“A Sermon I’ve Never Wanted to Preach” (Hebrews 10:26-31)

 

Aside from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I wonder if anyone here this morning can tell me what may have been the most famous sermon ever preached…

I don’t have any statistics to back me up, but I am certain that one of the top contenders has to be a sermon delivered to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut, on hot July day in 1741. The preacher was Jonathan Edwards, a distinguished graduate of Yale University, who would later be appointed president of what was to become Princeton University. Along with the Anglican preacher George Whitefield he was one of the leaders of the remarkable spiritual revival known as the Great Awakening. It was a movement of the Holy Spirit that profoundly touched the hearts and changed the lives of thousands as it swept across New England in the mid-1700s—reaching as far as Nova Scotia!

The title Edwards gave to this particular sermon was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. And if you find its title forbidding, its contents are nothing less than soul-shaking. By my estimate the sermon would have taken close to an hour and a half to preach. And it was around the mid-way point that Edwards thundered forth to the congregation with these words:

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

I’ll leave it to you to imagine the rest!

The reality of judgement

Now I have never been what you might call a hellfire and brimstone preacher. I am one of those who believe that the carrot is generally more effective than the stick, that the glories of heaven are far more inducive to faith than the threat of hell.

Yet I have to acknowledge that Jesus himself warned about the prospect of hell for those who turn their backs on God. He declared to the people of Capernaum, who refused to accept his message, that it would be more tolerable on the Day of Judgement for the inhabitants of Sodom than it would be for them (Matthew 11:23). He cautioned his followers, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43).

Think too of his parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man ended up in flames and anguish, desperate that Lazarus might even dip the tip of his finger in water so that he might have a droplet to cool his tongue (Luke 16:19-31). And at the last supper Jesus warned his disciples, “If anyone does not remain in me, they are thrown away like a branch and wither; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned…” (John 15:6).

In fact it has been claimed (and not without merit) that Jesus had more to say about hell than anyone else in the Bible. So perhaps we should not be surprised when we come across it again in this morning’s verses from Hebrews. We read of “a fearful expectation of judgement”, and those chilling words at the conclusion of the passage: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

The word in both cases in the original Greek is foberon. It’s related to our English word phobia, hence words like acrophobia, the fear of heights, and arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. Or how about odontophobia, the fear of dentists!

It all reminds me of my days in elementary school back in the Dark Ages, when to be sent to the principal’s office was a punishment you sought to avoid at all costs. Who knew what penalty was going to be meted out behind that thick oak door? Well, at least you came back from the principal’s office. But here there is no coming back.

Now lest I leave you thinking that God is some kind of celestial killjoy, constantly on the lookout for people to punish, let me remind you that there is a whole other side to the coin. Ours is a God who cries aloud to his people, “As I live…, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” And he pleads, “Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). And our Lord Jesus is the good shepherd, who seeks out his sheep that have strayed and brings them back into the fold. Yet there remains the tragic possibility of an eternity without him.

So it is that our verses from Hebrews this morning contain that stark warning to those who might be tempted to abandon the faith, that “if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgement…”

Why people leave the faith

Now this connects with one of the themes that has been in the background of Hebrews all along. Indeed it is likely that it is the reason for its being written in the first place: that one by one and for various reasons people had been dropping away from the community of believers. And for the author of Hebrews that was no light matter. It’s not like dropping out of a bowling league or even dropping out of school. No, dropping away from following Jesus is a matter of life and death.

Now for some people this whole topic brings up the question of whether or not it is possible for a believer to lose their salvation. And that is an issue I’m not going to delve into right now. But no matter which side of that particular debate you stand on, you don’t have to have been a Christian for very long before you notice that there are people who at one point appear to have had a genuine faith and yet somewhere along the road have left it behind.

Christian author Frank Viola offers a list of reasons why this happens.[1] Here are a number of them that he highlights:

·      The nasty way that Christians can sometimes treat each other. Disputes in the church can often arise over what are really non-essential issues and church members can become overinvested in them to the point where they lose perspective altogether and end up treating those with a different perspective as though they were enemies.

