Sermon – “Consider Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1-6 – 1998)

 This is a sermon I preached on 15 February 1998:

As he drew to the conclusion of his gospel the aged apostle John reflected, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” It was a common characteristic of those early Christians that they could not say enough about Jesus. At a much earlier stage in his life John had been arrested, along with his fellow fisherman-turned-apostle Peter, for publicly proclaiming the name of Jesus. When confronted with a court order not to do so any longer, they replied, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

In a similar vein a number of years ago, when I was a curate in Montreal, we had a visit from Erica Sabiti, the Archbishop of Uganda. During his time there, he was hosted by a family in their home in the suburbs. After he had left, I remember the wife commenting (with some consternation) that all the time he was with them he never stopped talking about Jesus. Apparently that was something quite uncustomary for her as an Anglican!

It seems that our author to the Hebrews is a member of the same camp. He cannot say enough about Jesus. He began by extolling him as the exact representation of God’s being, shining with all the radiance of the divine glory, whose majesty is such that even angels are barely worthy of comparison with him. He is the eternal Son of God, to be worshipped and adored. He is the King of kings, to whom we owe our fullest allegiance. He is the unchanging Creator of the universe, who holds all that is in the palm of his hand. Yet we also know that that hand is a nail-scarred hand. This same Jesus, whose glory is beyond our power to conceive of it, has entered the sphere of our human existence. He has suffered and died in order to be the captain of our salvation. He stands alongside us in our weakness and need as our faithful brother. He is our merciful and faithful high priest.

You might think that after all of this the author might have run out of things to say. In fact, he has only begun. What we have been reading thus far is hardly more than an introduction to what he yearns to tell us about Jesus, who means everything to him. And so, as though we had not been doing so already, he calls upon us to “fix your thoughts on Jesus”. The word means to consider, to contemplate, to observe carefully, to focus our minds and hearts, for we have still more to hear about Jesus.

Jesus the Builder

Who is this Jesus? We have already l earned in chapter one that he is beyond comparison with the angels. Now the author compares Jesus with the towering figure of Jewish history. Although the Hebrew nation traced its origins to Abraham, it owed its identity to Moses. It was Moses who h ad led them out of their generations-long slavery in Egypt and in their trek to freedom in the land that God had promised them. It was Moses who communed with God atop Mount Sinai and brought down with him the laws and decrees which form the heart of the Old Testament. It could easily be said that Moses was the builder of the Jewish nation.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews begs to differ, however. Moses is not the builder of God’s house; he is just a part of it. He is a brick, a board or perhaps a piece of the foundation. That is not to deny the important place that Moses occupies in history. (Jesus himself said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets [that is, Moses’ contribution]; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.") Nor is it in any way to diminish Moses’ role within God’s purposes for his people. Yet it is to say that, as great as Moses was, there is one that is yet greater than he; and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you remember what Jesus said to Peter? “On this rock I will build my church” Jesus is the builder of God’s house. The word employed here is one that was commonly used for shipwrights. It was used to describe what Noah did as he sawed the wood and hammered the nails into the ark. But of course, what the author is speaking of is not a physical structure such as the ark. He is speaking of a spiritual reality. And what we find is that this picture of Jesus as the builder of God’s house points not only to who he is, but also to what we, his followers, are called to be.

In the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, St Luke gives us a marvellous snapshot of the early church. He tells us of the devotion of the first believers to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayer and to a remarkable spirit of generosity. Then he comments, “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” What Luke recognized was that the church was not being built by its members. It was being built by the Lord. That does not mean that we are free to sit back and do nothing. Just the opposite: we must be as faithful as those first Christians in committing ourselves to teaching and fellowship, to worship and prayer, to generous giving according to our means and sharing with those in need, and to exercising the gifts that God has given us. Yet we do so, not in a frantic effort to prop up an institution, but in faith that Christ will use our contribution in the building of his church.

Jesus the Son

As we move from verse 4 to verse 5, the picture of a house and its builder shifts into a picture of a household and its members. Until very recently we have been accustomed to think of a household as a combination of a husband, a wife and 1.7 children or some variation on that. In ancient times family structure was much more complex. A household would include not only parents and children, but grandparents, uncles and aunts, perhaps some cousins, and the household servants. In any family in the ancient world a son (particularly the first son) occupied a place of honour. As the bearer of the family name, the heir of the family fortune, he held pre-eminence. And so it is with Christ and the church, the family of God. Christ is the first-born son. Christ is the head. The church exists for him.

And so just as Moses and you and I may be characterized as parts of a house with Jesus as the builder, so we may also be seen as servants in a household where Jesus is the son. We may understand the place that a servant had in a household in New Testament times from a remark that Jesus made to his disciples:

Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, “Come along now and sit down to eat”? Would he not rather say, “Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink”? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty” (Luke 17:7-10).

