Psalm 26:1-12 · Job 1:1, 2:1-10 · Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12 · Mark 10:2-16

The theme this week is humanity – the jewel of God’s creation. The call to worship Psalm describes the daily choices we make. God cares about them because he cares about us. Job 1 and 2 tell us about Satan challenging God by saying humanity is a waste of his time, and God rebuking him. Mark 10 tells the story of the Pharisees trying to trip Jesus up with a complicated human question contrasted with the story of Jesus spending time with children. He tells them that the childlike simplicity, not the tired sophistication of society, is what pleases God and what he loves about us. Our sermon looks at Hebrews 1 and 2, which tell of God’s romance with the jewel of his creation – Jesus becoming one of us.

The Peasant King

Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12 ESV

The 19^th century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard told the parable of a king who fell in love with a maiden. She was one of his servants and lived across a great distance of social class and wealth from him. He couldn’t imagine her life, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He had every privilege, but what he really wanted was her, not just with his body, but with his heart.

He was wise enough to know that he couldn’t go to the village with his royal guard and simply take her back to the palace. She could never resist his power, and she could never resist the opportunities for her and her family that his wealth would provide. She’d have no choice, and the king knew in that scenario that she’d always keep her heart from him.

One day he finally left the castle in disguise. He put on the rags of the peasants and let his beard grow. He found the maiden and a place to stay near her. Slowly, through stolen glances and kind words, he won her heart.

They lived alongside each other, sharing work and breaking bread. He patiently showed her his heart and his true self. Finally, after a while, he was able to tell her he was the king. By then, she knew him, and her heart was his.

The author crowns the story with the line: “For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love.”

Hebrews tells this story, through the story of Israel and sometimes in details that sound strange to our modern ears, of God coming to us through Jesus. He put on the shabby clothing of humanity to come and meet with us as one of our own, revealing himself at just the right time to be the King.

Our passage from the beginning of Hebrews today is a close look at this incarnation – the story of the peasant king who came among the people, whose name was called Immanuel, “God with us.” The Author became a character in the narrative, so let’s look at him in three aspects today:

• The story of Israel
• The story of the world
• The story of us

The story of Israel

We’ll start with the story of Jesus in a very local sense—Jesus as the Jewish kid who sometimes slowly but always intentionally tied himself into the narrative of Israel.

But first a step back to look at what we’re reading. We roughly know the author or authors of most books in Scripture—a person or a small school of scribes that they taught and who wrote in their name. John wrote John, Matthew wrote Matthew, etc.

But Hebrews is the exception. No one knows who wrote it. There have been guesses throughout history, but none have really stuck. The only reason it’s called “The Letter to the Hebrews” is because it is so thoroughly Jewish. It is full of Old Testament quotes and parallels and it is so obviously intended to connect Jesus with the Jewish story that ancient scholars have inferred it was meant for a Jewish audience and titled it that way.

But who wrote it, why it was written and who it was sent to are mysteries, and in a sense that makes it even more the timeless theological discussion it is. Jesus is being connected not just to one community and circumstance (like in one of Paul’s letters), but to the whole story of all humanity.

That starts locally with the Israel story.

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. (Hebrews 1:1-2 ESV)

This is a powerful connection. Think of a king, especially in the ancient world, who started by sending messages and legislating laws from far away, and then got to the point of sending portraits of himself, and finally came to visit. This is the connection of Jesus to the story of Israel.

The unfortunate theological mistake we often make in the modern world is to see the giving of the law and the coming of Jesus as disconnected. We think God gave us the law, then we couldn’t keep it and we messed it all up and missed the mark, so Jesus had to come and set everything straight. This understanding misses the point of the story.

The choosing of Israel, the giving of the law and even the consistent failure of humanity were all part of the narrative. God let nothing go to waste. He knew even before Eve reached for the fruit that the whole deal would cost him his Son. He chose one person, Abraham, then one nation, Israel. Then he chose out of that nation one lineage, one family and finally one unassuming teenage girl to bring himself into the story of Israel.

So, instead of the law somehow failing, it only pointed forward to our need for a Savior. It clarified the story and made space in it to prepare the way for Jesus. And the author of Hebrews starts his letter with this discussion.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:3-4 ESV)

“Much superior to the angels.” This line may sound strange to our modern Christian ears. Angels are on the periphery, if anywhere, of our theology. But in the time this letter was written, there was a strong Jewish tradition that the law had been delivered by the angels (see Deuteronomy 33:2). They had delivered the law or somehow been involved in the process on Mount Sinai.

The law was a kind of advance echo of God’s redemptive plan in Christ. Like the king in Kierkegaard’s story becoming a servant and winning a girl’s heart as a servant, before bringing her to the castle and making her queen, Paul said the law was “our tutor to bring us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24).

So, we go from the local story of Jesus as a Hebrew fulfilling the Israelite story to the universal…

The story of the world

But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:2-3 ESV)

The writer of Hebrews then uses this word to describe Jesus—the “exact imprint.” This is a word from minting describing the exact imprint of a face on a coin. He is to God what sunlight is to the sun. Jesus is God himself among us.

One commentator expressed the difference between us and Jesus’ original audience:

It is sometimes said that the ancient and the modern Christological heresies are mirror images of one another. Moderns understand well that Jesus was human, but have a difficult time imagining how he might be God. The ancients, on the other hand, could well imagine that Jesus was divine, but struggled with his humanity. (Erik Heen)

The ancient world was very religious, with shrines and temples on every corner. The idea of Jesus being some kind of divine otherworldly being was not too far of a stretch for their imaginations. But a god being a flesh-and-blood human—or even caring about us very much—was baffling to them.