·      The simplistic answers they have been given to complex and difficult issues. The world can present us with challenges that strike at the roots of our faith. Yet sometimes these questions end up being treated with suspicion or simply dismissed with a pat answer, instead of being dealt with honestly and openly.

·      Disappointment with God as a result of a tragedy or seemingly unanswered prayer.

·      The busyness of a life that doesn’t leave room for prayer or engagement in the community of faith.

·      A legalistic understanding of the faith that demands perfection and can only lead to self-reproach, disappointment and even serious depression.

All of these can be factors in slipping away from the faith—and no doubt we could list many more as well. Indeed, in my experience one of the prime factors has been adultery. One of the biggest disappointments of my ministry has been to see leading laymen, men who have a deep and articulate understanding of the faith, Christian leaders, become involved in secretive affairs that end up undermining both their marriages and their faith. And I am sure that many of you could name any number of Christian “rock stars” who have fallen for the same reason in recent years—famous preachers and teachers, megachurch pastors and authors among them.

Today the internet adds an additional, highly powerful factor as well: pornography. It’s no longer a matter of hiding copies of Playboy under the mattress as it was when I was young. Our high-speed fibre optic cables can bring full-colour images and videos right into the privacy of our homes. And they can be deeply addictive.

Preventing departures from the faith

So what are we to say to all of this? How are we to deal with it? I could tell you that you’ll have to wait until next week’s exciting episode, and the weeks that follow. After all, we still have three chapters of Hebrews left!

But before I conclude, I want to mention one author who has been particularly helpful to me recently in thinking this whole issue through. He is psychologist Jonathan Haidt[2] and he is not a Christian but a secular Jew.

His thesis is this: We often think of our mind, our rational faculty, as what is most important in giving direction to our lives and guiding our decisions. But Haidt says no—that as often as not it is our emotions that guide us. And he summarizes it in a simple picture.

Picture if you can an elephant driver on top of an elephant. Now, by and large the elephant has been trained to be compliant. It will go wherever the driver commands. But if for one reason or another the elephant decides to take a different path, the hapless driver is forced to go along for the ride.

The elephant, says Haidt, is that part of our faculties that is based on feelings and sensations, while the driver represents our rational faculties. By and large it is our minds that we look to to guide us through life. But there will be times when the elephant of our emotions takes over—and I don’t imagine you have to think for very long to remember occasions when that has happened in your life.

So what does this mean for us as Christians? Perhaps one of the weaknesses of our Protestant tradition is that we often tend to place our emphasis on the mind at the expense of our other faculties. We engage primarily on a cerebral level, and only secondarily (if at all) on what we might call a gut level. Now I know that part of that is to avoid manipulation. Yet if our faith is to be fully rounded, it needs to involve the whole of us.

For example, how crucial music is to Christian experience! Even Paul, who seems like such an intellectual type, encourages us to “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). Besides, I’m told that singing helps to release endorphins that contribute to both our mental and our physical health.

And how crucial is fellowship! By this I mean not just that casual cup of coffee after the service (as important a part of church life as that is!), but engaging with fellow believers on a deeper level—having others you can share with about the important things of life, people you can trust to stand by you without judging even in the most difficult times, and yet who have the courage to say, “Get with it!” when that’s what’s needed.

I would be remiss too if I didn’t stress the fundamental importance of developing a habit of taking time to be with God on a daily basis—coming before him in prayer and praise, reading his word, and simply enjoying being consciously in his company.

Yes, it is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Yet what is more wonderful than to be held in the firm grip of a loving Father, who vows never to leave us or forsake us? What could be a greater privilege than to walk with a Saviour, who promises to be with us to the end of the age? What could be more amazing than to be filled with a Spirit, who will be with us forever!

