Hebrews Talk 5 (3:1-6)

0:01 Good morning. We are back in Hebrews. So if you have a copy of the New Testament with you, please do hunt it up and keep it open. If you have it on a phone or on an iPad or a real Bible, that would be great just to follow along. It's going to appear on the screen behind me. And we're going to begin with the reading. Please excuse me if I have to use a handkerchief occasionally. It seems that some of this lovely weather we're getting is getting to me.

0:37 Therefore, he, that is Jesus, verse 17 of Hebrews chapter 2, we are. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. Now, let's stop there for a moment. If you're just here for the first time, if you've not been around church maybe ever in your life, or it's very recent, this kind of language might make you think, I live in a different world. This terminology is just weird. I mean, what on earth is a high priest? What is propitiation? I can't even spell it, let alone pronounce it.

1:36 What are these things? And that's fine. If you don't have a background in all of this stuff, then we need to do a little bit of work about it. You know us old people, when it gets to technology, we have that struggle. So I'm sympathetic with you. The last bit of technology that I managed to understand was a mouse. And apparently the word mouse has now gone back to being a little rodent because you don't use mouses or mice anymore unless you have a very old computer. So there is a bit of technical language to understand in any walk of life.

2:19 If it's sport, if it's business, whatever it is, there's a certain amount of technical language. And once you understand what the term is, then it's a kind of a key to understanding what's going on. So you probably don't have any reference point to a high priest, except maybe some weird movie you watched with Harrison Ford and some guy dressed in funny robes at the front and all sorts of blood appearing. So that really wouldn't be terribly helpful in this context. But the people that this letter is written to knew exactly what he was talking about because their high priest was their main representative for them in the relationship with God. so that's what you need to think of the person in a sense who came between them and God the mediator between them and God was called the high priest and so when we read that Jesus is a high priest we're thinking of that that's an analogy think of the high priest Jesus does that and much more but we need to understand that and we don't have any other equivalent in English that I can think of. A teacher, a life coach, a supporter.

3:45 None of those words really do justice to this idea that is conveyed here. So you do need to understand a bit of the background. And one of the things that the high priest did was that every year there was a big day of atonement when he offered a sacrifice of propitiation, i.e. turning away God's wrath against the sin of the nation. The sacrifice was there for that. So he made propitiation through a sacrifice once a year. It had to be repeated every year. The other thing, and of course he did lots of other things as well, but the other thing that he did was that he prayed for people. He represented them before.

4:26 They could pray themselves, of course, but he was their special representative before God. And when he did that, he had special clothes, and he carried on his shoulders precious stones that were engraved, literally engraved, the names of the people on his shoulder. And, of course, we know what that's involved. You know, you get your shoulder to a task. It's about support. It's about strength and so on. That's what that symbolized. But he also had a kind of a breastplate and the stones there with the names.

5:01 And so he had them over his heart. And that's the idea here that was being presented. It's a little picture in advance, in physical terms, of what it means when we say we have Jesus as our high priest. He gets his shoulder to the wheel. He supports us. He has us on his heart before God. Okay, got the picture? Right, let's get back into this.

5:27 For because, verse 18, he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help. There we have it. That's the idea of helping, strengthening, encouraging. He's able to help those like you and me, as well as these folks at the time, who are being tempted. Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus. And that's really the central focus. If you miss everything else about the talk this morning, that's what it's about. It's about considering Jesus.

6:08 The apostle, there's another word that we don't tend to use unless you go to certain parts of the earth where they call a group of 12 sea stacks, the apostles, or 12 mountains, the apostles. But it's taken from the 12 that Jesus chose, who were the sent ones, with the message. And it's telling us that Jesus is also that, not just the high priest, but the sent one, the one with the authority, the message who came with the truth to us. That's the whole idea. So, with that in the background, you share heavenly calling. Consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him, who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house. And here's another term. Moses pled twice for Chelsea.

