Hebrews - Talk 2

Everyone needs a Big Brother!
And Jesus the Supreme Son of God (who has defeated death’s power and penalty), is our Brother, so fix your thoughts upon him in this life when you face opposition!

INTRO
A couple of years ago I was on beach mission on the Central Coast. And the first day of beach mission is set up day, where you spend time slaving away in the hot sun, putting out tents, marquees and even building a kitchen, believe it or not!

Now on this particular day, we decided to kick off with a laid-back event for the first night, so we had an open-air cinema, and we put on a kids movie. Now as night-time fell, and the movie started, the crowds began to flock in. And we had quite a few people come to watch, but as with any open event, near the beach, we got a couple of people we would have preferred didn't come as well!


So the kids were sitting and enjoying the movie, and meanwhile these two guys, in particular, were enjoying the kids movie just a little too much, which made it clear that it had more to do with their beer and a lot less to do with the movie. In fact it looked like the beer had started quite a few hours before the movie!

So as the movie continued these guys got louder and louder, and quite frankly ruder and ruder, until the point that their language was just out and out foul. And so as I was sitting, at the back of this scene. I was thinking to myself someone should say something to these two. Then it dawned on me, that I was the oldest one there, surrounded by a bunch of 20 year old Uni students, so that someone was probably me!

This prospect didn't thrill me at all, let me tell you. But it had to be done, so I wandered up to the main guy and quietly and politely asked, ‘could you keep the language down because a lot of people had brought the little kids with them’.

His response was to mumble something, and he seemed reasonably okay with what I had asked. So peace was restored.

For about two minutes, and then the scene was repeated only this time the guy wasn't so positive to my request, in fact it would be safe to say he didn't take it well at all, he stood up and faced me and said, ‘no one comes here and tells me what to do!’.

To which I replied, ‘I wasn't telling, I was asking’ but he didn't seem convinced by this linguistic distinction, and seemed to think this would be better sorted out by more physical than cerebral means.

Now that's the funny thing about drunk people isn’t it, they think they're being so cunning in what they are planning, but if you are sober you can tell what they are thinking straight away. You can almost see the gears moving inside their brains.
So let me tell you this scene was getting extremely tense, and he kept muttering something about, ‘not being told what to do’, and all the meantime he was squinting at me, obviously trying to size me up!

It really was about to turn ugly, hat full of ugly, for your first day of Beach mission in front of a lot of the campers and their little kids!

Now I have to admit, I didn't really fancy being where I was. But in the scheme of things, well this guy was older than me, he was smaller than me, and he was profoundly drunker than me, (not that I was drinking on beach mission but you get the point) so out of the two of us, the odds were not in his favour. But at this point it didn’t seem to have bothered him.


But then all of a sudden the squinting eye’s of this guys drunk gaze, turned into a wide eyed amazement, with eyes the size of 50c pieces. And I knew why! You see the guy was no longer looking at me, but passed me, and I knew why, without even turning around. And his demeanour changed totally, suddenly he was all smiles and friendly. And he looked past me, and asked the question, ‘what is your name?’.

And like I said I knew the answer without even turning around, because one of my good mates, a good Christian mate, my Christian brother if you like, was on the same mission team as me, in fact we had been on this team together for a number of years, and I knew without looking he'd be standing right behind me. This drunk guy did not until that point notice my mate. Now my Christian brother, is a gentle fellow, but he is 6 foot four and 100 kg and quite capable of looking after himself, (and the rest of us for that matter if it came to that!).


So it quickly became apparent to our drunken friend, that discretion is the better part of valour, although I am pretty confident he would not have used those exact words, but that's what he meant, and he decided it was time he made an exit stage left.

Now I could have gone on for the rest of beach mission telling people about how I stood up to this guy, but it wouldn't have been the truth would it, this guy did a runner not because of me, but because I had a big brother basically. Even this profoundly drunk guy can work out when he is beaten, even if he may have yelled obscenities at us from his truck as he drove away from the car park, (yes he drove away in that state with his own kid in the front seat), well if even a drunk can work out when he is beaten, then even the devil is smart enough to work out when he is beaten, and that is what the writer to the Hebrews is reminding us today.