So as we hold these verses from Hebrews in one hand, let us balance them with these words from Philippians in the other:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ… And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. (Philippians 1:6;9-10)

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[1]     “7 Reasons Why Christians Abandon the Faith” https://frankviola.org/2022/05/12/7reasons/

[2]     Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 2012

“A Better Covenant” (Hebrews 7:20-28)

 

The other day I was going through some old DVDs in our basement, when I came across one of my favourites: The Princess Bride. I find it difficult to believe that it goes back thirty-five years, so I’ll excuse you if many of you are not familiar with it.

I won’t recount the whole story for you. (I’m not sure I remember it all that well myself!) But there was one character in it called Vizzini who stood out for me. It seemed that in almost every scene where he appeared, he would find a reason to utter the word, “Inconceivable!” In fact it gets to the point where another character ends up saying to him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Well, I suppose we may all have our favourite words. That certainly seems to have been the case with the author of Hebrews. I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his favourite words is “better”. In all he uses it eleven times: We have a Saviour who is better than the angels (1:4), we are heirs of a better hope (7:19), we are recipients of better promises (8:6), we desire a better homeland (11:16), we are purified by a better sacrifice (9:23), we will rise again to a better life (11:35) … And in verse 22 of this morning’s passage we find that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant.

Which brings us to a second favourite word in Hebrews: “covenant”. It occurs for the first time in verse 22 this morning. And by my count we will come across it a total of nineteen times before we arrive at the conclusion of the final chapter. So if we’re going to understand the message of Hebrews, we need to understand what its author means by the word “covenant”.

So let me ask you: What comes to your mind when you hear the word “covenant”? Personally, I can think of covenant being used in a couple of settings. The first is in the realm of legal contracts, where two parties agree to certain conditions that must be met in order for a deal to be settled. The second is in the realm of marriage, where bride and groom swear to love, honour and cherish each other to the exclusion of all others “till death do us part”.

Perhaps you can think of other examples. But whatever the case, I think we all can agree that a covenant of any kind involves solemnity, permanence and commitment.

The Four Covenants of the Old Testament

Outside of marriage, covenants may not be a regular feature of life today. But they were not uncommon in the world of the ancient Near East. There were covenants between kings, covenants between cities, and covenants between rulers and their subjects. And some of them can be traced back to more than four thousand years ago. However, common though covenants may have been in the ancient world, the Old Testament is the only place where you will find a covenant in which one of the parties is God. So let’s take a few moments to look at some of the covenants we find there.

The first time the word “covenant” appears in the Bible is in the account of Noah. No doubt you are familiar with the scene, as after what seemed an endless time in the ark, Noah at last stood on dry ground once again. As he gazed into the sky, there was a rainbow and God spoke to him: “I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature … that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:9-11)

Turn another half dozen or so chapters through Genesis and you will come to a second covenant, this time with Abraham. God promises that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Added to that, they will no longer be wanderers but will be possessors of a land that they can call their own. Unlike the covenant with Noah, however, this time there was an obligation on the part of Abraham and his descendants: that every male should be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.

We come to a third covenant when we turn to the book of Exodus and stand with the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. There the Lord lays down the conditions that his newly rescued people are to uphold if they are to remain in relationship with him. We think of them as the Ten Commandments. But rabbis would tell you that there were in fact no fewer than 613!

The fourth covenant comes two centuries later, when the nation of Israel was entering its golden age under King David. God’s promise to David is summarized for us in Psalm 89: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your offspring for ever, and build your throne for all generations.”

Now these are all amazing promises. The people of Israel stood in immense privilege. No other nation was so favoured. But the problem was that they never upheld their side of the covenant. They failed to recognize that circumcision did not involve just a surgical procedure, but that that outward act was intended as a sign of an inward commitment to serve the Lord God and him alone. Instead, they found themselves being attracted to the false deities and pagan practices of the nations that surrounded them. They bowed before images made of wood and precious metals and some even sacrificed their children to them. Their priests and their leaders from the king down became corrupt and the people were not far behind in following them. The poor were trodden under foot and widows were forced to beg to keep themselves and their children alive.

