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In their minds and on their hearts

The writer of Hebrews is now really beginning to move forward his argument for the supremacy of Christ as the high priest that will minister the New Covenant that has been given to the people. Here are a few of the things that we can see about the New Covenant as noted in Hebrews 8:

Previously, the Old Covenant with Moses brought laws that the people must obey. Now, quoting the prophecy of Jeremiah, we see that God has written His law on the hearts of His people:

I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

Hebrews 8:10

Previously in the Old Covenant, Moses mediated with the people by giving them laws that they must obey. Now, Jesus has offered love, grace, and mercy to God’s people and they will obey God because of their love back to Him for what Jesus has done for them.

Previously in the Old Covenant, the covenant was confirmed through the sacrifice and blood of animals. Now, the New Covenant is confirmed through the shedding of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Previously in the Old Covenant, the priests were from the tribe of Levi, serving the rest of the people. Now in the New Covenant, all believers are priests of the Covenant with Christ serving as the High Priest.

The Old Covenant is no longer necessary because the New Covenant has now been made between God and His people through the work of Christ. The New Covenant is the covenant that will live on and last forever.

These differences have significant implications on our world today. Islam and Catholocism, as a starting point, but also Buddhism and Hinduism, impose a set of regulations that must be followed and through the fulfillment of these regulations, a person can be accepted by God. This is the nature of religion. Do lots of good things and hope that you will one day be able to be accepted by God (or “gods” in the case of some of the religions) at the time of judgment.

But God has done something much greater, and is communicating something much greater, if we are willing to understand it. He has been saying that He has done the work already. We don’t need to continue to strive to reach Him. We don’t need to try to keep a law that is impossible to keep. We have already lost the battle. We are already imperfect, and without God’s mercy and grace, we will be judged for being spiritually dead before God as a result of our sin.

Jesus fulfilled the law. He did not sin…and he is the only One who has ever done that! But yet Jesus was punished as if He was a sinner because God placed all of humanity’s sin upon Him.

This is why Jesus is called our great High Priest. He was offered, and for that matter, offered Himself, as a sacrifice. And he continues today, sitting at the right hand of the Father, mediating on our behalf.

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God’s day of rest

The book of Genesis recounts that God created the world in 6 days, and then on the seventh day, God rested. Reading in Hebrews this morning, I saw an important connection between the story of creation and the invitation that we have into God’s rest.

So if we say that God rested, what are we referring to? There are at least a couple of things that we can talk about on this front:

First, we see that God rested on the seventh day from His work of creation. There was a specific time that was set out for rest from the work. In each of the previous six days, we see that they are each described as finishing with an evening and then a morning, and then the day would be ennumerated. So, for example, if we refer to the first day of creation, Genesis says it this way:

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:5

Each of the days go like this. It is a pattern of the day happening with God creating through His word in the course of that day, then evening to bring the day to a close, followed by morning to open a new day.

But then we arrive to the seventh day and we see that there is no end. There is no evening and there is no morning. The seventh day never ends.

Well, maybe the author just didn’t close off the day and moved on to the next thought.

Or maybe instead it was intentional.

So now we arrive back to Hebrews 4 where I was reading this morning and it speaks of God’s day of rest being called Today. Here is the breadth of the passage:

And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.”  And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”

Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
    do not harden your hearts.”

Hebrews 4:3-7

So I think that what we are seeing here is that God rested from his word on the seventh day, but that day, from God’s perspective, never ended. And he calls that day Today.

So God has rested and is continuing to rest, and He is calling us into His rest. If we will believe what He has said, then we also can enter His rest.

What has He said that would allow us to enter His rest? God has sent Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life to come back to the Father. Jesus came into the world to reestablish God’s Kingdom here on earth and call His people to Himself, purchasing them away from the kingdom of darkness to come into the Kingdom of God.