We all need a Big Brother when we face opposition, and the writer to the Hebrews is telling us that Jesus, the son of God, the supreme Lord, is our big brother. And when we face sin, and when we face evil in this world, we face a foe who has already been defeated, by our big brother. So we need to remember how big our brother is;

Jesus is not just a man – but the Supreme Lord because he defeated death
(No power will stand)

Now today's reading was fairly long, so we are going to focus on 2:14 through to 3:1, because in these verses we have the hub of all the ideas brought forward in the wider reading we just had.

V14 ‘Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.’

Jesus is not just the man but the supreme Lord he is the lord over everything and even death, and he who uses the power of death - the devil.

Mankind's great opposition in this life, is their death. In fact whole life, whether consciously, or unconsciously, or even subconsciously are shaped by the fact that we will die. This frightens the life out of any sane person doesn't it? (If you’ll pardon the expression). If you stop to admit it, what ever it is in life that you fear, in one way shape or form it can always be traced back to death. It seems in my experience you see it in older women, because they obsess over health issues, and you see it in older men, because they ignore health issues at all costs!

Our society today doesn’t like to talk about death, so it will put it as with all things in more politically correct terms, like being short of time. People today feel time poor, and that is because they do not having enough time to do everything they want to do, and we all know this is; because we die, we are finite.

Death hangs over us, and rules our existence, like the spectre of storm clouds that slowly, come over the horizon. They hang and then encroach over our entire lives.

Who truly can face up to the reality of death, this spectre of storm clouds that comes over the horizon, and most of us know what is there, but choose to focus upon the last rays of light of the sun, but even though they too will be eventually eclipsed by this dark cloud called death. Time gets away from us all, and the scary part is, very few of us realise, how quickly the storm clouds are approaching.

And for those of us for whom the storm clouds to approach slowly, well is it really any more benefit? Because it only becomes more and more apparent how the light is gradually becoming dull. From the lines of their face to the arthritic knee to the final diagnosis by the doctor, this cloud hangs over all of us


And in those few moments, when we do choose to acknowledge the reality of the storm clouds approaching, we hear these faint words in our ear;
‘You haven't done enough!
You haven't done enough and time is passing you buy!
It won't count and you won't matter in the end!
And when you do die you will get what you deserve!’

We hear accusation about our life, about how we have lived it, and about how we have failed to live up to all that which we have been given. We hear words of accusation, but that is not surprising, because the Devil's name is Satan, which literally means the accuser. And he wants us to be buried under the weight of his accusations.

And human tyrants throughout time have picked up on this accusation, they have always threatened the common man with the ultimate finality - death.
The tyrant's lordship has always involved the threat of death, whether the killing fields of Pol Pot, the death camps of Hitler, all the waste land of Siberia to Stalin, death has always been the tool of the tyrant lord.

At one level, any sane man does fear death, and as a result we are slaves in this life to whomever holds the key's to our death. And the one who stands behind them all, every tyrant and every scheme that holds men captive in his life, the one who stands behind them rattling the key chain, on which is the key that opens the door to our death, is the devil.

But the son of God became flesh and blood, he became man and he shared in our humanity. Jesus became God incarnate, and Jesus lived under the spectre of death himself, in all the frailty that humanity involves.
And he was not defeated!


In fact in the arena of humanity in Mankind himself, God defeated mankind's great enemy of death. Jesus the son of God, defeated the great enemy of death, by defeating its agent the devil. We no longer fear death, we no longer fear accusation, Christ has defeated them both.

No power of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from his hand.

Christ crushed him who holds the power of death, he brought him to nought, both his powers and his accusations have been destroyed. Christ has thrown open the cell door of our slavery to death and has set the captives free. Christ has shown himself to be the true Lord, the sovereign Lord, and in his humanity, and in his obedience, and most pointedly in his death, he has set you and me, the captives to death - free. We do not need to fear death or its accusations any longer because, we know the Lord overall things, Christ who died to set us free from this fear.

So now we serve our new Lord, the one who came to save us, to save us from our slavery to Sin and death, to live a life of freedom and service under his Lordship and for his glory. We do not live with death as our master any more.

