person, so I can do whatever I want to you. The pro abortion person today is saying to the babies, Hey, unborn, you don’t count as a real person, so I can do whatever I want to you. Pro abortion people today are literally making the exact same arguments that slave owners made in the 1800s. To be pro-abortion today is to be equivalent to being a slave owner in the 1800s. People will be very offended if you say that in public, but it is true. It’s the exact same argument. Black person, I can do whatever I want to you because you’re not a real person. Unborn baby, I can do whatever I want to you because you’re not a real person. At the core of these two grotesque institutions is a devaluation of personhood. You know what’s crazy, you know what’s wild in a good way? It’s the exact opposite of the gospel. The white slave owners say to the black person, You don’t count as a real person, so I can exploit you, I can abuse you. Jesus says, You do count as a real person, made in my Father’s image. So I’m going to allow you to exploit and abuse me for your good. The pro abortion advocates will say to the unborn babies, You don’t count as a real person, so I can kill you so I can have freedom. Jesus says, You do count as a real person, so I will let you kill me so that you can experience freedom. Jesus says, you count as a real person. You are valuable, you are made in the image of God. So I will allow you to inconvenience me, to abuse me, to exploit me, so that you can experience the love and goodness of our Father in heaven. The ideology at the heart of slavery and the ideology at the heart of abortion on the man is identical, and it is the opposite of what Christ did for us. Christ intervened in the human story. The Son of God became a man, took on humanity, and died in our place. He died a brutal death at the hands of humans. It is through his death that we overcome death, sin, and the grave. He laid down his life so that we could experience true freedom. As he reconnects us to the love of God, he transforms us and begins to repair the image of God that has been tarnished, that has been blemished, slowly becoming cleaner and stronger and more vibrant. In fact, in Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul tells us that’s our predetermined destination. The final destination for people who love Jesus is to be molded into the image of his son. The image of God that was tarnished because of sin was repaired through Christ. Unblemished, being molded because of what he has done for us. He is cleansing us, healing us, repairing us, and allowing us to slowly become more and more like the good, beautiful humans that we were created to be. All of this is possible because of the work of Christ. What Christ did at the cross, what he did on our behalf.   Communion That’s why we take communion every single week. Every single week, we take communion to pause and to remember what Christ did on our behalf. To remember that Christ laid down his life, that he did the opposite of what evil people in our society are doing. He welcomes us, he beckons us, and he says, In me you will find your rest. In just a moment, we’re going to pass the baskets. Those of you who’ve never worshipped with us, we have two options. One cup is grape juice and gluten-free bread. Then there’s a little mini chalice with a W on it. When the basket comes, grab whichever one is your preference. Hold on to it. I’ll come back and I’ll lead us, and together we’ll remember who Christ is and what he has done on our behalf.  

  Introduction: Why Do Bad Things Happen? I am almost 43 years old, and I’ve served in pastoral ministry for a little over 15 years now. I was also a college professor at a Christian school, a missions training school, and worked in parachurch ministry. So altogether, about 20 years of Christian ministry over the course of my life. Throughout my experience in Christian ministry, the number one question I have been asked in my life is, Why do bad things happen? Why does God allow so many bad things? There’s not even a close second. This is the number one question I’ve been asked over and over and over again throughout my life. I think it’s a fair question. I get why people would ask this question. When we examine the world in which we live, when we examine all of the pain and brokenness of this world, I get why people ask those types of questions. Think about, on a global scale, the things that we face regularly, things like wars and famines and diseases, pandemics, natural disasters, corrupt leadership, toxic politicians, civil unrest, mass shootings like we saw this week in New Orleans. Then you think about the individual things that I’ve observed in people’s lives. I know several people who have experienced the loss of a child, loss of a loved one, the unexpected loss of a parent, infertility, miscarriages, betrayal in marriage, and the pain of divorce. I know people wrestling with various health issues or mental health issues, or financial woes. We all face a lot of stuff. We all face trials and bad things. If you have ever asked yourself, God, why me? You are not abnormal. You’re not unique. Lots of us have asked those types of questions. Sometimes, when bad things happen in our lives, the reason seems obvious. We’ve got enough information or enough data that we can figure it out and put it together. But that’s the minority report. In most situations, we don’t understand. Most of the time, when things come our way, we don’t fully understand, or we understand maybe partially, and it breeds confusion. So if you’ve experienced that, you are not alone. Many of us have felt those, experienced those emotions. This morning, I want to lean into just one reason why God allows suffering. There are actually multiple reasons. As we look throughout the New Testament, we see at least six distinct reasons why God will usher us into moments and seasons of pain and suffering, when God will allow those things. I can find at least six different reasons. God willing, over the next few weeks, we plan to look at several of those reasons. But today I want to lean into just one of those reasons. So, you know, in a few weeks we’ll look at some other reasons. But today I want to particularly focus on how God uses suffering in our lives to shine his glory to other people. Sometimes God will allow us to experience pain for the betterment of others. Sometimes the pain you experience it ain’t even for you. It’s not even for your good or your benefit. It’s actually for the good and benefit of someone who knows you, who’s watching you. Several passages of scripture allude to this and teach us this. But in my opinion, the best, my favorite passage of scripture that shows us this is John chapter 9. John chapter 9 is immensely helpful to us in helping us understand and see how God uses pain and suffering in our lives to demonstrate his glory through us to other people. So let’s pray one more time and ask God’s help. We’ll look at John chapter 9 together. Father in heaven, you are so kind. You are merciful and gracious and slow to anger. Thank you. Thank you for being kind to us. Thank you for the Gospel of John. This book, this rich book that gives us so many great insights into the life and teaching of Jesus. May we be encouraged by your word today. May you use your word, oh God, to shape us, to make us more like Christ. God, I pray that if there’s anyone in this room who does not know you, I pray that today they would see you. I ask that today would be the day of salvation for them. I ask all these things in the powerful, matchless name of Jesus Christ. Amen.   The Man Blind From Birth If you have your Bibles, you can turn to John, chapter 9, verse 1. Speaking of Jesus: “And he passed by and he saw a man blind from birth. And as his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents?” So Jesus and his disciples are traveling. They’re in Jerusalem and they pass by a young man who is blind. Now, we don’t know for sure how old this blind man is. Later in the text, some clues would tell us that he’s at least 13 or older. But there are some additional clues later that would lead us to believe he’s a little bit older than that. I speculate that he’s probably a college-age type of student in our era. He’s probably about 20 years old. So he’s been blind since birth. He’s been blind for probably 20 years or more, his entire life. In the ancient world, people were not kind. Generally, if you had an ailment, you were seen as being at fault. Today, if someone were born blind, we don’t hold that against them. We don’t think they’re a bad person. But that’s a very modern view. Throughout a whole chunk of human history, if you were born with an ailment, you were seen as a drain on society. You’re disgusting. You deserve to be embarrassed. It’s shameful. You would be ostracized in a lot of ways. So all the days of his life, all this young man has known is a life of shame and probably loneliness. The disciples walk by with Jesus, and in their minds, there’s only one of two reasons why this guy was born blind. They only have two categories. So they asked Jesus Which one is it? Is it because his parents sinned, or is it because of his own sin? Is it because his parents did something, so God is punishing them by giving them this disgraceful, blind boy? Or is it that God foresaw in the future how sinful this man would be, and God proactively punished him by having him be born blind? Which one is it, Jesus? Of course, Jesus is like, there’s a third option. It’s more than just those two. Look at verse three. Jesus says this: “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” This is an unbelievable statement. The reason why he was born blind was so that God’s power would be shown through him. He’s implying he was born blind so that this moment that’s about to happen would happen. He was born blind and suffered so that I would heal him. In front of all of you. A good thing’s about to happen. Jesus is about to intervene in a miraculous, gracious way. But before this good thing could happen, there were 20 years of suffering leading up to this moment. How many times did that young man go to bed thinking, Why God? Why me? Jesus is saying, I’m about to give you the answer. Jesus looks at his disciples and says, This man was suffering because there’s a great moment about to happen. The reason he was born blind was so that I would heal him in this moment in Jerusalem, and it would cause a stir in the entire city of Jerusalem. Remember, not long before this, Jesus fed the 5,000. They didn’t count women and children, so the crowd is probably actually 20,000. So Jesus feeds probably 20,000 people or more with five loaves of bread and two fish. There are baskets of food left over. We see this a few chapters before John chapter 9. This is the moment where Jesus really kind of comes on the scene in a public fashion. The feeding of the 5,000. Before that, he was slowly becoming a little more famous. But the feeding of the 5,000 is where Jesus comes on the scene in a significant way. His reputation starts to spread throughout Judea. Now, the feeding of the 5,000 happened in a region about 80 miles west of Jerusalem, where Jesus sees this blind man. 80 miles in the ancient world might as well be hundreds of miles in some ways because people didn’t travel. So 80 miles is a long distance away. Most people in Jerusalem had never actually interacted with Jesus. They didn’t know what he looked like. But they’re hearing rumors that there’s this rabbi from Galilee, redneck town. There’s this guy from the backwoods of Nazareth who’s healing people. Some people are considering that maybe he’s the Messiah, the long-promised Messiah that we’ve been waiting for for hundreds and hundreds of years. The rumors start to spread, and so Jesus goes to Jerusalem. This moment here in John 9 is one of the first major public signs that Jesus does in Jerusalem. So lots of people have heard of him, but this is the first time they’re experiencing firsthand what Jesus is all about. This is Jesus’ coming-out party in Jerusalem in some ways. It is through the healing of this young boy. Up to this point, most of the ministry that Jesus did was in smaller towns. He was in places like Galilee. But now he’s at the center of Jewish culture. He’s in Jerusalem. He’s in Manhattan at Times Square. He’s not out in Mineola. He’s on, I drive right in the center of all that’s happening. This is the moment where Jesus publicly introduces himself to the Jerusalem region. It is through the healing of this young man. It’s a remarkable thing to consider that this young man gets to be a part of introducing Jesus effectively to the world. It’s after this healing that the influence and ministry of Jesus expands greatly throughout Jerusalem. His ministry starts to expand rapidly and eventually puts him in the crosshairs of the Jewish leadership. This is a significant moment in the ministry of Jesus. It’s a big deal, and this young man gets to be a part of it. A billion years from now in heaven, we’re going to be looking back and he’s going to be saying, I got to be a part of that. You remember when Jesus came out to the world and showed the world who he really was? That was me. I was in on that one. But before that moment, there were 20 years of suffering.   Jesus Heals The Blind Man What if God has allowed you to experience difficulty in your life because he’s got a John 9 moment for you in the future? What if God has ushered you into some difficult, painful moment because he one day will intervene and demonstrate his power through you to others? So Jesus heals this young man, and you can imagine what a moment this would have been for this guy. I mean, 20 years, he’s never seen anything. Everything is new. The color of the trees, the way people’s faces look. He’s never seen anything. What a remarkable moment this would have been for him. Up until this point in his entire adult life, he’s been an impoverished beggar. How many times does this guy go to bed hungry at night? How many times did he go to bed feeling embarrassed, ostracized, abandoned, alone? That all ends right now. This is a monumental moment in this young man’s life. It’s a moment that causes a stir in the entire city of Jerusalem. This is what we see through verses 8 through 12. We see these interactions between this young man and people in the city. They’re asking him all these different questions. Verses 8-12, there’s the interaction between the young man and the people in the city. They’re asking him questions, How’d this happen? Who did this? And he’s just like, I don’t know. Later in verse 13, we see that eventually the stir in the city is so prominent that the Jewish leadership brings this man in to interrogate him. He comes before the council of the Pharisees. The Pharisees are the religious scholars of the day, and they have tremendous political clout and political leadership in the region. They bring him before the council, and they’re interrogating him. What happened? How’d this happen? Who was he? How did he do it? They’re being quite antagonistic. It’s quite hostile at this moment toward him, and he doesn’t have good answers for them. But we see in verse 16, this division happens. Some of the Pharisees are actually sort of intrigued. They’re impressed by this. We’ve heard rumors about this guy named Jesus, and now we’re finally seeing the work of Jesus. Maybe there’s something to this Jesus guy. But most of the Pharisees think he is insane. He’s demon-possessed. He’s a sinner. We don’t want him getting any credit. We don’t want anyone following this guy. So they’re antagonizing this young man, and he doesn’t give them good answers. Eventually, they even bring his parents in. They start interrogating his parents. His parents are saying, we don’t know either. He’s of age. Ask him. Eventually, they bring the man back for a second interrogation. They’re peppering him with all these questions. What about this? Tell us. This is how he answers. Look at verse 25: “Whether he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know, I was blind, now I see.” They’re asking him all these questions, bombarding him, accusing him. He’s like, I don’t know much about Jesus. You seem to know more about him. Later in the text, he’s like, maybe y’all want to be his disciples. Listen, I don’t know anything about this guy named Jesus. Here’s what I know. I was blind and now I see. I lived a life ostracized, abandoned, lonely, begging, hungry, and shameful. He changed all of that. I was blind and now I see.   Sharing Our Faith I think this is a Great model for us in evangelism. Sometimes we’re having conversations with people who don’t believe, and they’ll pepper us with questions that we don’t have answers to. Most of us don’t have answers to a lot of the questions. We have a family member or a friend. They’ll ask you, well, what about evolution? I don’t know. What about the ancient religions that have these myths that look like the Bible? How do you know the Bible is trustworthy? Or how about the nephilim? How about this? They throw all these questions at you, and you don’t know the answers. What ends up happening is that so many Christians get paralyzed by that. They feel like they don’t know the answers to all these questions. So they get paralyzed in their evangelism. Therefore, many Christians are like, I can’t share my faith. Until I have all the answers to all the questions, until I’ve studied every religion. I gotta study Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islam and Buddhism. Until I’m an expert on every topic everywhere, I can’t share the gospel. I think there are a lot of Christians who feel that way. I want to alleviate that pressure from you this morning. This young man gives us a great model to follow. When people pepper you with questions you don’t know, it’s perfectly appropriate for you to say, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question. Here’s what I do know. I was blind and now I see. I can’t answer all the questions about biblical text and higher criticisms or evolution or this or that. Here’s what I know. I was blind and now I see. That’s a great way to do evangelism.   Suffering Before The Healing Jesus heals this young man. His ministry begins to expand. His influence begins to expand significantly. This event seems to loom large in the background of lots of conversations going forward. We see this event alluded to multiple times later in the Gospel of John, and the next time it’s alluded to is in John chapter 10. There’s this moment where the Pharisees are arguing about who Jesus is. Some of them are like, he’s demon possessed. He’s insane. He’s a sinner. He’s blasphemous. Then others are not sure; they think about how he healed that blind guy. They are thinking demons don’t usually do that. This event looms large in the background of the conversation when people are talking about Jesus. There’s a whole group of Pharisees in Jerusalem who, later, after the resurrection, all became Christians. There’s significant evidence in the first century that a bunch of Pharisees all became Christians down the road. The ones who were most antagonistic to Jesus, a bunch of them got saved down the road. There’s no doubt that this event loomed large in their minds. It was a part of their thought process. This event was monumental in the ministry of Jesus, expanding throughout the region and reaching many people. The works of God were displayed through this young man, to many, praise God. But before this amazing event ever happened, before Jesus proved himself to many, a young boy was suffering in pain, embarrassed. Two decades of suffering, two decades of blindness. Two decades of being questioned, was it your sin or your parents’ sin? Years of begging and hunger and struggling and living in poverty. How many times was he spat upon or yelled at or kicked out of a public place? How many times did he go to bed cold and alone? We all want the special moment. We all want the moment when the power of God comes and uses me. Be the instrument to bring the glory of God to people. But we forget that moment is almost always preceded by years of suffering, extended pain. In fact, we see this in the life of the apostle Paul. Over and over again, Paul alludes to this. In Romans, chapter 8, Paul alludes to this multiple times. Paul seems to understand there’s a correlation between how much ministry he can do and how much suffering he experiences. There’s a connection between them. In Acts, chapter 9, when Paul has this dramatic conversion experience, he sees Jesus. He’s blinded, he’s knocked off his horse. His men led him into the town of Damascus, and there was a man named Ananias there. God says to Ananias in Acts, chapter 9, Ananias, go to Paul, I’m going to use you to heal him. God says to Ananias, I will show Paul how much he must suffer. I’m going to use him to do mighty things, but before that, he’s gonna have to suffer a whole lot. There’s a correlation there. It’s an incredible privilege to be a part of the story of God, but it often is preceded by pain. So here’s the takeaway. Whenever you experience difficulty and you’re tempted to ask, Why God? When you ask that question, instead, ask the question, For whom God? For whom am I suffering? Then pray for those people. I try to make it a regular habit in my life where I’m driving down the road or I’m by myself, and I think about some painful, frustrating situation, and I think to myself, God, this has got to be for someone. This is because you’re going to demonstrate your work through me to that person. I don’t know who that person is. I don’t know the name. But I pray for whoever that is in the future that you bless them. I pray for whoever they are, wherever they are in this moment. Maybe they aren’t even born yet. But I believe wholeheartedly that every moment of pain and suffering, God will use as he sees fit. He will demonstrate his glory to others who are watching. So instead of asking, Why God? Ask, For whom God? I promise you that it will bring you great comfort.   