In our day, we are more comfortable with Jesus being a great teacher, perhaps even an activist or a social justice warrior, some kind of sage poet. But the idea of him being supernatural or divine baffles many people.

The tension in Jesus is that he holds these two realities together. He is Lord of the universe who makes it cohere; he is the Jewish kid with calloused hands. He is the great teacher and advocate of the powerless; he is the eternal judge and all-powerful who is a greater mystery than we could ever imagine.

It is truly the story of a peasant king.

The story of us

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9 ESV)

Jesus entered the story of Israel. He entered the story of the universe. And now he enters our story.

The incarnation—from the word “carn”—which means flesh. In the flesh. The peasant king didn’t only come down from his throne, he took on the clothing, the hardship and life of the poor. In our case, he took on the flesh not just as a disguise, but in reality, even to the point of death.

The context of Hebrews talks a lot about angels—how the angels gave the Law and how human beings are just below the angels (quoting Psalm 8:5). Jesus walked through these barriers, stepping past the angels, stepping past the powerful, famous cultures in history, stepping past an elite privileged existence to live the relatively helpless life of a craftsman in the first century.

He entered the story of us and took on the chaos and humiliation of it. He stepped out of glory into nowhere. Instead of blowing it all up and starting over, he entered the story himself. He gave up all his power to die the humiliating helpless death on a cross—he’s been lower than all of us, so he could lift all of us up with him.

And that is where he still meets us. Jesus doesn’t want to take you from your life, but to meet you in it!

He redeems us by entering the story of our lives through circumstances and relationships to transform us into his image. He doesn’t want you to be someone else—he wants you to fully become you.

When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (Genesis 9:14-15 ESV)

This is the promise that God made to Noah as the earth dried from the flood. Never again would he destroy humanity and start over. Never again would he hit the reset button on the great human experiment.

Instead, he entered that story himself as the peasant king, through:

• The story of Israel – Jesus was a child of the line of David, born in a small town. He was the promised Messiah who brought about an unexpected kingdom.
• The story of the world – “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together,” Paul says in Colossians 1:17. Jesus is not just a religious figure or a wise teacher—he is the Lord of the universe who holds it together in light unapproachable.
• The story of us – The writer of Hebrews says he is able to sympathize with us because he was tempted in every way like we are (see Hebrews 4:15). Jesus went through the sweat and loss and confusion of being a human being. He entered our story and redeemed it.

So the peasant King is among us, sharing our lives and breaking bread with us. One day soon his reign will be fully restored on earth, and we will fully live like the royalty we are. We will be home.

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Small Group Discussion Questions

Psalm 22:1-15 • Job 23:1-9 • Hebrews 4:12-16 • Mark 10:17-31

This week’s theme is God’s strength in our weakness. Following Christ does not mean that we won’t get hurt or discouraged. However, it does mean that whatever we go through, Jesus goes through it with us. The call to worship Psalm is a messianic psalm that prophesies the pain Jesus would suffer on the cross. In it, the psalmist laments because he feels far from God. In Job, we encounter a man unable to see God in the midst of his suffering. Hebrews 4 speaks about our High Priest, Jesus Christ, who is able to sympathize with our weakness. Finally, in Mark 10, we encounter a man whose attachment to money robs him of the conviction to follow Jesus.

God in Our Weakness

Hebrews 4:12-16

In the Marvel Comics universe, there is a scientist named Dr. Bruce Banner, a theoretical physicist who specialized in gamma radiation. After an experiment went wrong, Dr. Banner was exposed to a massive amount of gamma rays. He was transformed into an unstoppable titan, the living embodiment of his rage. Dr. Banner’s alter ego came to be known as The Incredible Hulk. The Hulk is a very popular character in our society, and the green behemoth’s image can be seen on many posters, t-shirts, and Halloween costumes. However, there are very few images of Dr. Bruce Banner. Even though he is one of the most brilliant minds in the Marvel universe, few, if any, children pretend to be Dr. Banner. There is something about the Hulk’s raw strength that captures our imagination. Bruce Banner can use his mind to create wonderfully useful things, but most are more interested in the Hulk’s capacity for destruction. There is nothing wrong with finding the Hulk interesting and cheering for him at the next installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, we should wonder why we find the Hulk so compelling.

There is a saying: “Only the strong survive.” This Darwinist creed is built on the belief that being weak makes us vulnerable. If we show weakness, those who are strong will take advantage of us or maybe even do us harm. While we may not personally live by this creed, a disdain for weakness can be found woven into the fabric of our culture. We say things to each other like, “Never let them see you sweat,” or, “keep a stiff upper lip!” If we experience hurt, either emotional or physical, there is someone ready and willing to tell us to “shake it off!” We are indirectly given the message that weakness is to be hidden and ignored until it is overcome — that it is a shameful enemy that must be conquered. We are programmed to believe the Hulk is better than Dr. Banner because he is not weak.