6:57 apparently there are two Moses's pled for Chelsea that's not the one we're talking about here clearly but if you don't know anything about the Old Testament you don't know the book of Exodus you don't know who Moses is Moses was the great liberator the great law giver they revered Moses so he's been brought in as a point of comparison and contrast with Jesus ok that's what's going on here just as Moses was faithful in all God's house For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses. As much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone. The builder of all things is God. Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant. To testify to the things that were to be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over God's house as a son.

7:52 And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. So the central encouragement here is the encouragement to consider Jesus being faithful. Now, please note, not a faithful. This is not traitors. as I understand it a faithful in traitors is a contestant whose role is to identify the traitors in the group and banish them from the game but that's not what we're talking about here our English translations often put this in the past tense as I read it consider Jesus who was faithful but equally well it can be translated who is faithful or consider him being faithful. And that, I think, suits the context much better. They flow a thought because at the end of chapter 2, where we just read, Jesus is described as a faithful and merciful high priest in the servants of God.

9:09 Not that he was that, but that he is that. So we're being invited to consider him being faithful, not simply in the past, but in the present. The two big roles, and we think immediately of Jesus being faithful and making not just an annual offering of a sheep or whatever to God, but actually offering himself. as the one sacrifice for sin forever. One and done. It's over. All that's done. Jesus then is a high priest in a totally different category from the Old Testament high priest.

10:02 He did what they could not do. Not blaming them because they just couldn't do it. But he has done something that they could never do. Provide the solution to the problem of the guilt of our sin once for all time. So he's done that. But there is this other role. As well as that, there is this role of helping us, supporting us, praying for us. Listen again.

10:29 Because he suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Notice the tense. It's the present. He is able to help those, you, me, everyone. He's been tempted since he suffered. He's able to help those who are being tempted. So the idea then, consider Jesus being faithful, faithful to God he appointed him, faithful over all God's house as a son, he tells us. That is loyal, reliable, steadfast, true, trustworthy, consistent in his service to God as our faithful and merciful high priest.

11:15 Now, we are reading this in a particular historical moment, which isn't a particularly happy one, it seems to me, because the word faithful doesn't strike you as being something that's on the front of every newspaper or every news bulletin, because our news is full of people being unfaithful. people being corrupt not just the Epstein files which basically seem to me just lifting a tiny corner on the reality of corruption and faithlessness and greed and all the other things that there is so talking about being faithful in that context it's not easy is it I mean we long for it I suspect and those of you who have suffered through someone being unfaithful either in work in society in relationship that's a real challenge but for all of us cynicism can so easily set in and just paralyze us. Do you not find that? Do you know all the doom scrolling and seeing what the latest revelations, the latest this, the latest that. Can we trust anybody? It seems not.

12:50 So why bother? Is there any point anymore in doing your best to be faithful, to do good work, to keep on serving, even trying to please the Lord and live for God? Nobody else seems to be, so why should I consider Jesus being faithful? Well, how can that help us? Well, consider the fact that he wasn't simply tempted like we are, but that he suffered when he was tempted. the temptations were real but at a level far beyond anything that we will ever face we think of the battles in the desert when satan came against them over a period of 40 days i have never been tempted to turn stones into bread have you sometimes i've wanted to but i've never been tempted to because i haven't got the power to do it wouldn't be a temptation to me but jesus did have the power to do it.

14:06 I have never been offered all the kingdoms of the world if I will simply buy and acknowledge Satan as the supreme controller of things, offer all the kingdoms of the world without having to suffer, without having to work, just hand it on a plate. That's never happened to me. It happened to Jesus. I think of him in the garden in Gethsemane. if you know the story if you've read the gospels that really awesome description of Jesus on his knees in the garden before the father with every fiber of his body screaming out against the sheer awfulness of what he was facing being made as the New Testament puts it sin for us. I mean, it's just appalling if you're the Son of God, the divine Son of God, pure, sinless, to be made the very opposite of that in that sense of taking on the sin of the world, the just for us, the unjust,