It Is Well With My Soul This morning, we rearranged the liturgy because I wanted to have an extended time of singing on the back end as a response. During Communion, we’re going to play a song called Firm Foundation. Then, after Communion, we’ll stand and we’ll sing two songs together. One of them is a song called ‘It Is Well’. Many of you are certainly familiar with it, one of the most famous hymns in American history. It also has some extra meaning when you understand the story behind the song. ‘It Is Well’ was written in the 1870s by a man named Horatio Spafford. Spafford was a very successful attorney and real estate developer in Chicago in the mid-1800s. Very wealthy, owned lots of property in Chicago. In 1871, the great Chicago fire destroyed most of the city, ravaged the town, and destroyed most of the property that Spafford owned. He had some people who owed him money. He owned debt, and people owed him money. A lot of the property that the money he had loaned out for was the collateral was also destroyed in the fires. So all of his assets were gone. Within two years after the fire, Spafford, who had been one of the wealthiest men in America, was pretty close to bankruptcy in 1873. Spafford was a Christian and was friends with the famous evangelist D.L. Moody in Chicago. D.L. Moody, one of the most famous, greatest evangelists in all of American history in the Chicagoland area. D.L. Moody had been planning to go to England to do some evangelistic campaigns, sometimes called preaching crusades, which were these big evangelistic events. Spafford was one of the biggest funders of Moody’s ministry, and he had planned to go with Moody to England. So toward the end, after this happened, he told Moody, I’ll still go with you. He was able to scrape together some money to still help the ministry of D.L. Moody. Pretty significant, a man near bankruptcy, still being committed to doing this. So right before they left, Spafford and a crew of Moody’s associates and Spafford’s wife and four daughters were all going to travel to England together by ship. Right before the trip, just before they left, there was a business situation that Spafford had to stay behind and deal with. So he said, I’ll stay behind. You all go. We’ve already paid for the passageway. So Spafford’s wife and four daughters, and a bunch of their friends, board a ship, and they go to England. Spafford says, I’ll be right behind you, just within a few weeks. Well, as that ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean, it struck another ship and sank very quickly, killing 226 people on board, including all four of Spafford’s daughters. His wife was one of the few survivors from the wreck. A few weeks later, as Spafford traveled to England and they passed the region, the area of the ocean where the ship had sunk a few weeks earlier, it was there, aboard the ship, thinking about his four daughters who had died, he penned these words. “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.” Whether peace comes to me like a river, my life is peaceful. Or if sorrows come at me like sea billows. If sorrows come at me like crashing waves, over and over and over again, regardless of which one comes my way, God, you have taught me that whatever comes my way, to say it is well, it is well with my soul. What an unbelievable statement. God, whatever you got for me, whatever you determine to allow in my life, I’m good with it. Bring it on, because I trust you. Whatever you determine, I’m good with that. It is well with my soul. I want us this morning when we sing that later, make that your prayer. Make that a declaration to God this morning. That whatever he determines to bring your way, that you’ll be good with it, that you will trust him, that it is well with your soul. May that be the cry of our hearts.   Conclusion: Obedience When It Doesn’t Make Sense Last observation from John, chapter 9. I skipped over the particulars of the healing intentionally. I wanted to come back to it. Jesus heals this young man in John, chapter 9, verses 6 and 7. Having said these things, Jesus did a little mini-teaching, he says: “Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’, (which means sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.” Did you catch what Jesus said here? Jesus sees a blind man. He gets down, he hawks a loogie in the dirt, and he mixes. This is what happened. He mixes it around, and he scoops up the mud he just made from spit and dirt, and he puts it on the guy’s eyes. It’s a little strange. Sometimes we read the Bible, we go through it quickly. It’s okay to pause and be like, what is that, Jesus? Like, Jesus could have healed him. Jesus could have just gone, boom, you’re done. It’s healed. Jesus could have just said the word. Why this whole spit and mud nonsense? If you’re not confused by this, I don’t know what you’re reading. This should be confusing to you at first glance. Why are you doing this, Jesus? Then Jesus says, I want you to go down to the pool of Siloam. I want you to walk a few miles. This blind man with spit and dirt all over his face. Walk down to the lake a few miles and then go wash your face off, and then come back. Why this whole process? It’s okay, by the way, when you read the Bible, to see these things and ask the question, What’s going on here? I studied this week quite a bit. There have been hundreds, not exaggerated, hundreds of commentaries and Bible scholars, and pastors over the last 2000 years who have given their opinion on this text. And you know what? You get hundreds of different opinions on this text. There’s no consensus. Usually, when there’s disagreement amongst Bible scholars, there’s one interpretation that most people whom I trust hold to. This one makes the most sense. There’s one or two that you can point to. But with this text, I can’t find one interpretation that makes sense to me. There are all sorts of speculations. That the dirt is the material, and the spit is the power of God. So God uses natural means, like doctors, and he infuses his power to heal. So there are lots of people, and they are trying to give you an explanation for the text. I appreciate that genuinely. However, you know what became obvious to me as I studied this text this week? No one really knows. I think that’s the point. I think it’s not supposed to make sense. There are moments where God does things that don’t make sense to us at all, and he still expects us to obey. He tells this young man, I’m gonna put a bunch of spit and dirt on your eyes. I want you to walk down to the lake, go and wash your face. That made no sense to anyone observing. It doesn’t make any sense to us today. You know what you should do in those moments? In the moments where God commands you to do something that doesn’t make sense to you, you know what you ought to do? Obey. There’s a major sentiment in North American culture, and I think it’s seeped into our churches, where we demand things make sense to us before we obey. This is a very big problem in American culture. God will say things in his word to us, and we will respond. Well, I don’t fully understand it, so I’m not going to do it until I thoroughly understand why. I’m not going to listen to that. This particular doctrine that the Bible teaches doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not totally logical to me. Therefore, I’m going to reject it and refuse to embrace it until I understand what God is saying. Friends, that is an unacceptable response from the Christian. Church, there are moments where you’re not going to understand things. Obey him anyway. We have this thing in American culture where it’s like, unless I get it, I’m not going to say yes. Can you imagine if the boy had responded that way? What if Jesus takes the spit, the dirt, makes the mud, puts it on his eyes, says, go down there, and the boy says to him, Jesus, this is really kind of silly. Do I really have to go all the way down and get in the water? Really, it’s miles away. I’m blind. Do I really have to do that? Seriously, Jesus, just heal me. Why did I go through this whole face-washing process? Or what if the young man had said, Jesus, I’ve heard good things about you, but I want to understand how the saliva and the dirt work before I go wash. Can you explain the science to me first? Can you imagine if he had said that? He would have missed out on being a part of this incredible moment. He would not have gotten healed. He would have died an impoverished beggar, and we would never know anything about him. Listen, Jesus still would have gotten famous. Jesus would have found someone else to heal and would have shown his glory through that person. Jesus would have still gotten his message out, but that young man would have missed out on being a part of the story. It didn’t make sense, but the young man still obeyed, and that led to the healing. I want people to understand the Bible better. I want you to understand the things that God says. I want things to make sense to you as a pastor. Part of my job is to help you understand the Bible better. I want you to get it. I want you to understand doctrines. I want you to wrestle with things and learn. However, there will come a moment when you don’t understand the thing, and what God expects is for you to do it anyway. Church, there are going to come moments where things don’t make sense. If you say, No, I’m not going to listen to what God has to say, you will miss out on the glory that God has in you and through you. I implore you, if Jesus has commanded it, obey. Even if you don’t think it’s necessary, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. Trust him, obey him, and watch him display his glory through you in ways that are far grander than you could ever imagine. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you for John, chapter nine. We thank you for this word. We thank you for this passage that shouts to us the glory of God. For those of us who have asked the question, Why God? I pray now we would ask, For Whom? That we would know that there is a reason and a purpose and a person or persons, and you will use our pain to show yourself to them. We don’t know when or how, but we trust that you will do it. Our pain is never in vain. We take great comfort in that this morning, God, I pray that we would learn from this text and be inspired by it. We would be inspired to obey you more. And, God, we would be inspired to love you more. That we would see the goodness of God on display here, and it would cause us to love you more. And now, God, in a moment, as we sing, may we make it our declaration that whatever you bring our way, whatever you see fit to allow us to experience, may we declare with confidence. With humble confidence. It is well. May that be true for all of us. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.  

Introduction: The Offensiveness of the Gospel I want to start this morning with a little bit of a confession. I spend too much time on social media. I should not spend the amount of time I spend on just doing this. I shouldn’t do it. Well, a few weeks ago, while I was participating in this guilty pleasure we call TikTok, I came across a video. Everyone’s feed is different because it’s catered to you. So I came across this video of these guys street preaching. They were at a public university in Oklahoma, and these guys were there preaching. We can argue and debate about the efficacy of street preaching and whether or not that’s a valuable way to approach ministry. These street preachers were preaching in the open air. So police officers came up to them and said, You can’t be doing this. The preacher says Yes, I can, this is constitutionally protected. I’m on public property. We’ve done this before. We know we can do this. We know you can’t shut us down. So the police officers were saying, No, you can’t do this. One police officer was agitated, but then two other cops came over and calmed the first cop down. They said, actually, he can do this. This is perfectly legit. Honestly, I’m not sure that the preacher was representing Christ in the kindest, best way, but, again, it’s a different conversation for a different day. This preacher is going on and on, and one of the police officers said, Here’s the issue. She goes, I have no problem with you doing this. She goes, I go to church. This is cool. This is legal. You’re on public property. You’re allowed to do this. It’s fine. She goes, well, we did get a complaint from one of the students who was passing by. The preacher guy was like, well, what was the complaint? She said, apparently, you said something about her going to hell, and she was really offended by that. In the conversation. I was going back and forth. I don’t know what the preacher guy said. So I don’t know whether what he said was appropriate or not. I can’t judge. But it was interesting in the conversation between the police officer and the street preacher. They were going back and forth, and it became clear to me that the police officer was not bothered by the fact that this guy was talking about Jesus in a public square. She seemed to be saying, Jesus is welcome in the public square. That’s perfectly appropriate. That’s fine. She said to him, You know, if you’re going to talk about how much God loves people and how he’s good and all the good things, that’s fine. But you can’t be in a public place telling people they’re going to hell. Talking about Jesus in a public square wasn’t the issue. It was talking about the potential for hell that was crossing the line. That was unacceptable. I think that sentiment is very popular in American culture. I think about the Christmas season. We just celebrated Christmas. There are lights everywhere. I got a neighbor down the street who’s got all sorts of lights. When I talk to them, I’m pretty sure they don’t believe in the Bible or Jesus. But they’re decked out in the most extravagant light display you could ever see. They’ve got music going to a radio station. So you tune into a particular station on the radio, and you can hear music coming from their house. I mean, it’s all out. But they don’t believe in Jesus. Lots of people would love for Christmas to just be about some cute baby in a manger. What they find impolite or unacceptable is when you talk about the reason why that baby was born, which was to save us from the flames of hell, to rescue us from an eternity apart from the love and mercy of God. It boggles my mind that people are okay with elements of Christianity, and yet there’s a point where you go, now stop there. Well, the rest of it doesn’t make sense if we stop there. This sentiment exploded in American culture in the post-World War II era. From the early 1900s until the 1930s, there was a pretty significant movement away from biblical Christianity. Conservative Christians dominated pretty much every institution in American culture. The last institution that was lost was Princeton University in 1929, when the last conservative Christian Protestants at Princeton were booted out of the school. That was a watershed moment in American Christianity, where we lost control of a lot of the key institutions in American culture. That was the culmination or the climax of a movement that had been going on for several decades, a movement away from biblical Christianity. But in the wake of World War II, after the hellishness of World War II, many Americans were clamoring for religion, clamoring for God to be back in our society. But not wanting all of Jesus, particularly that impolite part, that hell part. We don’t want that. We want this nice, neutered version of Christianity. That got very popular in the 1940s and into the 1950s. Evangelical scholars look back and refer to that as civil religion. Civil religion explodes on the scene in American culture. It became very popular in the 1950s. People in droves start going back to church. This is the era when we add under God to the Pledge of Allegiance. This is where we add the phrase In God We Trust onto the American dollars. There’s this movement toward Christianity in the 1950s in a significant way, but it wasn’t true biblical Christianity. It was, again, this nice neutered version of it. This shapes American culture in pretty significant ways. The United States, not the only place that fell victim to this civil religion. This happened in Britain as well. Famously, C.S. Lewis addresses this in his book The Weight of Glory. Here’s how C.S. Lewis addresses it. He says this: “Many Christians these days do not like to mention heaven or hell, even in the pulpit. However, if we do not believe in heaven and hell, in these things unseen, our presence in church is a great tomfoolery. If we do believe them, we must sometimes overcome this spiritual prudery.” I love the phrase spiritual prudery. Lewis, He’s saying, we’re like prudes when it comes to talking about hell. We’re afraid to talk about it. We’re kind of embarrassed by it. Lewis says, if you don’t believe in Heaven and hell, being in church is kind of tomfoolery. What’s the point? What are you doing? What are you wasting your time on? But if we do believe in heaven and hell, then we’ve got to kind of get past this spiritual prudery. This is what Lewis is challenging us to. He is saying we must go beyond this civil religion that’s so popular, that was so popular in Western Europe and North America, and remains popular in parts of the United States. Lots of Americans want a version of Jesus that’s not offensive, but what they want is a version of Jesus that doesn’t really exist because Jesus is offensive. You cannot possibly talk about the Gospel, the truth of Scripture, without being offensive. Now, to be clear, what we don’t want to be is one of these guys who love offending. There are some preachers out there who just live to offend. They say, I’m just telling it how it is, brother. No, you’re not. You’re being a jerk. You’re being hellish. We don’t want to be offensive just for the sake of being offensive. That doesn’t honor Christ. But we absolutely want to speak the truth clearly, and that will be offensive. Most of you profess to be believers, I would imagine. If you are someone who talks about your faith at some point, ask yourself, take inventory. When was the last time I really offended someone because of what I believe? If you’ve not offended anyone recently, it’s probably one of two things. Either you’re not talking about your faith very much, or you’re talking about your faith in a nice, neutered fashion, and therefore you’re not really presenting biblical Christianity at that point. Again, we’re not out to offend people for the sake of offense. That’s not the goal. But we should expect occasionally that we’re going to offend people. It’s offensive to tell someone you are so sinful and disgusting that you deserve to burn in hell forever. That is a very offensive statement to make. But it is true. You can say that statement in your own way. There are different ways in which we can make that statement, but there are ways in which we want to stay that. But there are moments we want to offend. So this morning, I want to talk a little bit about this thing called hell. That is offensive to people. Typically, we go through books of the Bible. So in the fall, we spent a chunk of time in the book of Hebrews. From October, November, and then we’ve paused, we did an Advent series. Then, between now and January, we’re gonna cover some questions that I’ve been asked as a pastor. God willing, in February, we’ll jump back in the book of Hebrews. So, February through May, we’ll be back in the book of Hebrews. But over the next few weeks, I want to tackle some really specific questions that I’ve been asked as a pastor. One of the questions I’ve been asked frequently is about hell. So we’ll pray one more time, and then we’ll answer some of these questions, and we’ll look at what the scripture says. God, help us to understand your word when we look at some of these verses, help us to embrace the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.   Why Do We Talk About Hell? The first question I’ve been asked often is, Why would you ever want to talk about something so depressing like hell? How would you ever want to talk about that? I’ve been asked that multiple times. Here’s the number one reason. There are several reasons why we want to talk about it, but number one is because Jesus talked about it. If you take all of the teachings of Jesus, parables, sermons, and conversations, and you make a list of every topic that Jesus ever hit. If you make a list of over 100 topics that Jesus covered, and you put check marks next to each time Jesus talked about each topic. There would be two things that would be at the top of the list, and the third place would be a distant third. There are two things that Jesus talked about more than anything else, in significant numbers. That is hell and money. You know, the two things that most preachers are uncomfortable talking about? Hell and money. They’re both uncomfortable things to talk about. I’m not being honest. So we want to talk about things like hell, because Jesus talked about things like things like hell.   What Is Hell Like? The second question I’ve been asked is, What is hell like? In Matthew 13 and Matthew 24, Jesus describes hell as a place of a great gnashing of teeth, where you’re crying so much your teeth are grinding together, teeth are gnashing. I mean, that is an unbelievable image that Jesus gives us. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that hell is a place of great punishment. One of the things we get in scripture is that hell is hot. The book of Revelation uses the language, the lake of fire. Jesus uses the language in Matthew 13, the fiery furnace. Bible scholars have argued, is this literal? The lake of fire, the fiery furnaces, are these literal or just metaphoric? I gotta be honest, I’m not 100% sure. I don’t fully know. I’ve looked at Scripture and tried to study, and I don’t have a strong opinion. But here’s what I find odd. Sometimes when you tell people that it’s a metaphor, it’s like a sigh of relief. It’s like, is hell really a lake of fire? I’m like, no, maybe it’s a metaphor. Oh, thank God. It’s just a metaphor. I think you’ve missed the point of the metaphor. The reason God gives us metaphors is to give us a taste of the reality. If a lake of fire is the metaphor for what hell is like, and a lake of fire is really bad, that means hell is really bad. The Lake of fire, being a metaphor, should not let you off the hook. You should not breathe a sigh of relief. It’s either a lake of fire or it’s as bad as a lake of fire. Either way, it’s bad. I think we want to be careful not to unintentionally neuter the Scriptures.   Is Hell The Lack Of The Presence Of God? The third question I’ve been asked about hell is, Is Hell the lack of the presence of God? This is a very common folly. In hell, you are separated from God. It’s a pretty common Protestant language. It’s not unusual language. I wouldn’t even say it’s wrong, but I’m not sure that’s precisely accurate. Two verses stand out to me. Psalm 139, verse 8. In the old King James says: “If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” So wherever we go, God is there. And then Jeremiah 23:23, God says: “I am the God who is everywhere.” So, the idea that God is not present in hell, I’m not sure that’s accurate. I think a better way to talk about hell is not the absence of God, but it’s the absence of experiencing certain elements of God. Hell is the place where you experience an angle of God or an attribute of God in an intense fashion without other attributes. Meaning we experience the wrath of God without experiencing the grace and mercy of God. That should horrify all of us. If you prefer to use the language of separation from God, I think that’s appropriate. I don’t think that’s wrong, but I don’t think it’s the ideal way to talk about it.   