Jesus is not just a man but the supreme Lord because he defeated death.

Jesus is not just a man – but the Supreme Saviour because he has perfectly dealt with sin.
(Because No sin will stand)

In V17 we read, ‘For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful High-priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.’

All of mankind owed a debt to God because of sin. All mankind is guilty of Idolatry, of fashioning their own god, with their own hands, and serving and honouring it, rather than serving an honouring the true God.

And Idolatry is like treason before God, to choose another who is no God at all before him. It is an untruth, and a lie, that there is any god other than the true God, an untruth a holy God cannot justly allow to stand.

Treason is punishable by death. Our sin against God our creator, results in our being under a death sentence, and the devil himself is our jail warden. All mankind is guilty before God, all mankind has a debt before God. Mankind had to fix the debt they owed to God, and in the man Jesus Christ, God himself took on humanity to rescue humanity from its death sentence.

In V17 we read that, ‘for this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way’. Romans three puts it like this that in Jesus Christ, God is both just and the Justifier, of those who have faith in Jesus.

Christ took on himself, human flesh, real humanity, and all the weakness and frailty particularly in regard to temptation that being human involves. He faced every temptation - and yet did not sin.

And in the second half of V17 and V18 we learn that Christ is the supreme saviour, because he is a faithful High-priest. Christ is faithful as a high priest in two ways, firstly, he is faithful to God as High-priest, and secondly, he is faithful to man as their High-priest. Jesus is the faithful High-priest the mediator between God and mankind.

Now this language of high priest is old Testament imagery, and it brings up the way in the old Testament God used to deal with the sin of Israel. Israel's sin could only be dealt with in the way God had appointed for them, and it focused around the temple in Jerusalem which was built by King Solomon, King David's son in around 1000 BC. The temple was the place where the Ark of the covenant resided, and on the top of the Ark of the covenant between the wings of these carved cherubim, was a place called the Mercy seat.

The temple itself, was the place where God caused his name to dwell on earth and it was the place where you did business with God. And in particular from amongst the Israelite people God appointed one family Aaron's family to represent the people to God within the temple.

The temple had a system of worship and sacrifice, including that God had appointed one place to deal with man's sin, the Mercy seat above the Ark of the covenant, in the centre of the temple, for which one person was appointed from among Aaron's family, the high priest. And there was one day on which he was appointed to offer the blood of the sacrifice that dealt with man's sin, in that place, and that day was the day of atonement. One person in one place on one day.

You getting the picture that this is important, and how you go about dealing with God and your sin is important. If your High-priest does not get it right, it has repercussions for all the people, because he is their sole representative, the one guy who has the one chance to get it right for everyone. The people need a faithful High-priest, and God we will not accept a high priest who is not a faithful.
The high priest is the one mediator between God and man.

So firstly Jesus is the faithful High-priest to God. Jesus is the faithful High-priest, because he is the one man who lived the obedient life before God in this fallen world. Jesus whole life of obedience of course culminated in his death upon the cross. And because of his perfect obedience to the father as the one faithful man, the sacrifice of his life, was the one sacrifice that could pay the penalty that man's treason before God deserved. Christ the high priest, sacrificed himself, in order to be a faithful High-priest before God.

The key word atonement means quite a few things within the Bible, but in particular it means two things; two good Biblical words, propitiation and expiation. Now they may sound a bit geeky and technical (because they are geeky and technical), but they are good words because they assure us of what we have received in Christ's death. Propitiation simply means in this context of Jesus death, that the wrath of God has been satisfied. The whole amount of God’s just wrath has poured out in an awful judgement upon Jesus, and there is nothing left for us to fear.

Expiation simply means in the context of Jesus death, that our guilt and shame from our sin, has been taken away. We are cleansed, as white as snow. And it is the cross of Christ and his bloodshed that washes away sin.

No guilt in life, no fear in death this is the power of Christ in me.

Christ is a faithful High-priest to God because he is able to offer the one sacrifice, in the one place, at the one time, that truly dealt with the sin of the world. No one else could offer the perfect sacrifice, at the perfect place, at the perfect time. Christ alone is faithful in all gods house.