15:29 and going through pain and mockery and the darkness of abandonment by God himself. I just cannot find words to express or explain the suffering of Christ. I'm not talking about the cross. I'm talking about what happened before the cross. Is it a different level? and they watched as he prayed Father if it is possible may this cup be taken from me yet not as I will but as you will consider him

16:13 being faithful that's why you're here today that's why there is such a thing as salvation because he was faithful. When Peter shortly after tried to use a sword, used violence to prevent Jesus from being taken, listen to what Jesus said to him. Peter, do you think that I cannot call on my Father and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But then how would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way? Consider him being faithful. Think of the untapped power.

17:15 Think of the restraint. could have wiped them out with a word. And yet he handed himself over to those who would crucify him. Why? Because he was faithful to the Father. How does that help me? Well, at many levels, but at least this. Many of the readers of this letter were in a battle themselves, like maybe many of us are.

17:54 The pressure from many sources to get us to drift away from the claim to believe in Jesus or even openly to repudiate it, Faced with the cost of misunderstanding, being laughed at in school or at work, being called names, being mocked by our culture, being socially shunned, possibly even outcast and physically persecuted. This is more than a momentary temptation to tell a lie or to take something that doesn't belong to you or even some self-indulgence, some immoral action. This temptation strikes at the very heart and soul of who we are and what we live for and what we truly deep down believe. So take a moment. Consider Jesus. the apostle the divine messenger who is himself the truth and faithfully witnessed to that truth when he stood before Pontius Pilate he made the good confession my kingdom is not of this world else my servants would be fighting my kingdom is from a different place confessing to the reality of the eternal kingdom of God

19:37 faithful as an apostle. Well, take a moment to consider him being faithful as your high priest. He suffered being tempted. Are you willing to? Am I? Do you feel the pressure? And he is faithful. He's unchanging.

20:07 It isn't just that he was faithful once. Consider him being faithful right now. The one who is there to strengthen, to support, to listen. Fix your thoughts on him. And now the writer takes it a little further with this comparison between Jesus and Moses. Moses, well if you don't know anything about him you need to catch up the Jews called him Moshe Rabbeinu Moses our teacher he's revered as their greatest prophet the lawgiver, the author of the Torah the first five books of the Hebrew Bible he's also revered as their great deliverer from slavery in Egypt as the mediator of the covenant God drew up between himself and Israel and surprisingly perhaps in the midst of all of that he is revered for his humility. In Numbers 12 God describes him as the most humble person on all the earth.

21:16 That's amazing isn't it? Someone who is the supreme leader. Can you think of any supreme leaders in the world stage that you would describe as the most humble person on all the earth? I can't, I have to confess. And in that same chapter, God calls him my servant Moses and adds, he is faithful in all my house. And that's where the quotation used in Hebrews is coming from. Numbers chapter 12. Moses faithful, Jesus faithful.

21:54 But just in case we confuse things, it's not just the similarity. There's a contrast. Moses wasn't in the same category. Jesus is in a category all of his own. Moses is faithful as a servant. Jesus is faithful as a son. Moses was faithful. Jesus is, continues to be, because he is the eternal son of God, who is our high priest in a category of his own.

22:28 Moses faithfully carried out God's instructions. For example, in the building of the tabernacle. And we read here about building the house. Well, Moses was faithful in all God's house. God gave him the blueprint. Moses didn't design it. He built it and caused it to be built and stuck exactly to the instructions he was given as God had asked him to. He was faithful in all God's house.

22:56 Jesus was faithful. not simply in God's house but over God's house he's in a different category in a different category such as the house and the builder I don't know if anybody's been watching house of the year in northern Ireland anybody indulge yourself in that kind of thing and not ask you what you thought of the eventual winner in case they happen to be here or anybody else who was involved in it but you know the way the thing ends up becoming about the house the house the house the house the house actually houses don't build themselves as the writer says they have to be built they're designed and built by someone else the greater glory belongs to the one who designs and builds not to the house and he is the one that designed and built the house that now we're talking about not the tabernacle in the old testament that god designed that fine Moses built them. But now we're talking about the eternal dwelling place of God, described as a house, the tabernacle of God. Who designed and built that? Well, who could?