Is Hell God Inflicted or Self-Inflicted? The next question I’ve been asked pretty often is, Is hell something that God inflicts on people, or is this self-inflicted? Does God send us to hell, or do we choose to go to hell? That’s a question I’ve been asked, and I think the answer the Bible gives us is both. There’s a language of both. C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, talks about this quite a bit in his book The Great Divorce. He gives some imagery of hell that I think is interesting and helpful in some ways. He clearly uses the language of ‘cast’ into hell. The Bible uses that language. Jesus says that we’re thrown or cast in. That’s the language we see. Lewis also talks about this language. He uses what he sees in scripture, that hell is also self-inflicted. Lewis says that hell is locked from the inside for those who are in and do not want to escape. It’s an interesting language. Humans have been so poisoned by sin that, although they would want to escape the torment of hell, they would not want to acknowledge the God of Hell, Lewis says. Human beings were connected to God back in the Garden of Eden. We had this unbridled, unbroken connection. Fabulous, wonderful, glorious. As humans, we chose to betray God to break that friendship, not realizing that God is the source of life, and therefore that broken friendship meant we were no longer connected to the source of life. So now we are spiritually dead. We are rotting, we are spoiling. I use this imagery when we’re talking on Christmas Eve. The human soul is like a glass of milk you’ve set on a counter, sitting there rotting, spoiling, getting worse and worse. Lewis proposes, and I think I agree with him, that the human soul is rotting on this side of eternity, and into eternity just continues to rot. On the flip side, we have the soul of the believer. Those of us who love Jesus, who are connected to him. We are in the process of growing in our faith. Our soul is getting healthier and healthier. We’re experiencing more of his joy in life, and that simply continues into eternity forever and ever and ever and ever. But, on this side of eternity, we are already being spoiled. Paul says in Colossians that our minds have become hostile toward God. This is Lewis’s imagery. In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus says: “The condemned persons will experience destruction.” The word he uses, destruction, the Greek word for destruction there can also be translated as totally ruined or completely undone. So Jesus says the soul of the condemned will be totally ruined or completely undone. This is a similar language to what we see from Paul in Romans chapter 1, where Paul talks about the wrath of God being poured on humans and that humans are becoming dehumanized over time. He’s saying God is going to allow you to experience the fullness of your own choices. That over time, we’re becoming less and less human in our sensibilities and our rationality. We’re not becoming less human in our souls. Ontologically speaking, we’re still humans, but we’re becoming more and more beastly, more and more disgusting. There’s a constant decay in the language that C.S. Lewis uses in The Great Divorce. In that book, Lewis depicts hell as being this town of human beings who are ever growing in their hatred for God and hatred for each other. Like a town of millions of people where the houses are constantly moving further and further away from each other because they can’t stand each other, and they long to be away from one another. They are consumed with an ever-growing hate. Lewis contrasts this with the ever-growing, increasing joy that will be experienced by those who are with Christ. The ever-increasing love that we will have for God forever and ever and ever. So is Hell something God does or self-inflicted? Well, it’s both. The Bible seems to give us both of these.   Why Do Humans Deserve Hell? The fifth question I’ve been asked a lot. Why is it that humans deserve to go to hell? This is what we’ll look at. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Romans chapter 1. We’ll look at a couple of verses throughout the first few chapters of Romans. I think the question of why humans deserve to go to hell evokes some emotion. It should. The concept of hell should be unsettling. If it doesn’t bother you at all that there will be people in hell, that people are in hell, if that doesn’t bother you at all, I think you should take that to the Lord. Maybe there’s a lack of compassion. It should unsettle us. It should unnerve us. More than that, what we should be unnerved by is the fact that we ourselves deserve hell. That should be unsettling to us. Look at Romans chapter 1, verse 18. The apostle Paul says this: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” The word ‘revealed’ here that Paul uses can also be translated as demonstrated or focused, or set against. So there’s a wrath of God from heaven being revealed or focused upon, or demonstrated to ungodly, unrighteous human beings. That’s all of us. We are more sinful than we think. Your sin is worse than you think. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the 1800s, said it this way. He said, “Whenever someone slanders you, take heart. You are surely worse than whatever they have said.” Someone gossips about you, says something, you’re like, Oh, that’s all you said? You don’t know everything about me. Because we are worse than we think. Flip it over to Romans chapter 2. Look at verse 5 with me. This is Paul speaking of the state of humanity. Paul says this: “Because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” A hard-hearted heart that refuses to feel remorse, that refuses to realize how wrong it is. Because of your hard, impenitent heart, because of how hard-hearted and stubborn you are, you are storing up wrath for yourself so that when God pours out and reveals his wrath, it will be revealed and focused upon you, human beings. So Paul is saying you are storing up wrath for yourself. Flip over to Romans chapter 3. Look at verse 23. Paul says this: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So God has set this glorious standard. This is who I am. Be like me, meet this standard. But the reality is, all of us, not a one of us, has met the standard. Sometimes people ask questions like, It just doesn’t make sense that God would send us to hell because of this. My response is always, I don’t think you realize the standard that God has set. Let me give you a silly illustration. Let’s say you and I are going to take a baseball, and we’re going to throw the baseball to the road, about 100 yards or so away. So we each take a baseball and see how far we can throw it. You might get further than I. So, we throw the baseball. We’ll see how far we can get to the road. Then I say to you, did you make it? Maybe you made it, maybe not. Most likely, you did not. Then I say to you, let’s see who can throw it to the North Pole. You take your baseball, I’ll take mine. We’re going to throw it to the North Pole. All right, let’s see who gets the closest. I’ll throw it. And now you throw. Let’s see who got closer. Well, you got closer, but you know what? You still fell miserably short of the standard. See, sometimes what we do is we want to compare ourselves to other people and go, well, I’m better than that person. I’m not as sinful as that person. At least I’m not this guy or that guy. I haven’t killed anyone. God does not contrast us against other humans. God contrasts us against himself. His own glory, his own holiness, and we have fallen short. No matter how far you think you get, you’re never going to throw that ball to the North Pole. Similarly, you’re never going to meet the standard that God has set. Then Paul says, let’s skip over to chapter 6. Romans, chapter 6, verse 23. Paul says something I think is easily missed, one of the most condemning statements. He says: “For the wages of sin is death.” The wages are the paycheck you deserve. A spiritual death. You go to your job, you get a paycheck. Your boss is not going to give you an arbitrary number. You’re earning something. In the same way, Paul is telling us, the spiritual death, the condemnation that God is going to bring, that’s the paycheck you’ve earned. It’s not arbitrary. It’s not like God is in heaven going, I kind of hate guys that wear teal shirts. I’m going to kill that guy with a teal shirt. No, God is looking at our actions and he’s giving us the wages we deserve. Then he says, but, oh, this is a great word there. But: “The wages of sin are death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul makes it very clear, yes, you earned something, you deserve something, but there is a free gift, a grace, a mercy available to you in Christ Jesus. Why do humans deserve hell? It’s because we are unrighteous and we warrant the full wrath of God. The next question I’ve been asked regularly is, if God is so gracious, why can’t he just forgive sin? Why can’t he just let it go? You’re forgiving, you’re God, you’re good. I’ve been asked this a bunch of times. Let’s imagine we’re in a courtroom. Let’s say there are a hundred criminals in the courtroom. They’ve committed the most wicked crimes you can imagine. Assaults, violent robberies, murders, violations of all sorts, the most heinous things. Whatever the most wicked crime you think of, these hundred criminals committed that crime. Imagine these hundred criminals coming to the courtroom, and they all deserve life in prison with no chance of parole. Can you imagine a judge would look at the hundred criminals and say, We’re just gonna let it slide. Every single one of us would go; you don’t just let them off the hook. We want justice. Every single one of us would cry out about the flaw of that judge. Is he being paid off? Is that judge corrupt? We would instantly begin to question the credibility of that judge because we all inherently know that crimes must be punished. If God just let things slide, we would look at him and think, Is he corrupt? God loves justice. Psalm 111 says this: “The Lord is righteous. He loves justice.” Isaiah 30 says: “The Lord is a God of justice.” Isaiah 61 says: “I, the Lord, love justice, and I hate iniquity.” God loves justice. He loves doing the righteous thing. He always does the righteous thing. That is a good thing. We praise him for that. He is a good judge. The bad news, of course, is that we are the ones who deserve that righteous judgment. We are the cosmic criminals. But God makes it possible for us to be forgiven. You see, the human judge doesn’t have the ability to do something that the supernatural judge does. The supernatural judge, God, the creator of the universe, has the supernatural ability to look at those hundred criminals and to take the guilt of stain of their crimes and to remove them and to place them on someone else. The human judge doesn’t have that ability. That mysterious thing that God does, where he takes the sins of humans and puts them on someone else. Can you imagine that judge in the courtroom who says, My son is in the courtroom today, and I’m going to take your sins and remove them from you and put them on my own son. I’m not going to let the sin slide. I’m going to cast that judgment upon him. The sin will be paid for so that you can go free. That is a remarkable offer. “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God, eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   Is Hell Forever? The next question I’ve been asked is, Is hell forever? This has been debated in recent times. This has never been a point of contention throughout church history. But over the last few decades, there have been some arguments around whether hell is forever or is it just for some time. That’s a debate amongst Bible scholars in America and the West today. I do believe that hell is forever, and again, as unsettling as it is, I think there are a lot of verses that point to this. The clearest one to me is Revelation 14. It says this: “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night.” That feels pretty clear to me. The smoke of their torment, the people who are being tormented in the lake of fire. The smoke of that torment goes up forever and ever and ever, and they have no rest day or night. The immediate follow-up question I’ve gotten is why? Why does hell need to be forever? The problem with this question, again, honestly, is that you don’t realize how big God is. He is strong and big and glorious. His goodness is infinite, and betraying him is infinitely wicked. There’s a pastor in the Orlando area named R.C. Sproul who died a couple of years ago. Some of you may be familiar with R.C. Sproul. There’s this famous clip, it’s gone viral online, where he was at a conference a few years ago, and there was a question-and-answer panel. Someone from the audience asked, Why does hell have to be forever? Doesn’t it feel too harsh? Someone else on the panel was going to answer, and R.C. interrupts him. He said, Wait, hold on. He looks at the crowd and he goes, What’s Wrong with you people? R.C.’s point was, don’t you understand? He says in the video, this creature from the dirt defies the living God, creator of heaven and earth, that is infinitely wicked. The person who asked the question, Why is hell forever? Isn’t that too harsh? It is a person who doesn’t understand the bigness of God. Human beings are so wicked. We deserve everything God has to give us. Everything he can dish out. God is so awesome and so good. Our sin is so bad, it deserves that. Here’s the proper way to think about it. People will think about hell being forever and ever, and they’ll say, That seems too harsh because my sin is not that bad. That’s the wrong response. The right response would be, That seems so harsh, my sin must be really bad. Another follow-up question I’ve gotten related to that is, if hell were forever, if I were in hell, then why isn’t Jesus still in hell? Why is it that Jesus, six hours on a cross, can pay for my sin, but I would have to pay for my sin forever and ever in hell? That’s a very good question that I’m not going to answer today. We will get to that, I promise. God willing, in February, when we’re back in the book of Hebrews and we get to Hebrews 7 and 8, we will answer that because that question deserves a sermon unto itself. It’s a good question, but I’m going to leave you hanging.   How Can We Be Saved? Of course, this leads us to the last question. How can we be saved? I’ve already mentioned it. Imagine the courtroom with the criminals and the judge brings in his own son, and he removes all the crime and puts it on his son. He says, I will punish him so that you will not have to be punished. Here’s the deal God makes. Be loyal to him, follow him, love him, be genuinely committed to him. My son and I will take all of your crimes, and I will have him pay for them. Deal? The brilliance of the cross, where sin is dealt with and sinners are reconciled. There’s no more brilliant innovation in human history. There’s no more brilliant moment in human history than the moment where sin is dealt with and sinners are reconciled at the cross.   Should We Talk About Hell in Evangelism? The last question to address that I’ve been asked multiple times is, should we talk about hell in evangelism? I’ve heard people say this is a very common kind of idea or sentiment in evangelical circles today. People will say things like, We don’t want to scare people into hell or heaven. We shouldn’t talk about hell. We should just talk about how great God is, how good he is. People should believe in God so they can experience the goodness of God. We shouldn’t tell them to believe in God just to get out of hell. We don’t want it to be fire insurance. This is a very popular sentiment over the last few years that I’ve seen, particularly on Twitter. People say these things on Twitter regularly, and I think to myself, you know better than Jesus, apparently. Talking about hell is not a scare tactic. It’s a Jesus tactic. Jesus did it. Now, certainly, we want to do both. We want people to see the glory of God, the beauty of Christ, and to treasure him. We want people to love God and to put their faith in him because of how wonderful he is. Yes, because he is glorious and worthy of our trust and faith. Simultaneously, we want to make very clear to people the consequences that are set against them. That they were born into a world that is about ready to experience the full wrath of God, and that will be their trajectory if you do not put their faith in Christ and Christ alone. We absolutely want both of those, not one or the other. They are not mutually exclusive. So those are the questions I’ve been asked. Why would we ever talk about hell? What is hell like? Is hell the absence of the presence of God? Is hell self-inflicted? Why do humans deserve to go to hell? Is hell forever? Why can’t God just let sin go? And should we use hell in evangelism? Those are all the questions. Of course, I proposed one question that I didn’t answer. Why is Jesus not in hell right now? I promise, Lord willing, we’ll get to that in a few weeks.   Closing: What Do We Do With This Information? Lastly, this morning I want to propose a question. That is, what do we do with this information? Now that we know the wrath of God and this place is described as a lake of fire, what do we do with it? Well, there are two things we do with it. If you are here this morning and you are not a Christian, if you have said, I have not put my faith in Christ Jesus alone. I’m not all in on Jesus. I’m not genuinely following him with all my heart. I don’t genuinely love him with all of my heart. If. If that is you, if you are not a believer, not a follower of Christ this morning, I challenge you, I implore you, put your trust and faith in Christ this morning. Be loyal to him. Genuinely choose to follow him. Paul says this in Romans, chapter 10: “If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” If you confess with your mouth, you declare, yes, he is Lord, and you genuinely believe in your heart that he rose from the dead. If that is you, then you are saved. If this morning, you are not a believer, I would implore you to put your faith in Christ this morning. If you want to talk about what that means, I’d love to have a conversation with you after the service. The second thing is this: What do we do with this this morning? If you’re a believer, which many of us in the room this morning are, I implore you, I exhort you, tell others about the mercy of God. Think about the people that you know who are not Christians. Friends, family, loved ones, neighbors, colleagues, people that you know that don’t understand the gospel, have not believed the gospel, or have rejected Christ. I want you to think about some names right now. Let those pictures of their faces come to your mind. Those people are on a trajectory to face unbelievable horrors. It’s on us to speak up. It’s on us to talk to them, to pray for them, to challenge them, to warn them. Ezekiel, chapter 3, verse 18. The prophet Ezekiel says this: “If you give the wicked no warning in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood shall be on your hands.” He says, if you give no warning to those that you know are condemned, their blood’s on your hands. That is a very unsettling idea. I do not want to leave this life with the blood of people’s souls on my hands, because I didn’t warn them. We close this morning with a quote from Charles Spurgeon, one of my favorite preachers. Charles Spurgeon said this: “If sinners be damned if they’re going to go there, Let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” If someone’s going to go to hell, let’s make sure they’ve been warned and let’s make sure they’ve been prayed for. Let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for. Would you pray with me this morning? God, we thank you for your word that gives us teachings that, even though they may feel uncomfortable, give us insight into your character, your holiness, your greatness, your infinite goodness, your justice. God, I’m so thankful that you’re a God of justice, and I’m so thankful that you made a way for our sins to be paid for, to be justly dealt with. Jesus, you didn’t have to save us. God, you weren’t required, you weren’t under any obligation to rescue us, but you chose to do it because you love us. Because you love us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Lord, we know that our sins while they are many. Your grace is even more. Your mercy is even more. That while we are great sinners, you are an even greater Savior. We thank you. I pray this morning that we would be unsettled by the reality of judgment. But more than that, we would be inspired, and we would sense the exhortations from the prophet Ezekiel to go and warn others. May we, as Charles Spurgeon said, may we not allow any one of our friends and family members to go there unwarned and unprayed for. God, forgive us for not praying for our unsaved family members and friends the way we should. Forgive us, God. I pray that you would give us the grace to do that. May we today sense the urgency to pray daily for our unsaved family members and friends, and neighbors. May we see the personal responsibility of those who are in our lives, those whom you have put in our lives. May we sense the urgency to share the truth, the goodness of God, and the reality of judgment. May we share both of those. I pray you would use your people as we share the truth with those who do not know you. I pray that you would use our mouths to soften the hearts, to bring people into the faith. Would you use these people who love you to bring others into the fold? I pray all these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.   Communion Now we come to communion as we do each week. Every single week, we pause and take communion to remember Christ. To remember what Christ has done this morning for us. To pause and think, I deserve the judgment, but the son of the judge took on the guilt and stain of my crimes so that I could enjoy the goodness of the judge forever and ever and ever. We pause this morning to remember that. If you’re here with us for the first time, we’ll tell you we have two options. We’re going to pass some baskets for communion. We’ve got two options here. Both have gluten-free, unleavened bread. There’s a little cup here. It’s got regular juice in it. There’s a little mini chalice. The mini chalice has real wine in it. So juice and wine. When the basket comes, grab whichever one you prefer, hold it, and then I’ll come up and I’ll lead us together through communion. If you are here this morning, you are a follower of Jesus. If that’s you, we would invite you to participate with us this morning in communion. If you are here this morning, you’re not a believer. I’m so glad you’re here. I’d love to talk to you after the service. But I would ask that when the basket comes, just let it pass. Communion is for believers only. When the basket passes, don’t let the moment pass. In this moment, if you are not a believer, I implore you, look to Christ. Instead of taking communion with us this morning, take Christ instead. For those of us who are believers, let us partake in communion and remember the mercy of our God, who sent his Son to die in our place. To rescue us from the judgment we otherwise would righteously deserve. Let’s remember Jesus together.  