The Promise of a New Covenant

It was into the midst of this ongoing scene that God sent his prophets. Their task was to warn the people, including the king and the royal family, the priests and all the religious officials, of their rampant corruption and infidelity.

But the prophets came not just to alert the people to their waywardness. They also brought a message of hope and redemption, of forgiveness and restoration, of new life and a whole new relationship with God. Among those prophets was Jeremiah, who came with these words:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

It was a remarkable promise—and we don’t have the time to go into it in any great detail right now. Suffice it to say, though, that this new covenant would not be a matter of outward obedience to laws and regulations. Rather, it would be centred in a relationship—knowing God, not as a distant being out there, but as a living presence, God himself coming to dwell within us. And we know that those promises were fulfilled in a person—in Jesus.

I love the way the apostle Paul put it when he wrote to the believers in Corinth: “All the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ in Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 1:20) Jesus has come to usher in a better covenant than the covenant with Noah or Abraham or Moses or David—a covenant that is sealed not with the sacrifice of bulls and sheep and goats, but with his own life’s blood; a covenant that involves not an outward obedience but his daily presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit. All of that is wrapped up in the words from Hebrews we have heard this morning, where we read that Jesus , “the Son who has been made perfect forever”, “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him”.

Four Promises of Jesus

So it is that “Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant”—a covenant that was sealed by his blood shed for you and for me on the cross and ratified by his resurrection from the grave on the third day. But what does that mean in practical terms? How does it work out for you and me today? Part of the answer at least can be found in four promises that Jesus makes in the gospels.

The first is found in John’s gospel, where Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37) So we have the assurance that when we put our faith in Jesus, he will never let go of us. We may fail him. Indeed we most certainly will. I know I have time and time again. But he will never turn his back on us. Peter found that out after he denied knowing Jesus not once but three times. It was not many days later that Jesus was coming to him once again and saying to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:19)

A second promise of Jesus comes to us from the week before his crucifixion, when he assured his followers, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)

Yesterday was the anniversary of my ordination. Back then there were theologians who were claiming that God was dead. Now those theologians are the ones who are dead—and the good news of Jesus continues to be proclaimed with power and to prove itself true in people’s lives all over the world.

The church in Nigeria grows by more than a million new disciples a year. At last count the largest church in Europe was where? In Kyiv, with more than thirty thousand adherents.[1] And where are the world’s largest Christian congregations? Not in North America, but in Korea and India.

A third promise that Jesus made to his followers came as they gathered for the Passover supper on the evening before his crucifixion. It was on that occasion that he told them, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1-3) And so Jesus gives us the assurance that not only will he be with us in every circumstance of life, but that when life ends, we will be gathering among that joyful throng to sing his everlasting praise:

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:13)

And the fourth promise that Jesus has left with us comes in his very last words before he ascended to be with his Father: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

John Baillie was a Scottish theologian of the early twentieth century. He was fond of telling the story of going for a walk one day with his young grandson, who was just a toddler. At one point along their way the little boy began to stumble. He might have fallen down altogether, had his little hand not been held in the firm grasp of his grandfather’s. And that, said Baillie, is how it is with Jesus. We may stumble and fall, but Jesus is with us and he will never let us go.

With all that in mind, maybe you can see now why covenant is one of the favourite words of the author of Hebrews. May it be one of your favourite words too. And by the power of the Holy Spirit may you seek to live out that covenant in your daily walk with the one who sealed it with his blood.

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[1]     Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent, 88

“The Original International Man of Mystery” (Hebrews 7:1-3)

 

I wonder if anyone can tell me what is the Old Testament passage most frequently quoted in the New Testament…

You might think it’s something like Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If you’re really into the writings of the minor prophets, you might come up with an obscure verse like Habakkuk 2:4, “The just shall live by faith.”