Should Christians follow the creed, “Only the strong survive”? Should we avoid showing any weakness? Let’s turn to a passage in Hebrews for answers. The author of Hebrews was writing a group of people who were nearing their breaking point. The letter is addressed to Jewish Christians who, because of persecution, were tempted to revert to Judaism, or to add Jewish legalism to the gospel. In Hebrews 4, we see God’s response to their fading spiritual strength:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:12-16)

By “weakness,” the writer of Hebrews is talking about the things in his audience’s hearts that cause them to turn away from Jesus and lose their faith. This weakness can be found in all human hearts to some degree because we all, in our flesh, are oriented away from God. The passage shows us that nothing is hidden from Jesus, and he is able to see the weakness in all humanity. He sees our fear, selfish desires, and self-righteousness. He sees our greed, pride, and idolatry. He sees our cowardice and indifference. He sees our deception and cruelty. Jesus can see the corruption of our hearts and minds. It is all laid bare to him.

When confronted with our weakness, however, Jesus did not turn away in embarrassment. He did not tell humanity to “shake it off.” He did not find our weakness repulsive and recoil from us. Rather, he stepped into our weakness. Instead of fleeing from our failings, Jesus united himself to our weakness and overcame the sources of every human failure on our behalf. In his resurrection, Jesus secured for us a new humanity — one that is free from the corruption of sin. By the Holy Spirit, we have a guarantee of our coming perfection, and even get to experience moments of true strength now.

Christ did bear our weaknesses figuratively, but also literally. The passage says he was tempted in every way. Because he was fully human, born with our same corruption, the text indicates there was a part of him that wanted to give up on his mission. There was something inside telling him to give in to despair or to vent his rage. Something inside Jesus tempted him to focus on himself and seek his own pleasure. A small part of him wanted to become the Messiah everyone expected him to be. He bore all our weaknesses, yet he did not give in to them.

Jesus’ resurrection and ascension opened the door for us to bring our weakness to the Father. We are not to hide our failings or pretend like they do not exist. Rather, we should honestly and confidently lay them at the feet of the One who sits in the throne of grace. And since Jesus has been tempted in every way, empathy meets us at the throne. Jesus understands our weakness and he does not condemn us. He does not ridicule our weakness and greet us in shame. He opens his arms wide to receive us with love. In receiving our weakness with empathy, God displays his mercy. Apart from God, we would have to rely on our own strength to stay faithful to him. We would have to rely on our own abilities to keep from sin. It should be clear to all of us that we are not that strong. We are completely dependent on Christ and his strength.

For Christians, the creed “only the strong survive” does not work. The truth is that only the weak survive. When we bring our weaknesses to God, he extends grace to us. Grace is not just the favor of God, but it is also his presence. Grace is God giving himself to us. So, when we bring our weaknesses to him, God draws near to us. He brings his power to bear in our situation. He employs his wisdom to chart the way forward. He supplies his peace so that we may endure. That is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul understood that God shows up in our weakness. Not only does God deliver us from our trial, but we get to know the God of our weakness. He reveals aspects of his character we would not be able to discern otherwise. We get to see the extent to which he saves and delivers. We are able to witness deeper expressions of his mercy and grace. Our weakness helps us see and know God.

This is all good news. However, none of it benefits us unless we are willing to be weak. For many of us, this is a hard step to take. You may identify yourself with a human standard of strength and have little practice confessing your shortcomings to God or anyone else. Perhaps you had a difficult childhood and felt you had to develop some emotional armor to survive. Perhaps you were raised around people who frowned on any displays of strong emotion, especially emotions judged to be weak.  You may already feel so discouraged that you feel that admitting your weakness would cause overwhelming shame. All these mindsets result from failing to see God as the one who steps into our weakness. We withhold our weakness because we believe God will meet us with condemnation, anger, and rejection. However, the author of Hebrews lets us know that God meets us with empathy, mercy, and grace. Seeing God for who he is makes it easier to bring our shortcomings and hurts to him. Believing in God’s loving acceptance of our weakness enables us to be Dr. Banner and leave the Hulk behind.

We bring our weaknesses to God in honest, introspective prayer. We look in the mirror of our mind and confess to God our fear, anger, pride, greed, and anything else that is not of Christ. We have to be transparent and honest, knowing God can take it.

You may want to share a personal example to make the point. The author shares an example from someone he knows.

For example, I knew someone who struggled in prayer. It was not until he got honest that he experienced a breakthrough in his prayer life. One morning, he admitted, “Lord, I do not want to pray. It’s boring and I only do it so I don’t get in trouble with you.” Ironically, after that nearly irreverent opening, my friend had an incredibly deep, meaningful time of prayer. It began a season of study about prayer. He learned that the way he was taught to pray was not biblical. He also realized he was trying to have a transactional relationship with God, which showed he had a flawed understanding of the Lord’s nature. He explored better teaching on prayer and his prayer life is now far more consistent and intimate. However, he would still be struggling with an unsatisfying prayer life if he failed to bring his weakness to the throne of grace. The Lord stepped into my friend’s weakness and turned it into a source of true strength.

If ever you doubt that God steps into our weakness, just look to Jesus on the cross. Look to the nails through his hands and feet. See the wound in his side and the lashes on his back. Listen to the ridicule and rejection of the crowd. Hear him cry out his thirst and feelings of abandonment. Look at the crowd to see that most of his friends had left him. He did not transform into a green monster and rip himself off the cross. He did not call down fire on his enemies. His disciples did not lead a revolution and rescue him. He died. He died horribly. None who looked on his broken body saw any human strength. If we believe that only the strong survive, we would have to say that Jesus was not strong.