    Introduction: Matthew’s Account of Jesus This Advent season, we’ve been going through the early portions of the Gospel of Matthew. In the fourth week of Advent, historically in church, the theme has been love. So week one is hope, week two, peace, week three, joy, week four, love. So it’s probably no surprise to you where this sermon is headed. We’ll be talking about the love of God at some point. What we’ve seen so far in the first chapter and a half of the Gospel of Matthew is, Matthew, who was a disciple of Jesus, is a Jewish Christian now writing to Jews who predominantly are not Christians. He’s making an appeal to them to believe on Jesus. He’s making an appeal that Jesus is the rightful king, that he is the heir to David’s throne, and that he fulfills all of the expectations of the Old Testament, that he is the long-promised Messiah. That’s the case that Matthew is making on behalf of Jesus. So we saw in week one that Matthew starts with the genealogy, and he shows how the crown would have passed from David all the way down to Jesus. He also alludes to the fact that Herod, who is not a genuine Jew and not in the lineage of David, is not the rightful king of the Jews. He’s been put there by the Romans, and he is a puppet king. He is illegitimate. After that, we see Matthew telling us about Joseph and Mary, who are engaged. Mary gets pregnant. She tells Joseph that it was the work of the Holy Spirit. He thinks that she’s bonkers, but he loves her and respects her enough to break off the engagement quietly. He’s not going to bring shame to her. That’s his goal. But an angel appears and tells him, Mary is carrying a child who has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. That she is a virgin, and you can take her at her word. So then Joseph loves Mary and cares for her well. We see this in the early section of the Gospel of Matthew. They end up traveling to Bethlehem, the city of David. And there Jesus is born. That fulfills a prophecy. Some magi, these wise men from the east, show up and they worship Jesus and bring him gifts and then Herod, who had interacted with these wise men, had told them, when you find out where this new king is, where this royal baby has been born, tell me where he is so that I can come and worship him as well. But of course, Herod’s plan is not to worship the king. Herod’s plan instead is to kill this newborn king. He is going to squash any rivals, any would-be rivals to his power. So the magi, under the instruction of angels, go through a different way. They do not travel back, and they don’t interact with Herod again. This is where we’ve come to now in Matthew chapter 2, we see also through the first chapter and a half thus far that Matthew has highlighted two specific prophecies that Jesus fulfills. And he’s very precise. He specifically calls out exactly where that prophecy is. There’s no ambiguity. Anyone reading this knows exactly what where in the Old Testament, Matthew is finding these prophecies. We’ll see that he does that two more times in the next few verses. We also see this elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew, where Matthew is very precise. When he’s alluding to a prophecy, he wants you to know exactly where that prophecy comes from. There’s no ambiguity. That’s important because at the end of this chapter, he makes a statement that does feel ambiguous. It’s a departure from what Matthew typically does. We’ll see that in a minute. Throughout this chapter, we see that Matthew is making the case that Jesus is the one that the Old Testament prophets had talked about, had prophesied about for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is all we get from the childhood of Jesus, from Matthew’s Gospel. At the beginning of chapter 3, he skips ahead many years to where Jesus is beyond age 30, and doesn’t give us any details from the time that Jesus is very young until Jesus is well into his 30s. Three of the four Gospels give us almost nothing about that season of life. The Gospel of Luke gives us one mention of one moment when Jesus is 12. Many of you are familiar with this moment where Jesus gets lost when his parents are at the temple. Other than that, we know very little about the life of Jesus from his earliest years up until his public ministry begins again at age 30. So before we move on to his public ministry, before we fast forward from the childhood of Jesus to the adulthood of Jesus, Matthew wants to drive home one significant point. He uses the title that Jesus is known by. He alludes to Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth to drive home a particular point. When you first read it on face value to us 21st-century readers, it doesn’t make total sense. But when you examine it closely, you realize that Matthew is unveiling for us a profound truth that has real application for our lives. So let’s pray one more time, and then we’ll look at the text together. Father in heaven, you are so kind, you are merciful. You came to this planet and exposed yourself to all of the pains. You were disgraced and despised so that we would not have to be disgraced and despised. You were rejected so that we could be accepted. Because you love us, you did this. And this morning, I say thank you, God, thank you for the Gospel of Matthew, this gospel that gives us great insight into your kingdom and your royal reign. God, I ask that you would use the words of Matthew this morning to transform us, to shape us, to mold us. And lastly, God, I pray if there’s anyone in this room who does not know you, who’s not genuinely born again, I pray that today, they would put their faith in Christ and Christ alone. We ask these things in the matchless name of Christ. Amen.   The Prophecies of the Messiah If you have your Bibles, go to Matthew, chapter 2, verse 13. “Now when they departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him’.” So they had been in Bethlehem. They’re there for some time. We don’t know exactly how long they’re there. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. But eventually, Herod is on the move. He’s going to come after this baby. So an angel tells Joseph, Take Mary, take the baby, and flee to Egypt. They lived in Egypt for a while. We don’t know how long, but it seems like maybe a few years. It seems like Jesus’s earliest years were spent living in the nation of Egypt. Speaking of Joseph, Verse 14: “And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’.” This is another moment where Matthew quotes from an Old Testament prophet. It’s an exact quotation from the prophet Hosea. Anyone familiar with the Old Testament would not be confused as to what he’s saying. The prophet Hosea had given this prophecy that the Messiah would come out of Egypt. So the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, but ends up in Egypt, and then comes out of Egypt. All of this is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit to fulfill that which had been prophesied. Verse 16 says this: “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.” It appears that a period of time has passed from the time that Herod interacted with the wise men until this moment where he realizes he was tricked. It looks like almost two years have gone by. Herod feels a need to have any baby boy who’s 2 years old or younger, to have them slaughtered, killed. This is a heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, vile moment we see. Herod is so desperate to hold onto his power, he kills every baby boy in the town of Bethlehem to make sure that he kills the one. I was wrestling with this passage this week, and I thought to myself, Lord, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, and by an angel he escapes, and yet that results in the death of so many baby boys who lived in Bethlehem at that time. Most scholars estimate it’s probably somewhere in the hundreds. Hundreds of baby boys ages 2 and under are murdered by Herod’s soldiers. I think to myself, God, that doesn’t seem right. That doesn’t seem fair. I wrestled with that this week in my own personal prayer time. Why would God allow that to happen? The fact that Jesus was born in that town puts a target on all these little kids. I don’t have a good answer for that other than to say I trust that God is good and that he is in control, that he would work that out for his glory. Imagine one of the other women who were in the town, maybe one of the other teenage girls who had a child who was Mary’s age. I can imagine Jesus, who’s maybe a year old, playing with another little one-year-old boy. Then Joseph takes Mary and Jesus, and they flee to Egypt. A few months later, Herod’s boys ride into the town, and they say, Where’s the kid? Where was he born? She has to watch her baby be murdered by Herod’s henchmen. In January, God willing, we plan to do a topical series. We won’t do that often around here, but we’ll do a series on suffering. I’ve been asked as a pastor many times, Why does God let bad things happen to good people? I am going to answer that question; you might not like the answer, but we’re going to spend a few weeks in January talking about suffering. Why does God allow the suffering that he allows? We’re going to hit that head on in January, Lord willing. But it’s a heart-wrenching moment, and I think it’s fair and helpful for us to pause and to think about the disgustingness, the vile nature of sin that would lead someone like Herod to kill hundreds of baby boys. Then he says this. Go to verse 17. Matthew says this: “Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; She refused to be comforted, because they are no more.’” Again, Matthew is saying this is the moment where all these mothers have their baby boys killed in Bethlehem, and these mothers are weeping. This fulfills another prophecy that Jeremiah gave us about 600 years before Jesus was born. That all of Israel would be laid waste. The Babylonians were going to come in, kill a bunch of them, and those who survived would be dragged off into slavery in Babylon. That the nation of Israel would be desolate, that the land would be desolate. So Jeremiah is prophesying that this is going to happen. Jeremiah says, when the Babylonians come in, there’s going to be a lot of crying. There’s going to be a voice heard in Rama, it’s a region there, there’s going to be lots of weeping and loud lamentations. Rachel is one of the ancestors of the Jewish people. The mothers of Israel are going to be weeping and crying because their children will be dying. Jeremiah is alluding to the events of his day, around 580 BC, when the Babylonians would come in. But Matthew says Jeremiah is talking about the events of his day. But there’s a dual meaning to what Jeremiah said. Jeremiah is prophesying about the events in his day, but his words are also a prophecy of the events in Jesus’ day. Matthew is saying, when Jeremiah said this, when he made this statement, he was also alluding to the women in Bethlehem who were crying, devastated because their baby boys had been killed. Matthew is saying, here yet again is another prophecy that Jesus fulfills. This is the fourth time we’ve seen this through the first two chapters of Matthew, where he has called out a specific moment in the Old Testament and has said that it was also alluding to Jesus. Jeremiah also prophesied to Israel, to the Israelites, when the Babylonians were coming in. He says the exile is not going to go on forever. Within 70 years, God’s going to bring you back. God’s going to restore you. The language of the Old Testament was Israel’s consolation. The consolation of Israel is this idea that God’s going to bring them back and restore them in the land, and that they will flourish once again. But Jeremiah tells us that the women of his day took no comfort in this. The women in Bethlehem took no comfort in the fact that while their baby boys were killed, there would be a Messiah to come. So Jeremiah is telling us here that there’s a prophecy. Babylonians are going to come in, they’re going to kill a bunch of kids, they’re going to drag you off as slaves, and God’s going to bring you back, and you’re going to flourish. That begins to happen. Within 40 years, some of the Jews returned in multiple ways, and by the end of that 70-year mark, most of the Jews had returned and had begun to rebuild the nation of Israel. But they never really flourished the way the prophecy said. They never quite flourish. When they’re coming back, they’re under Persian rule. Then, after the Persians, it’s the Macedonian Greeks who are oppressing them. After the Macedonian Greeks, it’s the Ptolemy empire, another Greek empire to come, and oppressing them. There’s a brief period where Israel has independence under a group known as the Maccabees. But the nation doesn’t flourish during that time. There’s a lot of civil unrest and lots of problems going on there. Not long after that, the Romans came into town and occupied them. When Jesus shows up on the scene, the Romans are in charge, and they are brutal tyrants. They treat the Jewish people brutally. So this idea of Israel’s consolation, that God was going to bring them back and reestablish them in a way that they would flourish. That prophecy has not been fulfilled. Matthew is saying now it’s going to be fulfilled. There have been lots of problems, but there’s a moment coming where Israel’s consolation is finally going to come about. It’s not quite the way you thought it was going to be. It’s going to be through a God man named Jesus. It won’t just be for the nation of Israel, it will be for all people everywhere that would believe on him. This is the prophecy that Jeremiah is telling us. If you’re an astute Old Testament person or a student, you would pick up on what Matthew was alluding to. He’s saying, remember what they were looking forward to, a moment when Israel would be consoled and comforted, they would flourish. Now is the time it’s going to come, and it’s going to come through this baby who was just born.   The Prophecy of the Nazareth As Matthew is telling his story, he’s highlighting particular things. Luke gives us a version of these events. John gives us a version of some of these events. Mark gives us a version of some of these events. These events are given to us throughout the Gospels, and Matthew highlights particular things for a particular reason. Look at verse 19 again, he’s highlighting a particular thing here. Verse 19 says this: “But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought to kill the child’s life are dead’.” So Herod is dead, it is safe to go back. He rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea, Archelaus is Herod’s son. He was afraid to go there. Being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. So he, Joseph, is leaving Egypt now, after several years in Egypt, headed back to Israel. But he doesn’t go back to his hometown of Bethlehem. He doesn’t go back to Jerusalem or any other city that he may have lived in. He goes into a region that’s somewhat unknown to him, the region of Galilee. They end up in a town called Nazareth. Galilee is where the rednecks live, the country folk of the first century. They are the first century Jewish version of a redneck. That’s where they lived. If you are a redneck, I mean no offense. There’s nothing wrong with being a redneck. Galilee was the place of the people who had limited education. They were fishermen, people who worked with their hands, people who were sort of disconnected from the center of commerce or politics. They were backwoods people. They didn’t get involved in what was going on in Jerusalem or the cultural engagement of the day. They didn’t get involved in all this stuff. The people who live there don’t engage with the rest of the country. That’s how Galilee was. Joseph thought that would probably be a wise place to go. We can go to the backwoods and live in a small town. No one will know where we are, and we won’t ruffle any feathers. No one back in Jerusalem will know where we are or try to seek us out or kill us. He ends up in Galilee in a town called Nazareth. Here’s what Matthew says: This is the climax of the story. Everything is headed toward this moment. He says this in verse 23, speaking of Joseph: “He went and he lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.” So Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to the city of Nazareth. Nazareth was one of the smaller towns. Most scholars estimate the population of Nazareth at this time to be no more than 400 people or so. Small town, everyone knows their name. That kind of place. No one locks the doors. They’re living in this place called Nazareth. Matthew is saying all these events that happened, Bethlehem to Egypt to Galilee, Herod and the Magi, all of this that took place, is God providentially putting this together for one particular reason. So that what the prophets spoke about might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. It was so important that Jesus would be labeled a Nazarene that God orchestrated all of these events so that he would end up in Nazareth. That seems like a big deal. All of this would happen so that Jesus would end up in Nazareth. Why is that important? Matthew says that this is to fulfill what the prophets said. There’s one problem with that. Nowhere in the Old Testament is it ever prophesied that Jesus would come from Nazareth. So this creates a problem for us, 21st-century readers who might be unfamiliar. Matthew is saying that the Old Testament prophesied that the Messiah would come out of Nazareth. But the Old Testament doesn’t prophesy that. I want to say that you need to give more attention to the text because Matthew does something here in this verse that is very different than what we see at any other moment in his gospel when he’s alluding to the prophets. He’s usually very precise. He calls out the name of the prophet. He gives you a very clear understanding of exactly where he’s getting that from. In addition to that, Matthew intends to write this and circulate this amongst a bunch of people who know the Old Testament. Matthew knows he’s going to get fact-checked. There’s no doubt. He knows that if he were to make something up or get this something wrong that he’s going to undermine his entire argument. It makes no logical sense whatsoever that Matthew would allow this sort of mistake to be recorded. It’s an irresponsible or irrational assessment of Matthew’s work here. So what is he doing then? Why is he making this elaborate case that Nazareth is so important? When he says prophets and he doesn’t allude to anything, what he’s doing here, He’s saying, I’m telling you what the prophets of all of them in totality, what the general theme they’ve given us, the general motif of the prophecies, the 700 plus prophecies of the Old Testament, all the prophecies from all the prophets, they point at one thing. No, there is not one prophet or one scripture that tells us he’s going to be a Nazarene. But the general overarching theme of all of the prophecies tells us he’s going to end up in a place like Nazareth. That’s why understanding Nazareth is important. There’s a lot of scholarship on the city of Nazareth from the first century.   