The glory of membership in Jesus’ household, however, is that he does not treat us as servants. As he said to his disciples at the last supper, “I no longer call you servants Instead, I have called you friends.” It is our inestimable privilege to be included in Christ’s family, not as servants, but as his friends. More wonderfully still, Jesus comes among us as one who serves. “Who is greater,” he once asked his disciples, “the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (John 15:5; Luke 22:27). And so we discover one of the miracles of God’s grace: a son who comes to us as our servant.

Jesus the Apostle

We have looked at Jesus as the builder of God’s house and the son in God’s family. Yet there are two important words about him that we have skipped over. They occur in the first verse of the chapter. One of them is familiar to us, but the other, I suspect, is less so. Jesus, the author tells us, is “the apostle and high priest whom we confess". The concept of Jesus as our high priest was introduced in the previous chapter and receives a fuller treatment in the next. But this is the only occasion in all of the New Testament where the word “apostle” is used with reference to him.

Commonly we think of apostles as those whom Jesus appointed to be his representatives in the world: Peter, James, John, Andrew, Simon, Jude, Matthew, Bartholomew, Thaddeus and the rest. These were the ones who accompanied Jesus to the towns and villages of Galilee and on whom he conferred authority to proclaim the good news and to cast out demons. After the defection and death of Judas Iscariot, the apostles met to find a suitable candidate to fill their ranks. Their criteria were that, whoever the person was, it must be someone who had been with them throughout the whole period of Jesus’ ministry, right back to his baptism by John and through to his ascension. Their primary task, as they saw it, was to bear witness to Jesus’ resurrection and that was what they faithfully did from the day of Pentecost onwards.

How, we may ask, does Jesus fit into this picture? Certainly we cannot speak of him as an apostle in the same sense as Peter, John and the others. In what sense, then, does Jesus fit the title of apostle? The answer lies in the meaning of the word itself. Our English word “apostle” derives from the Greek verb apostello, which means “send forth". Simply put, an apostle is someone who has been sent out by someone else. In the Greek-speaking world the word was used to denote an envoy, a delegate or a messenger. The twelve apostles were sent out into the world by Christ to bear witness to him. But Christ has been sent by the Father.

So it is that we hear Jesus repeatedly speaking of himself as having been sent. Quoting from Isaiah he announced at the outset of his ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Taking a little child into his arms, he instructed his disciples, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” To a woman seeking healing for her daughter he said, “I have been sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” And in the upper room after the resurrection he addressed those who had gathered with the words, “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.” (Luke 4:18,19; Mark 9:37; Matthew 15:24; John 20:21).

Once again, when Hebrews refers to Jesus as the apostle of the faith we confess, it is telling us something both about Jesus and about ourselves. Just as Jesus was sent into the world by the Father, so he sends you and me. And just as Jesus entered fully into the suffering of sinful humanity, so he sends us to the same costly participation in our world today. To use theological jargon, what we are talking about is the principle of the incarnation. That is, just as Jesus took flesh to make God and his love a reality in the world, so he sends us to do the same: not merely to proclaim a message of words from pulpits of brass and stone, but to share in the lives of those around us, to make God’s love a reality by the kind of people we are, by our willingness to be with others and to give without an eye to the cost. To confess Jesus as our apostle is not only to acknowledge him as the one sent by God, but to recognize that he sends us today.

This point was brought home to me very forcefully this past week. At the suggestion of members of our Bible study group I watched the video Dead Man Walking. It is the true story of a nun, Sister Helen Prejean, who became the spiritual advisor to a man who had been sentenced to death for the brutal rape and murder of two teenagers. This was an emotionally wrenching experience for her, not only as she sought to relate to this twisted and manipulative individual, but as she also attempted to offer love and understanding to the parents of the two victims and to enter into their grief. As he was being taken to receive a lethal injection, her final words of advice to the convicted killer were that he should look into her face as he died, so that the last thing he saw would be the face of love.

I have no doubt that when people looked into Jesus’ eyes that was exactly what they saw. And as Jesus was sent by the Father, so he sends you and me into a needy, hurting and often twisted world that others might see in us the face of God’s love.

* * *

Heavenly Father,
we can never thank you enough
for sending Jesus into our world: 
grant that he may so live in us today
that we may serve you in all that we do
and that others may see in us
your face of love;
for the glory of your name.

Sermon – “Faithful” (Hebrews 3:1-6)

For six weeks we have been looking at the Letter to the Hebrews. If you hadn’t noticed before, you are probably aware by now that it is far from the easiest book of the New Testament to understand, with its frequent quotations from what often seem obscure passages from the Old Testament, and with its talk of angels and references to mysterious characters like Melchizedek.

On the other hand, I hope that at the same time you have begun to appreciate what an amazing piece of writing Hebrews is—and that you will realize this more and more as the weeks go on.