And Today is the day. Today is the day that we are called to enter God’s rest, which we can do if we will put our faith in Christ. If we will believe and we will give our lives to Christ. If we place Him as the Head over our lives. If we submit to Him. This is the only way, but it is the way of rest. God gives us an invitation to enter into His rest, the rest that God has been in since the very first Sabbath day, the 7th day, the day that He calls Today.

I pray that we would all enter into God’s rest. That instead of doing as the Israelites did and not trust Him, instead rebelling against Him, that we would put our faith in Christ and enter into God’s rest.

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God is the builder

I have a vision…

I have a dream…

We are working to achieve…

These are pretty common statements, both outside of the church as well as within.

But as we think about the Kingdom of God, it is important for us to continue to remember that God is accomplishing God’s purposes. Our ideas and our thoughts are all good and fine, but they will only find lasting meaning and purpose when they are found in the context of God’s purposes, within God’s mission.

Why? Because God is building His Kingdom. They are His plans. It is His work.

We think that we are working and contributing, and we are, but we know that what we do will pass away, but what God does will never pass away.

In Hebrews 3, we see that the writer is comparing Jesus to Moses. It is a good comparison to help us understand the outcome between God’s plans and man’s plans, between obedience and disobedience. There is a direct contrast between the work of Moses and the work of Jesus, an important contrast to understand especially for Jews who should be familiar with the life and work of Moses and who are now trying to understand Jesus in that context.

Moses was found to be faithful, but he was a servant in God’s house, the scripture says.

But the difference is that Jesus is the Son over God’s house.

But God is the builder of the house.

For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.

Hebrews 3:4

This is critical for us to remember for a couple of different reasons:

First, we need to remember that God is doing the building because if we try to do something that doesn’t align with God’s plans and purposes, then we are simply building in vain. Sure, we may be able to build a great ministry, or a great company, but it will amount to nothing over time. It will eventually be torn down, eventually be shuttered. Even if it is after we are dead and gone, it will still be gone. The legacy of what will be built may live on for a little while, but we should emphasize that it will be a little while. Not a long while. Not eternal. A little while.

The second reason is that we should be thinking about who is receiving the glory for the work that is being done. If God is the builder, and we work as his children to align ourselves with His plans, then it is God who is receiving the glory. We are not trying to receive the glory ourselves. What we do is being done to give God the glory. Not to us, but to Him. There is a significant difference in how we act, in how we hold open handed our plans, in how we work and speak if we work to give God the glory instead of to ourselves.

God is the builder over all things. Let us understand what He is building, and let us serve Him and build with Him!

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Ignore so great a salvation

We have a lot that is happening. We need to make money to support our families, so we have our jobs, which can be all-consuming, in terms of our time and our attention.

Then we have our families. Our spouses rightly demand our attention as we walk through our lives together, in partnership, navigating each of the details of our shared lives.

Let’s not forget our children. We work to deliberately sow into them, to teach them both in our word as well as in our actions, helping them to navigate through school, through challenges of learning to understand the world, through relationships, and much more.

And of course there are many other things. We have hobbies and passions, but we also have time where we are just tired from all of the other things and we need to rest and relax.

And so there are so many different things that take our time and distract us from some of the most important questions of life. Who am I? Where did I come from? What is my purpose here? These are questions that are incredibly important, but they are difficult. We don’t really know the answers, and we aren’t sure who has the answers, so we can easily ignore them. We move on and think about other things. There will be time some day… I think.

That is an experience that I can relate to having grown up in the US or having been part of a western society. Maybe there are other stories, other ways in which we can spend time thinking about other things besides that which is most important. Stories that I don’t necessarily know nor have had as an experience, but that can have a similar effect.

This may be what the writer of Hebrews had in mind. He started the book by saying that Jesus was the exact representation of God in human form and is the radiance of His glory and then says that Jesus provided purification for sins and then sat down at God’s right hand.

And that is incredible news! We have God himself right here with us? We have God’s own words? And we have purification from sins?

That is incredible!

But only if it is true… and only if we pay attention.