Rejected, Despised and Overlooked Nazareth was a backwoods, low-educated, and very poor place. There’s also quite a bit of evidence from extra-biblical literature that people who lived there were quite immoral. They weren’t religiously fervent the way you would get in Jerusalem or other parts of Israel. They were apathetic toward the Jewish faith. This is the place where Jesus would spend his most formidable years from the time he was about five or six or seven years old until the time he was in his late 20s. This is where he spends most of his life. Nazareth is not respected at all. In fact, when Jesus is calling his own disciples later, we see this in John chapter 1. Jesus calls Nathaniel, a fellow Galilean. He says, Nathaniel, come be one of my disciples. Nathaniel’s like, you’re from Nazareth. Nathaniel goes, Can anything good come from Nazareth? Why would I be a disciple of someone from Nazareth? They’re the lowest of the low. I mean, I’m from Galilee, and we’re pretty low. But you’re even lower than I. Matthew is summing up the general motif. He’s saying the Old Testament prophets were, in essence, telling us that Jesus was going to live a life in which he was rejected, despised, looked down upon, overlooked, underrated, underappreciated, abandoned, eventually betrayed, and murdered. God wanted the Messiah to be the underdog to one who was underestimated, the one who was rejected and despised. It’s a big part of the motif of the Old Testament when the prophecies of the Messiah are coming forth. What better way to ensure that it becomes a part of the ministry of the Messiah. The identity of the Messiah is to make sure he grows up in a town that is totally despised. A big part of the ministry of the Messiah was to take on rejection so that we could be accepted. God says that element of his ministry is so important that he was going to orchestrate the events of his life, so he would end up in the town that people despise the most. Eventually, Jesus comes from Nazareth and has a ministry where he is greatly despised. There are many times in the Old Testament where we see this language given. The most famous is from Isaiah 53. It says this: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened his mouth not; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before and before its shearers is silent, he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away.” We see this elsewhere in Psalm 118. A very famous verse quoted twice in the New Testament. Psalm 118 says this: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.” When I was in college, between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I came home. I was going to college in Illinois, and I went back home to Philadelphia, my hometown, for the summer. I got a job working in construction. That was the last summer I ever did that, because that’s for the birds. So I worked one summer of construction, about seven weeks, and decided I was never gonna do that again. But one of the jobs I had in construction was working for a general contractor. One of the jobs I had was to mix mud. It was like, you know, 95 to 100 degrees every day, 98% humidity in Philadelphia. If you’ve ever mixed mud, it’s terrible. The contractor I worked for had bought this huge water tower that had been knocked down. The water tower is eight stories tall, knocked down tons of bricks, this big, huge pile of bricks. My job was to go through the brick piles and pick them out, and look at the bricks that might still be good and clean and still be usable. Then I would use a diamond-tipped cutter to get all the mortar off and clean the bricks. I did that for seven weeks. In between, when the bricklayers needed help, I’d go mix the mud for them and then go back and clean the bricks. I did that for seven weeks of my life. By the time I was done, by the end of the summer, the pile of bricks that I had cleaned was about four feet tall, about eight feet wide. But there were a couple of times where I would go to these bricks and I would look at them and I would think, these are not usable. So I would throw them into a discard pile. Sometimes the General Contractor would come up to me, and he would see a brick and go, This was pretty good. He would try to help me see, but to me, it looked ugly and unusable. Could you imagine if one of the bricks that I had tossed into the discard pile would become the cornerstone of the new building that was being built? It would become the most important stone, the one upon which all the weight of the building is held. How foolish I would look. You threw that one away, and it became the most important brick in the entire building. Psalm 118 is saying that’s exactly what the Jews did with Jesus. They looked at him and said, he’s useless. He’s a dirty old brick. We’ve got no use for that one. They discard him. He’s a Nazarene. Yet he becomes the cornerstone for God’s plan to save the world. Jesus was rejected over and over and over again in his life by people who lived in Nazareth and people who were outside of Nazareth, in part because he was from Nazareth.   The Pain of Rejection Rejection is a painful thing. I’ve done some research on rejection. There’s a lot of good research in the world of psychology on rejection. There’s a lot of terrible research coming from the world of psychology. A lot of garbage that we should not listen to. But there are some good things. A lot of the studies that have come out on rejection have been really helpful. It shows that if you’re rejected over and over again in your life, it rewires your brain in a dysfunctional way. It causes significant damage to your cognitive abilities. Your mental faculties are impacted by rejection. Health is impacted by rejection, and of course, the human psyche and self-esteem esteem greatly impacted by rejection. All of us have experienced rejection at some point, in big ways or small ways. Some of us wanted to be friends with someone. They didn’t reciprocate. We sent someone a text message, but they didn’t respond. We didn’t get picked for the kickball team we wanted to be on when we were young. I remember when I was in high school, there was a girl I wanted to date. She turned me down. Couldn’t believe it. There are all sorts of reasons why we feel rejected. Divorce. Whether it’s your divorce or a parent’s divorce, an absent parent or an abusive parent, or an emotionally distant parent. People who have been orphaned obviously deal with rejection significantly. I recently had a conversation with someone who’s adopted. Adopted into a great Christian family. Fantastic parents, love them. Very healthy family in so many ways. I was talking to him, and he told me he loves his parents; they’re awesome. He’s so thankful for them. And yet he still has this sense that his biological parents rejected him. He can’t shake the feeling. We’ve been overlooked for promotions or jobs we wanted. Getting bullied at school, not getting accepted into a school maybe you wanted to get into. There are all sorts of reasons why we might experience rejection. I’ve been dealing with this very recently. I’ll confess to you a bit here. In church planting, fundraising is a big part of what we do. I’ve spent a lot of time fundraising, and I hate it. It’s exhausting. I hate asking for money, but it’s a part of what we do. I’m regularly reaching out to churches and people around the country. There was a grant that I applied for that would have been significant. $200,000 grant over three years. It would have been game-changing for what we would do here, ministry-wise. I went through the process and applied, and I got rejected. A friend of mine in Hunters Creek planted a church, got accepted. I’m thankful for my friend. I love my friend, thankful for the ministry. But I gotta be honest, I couldn’t help but have the feeling of going, Why? Is he better than me? Is he a better preacher? Is he a better dad? Is he a better pastor? Is he better looking? I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. I found myself driving, just feeling rejected by this. Then, a couple of weeks later, Malaina and I applied for another grant. This one was $70,000. There are over 88 applicants for this grant, and there were seven finalists. So they flew us up to North Carolina, this two-day interview process, and we were told by someone that it’s highly likely that they were going to select three of seven to give $70,000 to. We were told highly likely that we would be one of the three. And I was very excited. I had already spent the money in my mind. Then I get an email a couple of days later, and they had decided to go a different direction. We didn’t get the grant. I just feel rejected. I guess I’m not good enough. All these emotions start flowing through. I’m a human being. I’m a 42-year-old man, and I’ve walked with Jesus for 27 years. I’d love to tell you that I have no insecurities, that I’m perfectly emotionally healthy, and none of those types of things bother me. But that would be a lie. Those things bother me. And that bothered me for several days. I was frustrated. I was frustrated with the Lord. And then I was reading through Isaiah 53, thinking, you know who experienced rejection far worse than me? My Savior. You know who doesn’t reject me? My Savior. Rejection in and of itself is not sin. We’re not sinning. We’re rejected. But so often it leads us very quickly to sin if we’re not careful. Often, it can lead us to some pretty vile, wicked sins. We get bitter, jealous, and envious. Those emotions cause us to make some really poor choices if we’re not careful. Self pity, a desperate, crippling need for approval, an unwillingness to show compassion toward others. All these things are impacted, caused by rejection. Fierce independence is often fueled by rejection.   How Do We Navigate Rejection? Someone’s been rejected, and so they refuse to take accountability or come under someone’s leadership. The refusal to acknowledge their own sins or mistakes. That’s American society, which is fueled by people’s fear of rejection. I’m going to go do my own thing and not be connected to this. I’m going to run away from you before you have the chance to reject me. How do we navigate this? Jesus gives us a model for how to navigate rejection. There are two ways we do it. 1. Take it to Jesus in prayer. Friends, Jesus gets it. No one experienced rejection like him. God orchestrated the events of his entire life to ensure he would grow up in a town where he would experience rejection. That was God’s plan. He experienced it greatly. He knows how you feel. He gets you. He cares about you. If you’ve been rejected or despised, overlooked, abandoned, disenfranchised, ostracized, misunderstood. Jesus understands all of that. He gets you, and he invites you to come to him. Look what Hebrews chapter 4 verses 15 and 16 say: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” We don’t have a high priest who doesn’t understand what we face. He understands exactly what you face. The writer of Hebrew says this in chapter 4, 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.” With confidence, because we know we have a high priest who can sympathize. Have you experienced rejection? Have you been despised? Do you feel abandoned or alone? Jesus gets you, and he says, Come to me confidently and in me you will find help. Take those moments of pain and those emotions to the Lord in your prayer closet. 2. Choose to believe the truth of Scripture over the feelings that we feel. The truth is, he was rejected, and we are accepted. He did that because he loves you. Christians here today, God loves you. He loves you and he sent His Son, motivated by a Holy love. Jesus was willing to be despised and rejected because he loves you. John chapter 1 says this, verses 10 to 12: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, yet the world did not recognize Him.” Unbelievable. He made the world, and the world refused to acknowledge who he was. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. The Jews didn’t receive Him. Yet to all who have received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God. He was rejected by his own. But Jesus says, but you know what? Those who believe in me, I’ll to give you the right to become a child of God. First John 3:1 says this: “See what kind of love the Father has lavished on us?” Do you know that the type of love he’s given us, the category of love? This is it. “That we should be called children of God.” That’s what he says. Of course, John 3:16, probably the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life.” Whoever believes, motivated by his love, sent his one and only Son to save you because he loves you. That’s the truth of Scripture. Christ was born for you. Born so that you could experience his love. Church, know that this morning. Know that he loves you. You. He was born for you.   The Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus We must remember that Christ was not merely born and did not accomplish our salvation through his birth alone, but also through his birth, life, death, and resurrection. At Christmas, we want to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But the birth of Jesus, divorced from the mission of Jesus, has little value. We’re celebrating 2000 years later because of who was born and why he was born. It was God coming to save his people through his birth, life, death, and resurrection. Jesus lived a perfect life. He fulfills all the expectations of the Old Testament. Along the way, he experiences plenty of rejections. Then he goes to a brutal Roman cross. There, God the Father takes all the guilt and shame of the world and puts it on Jesus. God the Father punishes him, pours out his wrath. God the Father punishes the sin that was placed on Jesus. Your sin and my sin. It should have been you on the cross. It should have been me on the cross. But Jesus dies in our place. But he doesn’t stay dead. God the Father vindicates him by raising him from the dead. Jesus then defeats death, sin, and the grave. So at Christmas, we do not merely celebrate the birth of Christ. We celebrate the reason for the birth of Christ, for the rescue of his people, for Israel’s consolation. Not ethnic, national Israel, not the Jews, spiritual Israel. All who would believe on Him.   Closing: Receive The Newborn King If you are here and you have not put your faith in Jesus, if you have not truly believed on him, what he has accomplished does not apply to you until you fully believe. If you have not genuinely believed, you have not wholeheartedly trusted in Him, If you are not in a place where you’re all in on Jesus, I love Him, I’m living for Him, I’m pursuing Him. I genuinely believe that there is no salvation outside of him, and I am committed to Him. If that is not you, the work of Christ does not apply to you. You have not been forgiven of your sin, and you are not headed for God’s family. But it can apply to you today. If you today would believe in Jesus and say, I am all in on him and put all your faith in Christ and Christ alone, the work of Christ will apply to you. You will be forgiven, and you will be adopted into his family. You will be declared a child of God. If you are not a genuine believer this morning, I implore you, believe on him today. I want to close this morning with a quote from a pastor by the name of R.C. Sproul. Sproul was a pastor on the east side of Orlando for many years. He died in 2017. I think I’ve read more books by R.C. Sproul than any other author. R.C. Sproul said this in a Christmas Eve service a few years before he died, talking about the birth of Christ. He said, “Where are you with Christ? For his birth is of no meaning to you if you are not right with him, and there is no middle ground, there is no neutrality. You’re either with him or you’re against him. Either his friend or his foe, his enemy or his family.” As you examine your own heart this morning, either you have rejected him, and so too you shall be rejected, or you have received him, in which case you too shall be received by the Heavenly Father. You need to answer this question. It’s the most important question you will ever answer in your lifetime. Your eternal destiny depends on how you answer this question for yourself. Do you receive this newborn king, or do you reject Him? That is the question at hand. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather this morning and to look at a few verses here from the Gospel of Matthew. God, I thank you that you experienced all that we’ve experienced in this life, that you were rejected, you were despised. So you understand how we feel. You get us. God, thank you that we have a high priest who understands us. You sympathize with us, and you invite us to come to you confidently. So, Lord, I pray that when we are feeling rejected, when we are feeling abandoned or alone, we are experiencing these emotions, the emotions of the Nazarene, when we are experiencing that, and we are tempted to allow that to fuel sin in our life. God, I pray that you would give us the grace and the courage to come to you, to take it to you in our prayer closet, to bring those hurts and pains to you. God, when we bring them to you, would you give us the grace to experience your healing power? I pray, would you do that? I pray that we would believe the truth of Scripture more than our feelings. That we would believe that we have been loved, redeemed, and adopted. May we believe the truth that you were rejected so that we could be accepted. May we believe the truth that you love us. Lord, sometimes it’s so hard to believe that you love me. It’s so hard to believe it. It’s so easy to believe it for others. I’m so confident that you love every person in this room who has put their faith in you. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I struggle to believe that, Lord. It’s not a felt reality. God, would you help that become a felt reality in my own soul. I pray that for anyone in this room who has struggled with that, Lord, would you bestow upon them the supernatural ability to believe that God loves? That God loves with a fierce, Holy love. May that shape the way we live our lives each day from this day to the day we see you face to face. May we believe on you. God, I thank you for the opportunity to put faith in you. And, Lord, again I pray if there’s anyone in here that’s not done that. May your Holy Spirit work in their heart, and may they believe on you. In Christ’s name. Amen.  

    Introduction: A Christmas Surprise Has someone ever reacted in a way that you were not expecting or that took you by surprise, that caught you off guard? A story like that came to my mind with my Dad one Christmas when we were younger. A little bit of backstory about my Dad. He loves all things German. He grew up in Germany and has a lot of very fond childhood memories there. If he sees something, anything, whether a food item or a trinket that’s from Germany, he’s going to go out of his way to buy it. He gets really excited. He’s going to shove people over to get the item. My sister knew this about him, and she searched and searched, and she found for him ‘Stollen’, which is a traditional German sweet bread that is usually eaten around Christmas time. All of us knew that he was going to be so over the moon ecstatic about this. My Mom and I were convinced that this year, my sister was going to win Christmas for my Dad. So Christmas morning comes. After so much anticipation, so much anxious waiting on my sister’s part, it was time for my dad to open his present, the ‘Stollen’, and he unwrapped it. He looks at it and with a very, very unaffected reaction, he says, Okay, thanks. All of us, needless to say, were really confused by his reaction. My sister knew what to expect, that he was gonna freak out over this. She knows my Dad so well that she could predict precisely what would happen. She thought she could predict exactly what was going to happen. That’s what’s happening in our text here today. Matthew is telling us of two reactions to Jesus’s birth. Both of them are unexpected. This story might be very, very familiar to you. You might have grown up hearing this story year after year at Christmas. But don’t let your familiarity with this story make you miss that. This is meant to be a surprising story, especially for the first-century Jewish audience. It would not have been what you would have expected or guessed would happen when Messiah arrived.   The Wise Men So if you have your Bibles open them today to Matthew chapter 2, starting in verse 1. It says: “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him’.” The events that Matthew is telling in chapter 2 are real events that happened at a certain time. Matthew gives us at the beginning of chapter 2 a timestamp and a geolocation for this story of Jesus’s birth. This occurred at a real time in history. You can look it up, you can plot this on a historical timeline in the days of Herod. This is a real place in history. If you wanted to, you could hop on a plane right now and go and visit and touch the spot where he’s saying this happened. It happened in Bethlehem of Judea. Matthew is emphasizing here that this isn’t a fable or a fantasy story. This is a story grounded in a real time at a real place. This is the setting for what he’s about to describe. We read on in verse 2 that there are these wise men from the east who have come to Jerusalem. Who are these wise men, these Magi? A lot of speculation has been given about them, and if you wanted to, you could go down a seemingly endless rabbit trail on how traditionally people have viewed these Magi. There have been a lot of interpretations of who these men from the east are, and there’s been a lot of allegorizing them. It seems most likely that these are astrologers or dream interpreters from Chaldea or Persia. Traditionally, people have thought that there were three wise men, even attaching names to each of them. But what we need to note here is the Bible never says the number of how many men were there. So there was a group of men without any names. All the scriptures tell us is that a group of Magi came from the east following a celestial event that they noticed. But no matter who these men are, what’s important to pay attention to in these verses is that these men are definitely Gentiles. They’re not Hebrew, they’re not Jewish men coming. They’re not Israelites, but they are coming to worship the Messiah, Jesus, born king of the Jews. That’s already giving us a taste of something unexpected. It doesn’t seem like many Israelites would be sitting around expecting that gentile astrologers, dream interpreters, kind of like pagan magicians, would come all this way and worship, not meet as a sideshow attraction, but to worship Jesus. This raises a question: Where did these Wise men get the information that a star would lead them to the one born king of Israel? What is this star? Is it a natural phenomenon or maybe supernatural? Some have linked it to a planetary alignment of Saturn and Jupiter. Others to Halley’s comet or some low-hanging comet. A lot of speculation, but I think my answer today is going to disappoint you. I don’t think we could know for sure where they got this information on what exactly the star was. I think Matthew is keeping that mysterious for a reason. While we can’t be certain of what exactly the star is, I personally tend to think that maybe this was a supernatural event that God caused to lead these men to Jesus. We can’t be sure, nor can we be certain what knowledge these men had that they gained to follow the star. Maybe they had documents, or they were pulling from oral tradition. Maybe they got this from prophets who were taken in captivity in Babylon and were living in Persia during exile. Or maybe there was some entirely different source that they got from God. But it seems Matthew doesn’t want you to focus on these details anyway. It’s much less important how these wise men heard of Jesus’ birth than the meaning that they’re coming to visit his birth. The fact that they’re there is more significant than how they found out. Matthew does catch the reader off guard that these Gentiles seemingly spring up from out of nowhere with no real background on why they’re showing up to pay homage and worship Jesus the Messiah. It seems this event is meant to be surprising to the reader. These men are not who you would anticipate to be some of the first to show up to worship Jesus. Like seeing a really grizzled, angry biker gang, engaged and enjoying Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera. That’s probably not the group of people you would expect to be doing that. The Magi signal that the Gentiles are being brought into the saving plan of God. That’s the point. As has been hinted at throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, the Gentiles will be brought into faith. The Magi are yet another example of Gentiles being brought into the people of God. Following after Ruth, the Moabitess, after the promise that Abraham would be a blessing to all nations, the repentance of Nineveh, and other prophecies of salvation going out to the nations. I think this visit follows in the footsteps that Gentiles are now responding in faith and worship.   