And so secondly, Jesus is a merciful and faithful High-priest on account of his brothers. Christ represents humanity in his life of obedience and in his one and only sacrifice to God, and because of this he alone is a faithful High-priest for his brothers.

But the writer to the Hebrews and goes on to point out that Jesus is not just faithful - but merciful. Christ not only withstood the onslaught of the frailty of humanity, and the temptation of sin, in order to offer the perfect sacrifice, but in the process he learnt personally and deeply, the real grief humanity feels in the face of temptation to Sin, and our vulnerability to, and fear of, the impact of evil, and our susceptibility to the schemes of the devil, in our created world.

Christ is a merciful High-priest, because he suffered temptation in a way we can only imagine. Most of us like Eve, can be bought off in temptation at the bargain basement price of an apple, or an extra 10 grand a year if you really hold out!
Jesus resisted;
the temptation to escape death,
the temptation to rule over the whole world,
the temptation to get out of the mire that this humanity in this broken and frail world.
And Christ withstood the temptation, he is the expert on it, and he went to the cross anyway, to save his brothers like you and me, who were unable to resist temptation like he was.

So now we are able to approach Christ in our times of hardship knowing that he is a faithful high priest, who has paid the penalty that we deserve to pay, and more than that, he is merciful to us because he can identify with us in our frail human existence, in the face of temptation, Sin and evil.

And as he stands in victory Sins curse has lost it’s grip on me,

Jesus is not just a man but the supreme saviour, as our faithful High-priest.

The writer to the Hebrews is telling us in this passage, that Jesus has defeated the power of death and the devil, and he has done it for us by Ransoming us from slavery, the jail cell has been sprung open.

And he has done it because he is a faithful High-priest who has dealt with sin through his obedient life and his atoning death. Christ paid the debt of our release, because he is a faithful High-priest who has done business with God in regard to sin, on behalf of his brothers, who could not represent themselves and could not pay the price.

Christian people like you and me belong to Christ, he bought us at a price, and we're no longer slaves to sin. Christ has defeated the power of sin in death because he paid the penalty of sin through his death, but as Christian people the question is;
what about the presence of sin in this world.
What are the Christian people to do when they face sin, temptation, the Devil, and evil.

Well our writer to the Hebrews answers that in 3:1.


Fix your minds on Jesus - the Supreme Son of God
(So No Fear any longer – But Faith)

In 3:1 we read, ‘Therefore holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the Apostle and High-priest whom we confess’.

Then v6 we read, ‘and we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast’.

When I find myself in times of trouble
this passage of Hebrews comes to me
speaking words of wisdom
look at Jesus.

We are called Jesus Holy brothers, we share in his heavenly calling, and we are told to hold onto our courage, and the hope we confess. What this means is that Christian people no longer live in fear of Sin and death, but we live by faith.

We live by faith, we trust that Jesus is our brother, the supreme Lord, the supreme saviour, our merciful and faithful High-priest, who was able to identify with us in the suffering hardship of living in this world, and who will comfort us in our trial and opposition. We can boast in our brother, because even the difficult battle's we face in this world, we know that the war has already been won.

The way we face the evil and temptation and trial in this world, is changed entirely, if we remember who our brother is, what he has done, and what he will do for us now, and who he will be revealed to be when he returns and puts these things right once and for all in the future.

Compared to the power, and the Majesty, and the sovereignty of the Lord, our Creator, evil certainly is a real and terrible ordeal for humans, But it is a part of the creation that is on a very short leash, when compared to the power of the Almighty himself.

Our goal in life is not to escape the difficulty that comes our way, because that is not what our brother did, he became like us so that we may become like him, and he did it trusting in God his father, and our father, that he would be faithful in all things, even in the midst of his poverty, his temptation, and his violent and unmerited death.

In times of trial and temptation and difficulty in suffering, we don't look for strength within ourselves, but we set out eyes upon our brother, Jesus the author and perfect of our faith. In him fear has been dealt with, faith is now possible, and the hope of glory has been assured. By faith Christ's treasure becomes our glory.

Fix your minds on Jesus the supreme son of God.