But Jesus is strong. Unbelievably strong. His broken body forged a new humanity. His spilled blood cleansed our sins and reconciled every person to the Father. He transformed the cross from a curse into the cure for all that ails humanity. He defines strength. There is no weakness in him. He embodies power. And he uses his power to rescue and redeem humanity. When we bring our weaknesses to God, by the Spirit, he is the one who shows up. Let us be weak so we can find our strength in Jesus.

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Small Group Discussion Questions

Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c • Job 38:1-7, (34-41) • Hebrews 5:1-10 • Mark 10:35-45

The theme this week is God made low— the creator of the universe becoming a humble servant. The call to worship Psalm portrays the almighty God “wrapped in light.” In Job 38 we glimpse the frightening depths of God’s power in creation. In Mark 10, Jesus explains that the greatest is the servant of all. Our sermon is based on Hebrews 5, which shows us how Jesus entered the complete helplessness of being human in order to become our priest.

The High Priest Made Low

Hebrews 5:1-10 ESV

Begin with the lectionary reading: Hebrews 5:1-10.

“Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes” is a well-worn cliché about reserving judgment on people. Well-worn enough to have a joke made out of it, “…that way, when you judge him, you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have his shoes!” But even the threadbare quality of the proverb and the tiring humor of the joke tell us that this phrase has been around a long time and is basically universally understood.

It’s no accident that some of the most effective social workers are those who grew up in impoverished communities. It isn’t a coincidence that some of the most mission-driven police officers are those who were criminals in their youth or at least grew up around crime.

Take Edson Arantes do Nascimento (known as Pele), for instance, arguably the best soccer player in history. He learned his sport in the slums of Brazil, playing with a sock stuffed with old rags because his family couldn’t afford a ball. After achieving fame, he never forgot where he came from, donating to philanthropic causes and speaking out against racism. What he learned through that firsthand experience never left him. It became part of who he was.

A similar experience is at the heart of the gospel – Jesus became one of us. His name was Immanuel, “God with us.”

The thematic language of this chapter in Hebrews concerns the Jewish priesthood, so it may seem a bit removed from our experience. But if you look closely, you realize you are reading the story of Jesus very much as a human being – as someone who was walking a mile in our shoes. Even in the midst of the complex religious language around the priesthood, Jesus’ humanity comes through – with “loud cries and tears” (verse 7).

Let’s look at this passage today, even its most peculiar feature Melchizedek, and see what it means to have a high priest who came low. Let’s look at:

• Christ out of nowhere
• Christ right here
• Christ out ahead of us

Christ out of nowhere

Most of us can’t even quite pronounce the name Melchizedek let alone understand why the writer of Hebrews is so excited about him. He is mentioned so casually here that the readers must have had a strong Jewish context to understand the reference.

Melchizedek was a historical person who came essentially out of nowhere to comfort and encourage Abraham, thousands of years before. (See Genesis 14.) Abraham had been through a brutal battle and this disorienting story shows Melchizedek walking up to him in the desert one day:

 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (Genesis 14:18-20 ESV)

Abraham, called Abram at the time, was the start of the story of Israel. He was the only one we know of who worshipped the God of Israel and had heard from God. It must have been very lonely, and he was constantly having to convince family members and others that this God was real and cared about them. And then this guy comes from nowhere, speaking the same language about God that Abraham spoke. No one else had experienced that, at least that Abram knew, and suddenly Melchizedek is there. As suddenly as he appears, he disappears from the narrative.

The next place he appears is in a Psalm:

Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.  The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:3-4)

Here the psalmist is writing about a conversation between God and a shadowy priest king figure, who is never fully explained. He then designates this figure a priest in the order of Melchizedek.

So, we have a shadowy figure who is somehow associated with a mysterious personage in an enigmatic exchange. Everybody following?

Distraction is always a temptation here. We want to explore the mystery and try to guess the secret code of scripture and unlock it. But I think that’s counterproductive and leads us away from the heart of what’s being told here. What we see in Hebrews is the writer trying to connect the story of Jesus with the story of Israel and therefore the story of the world. He’s interpreting it with the context he knows, not trying to give us some mystic riddle.

Boiling it down, the author is saying that Jesus is not like the priests they knew, who came from the tribe of Aaron. He is something else entirely, part of the larger, global, and admittedly mysterious world of Melchizedek. Essentially, this story is bigger than us. The gospel is not just a story of the political situation of Israel in that day, nor is it just the story of our own personal devotional journey today – it is all those things, and much more.

Jesus is our best friend who comforts us, loves us and “has a wonderful plan for our lives” (as the Four Spiritual Laws puts it). He’s also the Lord of the universe who holds quantum reality together and strolls through the planets as King. One of the best ways to express that to the audience of Hebrews was to identify him with Melchizedek, a figure somehow greater than even Abraham, which they couldn’t imagine.

Melchizedek is a much deeper theological discussion that we don’t have the right to ignore just because it’s complex; however, the error on the other side is to become obsessed with it and let the mystery of it distract us. Neither extreme is helpful. For now, the point is that the mystery of Jesus is greater than any system we try to cram him into.

Christ right here

Chapter breaks, verse numbers and subtitles weren’t in the original manuscripts of scripture and can sometimes be unhelpful. The discussion here of Jesus as High Priest actually starts in the end of chapter 4, where it says:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15 ESV)

The author then turns to discussing earthly priests, which were probably a familiar class of people to the original audience. They grew up with priests, and the temple life was woven right into their own. The author reminds them that a priest can identify with them:

He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. (Hebrews 5:2-3 ESV)

So the priest is able to empathize with the people because he is one of them. The priests were the people’s representatives before God and kept the ritual connection to the God of Israel. Their role was vital and highly respected, and the author here reminds the reader that the priests are just people, even to the point that they had to give sacrifices to cover their own sins. Because of this they could “deal gently” with the people – because they are just like the people they serve.