My own experience of Hebrews goes back some of my earliest days as a Christian, when I was an undergraduate student at university. A friend and I thought we’d like to get together to study the Bible. For some reason we landed in the Letter to the Hebrews. As the weeks went on, we invited others to join us and they in turn invited others, so that by the end of the term there were more than thirty participants in the group!

While we found it challenging and at some points even mystifying, we also found that we were being profoundly enriched, with its repeated calls to focus on Jesus, the incomparable Christ. Indeed, a year later that became the theme of a campus-wide mission: “Focus on Jesus Christ”.

The Letter to the Hebrews is unique among the books of the New Testament on a number of accounts. For one thing, nowhere does it tell us who its author was. Added to that, many scholars aren’t sure that it was intended as a letter at all, but think that it may have begun its life as a sermon. Whatever the case, it is clear that its author was a highly gifted teacher, a deeply caring pastor and a brilliant interpreter of the Old Testament. Most importantly, whoever he or she was, this writer was passionate about Jesus.

Unfortunately, that seems to have been less and less the case with some of the men and women to whom this letter was addressed. We cannot know for sure, but evidence suggests that Hebrews was written somewhere in the early 60s. And the likelihood is that the recipients were in the main Jewish converts to Christ living in Rome.

At that time Rome had a population of about a million people, of whom around fifty thousand were Jews. It is not unlikely that the good news about Jesus had first come to Rome with some of those who had been visiting Jerusalem on the feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ disciples in the upper room. They were among those who had been cut to the heart by Peter’s proclamation of Jesus as Lord and Messiah. They had heard the challenge to repent. They had responded by being among the three thousand who were baptized. And they had brought the good news of God’s love in Jesus back with them to Rome.

However, the years between Pentecost and Hebrews had not been easy ones for the Christians in Rome. In AD 49 the emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome—and that undoubtedly would have included a number of those who had turned to Christ. Over the years that followed, many of them were able to return. But hostility towards Christians from both Gentiles and Jews was only growing. It would reach a climax under the emperor Nero in the year 64, following the great fire of Rome.

With all this in mind, it isn’t difficult to understand how many of the believers in Rome were suffering from discouragement. Some, I suspect, had reached a state of exhaustion. Others were tempted to go back to their Jewish roots. And a few were at the point of abandoning the faith altogether, if they hadn’t done so already.

This, then, is the audience to whom the Letter to the Hebrews was directed. And I’m wondering, does any of it sound familiar to you? Two years of covid have kept many believers isolated from the fellowship of the church. And even when we are able to come together, what we are permitted to do is for the most part a pale shadow of the worship and community life that we formerly enjoyed.

Besides that, we live in a milieu that is increasingly hostile to many of the truths we hold dear. Christian faith has become marginalized, if not demonized, in many of the mass media. Added to that, “cancel culture” makes it dangerous to say or write anything that conflicts with today’s social norms—norms that are becoming more and more inimical to Christian values.

The result is that we end up with Christian believers who suffer from what we might call faith fatigue—rather are like someone who is adrift in a rowboat in the middle of a storm. Row as hard as they will, the rain continues to lash down, the wind continues to whip around them, and the waves threaten to overturn their little craft at any moment. Does that match up with anyone you know? Perhaps it even describes where you’re at right now.

Our Privilege: Brothers and sisters in a heavenly calling

If that’s the case, take heart. Because that was exactly the kind of people the author of the Letter to the Hebrews was writing to. And what does he say to them?

He begins by reminding them who they are. Look at how he addresses them in the opening verse of our passage this morning: “holy brothers and sisters”, “you who share in a heavenly calling”.

First of all, he calls them “holy”. Now that isn’t a word that many of us are accustomed to using of ourselves. We may think of “holy” people as those we consider model Christians, women or men who demonstrate all those beautiful fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience and all the rest. But that’s not what the New Testament writers mean when they use the word “holy”. We are holy not because of anything we have done, but because our heavenly Father has claimed us for himself, because Jesus Christ has died for us on the cross, because the Holy Spirit dwells within us. You don’t have to think about it for more than a moment to realize what an immense privilege that is.

Secondly, he calls them “brothers and sisters”. If the word “holy” speaks to us of our vertical relationship with God, then “brothers and sisters” speaks of the horizontal relationship that we have with all who belong to Christ. That is, we have the remarkable privilege of being knit together with people of every language, race, status, nationality and whatever other category you care to mention—all those factors that are too often used to divide people and set them apart from one another.

I’m not a huge traveller, but I have worshipped with other believers in Australia, France, Libya, India and Haiti (not to mention most of the provinces of Canada). In every case I have found myself welcomed by people who recognized and claimed me as a brother in Christ. One of the qualities that draw me to First Congregational is the wide diversity of backgrounds and nationalities that this church embraces.

