With the Hebrews' videos done, I thought I might add Tuesdays and Thursdays to a feeble attempt to get my explanatory and preaching notes on Hebrews closer to finished. The semester ends next week so it will be hard to keep motivated to continue through. But maybe I will at least commit to continuing them Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays through the rest of April. Then we'll see.
Hebrews 3:1-4:13
This unit began with a contrast between Jesus and Moses as part of the author's overall purpose to show that Christ has made the now old covenant unnecessary. As such, a sermon meant to show the greatness of Christ might include this idea as one among other points (greater than angels, Moses, Joshua, Levitical priests, sacrifices, sanctuary...).
To the original audience, these contrasts had a direct practical relevance. Whether written to Gentile, Jew, or a mixed audience, they were meant to encourage them not to worry about the loss of Jerusalem and its temple. Or if Hebrews was written before AD70, these contrasts were meant to set their priorities straight. We think the former is more likely.
To find a direct pastoral equivalent today is difficult. Nevertheless, one of the general implications of Hebrews--one that we find ourselves drawing over and over in various ways--is we need not cling to anything other than Christ for rest. A brief word study of the words peace and rest in Hebrews will conclude that these are part of the desired responses to its message.
To cease from your own labors in Hebrews, we have suggested, is to stop fretting over your destiny and to enter into God's rest. The rest that God promises is both current and ultimate. It is ultimate in the sense of something God will give us most fully when we finally see the coming of His unshakeable kingdom. Yet we must also enter it every day that is called, "Today." We can talk about yesterday and tomorrow, but in reality, we never exist outside of today.
This observation leads us to another aspect of this unit of thought, namely, its warning to those who disbelieve God's promises. In addition to the positive hope of God's rest, these verses hold out a stark warning to those who do not continue in faith to the end. We have become partakers of the Christ if we hold fast to the end. We are God's household if we hold on to our confidence and public confession of hope in what God has promised is coming.
We must not be like the wilderness generation, whose corpses fell in the desert. They left Egypt and thus are a type of the Christian. But they did not believe God's promises and their corpses fell in the desert. So a person can truly be in the people of God and on their way to the coming kingdom yet fail to make it in the end because they fail to continue in faith.
The unit ends with a stern warning. God's word, His will in action, sees everything, including the heart. Nothing can hide from God, and we must all give an account to God. We will see these themes in Hebrews reiterated over and over.
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I think recognizing that we are responsible "selves" and seeking to be responsible first and foremost for ourselves is the issue in Hebrews....We cannot enter rest if we think that we are the "world's savior". We cannot enter rest if we reside by the principles of success as far as America's standard...Success is understanding who you are and what commitments and convictions are of most importance to you and then seeking to follow those commitments and convictions, recognizing that God is the one who endowed you with the talents and gifts you have...and that those gifts and talents are to be offered back to Him, as a form of worship. So, although we will differ as far as how we "play out" those commitments and convictions, recognizing that we all follow some ideology of some sort, although limited...we have the freedom (at least in this country) to engage one another in discourse, which is a fruitful enterprise of refining and tuning our commitments and convictions...
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