King Herod’s Reaction This matches up with what happens throughout the book of Matthew. If you continue reading on in this book, Matthew will often point out Gentiles reacting positively to the Messiah. He contrasts this to the Jewish reaction to Jesus, which is overall negative. None of that is what anyone would have been expecting. It’s weird, it’s strange, it’s baffling that Gentile people outside of the chosen people of God respond with faith and worship towards Jesus. While the people that Jesus came for, the house of Israel, the ones that have the blessings, the covenant, the Scriptures, are responding negatively and harshly, and oftentimes with hostility towards Jesus. Chapter 2 begins what Matthew will continue to do throughout his Gospel. Contrast these two reactions of people towards Jesus the Messiah. Unexpectedly, these Gentile wise men from the east have come to worship Jesus the Messiah, the true King of Israel. We read on in verse 3, another reaction to Jesus, we read: “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and the scribes and the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.” So now we get to Herod’s reaction, and it’s negative. That’s maybe somewhat odd, but that’s not surprising for Herod. A little backstory about Herod. Herod is not a natural-born king. His father wasn’t king. He’s a king placed over the Jews, sort of as a puppet ruler over the kingdom of Judea by Rome, a hostile power. For the most part, he’s unliked in Jerusalem. To the Jews in Jerusalem, he’s not a popular figure. He wasn’t elected by popular vote. Herod is part Idumean as well, which means he’s partly descended from the nation of Edom, which was founded by Esau. Historically speaking, that nation has almost always been hostile to Israel. Some sources even cite that while he was nearing the end of his life, Herod himself acknowledged that he wasn’t popular and acknowledged that no one was going to cry for him when he died. So what caused me the most confusion this week in my study was why, if Herod is troubled, why then is all Jerusalem troubled with him? Because the text tells us that he was troubled, and so all Jerusalem was troubled with him. I think this is helpful to note, all Jerusalem is a figure of speech here to say that the city as a whole was troubled. Not necessarily every person. If you knocked on every door in Jerusalem, not everyone is going to have the same level of emotion. It’s just saying that the majority of the mood of the city, overall, was troubled about this news, was in an uproar, and was upset. So why was all of Jerusalem upset with him? We’re going to return to that question in a moment, but let’s keep looking at Herod’s reaction. Herod seems to know some things about the coming Messiah. Herod is not stupid. He may not be liked, but he’s not a stupid man. He’s a smart guy. He seems to be aware of Messianic prophecies and that they’re found in the Hebrew Scriptures. We see in verse 4, he assembles the chief priests to ask them, Where is this Christ to be born? Suggesting he knew enough to know where to look. He’s not stumped by the Magi’s question, Where is he who’s been born King of the Jews? He places that as a telltale sign of the Messiah. So he gets all of the scribes, the chief priests, together, all of the religious elite, and the scholars of the time to search the Scriptures and tell him where this Messiah will be born. But he’s not doing this out of excitement. He’s not eager to find the Messiah. He’s anxious. He’s troubled by the news. He sees this as a rival to his own power. As we see later in Matthew’s gospel, Herod wants this information in order to destroy the Messiah, not to congratulate him. Herod’s claim to the throne is not strong. He’s not king by birth. He’s not popular in Jerusalem as well. Now it seems that Messiah has burst on the scene. This is going to cause some problems for him politically. No wonder this man is troubled. If you or I hungered for power the way that Herod was always hungry for power, it would trouble us too. After all, his claim to the crown is tenuous. It’s not solid. Herod knows this. He had any potential rival to his power put to death, including many of his own family members. Some of the historical sources say that there was a saying in those days that it was safer to be one of Herod’s pigs than one of Herod’s sons. He did indeed have a few of his sons put to death as potential rivals. Herod is hostile to this new Messiah, and he will do anything he can to stop this newborn king so that he can hold power over Judea. In the third book of the Lord of The Return of the King, there’s a character named Denethor. He’s reigning over this kingdom, Gondor, as steward of Gondor, not as king. As a result of a lot of events that happened in the past before the story of The Lord of the Rings takes place, the king of Gondor has gone away. The steward is appointed to act in his stead, govern the kingdom while he’s away, so that it doesn’t go into chaos. To rule the kingdom as if he were king until the true king returns and takes over the reign. Then, as the story goes, the king does return. And what does the steward of Gondor do? Well, he resists the king, of course. He doesn’t want to accept this king. His house of stewards has been ruling successfully for many generations. He doesn’t even see that this kingdom needs that king. They have a king in the stewards. At this point in the story, the wizard Gandalf gives one of my favorite lines to Denethor. He looks at him and, in frustration, he says, “It is not given to you to resist or deny the return of the king.” To say it another way, Gandalf is telling the steward, You have not been given authority. You have not been given permission. It is not part of your duties. It is not in your pay grade to decide who gets to be king over this kingdom or not. The true king, the one born of the royal lineage, is here now. He has the birthright to the throne. He has the legal right to take the throne. That’s what’s happening with Herod. He’s like the steward of Gondor, and just like the steward, he’s resisting the new king who’s come on the scene. This king Jesus has the legal right to rule. I think it’s important to note in verse 2, the magi ask the question, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” They’re not asking, where is this newly born king, per se. The language here more fits what they’re asking for, where is the one who is born king by birthright? The one born with kingship rights. You can see why their language causes Herod, the king appointed by a hostile power, to be a little anxious when they asked him, Where is the one who is rightfully king? Where is the one whose birthright is kingship? Matthew states in his genealogy in chapter 1, he sets this up to communicate to his audience that Jesus, through legal right, through the line of succession, is heir to David’s throne. By legal right, he’s the true king. With this question that the Magi pose, Matthew again is highlighting that Jesus is the one who has the birthright to be king. Jesus is of the line of David. Matthew 2 is now further connecting Jesus as the true king and contrasting that to Herod.   Jerusalem’s Reaction Herod is troubled about the arrival of the Messiah, but as I said earlier, all Jerusalem joined in and was troubled with him. So why is all Jerusalem troubled with Herod? After all, as a reminder, they don’t care for Herod as a ruler. You might have guessed they would have been aching for another ruler to come and take this guy’s place. Is this just a way that Matthew is expressing that all Jerusalem was in a stir, that the news of the Messiah went viral in those days? Is that what Matthew’s getting at? Maybe he’s just saying the news of the Messiah was trending through all Jerusalem. I think what he means here is that all of the people were troubled by this news. They were bothered by the thought of the upheaval that might come. They knew, after all, very well the length Herod was capable of going when pushed, when threatened by a rival. It seems they were rightly troubled by the way Herod lashes out in hostility in verse 16. You will see later that he has all the male children killed to try to stop this rival to his power. Herod is capable of extremes, to say it mildly. But they should be excited about the news that Messiah is here. Instead, they’re troubled, following after the emotions of the current ruler, the emotions of the current time. They’re looking at the immediate consequences, which, yes, can be severe, but they’re looking at the immediate consequences rather than seeing the eternal significance of what’s happening in their own day. You should have expected them to be excited. After all, Jerusalem is the city of David. This is the city of the great king. This should be the very epicenter of excitement that Messiah is here. What is the city doing? It’s troubled along with an unrighteous king. They’re following in the path of an unrighteous king, while the righteous king of glory with the birthright of kingship has been born just neighborhoods away. No one in this story is reacting the way you would anticipate them to react.   The City of Bethlehem So after the scribes and chief priests finish their Herod assigned homework, they find the scriptures that say the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem. We read this in verses 5 and 6. The scriptures say: “They told him ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel’.’” They’ve located an Old Testament prophecy declaring, clear as day, Messiah is going to be born in a specific city, a specific place, Bethlehem of Judea. Before we unpack this a little more, I think it’s important to explain the difference in the quotation from Matthew 2. Matthew is quoting from the book of Micah, chapter 5, verse 2. But if you or I were to open our Bibles and go to Micah chapter 5, verse 2, what we would read would be a little bit different than what Matthew has here. I think there are some good reasons why. The first difference is that Micah calls it Bethlehem Ephrathah, which Micah does, in order to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in the region. Kind of like saying, I’m going to meet you in Springfield, Illinois, not Springfield, Ohio. So I’m saying Illinois to make sure that you don’t end up in Springfield, Ohio. Micah is being precise with his language here about the location. So there’s no confusion. It’s going to be in Bethlehem, that specific Bethlehem. But so is Matthew. But instead of saying Ephrathah to make it clear, he says of Judah, since that would make more sense for his readers at the time, they’ll understand Bethlehem of Judah to be that same city. They’re the same spot. It’s just a different way of referring to the same city. They’re both referring to precisely the same city, but using different terminology to refer to it. Matthew is also writing in a different language, so he’s using his best communication tools to take this prophecy written in Hebrew and write it for a Greek-speaking audience. But there’s something that I think the Christians should never forget about what we confess of the Scriptures. Matthew is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Things are being revealed here by the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit quotes himself in Micah. This might be, I think, one of my favorite quotes that is different. My heart was so warmed this week by the way that Matthew quotes Micah, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Micah says, Bethlehem, you are least among the cities, but from you a ruler is going to come. Matthew says, Bethlehem, you are by no means least. A really strong negation. You are absolutely not least, because from you has come the ruler of my people. Matthew is sitting on the other side of the incarnation as he’s writing. He is on the other side of the arrival of the Messiah. Bethlehem is now glorious because in that city the arrival of God in the flesh has taken place. Do you see the difference in the quotation? Yes, it’s true that in Micah’s day, Bethlehem was not a significant city. But now in Matthew’s day, it is no longer even able to be mentioned as insignificant. It is a significant city because the Messiah has come to Bethlehem, forever changing how that city can be referred to. It’s almost as if Matthew is quoting the prophet while also simultaneously revealing the fulfillment of that prophecy in the quote itself. Bethlehem is no longer the least among the nations because the promised ruler has come.   Go Share the Good News So, what do we take away from this small section? At the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah from the line of David, he is the true king. He is God incarnate who has entered the scene. He was born in the city of David. According to prophecy, he was born in a specific place at a specific time. Jesus is not an idea. Jesus didn’t come spiritually only. These events happened in a real place at a certain time in the days of Herod. You can go look it up on your calendar. The magi have come to worship him. Another sign that people from every nation, every tribe will be part of God’s family. This is a great reminder to us that we are to take the Gospel to the very ends of the earth to pray for our missionaries that are out there right now doing that very thing. I’m very thankful that our church supports and prays for missionaries. That we’re committed to sharing the Gospel and preaching it in our community as well. All Christians have been commissioned by Christ himself to go and share the Gospel. Making disciples. You should share your faith, share the good news with others. Go and tell the nations, or better yet, go right now and just tell your neighbors about Jesus, the Messiah. The Gospel does not discriminate. That is sweet news for us. All People, no matter your ethnicity, language, or background, can repent and believe in Jesus. This wonderful message of salvation is for anyone and everyone. As Paul himself says in Acts 17, verse 30: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” So now, as a memory device, whenever you think of these wise men or see a nativity with the wise men in it, or you’re listening to the song We Three Kings on the radio, think of the mission of God. Use that device to remind you to take a few minutes to pray for a missionary going to the nations. Maybe pray that God would give you an opportunity to share the gospel with someone today. May hearing or seeing these wise men pull you into worshiping God, that He offers salvation and mercy to people from every nation by the Gospel of Jesus.   Conclusion: Respond to Jesus In this short text, we see wise men rejoicing over the newborn king. We hear that Bethlehem is no longer insignificant. Messiah has come to this little city. May this stir up worship in your hearts. Jesus has come as God promised. He is the perfect revelation of the Father. He took away our sins and our weaknesses as God promised. He died and rose again on the third day as God promised. Now we see the love and salvation, the kindness and the care, the justice and the righteousness of our God in full display in Jesus, the King of Kings. Come and worship this king. Messiah has come. That demands a response from the reader of the Gospel of Matthew, which now includes you and me. Today, there are two contrasting reactions to Jesus that Matthew gives. There’s Herod and all of Jerusalem, troubled by the coming of the Messiah. This news is not a source of joy for them, but of angst and anguish. Many people follow in those footsteps today who have reacted similarly with anger and hostility towards the Gospel. Rejecting Jesus, rejecting God’s word, resisting him. That could be one way that you respond to the news that the Messiah has come and entered into history. But you could respond like the magi bowing and worshiping King Jesus, who is God with us. You can respond to Jesus in love and worship, and gratitude. This season should be filled with excitement for the Christian, not just for toys and candy, and presents. We are remembering one of the greatest moments in history. Unlike the Old Testament saints before us, who long awaited, eagerly anticipated the day the Messiah would show up on the scene. We get to know the details. We live on the other side of Christ’s first coming. His first Advent. That should stir up so much joy in our hearts. Jesus came in perfect fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies. He came in weakness, in gentleness, in kindness to save his people from their sins, offering his own body, his own life, to bear the wrath of sins that we had earned, so that in turn we can be forgiven and united to God. If you’re here this morning and you don’t believe in Jesus, you’ve been resisting him or living in hostility to him, or maybe you’re just saying, I’m really not sure how to respond to Jesus this season. I would encourage you, I would implore you to bow and worship this king. He is worthy of your worship. Repent of your sins and give your life to this Messiah who is gentle and lowly of heart, who sacrifices himself to save his people from their sins, their mistakes. May today be a day of new life and salvation for you. We’ve looked at reactions to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus. That was their reaction to Jesus. But for those of us who have heard the gospel, how will you respond to Jesus this season? Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we worship you and we thank you that you did not leave us in the sins and state that we put ourselves in, but that you planned from eternity a path to offer salvation to all kinds of people. Lord, it’s not just the elite few or those with a lot of money or those from a certain background. Lord, you give salvation to anyone who would repent and believe the gospel. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your mercy, that you would take on our sins, bear our iniquities upon yourself. You didn’t have to do that, but you did. You chose to show love to people who didn’t deserve love, who shouldn’t have been given love, but you gave them love. And, Lord, it says you gave us love aboundingly, Lord. Love beyond what we can imagine. So we praise you and we worship you, Lord. We thank you for your mercy that is demonstrated so fully in Christ. Lord, we pray that the gospel would keep going to all nations, that all people might hear the good news that you have made the way for your people to be united to you again and for all eternity. May you continue to strengthen missionaries across the globe. And, Lord, may you strengthen us as we are called to be evangelists for your gospel here and now. Help us to do that. Help us not to fall prey to shyness or cowardice, Lord, but that we would boldly tell the gospel the greatest news that has ever hit the scene. Lord, that we would be sharing that with all. May we truly embrace you, Lord Jesus, this season. May this season be a time of rich worship and meditation on who you are, Lord Jesus. Your person and your works. And Lord, your character, your kindness. We love you, Lord Jesus, and we pray that everything we do here is glorifying to you. We pray this in Jesus’ name.  