So can we know it is true? Yes, we can look at the historical record. Yes, we can look to what hundreds of eyewitnesses have testified. Yes, we can see what people have died for and for what they have been willing to take a stand. Can we believe them? Or should we take their willingness to die for what they knew to be true with a grain of salt?

And so if this is true, then we need to pay attention. We need to orient our lives in the direction of that truth because it is worth changing course. It is worth rethinking everything. If you can know God but you are required to make a change to your life, would you? These are important questions that speak to who we are and the importance that God has to us. We can say that we put God first, but are we actually doing that?

I think that is why the writer of Hebrews told the people that they shouldn’t ignore the salvation that has been given to us:

We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.

Hebrews 2:1-3

We need to pay careful attention. We must not drift away on the winds of life. We must live intentionally, not by accident. The message is important. No, in fact, it is critical, but we have to listen. We have to pay attention. Let us lend our ears and our hearts to God and what He is telling us, that He came in the form of Christ to establish His Kingdom and to purchase us with His blood so that we may receive forgiveness from our sins so that we may enter the Kingdom of God. It is salvation from the wrath of God, which is truly the punishment for our sins. Let us not ignore this great salvation but live holy lives in connection with him!

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Not a slave but a brother

As I have written about slavery as it is mentioned in the Bible in the past, I have been struck by how slaves have been called to be obedient to their masters, just as if they were being obedient to Christ, so that they might win their masters to Christ.

I’ve routinely said that this doesn’t mean that the Bible supports slavery. Not in the least. Instead, it means that there is a perspective that is much higher, of much greater importance, than that of our earthly understanding. So, for example, when Paul told Titus to teach slaves to obey their masters and not steal from them, the reason is that their message would become attractive. That is, that the master might also know Christ.

I have always been amazed by this idea that the slave should work hard for the master and be obedient to him because, even though slavery is not right and contradicts the very idea that we are made in the image of God and that we should all stand before God equally, following Paul’s teaching, the slave is deliberately sacrificing themselves so that there might be a chance that the master and his family might also be saved. If they take on this view, they take on a perspective that looks well beyond this world into eternity, sacrificing themselves and their freedom for an eternity with Christ and a vote of thanks from God Himself.

But in the book of Philemon, we see the counterbalancing perspective. Onesimus has fled from Philemon and his household and is now with Paul. Paul says that he would like to declare Onesimus a free man, but he wouldn’t do it without Philemon’s agreement and blessing.

So Paul appeals, instead, to Philemon that he would receive Onesimus back into his household. There has been some reason that Onesimus left, which we can’t understand from this letter, but now Onesimus is coming back so that they would be reconciled together.

But now Paul calls upon Philemon to do what is right and receive Onesimus in love, to receive him as a brother. Paul appeals to Philemon in love. He appeals to him as his brother to receive Onesimus not as a master receives a slave, but as a brother receives a brother.

Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever— no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.

Philemon v. 15-16

Paul and Onesimus are taking a significant risk here. There aren’t any guarantees that Philemon will forgive Onesimus, and in fact we don’t know how the story ended, but they decide together – possibly even with some trepidation – that it is worth the risk.

They know that reconciliation is needed. Regardless of what has happened, there is more that is at stake than just a relationship between master and slave. Brotherhood in Christ is at stake and that should take precedent over all.

They know that this must be worked out between the men involved. Paul is an apostle, but he does not try to lord that over the men and their situation. They must come to an agreement.

But most importantly, Paul calls Philemon to go beyond his legal rights. He would be within his rights to punish Onesimus. His slave has abandoned his post. Legally speaking, he should be punished.

And what is more, Paul calls upon Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother. He calls upon him to not only be forgiving, but to go beyond forgiveness to return back to brotherhood, to love for one another. No longer a slave, but a brother.

Paul is appealing to not only what is right, but much, much more than that. Justice isn’t all that is being discussed here. Neither justice for Philemon nor Onesimus. Instead, more than justice is love, love that goes beyond just what is right, but to brotherhood that extends past our human situation and our human stations to that of our position before God and before one another before God, as brothers in Christ.