Read about a page of the history of Israel and you’ll find out that priests often forgot that, and let their pastoral spirits be choked by pride. Look around the greater church for a minute, and you’ll see examples of pastors who seem to forget to practice humility. But the author of Hebrews points to the true reality that these people are just that – people.

The exception is with Jesus. The priests are just people because they are sinful and corrupt just like the rest of us, but Jesus never was. Jesus never sinned, and therefore didn’t have the experience of sin that – ideally – birthed empathy in the priests.

But what he did experience was the results of sin. And that is the subtle theme the author is getting across here. Jesus experienced the pain, hunger, sickness, anxiety, fatigue, fear and every other aspect of living in the fallen world – though he never participated in the sin that brought it on.

He didn’t share our sin, but he did share our weakness. He knew the limited, sometimes frightening life of living in this fallen world. Therefore, he knows us. He isn’t a superhero who dropped in, fixed everything and left. He was born into our world and knew the fear and weakness of our world to the point that it killed him.

• When you are tired, know that “Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.” John 4:6 ESV
• When you are scared, know that “And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Luke 22:44 ESV
• When you feel like God has abandoned you, hear Jesus say: “Why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46 ESV.
• When you weep, remember, “Jesus wept.” John 11:35 ESV

Christ is right here—Jesus was and is right with us. He can truly say, “I know how you feel.”

Christ out ahead of us

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Hebrews 5:8 ESV)

This verse makes most of us do a double take. How could Jesus learn obedience? Wasn’t he already perfect? What did he need to learn?

Again, Jesus was one of us. Although he never sinned, he learned to be human by becoming one. He learned life by the same skinned knees and sleepless nights and false starts that we do.

He went through the full experience of being prepared for his vocation as the savior of humanity. The uncertainty and confusion of human life was the way there. The details of how exactly all this happened, we don’t know, but we know he was thoroughly one of us.

Instead of scorching the earth and starting over, God worked through our brokenness to heal it. Jesus blazed the trail of what it means to be human—to show us how to be who we were created to be, and to make it possible through his death and resurrection.

This is Jesus out ahead of us, fixing the world from the inside.

One commentator said it well: “Creation got spoken into being. Salvation got shrieked into being.” God could have wiped us out and started over, that would have been much easier. But instead, he brought and is bringing the new humanity to birth with all the shrieks and sweat and blood it takes for that to happen.

Christ out of nowhere—The mysteries of Jesus and the gospel are far too big for us to understand. The gospel isn’t just a pleasant message telling us to love each other—it’s world-transforming, radioactive, somehow familiar and completely strange at the same time.

Christ right here—Jesus walked among us in the weakness caused by sin he never committed. He knows what it means to be human and so still walks among us by the Spirit—lovingly patient. He knows what we’re dealing with in the human experience. He’s been here.

Christ out ahead of us—God didn’t start the story over; he wrote himself into it. The creator of humanity became human to show us what it means to truly be human. He blazed a trail we could never blaze and now the point is to follow.

The high priest was made low—correcting, healing and ultimately affirming what it means to be human.

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Small Group Discussion Questions

Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22) • Job 42:1-6, 10-17 • Hebrews 7:23-28 • Mark 10:46-52

This week’s theme is faithful responses. The call to worship Psalm forms a response of faith in a God who rescues the needy upon hearing their humble prayers. Job 42 records Job’s final response to God as a penitent expression of faith in the Lord who “can do all things,” along with the Lord’s answer of restoration for Job after his journey of suffering. This response of faith is echoed in the reading in Mark’s Gospel with the story of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, who receives healing on account of placing his faith in Jesus. It is this same Jesus who is declared to be the permanent and faithful High Priest for all who approach God for salvation through him.

Permanent, Perfect and Promised High Priest

Hebrews 7:23-28 (NRSV)

It seems the only thing permanent in our lives is change. Change often adds some spice to life, some excitement and expectation. Change can be a very good thing. But not all change is good. In fact, change can sometimes be of the sort that disrupts and cripples our lives in very serious ways. When we find ourselves in the middle of these types of changes, we can find ourselves discouraged and possibly even in despair.

Where are you today? It is probably a safe bet to say that through your life you have had to deal with some rather earth-shattering changes. The last couple of years have no doubt been a period in history of epic change. For the most part, it hasn’t been the kind of changes we get excited about. Life as we once knew it has changed. But even beyond the world-changing events that affect us all, it would be naïve to assume that each of us do not deal with some sort of threatening changes closer to home. Maybe it’s a detrimental change in health, or worse, the disorienting change that comes by way of the death of a loved one.

These types of changes can overwhelm us, especially on top of the chaos we are enduring in our world today. Even smaller negative changes can prompt in us a despondent and disheartened outlook. Loss of employment, for example, may seem trivial compared to loss of health or life, but it still exacts a toll on individuals and families. I’m sure many of you can share times of such loss that were marked by painful doubts and sorrow.

Change can threaten our sense of security, meaning and purpose. And we are not alone in these unprecedented times of unsettling upheaval. As we look out our stained-glass windows, we see a world grasping for something, anything, that can give it a sense of permanence or some hope that all will return to stable ground.

As the church, we know where to look for this permanence. We look to Jesus. We place our hope in the one who does not change, and who is our permanent, perfect and promised High Priest.