We are brothers and sisters. And if that weren’t enough, the author goes on to tell us that we share in a heavenly calling. We look forward to the day when, with all of God’s people from every language, tribe, century and nation we will be gathered around the throne of the Lamb.

What a privilege this is! It is one that sets all the worries and contradictions, all the tensions and disappointments, all the pains and setbacks that life in this world puts across our path, into a totally different context. Surely these are words of encouragement if you are one of those who find yourself lonely or discouraged in your Christian walk.

Our Pattern: Take a good look at Jesus

If that is our privilege, the author of Hebrews next calls us to look at the pattern that God gives us on which to model our lives—and I don’t have to tell you that that pattern is Jesus! “Consider Jesus…,” he tells us. The word that he uses for “consider” means to ponder, to study, to observe thoroughly, to take careful notice, to contemplate, to fix your eyes on, to rivet your attention on something. The Message Bible translates it, “Take a good hard look at Jesus.”

What do we see when we do that? We see one who was faithful. And here the author does what he often does. He compares Jesus with a figure from the Old Testament. This time it is with Moses.

Everyone would have known about the faithfulness of Moses. In the face of threats from Pharaoh, in the face of the Red Sea, in the face of the Egyptian charioteers, and in the face of the rebelliousness of his own people, Moses remained faithful to God. For forty long years he faithfully led the people of Israel across the wilderness towards the land that God had promised them.

Moses was faithful as a servant, the author tells us. But Jesus was faithful as a son. Moses’ faithfulness led him to give up his privilege as a member of Pharaoh’s household. Jesus’ faithfulness led him to surrender all his heavenly glory to become as one of us. Moses’ faithfulness caused him to plead to God on behalf of his wayward people. Jesus’ faithfulness took him to the cross, to suffer and to die for the sins of the whole world—for your sins and mine. Moses’ faithfulness brought him to the edge of the Promised Land. Jesus’ faithfulness exalted him to the Father’s right hand, there to reign eternally in all his heavenly splendour. So it is that we fix our eyes firmly on Jesus.

Many of you will be familiar with the account in Matthew’s gospel of when the disciples were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee. They were far from shore and the wind was driving them farther, while the waves splashed over the gunwales. As things were getting completely out of control, they looked and there was Jesus! “Lord, if it really is you,” Peter shouted, “command me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” Jesus said. And at that Peter stepped out of the boat and began to walk towards Jesus. But when he looked at the wind whirling about him, he started to sink. “Lord, save me,” he gasped. At which Jesus reached out his hand and took hold of him (Matthew 14:28-33).

Peter’s experience is a useful model for us when we find ourselves overwhelmed by the circumstances that life sometimes throws at us: to look to Jesus, whose very last words to his disciples were these: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Our Priority: Hold fast

We share in the incalculable privilege of being sisters and brothers in a heavenly calling. We have a pattern in Jesus, who faithfully went to the cross for us and promises to be with us to the end of time. And that leads us to a priority, which we find in the final verse of this morning’s passage: to hold fast.

A couple of years ago Karen and I were in Australia at an extended family gathering on a lake. One of the people there had brought a high-powered speed boat, from which he towed a large inflatable raft. Of course, this was a source of great fun for the many children and teenagers who had come. But that wasn’t enough for some of them, who began to dare me to go out for a spin.

I can’t say I was keen on the idea, but eventually their cajoling got to me and I agreed to go out for a spin. We hadn’t been out for more than a few moments, when I could see a devilish expression cross the face of our driver as he glanced back at us. Suddenly he revved the engine to full speed and took us back and forth, bouncing recklessly across the wake of the boat. A couple of the young people who weren’t holding on very tightly were tossed into the water. But I held on for dear life as we were buffeted by wave after wave, and managed to survive until we reached the shore. I even went out for a second run!

Well, I can’t say it’s going to be fun. Indeed, it very often isn’t, and the stakes can be high. For some of those early Christians their faithfulness cost them their lives. And it hasn’t stopped. Are you aware that there were more Christians martyred in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined? That every day thirteen Christians die for their faith and another dozen are unjustly arrested or imprisoned?[1]

We can be grateful to God that, while keeping the faith can be a challenge, while it can even lead to losing friends or losing a job, we do not have to suffer as many of our fellow believers have. But with them, the Letter to the Hebrews calls upon us to hold fast, to keep a firm grip, not to allow anything to cause us to let go.

As we move on through Hebrews, the author will give us some practical guidance as to how we are to do that. But I don’t want to steal from future sermons in the weeks ahead! So, I will leave it there, with the encouragement to keep your eyes trained on Jesus, to hold fast and not to let go, even if sometimes we feel we are just barely hanging on by our fingernails. And with the reminder that we have a God who promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

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[1]     https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/january/christian-persecution-2021-countries-open-doors-watch-list.html