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Mission Task

Paul had been with Titus in Crete where they had made disciples amongst the Cretans. However, there was work that was yet to be done because the church was not yet in order. It was disorganized and leaderless at that particular point.

Paul had a plan to get it organized, though, which was the same plan that he had at each step in his work. He would leave the church with leaders appointed and intact in each town where they had done their work. In short, Paul did his work by traveling from town to town and doing the work of an apostle, making disciples and leaving them in his wake. Titus would then be tasked with organizing them and putting the leaders in place so that they could continue the work without him.

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.

Titus 1:5

This is, in fact, the missional task, that the work should be started, that the Gospel would be proclaimed, and that local leaders should be established so that the work would continue without Paul, or even without Titus following Titus’s work of establishing the leaders.

By doing his work in this way, Paul establishes churches throughout the entire region, through each of the areas where he travels in order that their work would go forward, led by the people locally so that all might hear the word of God through many other workers, not only through Paul and his traveling companions.

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The Next Generation

Paul is writing to Timothy and finishes his letter – in fact, his final letter that we know of amongst all of his letters, his epistles – with a charge to Timothy to continue to carry out the work that he has been given to do. Timothy is working in Ephesus amongst the people there and Paul is telling him that he should be continuing in his work.

What is the work that he has charged him to do? First, Paul calls him to preach the word of God. He says that Timothy must be ready to speak the word to both rebuke and encourage, patiently walking through the word so that the people can understand.

Of course, in that time, they had the teachings of Paul, and the words that he had written to the individual churches, but as we think about the word of God, we are really referring to the scriptures of the Torah, the writings of David and Solomon, and the prophets. The scriptures that we would today refer to as the Old Testament, they would refer to as the word of God. The scriptures spoke of the One who would come, the Messiah, and this was the word that Paul is calling Timothy to preach.

Paul explained that people will not want to hear the truth, but Timothy must keep teaching the word correctly. He must not bend to what people want to hear, but what they need to hear. Paul says that people will move from one teacher to the next so that they can hear what they desire. Their ears “itch”, he says, and they look for a teacher that will scratch their itch. But Timothy isn’t to do this. He is to continue steadfastly in the truth, even if it means that he must endure hardship.

And then Paul tells Timothy that, beyond teaching, he must also evangelize and speak to people that haven’t heard of Christ. He must call new disciples into the Kingdom, allowing them to hear the word of God as well so that many more yet would follow Christ.

I think that verse 6 starts the crux of this chapter, and probably of the entirety of Paul’s letter. He says this:

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day —and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

2 Timothy 4:6-8

Paul is telling Timothy that his time is coming to an end, and he is calling Timothy to continue the work that he has start. Because he is being poured out like a drink offering, because he has fought the good fight and finished the race, because he has kept the faith, Paul will now continue on to be with Christ and receive the reward for his faith. And he says that everyone who has done the same will also be rewarded in the same way.

Paul has taught Timothy to live as he lives and now he is charging him to work as he is working. In this chapter, he is “passing the baton” of the work on to Timothy, although this certainly isn’t the first time that Paul has taught and equipped Timothy. It is simply the last letter that we see with these instructions to him. Paul has passed the work from himself to others many times over, encouraging and equipping the next generation many times before, but now he is charging Timothy to continue the work as the next generation who will carry on his commission as a disciple and worker for Christ.

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Lovers of themselves

Paul gives a warning to Timothy that the end-times will come, and they will come not with the world continuing to get better and better, but instead with people continuing to become worse and worse in their character.

He said this:

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy

2 Timothy 3:2

This first phrase of the verse struck me because I think it speaks to the state of our world today. More and more we see this exact situation playing out.

“You can’t love someone else until you love yourself” is a type of refrain that you might hear and would be considered good advice by pop psychologists.

Even the rise of psychology over the last several decades as a “scientific” way to fix problems, even if it seems that the resolution rarely seems to come.