    Introduction: Prayer Good morning again, Horizon City. It is great to be with you as we continue through Hebrews chapter 1. I’m excited to continue to look through and see the theme that Jesus is better. Would you, before we look at the passage, pray with me? Father in heaven, we thank you. You’re so kind to us in so many ways. You are our living hope. There is none like you. There is none above you. God, you are Holy forever. God, we thank you. We thank you for your many blessings in our lives. We pray for our region. We pray that as our central Florida and other regions recover from back-to-back hurricanes, you would help our region to recover quickly. God, I specifically pray for families that have lost loved ones in the storms. Would you comfort them? God, would you use this tragedy as a means of pointing people back to yourself? God, I pray as your word commands us. I pray for our leaders. You tell us to pray for our leaders. So, God, I pray this morning for President Biden. I pray that you would give him wisdom in his final months in office, in the areas where he is righteous, where he has good ideas and righteous ideas, I pray that he would flourish and that his decisions would positively impact many. In the areas where he is wrong and has embraced bad ideas or evil ideas, I pray you would convict his heart, and may he repent. God, I pray the same for Governor DeSantis. Would you give him wisdom, especially as he leads hurricane recovery efforts across the state? Would you guide him, God, in areas where he is righteous, may he flourish. May his decisions positively impact many people across our state in areas where he is wrong and unrighteous, in areas where he has made bad decisions or has embraced bad ideas. God, would you convict his heart? Would you expose that and help him to repent? God, I pray for our local leaders, our county commissioners. I pray for Winter Garden Police Chief Steve Graham. Lord, I pray you would give every single leader in our community wisdom to lead well for the good of our community, I pray. And now, Lord, I pray for the rest of this service and this sermon, I pray that you would use all that we do this morning to glorify yourself. God, would you use the book of Hebrews to shape us, to mold us to be the church that you want us to be. And God, I pray that you would use this sermon to expose things in our own hearts where maybe we have sinned, where we have erred. Would you help us, God? Would you help us to see that Jesus is better? Lord, Lastly, I pray that if there’s anyone in this room right now, under the sound of my voice, who is not a believer, anyone in this room who does not genuinely know Jesus, I pray that today they would see that Jesus is better and may today be the day they put faith in Christ. I ask all these things in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.   Jesus is Better Last week we talked about Jesus, the Son of God. We talked about Jesus being on his throne in glory, and then he steps down off that throne and he enters into humanity and he suffers the consequences that we ought to have suffered. He dies in our place. Because of his death, sins can be forgiven. Because of what he did at the cross, our sins can be purified. That’s what Hebrews tells us. Because of sin, we are separated from God. All of us long to be close to God, whether we realize it or not. Billy Graham, the famous evangelist in the 20th century, said that ‘every human being is born with a God shaped hole in their hearts’. All of us have this hole in our hearts, this emptiness that can only be filled by God. We long for that. But because of sin, we are separated from God, and we are incapable of coming to him. The emptiness in our soul cannot be fulfilled because of our own sin. But because of what Christ did, because of his death, we can now come back to God. We can be reconciled to him and be fulfilled. Of course, Jesus didn’t stay dead. He rose from the dead. Then he ascends to heaven, and he marches back into glory. That’s the moment that’s happening here in Hebrews 1. When God the Father sees his Son coming back into glory, God the Father says, My son, he’s mine. Come on, sit right next to me. Stay close to me. What I’m going to do, all the enemies against you, son, I’m going to take care of them. You stay right here. I’m going to make all these enemies your footstool. That’s this incredible moment. That’s the starting point for the Book of Hebrews. That’s where he starts. Then, what he begins to do after the Book of Hebrews lays this foundation, what he’ll begin to do here in chapter 1 and then throughout the rest of the book, he compares Jesus to other things. He compares Jesus to the angels. He compares Jesus to Moses. He compares Jesus to Abraham. He compares Jesus to this guy named Melchizedek, this very interesting character that God willing, we’ll get to in a few weeks. He compares Jesus to the other offerings that were offered in the Old Testament. In every single case, the writer of Hebrews is making it clear that Jesus is better than all of these other things. Jesus is better. That’s the overarching theme. Last week, I quoted from that iconic Journey song, ‘Don’t Stop Believing’. That’s the overarching theme of the Book of Hebrews. Jesus is better, so don’t stop believing in Jesus. That’s the intent. If you’re gonna sum up the entire book of Hebrews in one phrase, it’s that Jesus is better, so don’t stop believing in Jesus. That’s the overarching exhortation of the Book of Hebrews. So we’re going to launch here into the first comparison. He compares Jesus to the angels. Look at verse 5, Hebrews chapter 1. He says this: “For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my son?” The writer of Hebrews is saying, What angel ever heard those words from God? You are my son. The answer is none. No angel in all of history has ever heard God the Father say to them, You are my son. There is something special about Jesus. Jesus is better than the angels. No angel ever heard God say, Come, sit next to me. Sit at my right hand. But with the Son, the Father shouts it from the rooftops. One of the sweetest moments, in my opinion, in the Gospels is Jesus’ baptism. In Matthew chapter 3, there’s this moment where Jesus has just been baptized and he’s coming up out of the water. And here’s what Matthew 13:16-17 says: “And behold, the heavens were opened and a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” God the Father sees his son and says, he pleases me. In him, I am pleased. God the Father wants everyone to know it. He’s never said anything like this to an angel. The angels have never heard these types of words. This might have been surprising to some of the people in the first century. When the book of Hebrews was written in the first century, 2,000 years ago, there seems to be an over-fascination with angels. We know this when we read extra-biblical literature from the first century. There seems to be a pretty significant fascination with angelic beings. There are some people in the first century who might have been surprised by reading this. When they read this sermon in Hebrews, they read these words from the writer of Hebrews. They would have said, why didn’t the Father say something like this to an angel? Aren’t angels awesome? The Apostle Paul says in Colossians, he warns them not to be tempted to worship angels. Paul says that because he knows they’re potentially tempted to want to worship angels. Angels were seen as really high. So this would have been a little bit of a surprise. The writer of Hebrews, saying God’s never said this to an angel, would have taken some people by surprise.   What Does the Bible Say About Angels So I think the question that maybe we need to answer first is, why were they fascinated with angels? Or maybe a better way to ask it is, what does the Bible say about angels? What I want to do for a brief moment this morning is to take a long side note and answer the question, What does the Bible say about angels? Why were people in the first century fascinated with angels? A couple of things about angels. First. Angels are personal spirits. They’re not like the Star Wars Force. That’s not what the angels are like. They have personalities. They can communicate, they can think, they can reason, they can act. Some of them have names. That’s important to consider. Angels are powerful. They are clearly way more powerful than human beings. Angels can do way more than we can do. Angels are immortal and invisible, and yet they can travel between the invisible realm and the visible realm. They can come back and forth. In the Gospels, Jesus tells us that angels do not marry and they do not procreate the way we do. Every single angel is distinct. We all have the same parents, Adam and Eve, many years ago, and all of us have come from them. We are of the same species. Angels are not like that. Each one is unique unto itself. They don’t procreate. Each one is a special creation. There are probably billions of angels. Angels don’t have flesh and blood like humans and animals do. We see this in the Gospel of Luke. But sometimes angels can appear to have flesh and blood. We’ll see this later in Hebrews 13. The writer of Hebrews tells us that there have been moments in your life where you have entertained angels, unaware. There are moments in your life when you’ve interacted with a person that you think is just another person, but is actually an angel appearing to be a person. That’s what the Bible tells us. Angels are not omnipresent. They can’t be everywhere at one time. And they are not omniscient. Meaning they don’t know everything. They know lots of things. They know way more than we do as humans, but they don’t know everything. The apostle Peter tells us that there are things they long to see. They’re longing to learn some things. They know a lot, but they’re not omniscient. Angels were created by God to serve in his kingdom, to serve a purpose. Now, God didn’t need angels. God could do it on his own without angels. But God seems to enjoy creating creatures and involving them in his plans. God seems to take pleasure in this. Angels are clearly involved in the affairs of humanity. You may not realize this, but there have been things that have happened in your life that angels were involved with. Now, the Bible doesn’t give us any idea of a guardian angel. We don’t see anything in Scripture. There’s not one angel assigned to you. That’s not what the Bible teaches. But clearly, there are angels involved. There are moments where God sends angels, and so it’s okay to pray those kinds of things. I prayed that this week, as a hurricane was bearing down on our home. Lord, would you send angels to encamp around our house to protect us? God, would you send angels with that vehicle to protect them as they drive? Lord, I pray this regularly over my kids. Would you have angels in their room to wage war against demonic forces that would seek to harm them? God will answer those prayers, and he will send angels. Angels were powerful, and Angels are involved. Now, we want to be careful. Some Christians want to overemphasize this or get a little weird about it. They’re like, oh, my stomach hurts. It’s an angel. Maybe it was the dozen donuts you ate this morning. Maybe it was the 5 gallons of ice cream you ate last night. Maybe it wasn’t the angel. So we want to be careful that we don’t overemphasize this. But we also don’t want to underemphasize this. We don’t want to act as if there’s no spiritual realm. We want to believe that there is indeed a spiritual realm. It is appropriate to acknowledge that there is a spiritual realm that we cannot see and that the things happening in that spiritual realm are influencing this world that we can see.   Spiritual Powers of Darkness We ought to think about whether we believe that angels are real. The Bible tells us that they are. So we should believe that. If we believe that angels have legitimate influence and power in this world, we should believe that because the Bible teaches that. If we believe there are spiritual forces at work, then that ought to lead us to be careful what we engage with on planet Earth. We don’t want to engage with overly spiritual things, which potentially opens the door to some spiritual influence in our lives that we would not want. So we want to be careful. What are the types of things we engage with? Now, I want to admit I’m not one of these people who think there’s a spirit behind every single thing. That’s not my position. I don’t think you’re going to hell if you’ve read Harry Potter. That’s not my position. I want to make it clear. But I think it’s wise and valuable for Christians to pause and take inventory of their life. What are the types of things I’m engaging with? Is it possible that I’m dabbling in something spiritual? That maybe would not be helpful to me? Just ask yourself that question. If the answer is no, then there’s nothing; that is great. But maybe there is something that you want to rethink. The Bible tells us that these spirits, the angels, some of them, disobeyed God. A third of them rebelled against God. We call them fallen angels. These fallen angels are at war with God, and they’re at war with you. They hate you and they want to cause damage in your life. These angels have corrupted themselves and they’ve poisoned themselves by sin, and now they love evil and they want to influence you to do evil. Anytime I hear stories of a mother who has done something evil to her children, I think to myself, that was a fallen angel. That was a demon. That was a principality. No human mother does that of her own accord. When I read stories about the Nazis and things they did or other evil regimes, I think to myself, that was a fallen angel, that was a demon, that was some hellish creature. Because humans don’t do that of their own accord. In Ephesians 6, it says: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.” The person in front of you is not your enemy. The darkness behind them trying to influence them; that is your enemy. The politician you disagree with is not your enemy. Donald Trump or Kamala Harris are not your enemy. Regardless of who you think should win, regardless of who you’re gonna vote for, that’s not your enemy. The kingdom of darkness trying to influence them; that’s your enemy. So be careful when you are having a conversation with someone who presents themself as an enemy, be careful that you don’t treat them as an enemy, when actually the person you’re wrestling with or the being you’re wrestling with is the principality trying to influence them. The kingdom of darkness is much more subtle than we think, and their number one tactic is conflict amongst people. It’s very subtle. Tuesday night, my wife and I were having a conversation that turned into a bit of a debate or an argument. We were having an argument about something, and I’m frustrated with her; she’s frustrated with me. I just sensed the Holy Spirit reminding me, Malaina is not your enemy. She’s not the one you’re wrestling with. Demonic creatures are seeking to wreak havoc on our marriage and our home. They are the enemy. I have to pause and remember, my wife is not my enemy. If I allow the conflict that they want to stir up, if I listen to them and I allow them to agitate me, then they win. We want to be careful. So angels are real, but those of us who are Christians ought not be afraid of them. 1 John 4:4 tells us: “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” If you are a follower of Jesus, Jesus lives in you. He is far more powerful than any fallen angel outside. He is better than the angels that are still with him and the angels that have fallen. If you are a follower of Christ, there is no reason to be afraid of the fallen angels.   Narnia and The Overworld As I think about angels and Hebrews chapter 1, I want to give you four quick observations and some application. The first one is something I’ve observed. When we think about angels and the spiritual realm, it often helps us to remember that we are indeed spiritual beings. There was a famous French philosopher who once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” We are spiritual beings, and sometimes we want to act as if we are not. We want to say things like, you’re nothing but the result of a chemical reaction, nothing but animals that have evolved. We’re nothing but a bunch of sacks of skin and cells. Philosophers refer to this sometimes as the ‘nothing buttery’ effect. Love is nothing but a bunch of chemical synapses in your brain that help the human species to continue and to propagate itself. The ‘nothing buttery’ theory is wrong. We are far more than simply material beings. We are spiritual beings living in this material world. Thinking about that regularly helps how we live, it helps us to live well. If you know me, you may know that I am a fan of a man named C.S. Lewis. This morning I want to touch base with something Lewis gave us. The sixth installment of the Chronicles of Narnia series is a book called The Silver Chair. In The Silver Chair, there’s a witch. The witch has taken some of these Narnians, people who once lived in Narnia, She’s taken them into the underworld. She has convinced them that this underworld is all that there is, that there is nothing above. She tells them, This thing you call the Overworld, there’s nothing there. There’s a prince in the story. He’s a descendant of Prince Caspian. He is arguing with the witch, and he says, No, I think I remember this place called Narnia. The witch says to him, ‘Narnia? I have heard of this word. It has been uttered from time to time. That name has been in your ravings. Dear Prince, I think you are sick. Oh, very sick. There is no land called Narnia.’ The prince’s friend, Puddlegum, one of the heroes of the story, jumps in. Puddlegum says, ‘Oh, No Witch, Yes, there is. You see, I have happened to live there all my life. I know of Narnia. I know it is real.’ The witch says, ‘Well, indeed, if it is, tell me where is this country you speak of? Oh, Narnia.’ Puddlegum says, ‘Well, well, up there. It’s overhead. I don’t know exactly where, but I know it is there.’ The witch responds, ‘You say there is a country up there in the Overworld, but I cannot see it. There is only here what we can see.’ Puddlegum shouts again, ‘I don’t know exactly where, Queen.’ She responds, ‘Is there a country up there among the stones and the mortar on the roof?’ ‘Well, no.’ Puddlegum says. ‘No, no.’ He’s struggling to catch his breath. ‘It’s in the Overworld.’ Puddlegum goes back and forth with the witch, and he tells her about this thing called the sun. He tells her about a lion. The lion is a big cat with a mane, but not a regular mane, but like a wig of a leader. But he’s wonderful. His name is Aslan. The Witch shudders at the name of Aslan. She says, ‘You speak of this, sun. You believe that simply because you have seen a lamp that there is a sun. You believe that simply because you have seen a cat, that there is a larger cat.’ The witch and the members of the court are mocking Puddlegum. The Witch later says this. ‘There is no light but the lamp that we see. There is no cat but the ones that we see here in the underworld.’ This goes on for a while. Puddlegum speaks up. He’s pushing back on the nothing-buttery phenomenon. Puddlegum says this: ‘Suppose we have only dreamed or made up all those things of Narnia. Suppose Narnia is not real. Suppose trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have, as you say, dreamt it. Then all I can say is this, in that case, the made-up things, they seem a good deal more greater and more important than these real ones we see. Suppose the black pit of the kingdom of yours is the only world. Suppose there is nothing more than what we see. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one indeed. If the world we see is all there is, it’s a pretty poor world.’ But this is what he is saying: ‘This world gives us clues that there is a greater world to come, that there is an invisible world that we cannot see. The fact that I can see a lamp shows me it’s an insight, an inkling that there is a sun that, although I cannot see it where I’m sitting, it will be there one day.’ He says this, ‘we’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right, Witch, but four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by and play in the world you say is not real. I’m on Aslan’s side, even if there’s no Aslan to lead to. Which I’m going to live like a Narnian, even if there isn’t a Narnia.” The world we live in, they’re going to tell you there’s no spiritual realms. You’re just silly. There are no angels. There’s nothing outside this universe. Where is it? I challenge you, take up the faith of Puddlegum, to look at the world and say, you know what? I’m gonna live like this is a spiritual realm, and if I’m wrong, fine, so be it. But I’m gonna live like there’s one. I’m gonna live like a Narnian, even if there’s no Narnia.   Observations of the Text There are several observations to look at here in our text. The more we think about the spiritual realm, the more we think about things like angels and spiritual beings, the more likely we are to remember that we are spiritual beings. That will impact how we live our lives. That will impact how we pray. It’ll impact how we think about suffering in this world. It’ll think about how we think about hurricanes, how we think about our prayer life for our families. When you think about angels of the spiritual realm and the elaborateness of angels, it helps you think about the beauty of the Creator. Several years ago, I was in New Jersey and went to Carlo’s Bake Shop. Carlo, the cake boss. I went to his shop in New Jersey, and these cakes are unbelievable. They use fondue to make figurines and these huge cakes that are elaborate and detailed. It’s unbelievable. Here’s what you don’t do. You don’t look at the cake and see how incredible it is, how elaborate it is, and think to yourself, wow, cake, you’re amazing. I just think you’re an awesome cake. Thanks for being great and making yourself so good. No one does that. When you see the elaborate creation, you look at the creator and you go, Carlo, you’re good at making cakes. You’re awesome. You are the cake boss. Similarly, when we think about the spiritual realm, when we think about angels and their magnificence and their glory, we don’t look at them and go, Wow, you’re awesome. We look at them and say, Wow, the Creator who made you is awesome. When we look at scripture, we see that God has offered humanity something that he’s not offered Angels, and that’s redemption. A third of the angels sinned against God, and God created a lake of fire where they will be cast into forever and ever to suffer. None of them gets a second chance. Humanity, 100% of us have sinned. Not a third of us, 100% of us, have sinned against God. Every single one of us deserves to be in that lake of fire right alongside those fallen angels. That’s what you deserve. But God has chosen to treat humanity differently from how he’s treating the angels. He’s offered us a second chance. The angels, they’re being treated righteously. Some people say that’s not fair, that they don’t get a second chance to repent. God is not obligated to save anyone. No law says he’s required to save. If he saved no one, that would be perfectly appropriate. God could have said to every human, To hell with you. But he loves us so much. He is so filled with kindness and mercy and grace that God says, I will make a way for their sins to be forgiven. Why does God not do that with the angels? We don’t know. The Bible does not tell us. But I’m so thankful that he doesn’t treat us that way. Every time you think of angels, you should think to yourself, a third of them rebelled and never got a second chance. 100% of us have rebelled, deserve the lake of fire, and yet all of us have the opportunity to repent. If you are here this morning and you have not believed in Jesus, if you have not repented, I exhort you this morning to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. He is kind, and he is willing to purify our sins if we believe in Jesus. The fourth observation comes directly from the text. If you have your Bibles, look back at Hebrews chapter 1 verse 7 with me. It says this: “He makes his angels winds.” The word ‘winds’ can be translated as ‘spirits’. So God makes these angelic spirits. The contrast, of course, is that angels are made. Jesus is the maker. Whenever we think of angels, we should think they were made by Jesus. He is greater than them. Now, this exact verse in this passage, the writer of Hebrews is quoting from the Old Testament. He’s quoting from Psalm 45. Psalm 45 was written about seven or eight hundred years before the Book of Hebrews. He’s quoting from Psalm 45 in this letter. In essence, what the writer of Hebrews is implying is that the words of Psalm 45 are actually words from God the Father to his Son, Jesus. When you go back and read the Psalm, that’s not obvious at first glance. You read through Psalm 45, you realize it’s a love poem. It was pretty frequently recited and sung at Jewish weddings. So when you read it, you think that it is a love note from God the Father to his son Jesus. It may seem a little odd at first thought. But what the writer of Hebrews is saying here is to remember that Psalm 45, what they thought was just a love note, was actually a love note from God to his own son, Jesus. Psalm 45:2, this is God speaking to his son, it says: “You are the most handsome of all the sons of men.” God the Father looks at his son and says, You’re so handsome. God the Father sees his own son, and he explodes with joy. I understand this a little bit as a father with a son. My son Josiah, every time I walk in the room and I see his two little buck teeth that are half out of his gums, he stands on his crib and chews on the side and gets the paint in his mouth. His hair is all disheveled. I walk into his room, and I see him, and I go, Josiah, you are so handsome, buddy. You’re the most handsome boy that’s ever walked this planet. This is my boy! This is my son. He’s so handsome. This is what the Father is doing in Psalm 45 toward his son.   Closing: The Spiral of Delight The writer of Hebrews wants you to know that Jesus is better than angels. Angels are great. They’re magnificent. They’re glorious. Jesus is better. Jesus is so much better, that God the Father wrote Jesus a love note. It starts by saying, Son, you are so handsome. There’s this divine love affair that’s been going on between the Father and the Son for all of eternity. The greatest joy and happiness that can ever be had is happening between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. I have a friend, Ricky. He calls it the spiral of delight. It’s this spiral where the most amount of happiness that could ever be had is being had right there between Father, Son, and Spirit. This divine love affair where they’re just gushing over one another, and then here’s what happens. They go, hey, let’s create some angels. They’ll watch, and then we’ll create some people. Those angels will be a part of taking those people and bringing them into this spiral of delight so that they can experience what we’ve been experiencing for all of eternity. God wants you. He invites you to come be a part of the spiral of delight, where you can experience and enjoy the most glorious form of happiness that could ever be had. The angels don’t get to be in on that. They get to be a part of bringing us into that. But of course, we sinned. We rebelled against God. So God says, we’re going to go after them. The Father says to the Son, Go rescue them, save them. Make purification of their sin and make it possible for them to be brought in so that they can enjoy us. When we think about angels, we should think that Jesus is better than the angels. We should think about the spiritual realm, and it should inform how we think. We should think about the spiritual things with which we engage. We should think about the Creator who made those angels. But above all else, every time you think of angels, think of Jesus being better than the angels, and think about the angels existing to help you be ushered into God’s presence so that you can enjoy him forever.   Communion But of course, the only reason we can enjoy him forever is because of what Christ did on our behalf. That’s why we take communion together each week. Every single week, we take wine, juice, bread, and we remember what Jesus did for our behalf. We remember that Jesus made it possible for us to be forgiven. In just a moment, we’re going to pass baskets. This is for anyone here who’s a believer in Jesus. If you are a follower of Christ, we invite you to participate with us this morning. If you are here, though, and you are not a Christian, if you are not a follower of Christ, I am glad you are here. But I would ask, when the basket comes, just let it pass by you. This is for Christians only, but don’t let the moment pass. Let the basket pass by, but don’t let the moment pass. Instead of taking communion with us this morning, if you are not a Christian, I implore you, take Christ instead. If you have any questions about what that means, what it looks like, let me know. I’d love to grab coffee this week and talk to you about what it means to follow Jesus. This morning, let’s remember not just the angels, but let’s remember the one who is better than the angels, the one who created the angels, the one who made it possible for us to enjoy God forever and ever. His body is the true bread. His blood is our true drink.  