24:06 Only one who is himself God, Jesus, the Son of God. Fantastic. But let's just stay a little moment longer with Moses. Because the incident that this quotation is taken from, I find really interesting. So indulge me just for a second. It is a very famous incident in Israel. It may not be famous here because you don't know about it, but if you do know about it, then you'll know what I'm talking about. But you have to read it yourself in Numbers 12.

24:36 I'll just give you the outline. There were four main characters in this story. Moses, his sister Miriam, his brother Aaron, and his wife, who isn't given her name, but just the fact that she was Moses' Cushite wife. And this became the source of family grumbling. Of course, nobody here knows anything about family grumbling. That would never be the case. Moses was no stranger to grumbling. And complaints, it goes to the territory of being a leader.

25:10 If you're a parent or a teacher or a leader in any context, You know this. The buck stops here. Grumbling is part of what you got yourself into. And if you didn't realize it at the time, well, hard luck. You're there. Deal with it. Sorry, that wasn't in the text. Anyway, he was their leader, and the people were prone to grumble against him because he was their leader about all sorts of things.

25:37 The amount of time that he took away from them to meet with God, they grumbled about that. They grumbled about the supplies of food. They grumbled about the supplies of water. But now he was facing a personal attack from within his own family about his choice of a wife. Great. As is often the case, the grumbling covered a much deeper problem. Because Aaron and Miriam were saying, Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Hasn't he also spoken through us?

26:15 I mean, what about us? We're here. I mean, we might not be Moses, but we've got a role. Why is nobody listening to us? They had allowed resentment and jealousy to build up in their hearts. Oh, that is so hard to deal with. So hard to deal with. The remarkable thing is that Moses didn't retaliate.

26:45 He didn't defend himself. He left it to God. He was the humblest man in all the earth. His humility and his grace shone through. But what was it that kept him from exploding with frustration and anger when even those closest to him were complaining and criticizing him? Well, we know the answer because God explained it. God intervened and spoke to Aaron and Miriam, and he said, "When I speak through others, I reveal myself through visions and dreams, but not with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house, and with him I speak face to face."

27:28 The secret lay in the fact that Moses was faithful in all God's house, faithful to God, faithful to his calling. God wasn't his servant to come at his beck and call. He was God's servant. And if this was part of the deal, it was part of the deal. He would be faithful to God, even when people grumbled. It is a very human thing, isn't it? the loose sight of the fact that I'm walking in God's way and he's called me to this. Am I going to turn around to God and say, you know, you could have done a lot better job.

28:18 I mean, this is not fair. So-and-so and this and that, and they're groaning about this and complaining about that. You're his servant. He's not your servant. He's not my servant. to do what I want him to do. I'm his servant. Sadly, Moses eventually lost it.

28:44 It got too much from him. And a few chapters on, you'll read the story of how the people grumbled again about lack of water. And when Moses brought this to God, God said, simple Moses, I want you to go and speak to the rock and water will pour from it. But by this stage, Moses had had enough. and instead of speaking to the rock as God had called him, he struck the rock with a stick and he shouted, listen to me, you rebels. Oh, whoa. And do you know what happened? God said to Moses, because you did that, you won't be taking them into the promised land and you go.

29:29 Seriously? because as God's representative I'm not Moses, neither are you none of us is he misrepresented God because God doesn't act out of bad temper doesn't lose his patience Moses lost it Jesus never does never Do you ever get the feeling when you come to pray and there's all sorts of things that stop us from praying, but do you know the thing that often stops us? Well, it's combined with this sort of sense of hypocrisy. Here we go again.