Or one product or service after the next that continues to rise up in an effort to give fuel to an industry the idea that the most important person is me. I am what I need to be concerned about. Bring the glory to me, create a legacy for myself, make my name great. Or my fulfillment, my riches, my desires…these are what are most important.

From this starting place comes all sorts of evil because instead of working for the other, for the good of the other person…instead of loving the other person, I love myself, and now we have a society, an entire world that is looking out for itself instead of the other, and this produces evil of all kinds.

Knowing this, I think it is no wonder that Jesus says that the most important command is to Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second one is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Instead of continuing to look to me, Lord, I pray that you help me to look to you. May you receive the glory. May you be the object of my love. May my life be about you and about your fame and not about me nor mine.

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Civilian affairs

Paul is writing to Timothy in what will be his final letter that we are aware of amongst Paul’s great writings recorded in the New Testament. Paul has been calling Timothy to imitate him, having received the Holy Spirit and being bold in sharing the Gospel with other people and being prepared to suffer as a result of the work that he has done.

Now in chapter 2, Paul tells Timothy, in essence, that he should “keep his head down” and keep working. He says:

No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.

2 Timothy 2:4

I say “keep his head down”, not in a way to suggest that Paul wants Timothy to ignore people or situations around him. Nor am I suggesting that he tries to stay hidden.

Instead, with diligence, with focus, Paul wants Timothy to doggedly keep working. He wants him to not become entangled in the things of the world. Jesus is both Paul and Timothy’s commanding officer. He is the one that is driving them forward and this commanding officer says that they shouldn’t be concerned about what they will eat, what they will wear, or be concerned about other things of the world. These are civilian affairs that will distract them from the work that the commander has called them.

In fact, Paul says that they are called to suffer. He tells Timothy that he should join him in suffering for Christ. Not “be ready” to suffer, but to join him in suffering, as a soldier for Christ.

This is not only the life that Timothy is called to live, but each of us. We should each live without distraction from these civilian affairs. We have been called to a life that focuses on pleasing our commanding officer, a life that no longer entangles itself in the things of the world, but moves forward for the sake of Christ, doing the work that he has called each of us to do, just as Paul reminds Timothy that he is to do.

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The Persistent Lie

Very often, lies can persistent much longer and much more fervently than the truth. For whatever reason, we as people are vulnerable to hearing something and both blindly receiving it and believing it without much additional investigation. We see this in our politics, we see it in our religious and spiritual practice, and we see it in many other areas of our life. Lies tend to abound, and they can be very difficult to unseat, regardless of the truth that is presented or the evidence that is used while presenting it.

This is what happened with the guards who guarded Jesus’s tomb and the chief priests of the Jews in Jerusalem. The priests invented a story, an alternative to Jesus being resurrected. In fact, instead of believing that God was doing something extraordinary in their midst, they invented a lie that Jesus’s disciples had come and stolen his body away from the tomb. The soldiers were paid as a bribe to tell this story and to keep their own selves out of trouble when word reached the local governor.

While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened.  When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’  If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”  So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

Matthew 28:11-15

Nevermind the fact that the tomb was also sealed, not just guarded by these soldiers.

Nevermind the fact that the disciples would have needed to be extremely silent to be able to roll away the stone, pick up Jesus’s body, and run away with it to prevent the soldiers from waking up.

Nevermind that the women saw Jesus there in the garden.

Nevermind that the disciples all saw him later in the house.

Nevermind that Jesus also appeared to 500 other people at one time.

The fact that this lie even persists today shows how much we want to believe lies when it is convenient for us, even when the truth is staring us directly in the face. The lie is persistent, primarily because we don’t like the truth and we are looking for another story.

But let us be a people that look for the truth. Even when the truth seems difficult. Even when the truth challenges the way that we look at the world. Let us allow the truth to change us, not us to change the truth. Let us look to the resurrection of Jesus as a fact that makes all of the difference, that Jesus defeated death and that he wants to do the same for us if we will bend our knee and give our lives to him.