    Introduction: Don’t Stop Believing Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world. She took the midnight train going anywhere. Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit. He took the midnight train going anywhere. I suspect many of you have heard the lyrics to the classic song ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey. It was a minor hit in 1981 and was relatively popular for a few years. But in the last few years, it has gotten a bit of a resurgence. It has become one of the most popular songs in America over the last 15 years. In my opinion, it’s one of the most fun songs to sing, and it’s mostly because of that iconic, powerful line, Don’t Stop Believing. Although that song is fun to sing, and it’s super sticky and it’s enjoyable, if you examine the lyrics to that song, it’s disappointing because the quality of the lyrics are pretty shallow. The song doesn’t have any real meaning. The guy who wrote the song, Steve Perry, one of the band members, acknowledged this. He was asked about this, and he said, he just came up with that one line many years ago. Don’t stop believing, Hold on to that feeling. He just wanted to come up with a song that had that line in it. So, one day, Steve Perry got the band together. They jammed out. They did an improv session and started making up words and lyrics until they came up with something that felt like it made sense. So, the lyrics mean nothing. It’s just sort of all over the place. When I listen to that song, Don’t Stop Believing, I hear those lyrics, and I can’t help but want to shout back, Don’t stop believing in what? What is the thing you want me to believe in? What is the object of my belief? What is the focus of my faith? The song, tragically, doesn’t give us anything. Why do I start the morning talking about Journey? Well, because this morning we’re going to be kicking off a sermon series on the Book of Hebrews, a book written in the New Testament. If you could sum up the Book of Hebrews in one phrase, what is the main exhortation of the Book of Hebrews? That is, don’t stop believing. But the writer of Hebrews, unlike Steve Perry, makes very clear for us what the object of that belief ought to be. He has a particular person in mind. That is Jesus. The writer of Hebrews wants us to know that Jesus is the one we ought to believe in. More than a dozen times throughout the Book of Hebrews, the writer tells us to look to Jesus. Think about Jesus. Consider Jesus. Put him at the forefront of your mind over and over again. He is to be the object of our affections. He is to be the object of our faith. He is beautiful. When I think about Jesus, his wonderfulness, his bigness. His majesty, his glory. He’s wonderful. When we think about the Book of Hebrews and we look at the structure, the particular syntax, and the grammar, we realize that this is not a letter written like any other letter in the New Testament. It’s pretty unique. It’s actually a sermon. It appears that the writer of Hebrews wanted to preach a sermon to a particular group of Christians, but he wasn’t near them. So he transcribes a sermon, or maybe he puts a manuscript together, and then takes that and sends it to a particular church near the city of Rome. The other question people often want to ask is, who wrote the Book of Hebrews? There are only a few candidates. We may not know for sure which of those candidates it is, but we know that the early church knew. The Christians living in the first and second century, they knew precisely who wrote this. There was no confusion, just no one ever wrote it down anywhere in a way that was preserved for us. But it was written down. We can examine letters and essays that were written, so we know for sure that everyone living back then knew who wrote this letter. But none of the documentation that has the actual name has survived over the last 2,000 years. Sometimes liberal scholars or people who are antagonistic to the gospel would want to say, We don’t even know who wrote that book. They would use that as an excuse to undermine the entire Bible. With all due respect, it’s simply an incoherent position to take. The data simply does not support that position. So the early church knew clearly who wrote this. It’s probably one of three guys. Paul, Barnabas, or Luke. If you want to ask me and talk about it later, I’d be glad to have a conversation. I do have an opinion, I believe it is Luke. So this sermon is preached by someone under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, written down, and then sent to a small church near the city of Rome. The primary message of this letter is, Jesus is better than anything else. Don’t stop believing in him. The entire message throughout the book of Hebrews is, Jesus is better than the angels. Jesus is better than other people. Jesus is better than the priests. Jesus is better than Melchizedek. Jesus is better than all the Old Testament saints. Jesus is better. I wouldn’t even say Jesus is best, because best has a particular sort of finiteness to it. Whatever you think the best is, Jesus is even better than that. You may have a low view of Jesus. He’s way better than that. You may be here, and you may love Jesus and be a follower of Jesus. You may have a high view of Jesus, but I want to tell you he’s even better than that. Whatever you think of Jesus, he is better than that. He is worthy of your belief. He is worthy of your allegiance. The writer of Hebrews would say to you, Don’t stop believing. Why is this the theme of his sermon? The reason that the writer of Hebrews writes this in this way is that he has a particular audience in mind. As you read through the Book of Hebrews, you can pick up on a few things about what this audience is like. He clearly knows the church to which he’s sending this. He knows things about them, and he has them in mind. This particular group of Christians near the city of Rome were all ethnic Jews. They’re nationally and religiously Jewish. They eventually come to faith in Christ. They embrace the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. So they are these Jewish Christians living amongst mostly pagans. What begins to happen is, they begin to suffer significant persecution. They’re under the threat of being arrested. Several of them have had their houses plundered. A few of them were arrested. Then, members of the church go visit the people in jail. When they came back from visiting their friends in jail, their houses had been broken into, ransacked, and everything was taken from them. Then, within the church, there starts to be some significant conflict. There are some relational fractures. There’s some sin in the church that is causing people to hurt one another, to not trust one another. It seems that everything is starting to fall apart. There are members of the church who begin to abandon the Christian faith, and they go back to the Jewish religion. The writer of Hebrews, the preacher of this sermon, has them in mind, and he wants them to know, don’t go back to the old ways. The Jewish system of the Old Testament has been rendered obsolete. That Old Covenant is now of no value to you. You can’t get saved under that. The only way to have your sins forgiven in the Old Covenant was to have animal sacrifices. That’s been done away with. So if you go back to the Old Covenant, there’s no way to be forgiven. Jesus is better than that. I know it’s hard right now. I know what you’re facing is difficult. I know you’re having trouble believing. I know, but Church, don’t stop believing. Several of them had been ostracized or disenfranchised. They weren’t allowed to participate in certain businesses or certain arenas of society or different industries. You could see why they might want to abandon the Christian faith. But the writer of Hebrews is saying, no, Jesus is better. Everything else is a downgrade. As this church is seemingly falling apart and getting smaller and smaller, he says to them, Don’t stop believing. I know things are hard right now. But I want to remind you of something. If you think about a group of Christians that are in that situation, facing what they’re facing, I don’t know what I would say to them. But the writer of Hebrews starts off saying, I know what you need to hear. When you’re facing difficulties and troubles in this life, what you don’t need is a motivational speaker giving you three steps on how to have a better life. That’s not what you need. You need to be reminded who Jesus is. Whenever you are facing difficulty in this life, whenever you are facing suffering or hardship or persecution or betrayal, here’s the number one thing you need to be reminded of. Jesus is better. Thinking about Jesus as better will satisfy your soul. If your soul is aching and hungry, knowing that Jesus is better will satisfy that. Knowing that Jesus is better will inspire you. Knowing that Jesus is better will strengthen you. He wants you to know who Jesus is and what he has done. So together, we’re going to look at the first few verses of Hebrews chapter one and see that Jesus is better. Would you pray with me one more time? Father in heaven, you are so kind to us. Thank you. Thank you, God. We thank you for the Bible that is without error, this perfect book that reveals you. I’m so thankful for it. God, I pray now as I share with your people in this service, I pray that you would use all we do here to glorify yourself and God. Would you shape us? Would you use the book of Hebrews, this letter, this sermon to shape us, to mold us, to transform us to be the church that you want us to be? Lastly, God, I ask if there’s anyone in this room this morning who does not know you, if there’s anyone in this room that does not truly believe, may today be the day they believe. Lord, supernaturally give them the ability, give them the faith to put trust wholeheartedly in Christ. I pray, I ask all these things in that matchless name of Jesus. Amen.   Jesus Is In Control If you have your Bibles, turn to Hebrews 1:1: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” So in a previous era, the primary way God spoke to his people was through the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Malachi. There are many others. But now, in these last days, that started in the first century and leads up to today, the way God speaks to us is through His Son. Look at the second half of verse two. Then he says this, speaking of Jesus, he is the one who was: “Appointed the heir of all things.” Jesus is the heir to everything. He has inherited the universe. He owns it. He owns you. He owns this world. There is no one above Him. He is the Master. Then look at the last clause of verse two with me. Speaking of Jesus again, he says this: “Through whom also he created the world.” This is referring to God the Father. God the Father makes everything, the Creator of the world, all things visible and invisible. He does it through Jesus. Jesus was there at the very beginning. The Bible doesn’t give us a clear insight. What does this ‘through’ mean? Bible scholars disagree on precisely what that means. But what we do know is that Jesus was there at the beginning. God the Father is making things, and Jesus is a part of it. Ultimately, everything is given to Jesus. He continues. Look at verse three: “Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God.” I think of the word radiance. I can’t help but think of the sun. I lived in Minnesota for six years, where in the wintertime, the sun goes down at 4:05 pm, and then it’s dark for nine months. You forget what the sun is like. For those of you who’ve ever been there in the winter, Seattle’s got similar vibes. So I remember moments walking out on a sunny day and being like, wow, there it is, the big yellow ball. I missed you. You just feel right. But when you live in a place where the sun is not as vibrant or as prevalent, it seems you love it. The radiance. This is sort of the picture that the writer of Hebrews is giving us. That God has his glory going, and it is through Christ that we feel and experience the power of it. I mean, think about the sun, almost 93 million miles away from us. You feel it. It’s powerful, it’s wonderful, and it’s dangerous. It’s a great metaphor for who God is: great, powerful, good, brilliant, and if you’re not careful, dangerous. It is through Christ that we experience the radiance of God. Then the writer of Hebrews continues in the next phrase, speaking of Jesus: “He is the exact imprint of his nature.” Jesus is the exact imprint of God the Father. He’s made of the same stuff. The substance of the Father, his essence, is the same as Jesus’. He’s implying that Jesus is God. Some people like you to believe that Jesus is not God. He’s a lesser being than God is. He’s above humans, but below the Father. No. In verse 8, God the Father explicitly calls Jesus God. Look at the next part of verse three. It says this, speaking of Jesus again: “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.” We read in Colossians, Paul says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. All things were created by him, and all things were created through Him. All things were created for him, and in Him all things hold together. This is remarkable to me. Everything in the universe is held together by Jesus. The fist that punched him on the day he was crucified, he held it together. The whip that was used to break open his back, he held that whip together. The hands that ripped the beard hair from his face was held together by Jesus. When the Roman soldiers were nailing him to a cross, the muscles that the Roman soldiers used to pull back and to swing down were held together by the one being crucified. At any moment, he could have said, Stop. Don’t hold together, muscles fall apart. Instantly, that Roman soldier would have fallen apart. He is so merciful that even when we blaspheme him, he allows us to still be held together. He is so merciful to us. He is so kind to us. Church, knowing that Jesus rules the universe, that he is God, that He is in control, that he holds all things together, is a great comfort to those of us who love Him. It’s a great comfort. To those who don’t believe, it should make you shake in your boots. But for those of us who love Jesus, when we face difficulty in this world, when we face problems, it’s a great comfort. Church, I think about Bridget, who just lost her father. Death is hard, no matter what the circumstances. I think about Caleb Dalton. We prayed for his home church, First Baptist Cedar Key, a couple of hours away from us. The whole town was devastated by Hurricane Helene. Hundreds of buildings gone. Thousands of people have lost everything and will have to completely start over. Devastating. Knowing that Jesus is in control is a great comfort in those moments. In this room right now, as I look around, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people in this room. In this room right this moment, some people have dealt with miscarriages, infertility, divorce, betrayal, adultery, cancer, diseases affecting adrenal glands, people who have been fired unjustly from their jobs, strained family relationships, death of loved ones, disappointments, and financial hardship. That’s just what I know about in this room right now. Church, the writer of Hebrews wants you to know that when you suffer, Jesus sees you and he will be with you. The One who holds the universe together. He is the one who will be with you when you suffer. He has no rival. He has no equal. Now and forever, our God reigns. He is unmatched, and he will harness all of the power of the universe to comfort and help you. He knows every hair on your head, and he longs to be with you. When we suffer, he helps us. All of this is made possible because of what Jesus did on our behalf. All of us are sinners. Every single one of us has sinned. Every single one of us deserves the full wrath of God. Sin is a poison. It corrupts us. All of us were on God’s bad side. All of us were on the cosmic naughty list. All of us are destined for hell. But Jesus steps in. God the Son steps off his throne in glory and steps into humanity. Can you just think about this? God is on a throne in glory, steps off, and then steps into a baby’s body dependent on a human mother. I sometimes don’t even want to get off the couch to pick up the remote because it’s too inconvenient. He stepped off his throne in glory, down to be with you. He lived among us. He exposed himself to all the pains of this world. He lived a perfect life, and yet he went to the cross, and his death makes it possible for you to experience God.   Conclusion: Jesus Defeats Sin and Death Now, people have asked, How does the death of Christ do this? The Book of Hebrews has several chunks dealing with that exact question. It’s a big question, but I’ll give you the short answer today. The short answer is that Jesus lived on earth, He was perfect. He was innocent, never sinned. But then, while he was going to the cross, Jesus, God the Father, takes all the sins of humanity, takes them up, and he puts them on Jesus. So Jesus is now guilty of those sins. He is no longer an innocent man. He is guilty. Not guilty of his own sin, guilty of your sin. He goes to the cross, and this guilty man is brutally murdered at the hands of the Romans. Punished for the sins of humanity. It’s a supernatural, mysterious thing that we don’t fully understand, but God willing, we’ll get to it in the coming months. Jesus suffers the consequences of our actions. It should have been you on that cross. It should have been me on the cross. That’s a short answer. Jesus, this God man, he does what needs to be done to make it possible for our sins to be punished in a way that we are not punished. That’s the brilliance of the cross: sins are punished, and yet sinners are not. What an incredible opportunity. Jesus does that, but he doesn’t state that. On the third day, on the first day of the week, on that first Easter Sunday morning, God the Father vindicates him, brings him back up from the dead, and then Jesus ascends to heaven. This is the picture we’re getting in Hebrews chapter 1. Jesus ascends to heaven and walks back into the throne room. The moment when God, who had stepped off the throne, became a man, died a brutal death, was resurrected, and now is coming back into heaven. Can you imagine what that moment might have been like with all of the angels, all of the Old Testament saints, all of the people who have died, who have believed in him, who went before, all there in heaven, cheering him on. Can you imagine this moment? I got a brief picture of what this might have been like this summer. I was watching a little bit of the closing games of the Olympics. The closing games are remarkable. There’s all this pageantry and pomp and circumstance. Every nation has these elaborate displays and platforms. There are processions and parades. There’s all this stuff happening. I remember watching Katie Ledecky come in, who just dominated the women’s 1500-meter freestyle, come in with her gold medals. Then Simone Biles walks in with her medals. LeBron James and all the members of Team USA basketball walk in with their medals, and everyone’s just cheering them on. Look at what you’ve accomplished. Everyone’s coming in, and the crowd is cheering them on in this elaborate display. I think that gives us a little hint of what that moment in heaven might have been like. When Jesus walks in, I can’t help but wonder, were the angels shouting and cheering? Were they singing? Were they just in awe of what he had just accomplished? The God of the universe became a man and made it possible for sin to be punished and for sinners to be saved. Can you imagine what that moment might have been like? Look at Hebrews, verse 3, it says this: “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of Majesty on high.” Jesus walks back in. After having made purification of sins, he sits down at the right hand of the Father, next to majesty, his rightful place. What a triumphant moment that might have been. What an amazing moment. We sang a song this morning, King of Kings. My favorite lyric from that song, I think it captures the sentiment. One of the lyrics says this. ‘For the Lamb had conquered death, and the dead rose from their tombs, and the angels stood in awe. For the souls of all who’d come to the Father are restored.’ The angels are standing in awe. Now, anyone can come to the Father and be restored. Sin had broken our relationship with the Father. Sin had separated us. But now, because of our King Jesus, because he made purification of sin, it is possible for people to come and be restored to him. The angels they stand in awe. Well done, King Jesus. I wonder what that moment was like. But if you’re a believer here today, if you’re a follower of Jesus, I want you to know there will come a day when you all have to wonder no more. We won’t be imagining. Because there’s going to come a day we walk into that room, there’s going to come a day where we join the angels and the Old Testament saints and all of our friends in the faith that have gone before us. We will enter into that heavenly throne room, and we will see him seated on his throne at the right hand of majesty. King Jesus, we are here because you made purifications of our sins. He made it possible. The death of Christ made it possible.   Communion That brings us to Communion. For 2,000 years, Christians have been doing this thing called communion. When we do this, we are remembering what Jesus has done. If you are a follower of Christ, you will walk into that throne room one day, and you will experience his glory. You will enjoy him and be satisfied by his glory forever and ever. Because he made the purification of sins. We’re going to take communion and we’re going to remember Jesus. When you hold the bread and you hold the cup, you’re remembering that Jesus made the purification of sin. Jesus stepped off his throne, entered humanity. He died a vicious death in my place, and then he rose from the dead. Because of that, I can now enjoy God and experience his goodness forever. Would you know that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are welcome to take communion with us this morning? If you are here and you are not a follower of Jesus, if you’re not, you would say, I’m not sure I’m 100% a follower. I’m glad you’re here. I am ecstatic that you’re in this room. But I would ask you not to take communion this morning. This is for believers only. When the basket comes by, just let it pass. But friends, don’t let the moment pass. Instead of taking communion with us today, take Christ instead. Choose to believe on him. I’d love to have a conversation about what it means to follow Jesus. But for those of us who love God, the writer of Hebrews will say to you, don’t stop believing and do this remembering in the one in whom you believe.