30:19 I have messed up again. I thought I'd sorted that out, and I haven't. And here I go again. And do you know the little thought goes up in your mind? One of these days he's going to get tired of me. and really and then we have to think okay well maybe I'm just going to have to do a whole lot of things to earn him paying attention to me today so we do our best we promise the world we're going to read the Bible right through from beginning to end and talk to everything that moves consider Jesus being faithful he's not going to change he's not going to change his mind about you.

31:00 My wife knows a lot of things about me, many more things than you know about me. She doesn't know everything, but my high priest does, because he's the son of God. He knows the weaknesses, the stray thoughts, all the stuff, the battles within. and he's committed to me still. Do you not find that an encouragement? Wouldn't it be good just to sit back for a little while and consider Jesus being faithful to you, bringing your name before the Father? Well, gosh, there he goes again, but you know what?

31:56 I died for him. I'm not going to change my mind. He's mine. What security there is in that. And that's precisely the security that we need because the chapter, the little passage ends, and I must end, with a warning. And it's a very serious warning. He says, whose house are we? In other words, We are now God's house.

32:28 Because God's house isn't a tabernacle made of stones and all of that or a temple either. It's made of living people who trust Christ. Whose house are we? And then if he's not content to say we are his house, he adds a condition. If we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope. And there's similar wording later in verse 14. We have become partners with Christ if we hold fast to the end. So you're thinking, well, how can that be?

33:03 How can you make something that has happened in the past depending on the condition? I mean, this doesn't make any sense. Well, it does if you think about it. Because what the writer is talking about is the evidence that people are genuine believers. And what is that evidence? It's not that they're sinless. It's not that they never mess up, but it is that deep down they hold to their love and faith in Jesus, like Peter did when he messed up and was out in the darkness, weeping his eyes out, thinking he had lost his eternal life and lost everything. It was all up.

33:45 And then potentially he heard and listened in his mind again. He considered Jesus being faithful. Peter, I have prayed for you that your faith doesn't fail and when you've recovered, strengthen your brothers. Faithful to Peter, faithful to you. This warning is not here for nervous Christians with sensitive consciences who feel that because they missed their quiet time or because they stood in the cat's tail or because they were nasty to their mother-in-law, that's it, it's all over. Or maybe a few things more serious than that. It's not written to them. It's not written to the Peters of this world, but it is written to the Judases of this world.

34:32 Judas play acted. Never was a genuine believer. Pretended to be for what he could get out of it. Friendship, money, kudos, social life. Never repented. never truly accepted Jesus as his Lord and Master. I let the warning set. Chris will talk about it more next week.

35:06 Let me emphasize again, this is not directed at those of us who struggle and fail and get up and struggle and fail and coming to God. That's not what this is about. This is about those who, well, really in the end, have given up the struggle. They couldn't care. They've given up trying to pretend to be what they aren't. And some may, well, may be here. You never really repented. You never really trusted Christ as Lord.

35:40 And you can tell that because you only agree with Jesus when he says the things that you want him to say. but you don't agree with the other stuff so when you say well well I think Jesus is a great guy Jesus is the son of God his word is what put the universe together and if you are in your life saying well I agree with him on this but can't have him on that and if I agreed with Jesus on that then my friends would laugh at me and I'd be ostracised and I'd be so persona non gratis so I'm not going with that but happy with that what are you doing? He suffered when tempted you're not prepared to? Not worth it? We leave the challenge sitting let's pray

36:45 Father our desire each week is that your Holy Spirit would work. Thank you that these words are not just words on the page, but they are powerful, active. They get in under the skin. They discern the hidden thoughts. They separate out the intricate details of our life and expose the motivation of our heart. And may that happen. We thank you for the one who is faithful. Great is your faithfulness.

37:23 Not that you always do what we want you to do. It's not that. But you're consistent, reliable, and you always do what you say you will do. We thank you. Help us to consider Jesus being faithful. Amen.