Today, as we look at the passage in Hebrews 7, we can be encouraged once again by this hope. After all, that is why the author of Hebrews wrote this letter. The original recipients of this letter are our brothers and sisters in Christ who were also facing major changes in their lives, changes that included suffering and extreme threats in their time of witness. This letter was written to encourage them to remain faithful to the one who remains faithful to them. Like those Christians living in perilous times, the church today is still called to proclaim to a frenzied world the salvation that it longs for that can be found only in its rightful King, Jesus Christ. So, as we go through this passage, let us do so with open hands to receive the hope and encouragement the Lord has for us. We will always face change, but we can do so knowing and sharing the good news of hope that Jesus holds for us and for all we know and love—our family, friends and neighbors.

Furthermore, 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. (Hebrews 7:23-24 NRSV)

Our selected passage begins with the word “Furthermore…” which means we will need to look back a little further in the text to discover more of what is being said. If we back up to the beginning of this chapter we find the author is laying out the case that Jesus is the perfect High Priest for his people by referring to the royal messianic Psalm 110 and the pattern of Melchizedek. The author is arguing that Jesus is the “priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4). This is part of the author’s sustained argument of Jesus as a superior High Priest that he began back in chapter 4. Many points about the superiority of Jesus as High Priest over the Levitical priesthood and Aaron are made. But in this section, the author is going to show three specific ways Jesus is the ultimate High Priest. These three points will be an important reminder for us during our times of changing challenges that threaten our faith and confidence in the Lord.

Permanence

The first thing we see the author bring to our attention by referring to the “order of Melchizedek” is that Jesus as High Priest is permanent.

Notice how the author makes his argument: “the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office…” In short, no matter how good a high priest each of these “former priests” might have been, they were not permanent. Death meant there was always a need for a change in the office of high priest. The fact that these “former priests were many in number” meant that there were many changes along the way. Maybe we can relate to this with our own histories marked by successions and transitions. Perhaps in school you had to memorize all the presidents from Washington to the present. Or perhaps you have a long-standing local church that has a wall with pictures of previous pastors who once served as its chief overseer. There are plenty of reminders such as these all around us that force upon us the transient nature of our existence. All things tend to pass on sooner or later. Death changes everything. The believers who first received this letter of encouragement had certainly been accustomed to these many changes throughout history and were in some ways finding themselves at the end of their rope, so to speak.

According to Josephus, there were 83 high priests from the time of Aaron till the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. We don’t know the exact date Hebrews was written, but it is very likely to have been written shortly before the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. The Jewish believers this letter was written to likely knew of many of those high priests through the stories and traditions passed along. Many had witnessed the passing of a few high priests. How relevant this author was to point them to the permanence of Jesus as the ultimate High Priest by telling them Jesus “holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.”

The author doesn’t just tell us that fact, but goes on to tell us the implications it has:

Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:25 NRSV)

These words were written a long time ago, but it makes clear that what is true of Jesus for these early Christians in their time of crisis is true for us today. Jesus the High Priest is “for all time” the one we look to for salvation. The word used here for “all time” carries an even deeper meaning as well. It’s the Greek word panteles which means all and whole along with perfect and complete.

When Jesus as High Priest saves, we can count on it to be a lasting, permanent, complete and whole salvation in every conceivable way. Nothing gets left out.

In addition, the word translated “save” carries the meaning of deliverance and rescue for the purpose of restoration and healing. The concept behind the word is the picture of bringing a person who has been locked away in bondage out into the open and into freedom.

Jesus was and is the one who sets the captives free. In our present time, words like “lock-downs,” “isolation,” “quarantine” were recently commonplace as they articulated the shape of bondage our world had been experiencing. These modern expressions of bondage point us to our deeper bondage of sin in which we all need to be saved and set free. This is found only through Jesus, who is our permanent High Priest.

If doubt and despair are setting in because of the onslaught of changes that leave us feeling locked away with little hope of freedom, take courage in knowing that Jesus is still serving as our intercessor as “he always lives to make intercession for them.” This means that Jesus is interceding for you and me in this present moment, even when our faith falters, and he will continue to do so forever. As our permanent High Priest, we can count on him to bring us to the Father along with all our burdens and sufferings that need his healing touch of restoration.

Perfection

The second thing to take note of in the “order of Melchizedek” is that Jesus as High Priest is perfect.

For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever. (Hebrews 7:26-28 NRSV)

This is quite the resume for a high priest: “holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” If Mary Poppins were to translate this verse, she would probably say that this High Priest is “practically perfect in every way.” This certainly could not have been said about any of the other 83 high priests in Israel’s history. The author is not trying to disparage the high priestly system God had put in place for Israel. That system was an act of grace by God to provide a way for his people to dwell in his presence even though they were a fallen and sinful people, just like the rest of the world.

The priest and the sacrificial system also served to point Israel to their true and ultimate High Priest who would be a “fitting” intercessor. It is important to know that God did not need people to offer him sacrifices as a way of twisting his arm for forgiveness. He does not need to be appeased in any way. God himself will do the reconciling and has done just that in Jesus Christ.

We may ask at this point, why is it “fitting” that Jesus be perfect as our High Priest? To answer this, it may be helpful to understand “perfection” in terms of relationship. This High Priest’s relationship to the Father is…well, perfect. It is holy. It is blameless. It is undefiled and devoid of sin. In short, there is no lack of trust between the Father and his Son. It is what we can rightly call a perfectly faithful relationship. And Jesus remained faithful to the Father even with all the changing chaos that comes in a fallen sinful world. His faithfulness was lived out through the thick of it. In other words, the Son of God became Jesus, the God-man who took on all of our sinful and fallen human nature and lived out his life in perfect obedience and faithfulness to the Father. In Jesus, we have the perfect man fitted for relationship with the Father.

Now, we can see why it is “fitting” that Jesus be perfect as our High Priest. The role of the high priest was to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people to mediate reconciliation between the people of Israel and God. Only, they also had to offer a sacrifice for their own sins as well. Jesus does not need to offer such a sacrifice. Instead, he offers himself as the perfectly fitted sacrifice who mediates reconciliation between humanity and God “once for all.” Only Jesus could be both the High Priest and the sacrifice at the same time. In Jesus, our High Priest, we have been reconciled to the Father to enjoy the perfect relationship the Son has had with the Father for all eternity.

This High Priest is “exalted above the heavens,” meaning he is presently and eternally with the Father. In this way, Jesus is the perfect High Priest for us. Today, no matter what changes you may be experiencing, Jesus does not change as your High Priest. He continues, even now, and tomorrow and the next day, regardless of what changes come your way, to intercede for you before the Father. He is completely capable and willing to restore you, save you, set you free and make you whole. In him you will find that his relationship with the Father is a perfect fit for you as well.

Promised

One final point this passage brings out about Jesus as our High Priest is that Jesus is a promised High Priest.

The author draws again from Psalm 110 to point out that Jesus as High Priest was sealed with “the word of the oath.” The Levitical priests were not installed with such an oath. Note the Psalmist’s words:

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4 NRSV)

Unlike the other high priests, Jesus has been given God’s approval, spoken as a promise that his priesthood would have no end. And the Father always keeps his word. Now we have something that never changes. No matter what changes come our way and challenges our lives in the here and now, we have a great High Priest who comes to us with the promise that our heavenly Father will never change his mind about us, today, tomorrow or forever. The Lord Jesus is faithful and one to be trusted with all the changes in your life. There is nothing he cannot and will not save you from in order to bring you into the perfect life of relationship he has with his Father.

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Small Group Discussion Questions

Psalm 146:1-10 • Ruth 1:1-18 • Hebrews 9:11-14 • Mark 12:28-34

The theme this week is being the people of God. Our call to worship Psalm discusses the fleeting quality of life and the permanence of God and God’s people. Ruth 1 tells us about Ruth choosing to identify as one of God’s people and then becoming a great hero of the faith. Mark 12 is an expansion of the Shema, which Jesus called the greatest commandment in the law. Our sermon is on Hebrews 9, discussing Jesus as the end and aim of the Hebrew faith, what it ultimately means to be the people of God.

The Real Footstep in the Hallway

Hebrews 9:11-15

Read, or have someone read Hebrews 9:11-15.

Kids are consummate imitators. They are wonderfully, sometimes manically creative, but they also very much enjoy “being like mommy and daddy.” Costumes of a police officer or a firefighter or a soldier are universally popular in toy stores. If you look at ancient toys from millennia ago in a museum, you will find miniature versions of the chariots and horses ridden by moms and dads and aunts and uncles. We learn how to be human beings by imitating.

There comes a time in every kid’s life when they leave behind these imitations and reach out for the real thing. They find themselves bored and unsatisfied with playing house, so they arrange and rearrange their living space in their room. That gets a little pointless right around the time they leave for college, and then have their dorm room, then an apartment, then a house of their own.

A little boy may have his plastic hammers and Legos until the day he finally joins dad in the garage and feels power tools in his hands. A little girl may have her toy kitchen and Easy Bake oven and one day enter the real kitchen and whip up a meal with mom. Modern kids may cross paths, too, with boys in the kitchen and girls in the workshop! These imitations are just that, imitations, that are meant to someday get us ready for the real thing.

In the midst of that imitation, it often feels like the genuine article. Ask teenagers in the 1960s who might have given each other a ring to “go steady.” They might look back on that with a smile ten years later when they have a wedding ring on, but at the time, nothing is more real.

Feel free to use your own example, or an example of dating/courtship in your culture.

This is part of the point that the author of Hebrews is getting across throughout the book. The trappings and rituals of Judaism were extremely important, given by God himself, but they were only meant to hold things in place until the real thing arrived. Essentially, for us to go back to the temple sacrifices and symbolic actions of Israel would be like setting up a playhouse inside our real house—it would be redundant, a distraction from the real thing.

We are modern people. We have WIFI, drive hybrid cars, eat food made in factories and are part of a scientific and largely secular society. Why should we care about how Jesus and obsolete ancient rituals are connected? What does that have to do with anything?

That’s a fair question—don’t feel bad about asking it! The context of this conversation is far out of historical earshot for us. Yet the Holy Spirit chose to make this seemingly strange narrative a permanent part of Scripture, and therefore we trust it has something to say to us. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

Let’s look closely at this section from Hebrews and see—not how it applies to us right away—but how it applies to Jesus and tells us more about who he is, because then we’ll find out more about ourselves.

What does this passage tell us about Jesus?

• Jesus is Jewish
• Jesus is done
• Jesus is alive

Jesus is Jewish

Jesus was a Jew. He was born into a specific people group with a very strong cultural flavor and with traditions that had been in place for centuries before he came along. It’s important to keep this in mind as we study him and his life.

How else would he fully enter into our world? If God was to come to earth as one of us in Jesus, if he was to truly experience what it meant to be human and take that human experience to perfection, then he had to be part of a specific group, a specific culture, a specific time. If he wasn’t Jewish, he would have been part of another culture with all the idiosyncrasies of that group.

It was all part of the plan. From that first call of Abraham in the desert to Gabriel’s visit to Mary centuries later, it was part of God coming into the human race as a very human savior. That may seem strange to the modern world, which seeks to reduce reality to beakers and spreadsheets, but our boiled-down ideas would seem very strange to the ancient Jews, too!

Yes, Jesus was Jewish. In the original Hebrew his name was Yeshua – Joshua, after the leader that brought them to the Promised Land. The symbolism was rich with that choice!

Jesus’ Jewish heritage is important for unlocking Hebrews, especially these passages that are heavy with priesthood imagery. The discussion here is about how the priests entered the tabernacle, which was the place where God’s presence dwelt. This was a careful, even dangerous enterprise. Commentator Tim Mackie calls it the “hotspot of God’s presence.”

There was an outer court in which the people of Israel worshipped and brought sacrifices. There was an inner court, the Holy Place, in which the priests did the sacrificial work, and finally there was a Holy of Holies, which was where the Ark of the Covenant was held. It was the “hottest” part of the hotspot where God’s presence was the strongest. A high priest could enter that part of the temple only once a year.

This is how Jewish practice was held in place for centuries, and it forms the scaffolding on which Hebrews is built. Serious students of the Word should look at commentaries and Bible dictionaries for help understanding it. But again, it’s part of understanding Jesus and therefore is worth our time.

The writer describes Jesus as high priest, and how his entrance into the temple was different:

 But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11-12)

Here the author of Hebrews is taking a behind-the-scenes look at the redemption story. He describes a “perfect tabernacle not made with human hands,” which is the tabernacle that the literal one pointed to. The sacrifices and important rituals in Jewish practice were never meant to be an end in themselves, but to point to a heavenly reality. The doings of the physical tabernacle were simply the imitation—like the boy with his plastic hammer and the girl with her Easy-Bake oven—of the real thing that came in Christ.

Some commentators believe that Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish Christians who were being pressured by their communities to take up Jewish practice again and return to temple life. The author is showing them that these rituals only pointed to, only foreshadowed the reality they live in in Christ. Again, that would be like setting up a playhouse inside of our real house and trying to live in there.

Jewish practice used a spotless, blemish-free animal to be sacrificed symbolically for sin. Then the blood, which represented life, was sprinkled in several symbolic places in the temple and elsewhere to ritually prepare the priest and the worship space to be in the presence of God. Jesus entered by his own blood. Because he didn’t have a blemish of sin, he could be the sacrifice.

Jesus is done

One of the most striking images in redemptive history is given to us in Matthew:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split. (Matthew 27:51)

This detail goes by in the middle of a small chaos of natural disasters that happened when Jesus was crucified, and we could almost skip over it, but the symbolism is earth-shattering—or rock-splitting, as the case may be.

This was the thick curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. The curtain was there to protect the priests from the holiness of God, where one priest could only enter once a year. To go beyond that curtain in the wrong spirit at the wrong time meant death.

And now the curtain is torn.

If we stood before the Holy of Holies today we could walk right in. We are protected by the blood of Jesus, which did the work once and for all. Hebrews talks about the messiness of the sacrificial system—how a flawed priest had to offer sacrifices for himself (chapter 5), and they had to be offered again and again (chapter 10). But now, as Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30).

Jesus is done. His sacrifice was perfect and was the end that all the other symbolic sacrifices pointed to.

Here is another analogy that might help. If you’ve ever truly, deeply forgiven someone, you know that initially it hurts. Your thirst for vengeance goes unquenched; your “right” to payback is forfeited. In Jesus, God took that vengeance and payback into himself. He took the consequences of our sins on himself instead of rightfully inflicting it on us. The ugliness of the sacrificial system pointed to that great pain which Jesus would bear in the crucifixion. And the good news is it didn’t defeat him.

Jesus is alive

How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! (Hebrews 9:14)

It’s been said before: God completely loves you as you are without reservation, and he loves you too much to leave you that way. Jesus didn’t only knock out sin and leave us at some theological point zero—he didn’t just die and that was the end. He rose again, undefeated by the worst our sin could throw at him. Death was the ultimate consequence of sin, and Jesus defeated even that. The resurrection life broke through into the world, and he’s given some of that life to us, even in our time on earth.

“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), he said, not only talking to us about a blissful afterlife, but fully living here and now. Eternal life begins now—in knowing Jesus and putting away what the author here calls “acts that lead to death.”

The discussion of temples and sacrifices and atonement may get a little abstract for us sometimes. Theology can sometimes do that. We can think of it as some kind of complicated life insurance policy—there when you need it, interesting in passing, largely academic.

But it was never meant to be that way. Knowing the living Jesus changes who we are and renovates our lives with his true life, transforming us in every moment. C.S. Lewis, describing the Church of England in the middle of the 20th century which was very enthralled with its rituals and pomp, writes about meeting with God:

There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (‘Man’s search for God!’) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?” (C.S. Lewis, Miracles)

And so we were blessed by those who kept the rituals in place for the centuries leading up to Christ. They kept the faith; they did what they knew. But with Christ came the reality all the ritual pointed to—the real footstep in the hall. And now we can never go back.

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Small Group Discussion Questions