Depending on how you do your calculation, there are something in the range of three hundred quotations from the Old Testament that can be found in the New. But the quotation that tops them all is from Psalm 110, verses 1 and 4, which run like this:

The Lord says to my Lord:
    ‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’ …
The Lord has sworn
    and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever
    after the order of Melchizedek.’

The first place we find these words is in each of the first three gospels. They come up in the course of one of those nitpicking encounters between Jesus and the religious authorities. We hear them, not on the lips of Jesus, but from his opponents. They use them to try to debunk what people are beginning to say about Jesus: that he is the promised Messiah. Clearly, they recognized these verses as a messianic prophecy.

The next time we come across them is when they are quoted by Peter. They are to be found in the middle of his sermon on the day of Pentecost. He was addressing the large crowd who had gathered in the street when they heard Jesus’ followers praising God in what they recognized as their own languages. And after citing these same verses, Peter proclaimed, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah.” (Acts 2:34-36)

This in turn brings us to the Letter to the Hebrews, which we have been following now since the beginning of the year. So I will forgive you if you don’t remember way back in chapter 1, where this text is quoted once again. There, pointing to Jesus, the author asks the question, “To which of the angels has God ever said, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’”? (Hebrews 1:13)

Finally we come to the verse immediately preceding the passage before us this morning: Hebrews 6:20. There the author writes of Jesus as “having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”.

When I was scratching my head early last week trying to come up with a title for this sermon, I thought of calling it “Who the heck was Melchizedek?” And perhaps that’s exactly the question you’re asking yourself right now! Well, the answer comes in the three verses which make up this morning’s passage from Hebrews.

The author takes us far back into the mists of history—in fact, to chapter 14 in the book of Genesis. Now here’s the scene: The rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah had been trounced in battle by the rulers of some of the neighbouring settlements. Among those whom they took as captives was Abraham’s nephew Lot. When Abraham found out about it, he pulled together his armed men and staged an overnight raid on the two rulers and their forces. The result was that Lot was made a free man once again and Abraham forged a treaty with the ruler of Sodom. And that is where Melchizedek enters the scene.

He appears to come to Abraham out of nowhere. He is the king of Salem (later to become Jerusalem) and the scene takes place in the nearby Valley of Shaveh. Melchizedek brings with him bread and wine and pronounces a blessing on Abraham. In response, Abraham returns to him a tenth of all his possessions. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, Melchizedek disappears into the mists of time.

Now I have to say that this scene is one of a few in the Old Testament that never fail to bring shivers down my spine. It is up there with the three mysterious visitors who later came out of the blue to visit Abraham as he stood at the entry of his tent. And with the fourth man who stood amid the flames with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego inside King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. I ask myself: Could it be that what those men witnessed—and what Abraham witnessed that day in the Valley of Shaveh—was a foreshadowing of the eternal Word, Jesus, who was with God and who was God from the beginning? I’ll leave it to you to come to your own conclusion.

King of righteousness

But back to Melchizedek. Our passage this morning tells us three things about him. The first is a translation of his name. It is a combination of the two Hebrew words melek, which means “king”, and tsedeq, which means “righteousness”. Put them together and Melchizedek’s name means “king of righteousness”—and as such he points directly to Jesus.

But before we go any farther, perhaps we need to ask, what does it mean to be righteous? Many people confuse righteousness with self-righteousness. In reality the two could not be farther apart. Jesus put the lie to what masquerades as righteousness when he told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to pray in the temple. You will recall how the Pharisee strutted in and parroted, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get…” That isn’t righteousness: that is shameless, delusional pride.

Several years ago one of my brothers had new neighbours move in next door. In an effort to be friendly, he went over and invited them over for a barbecue. He was taken aback by their response: “Oh no. We couldn’t do that. Our church forbids us from sharing meals with outsiders.”

As Jesus’ followers we need to be so careful not to radiate that false brand of righteousness, the one that gives the impression that we see ourselves as better than other people. True righteousness is what we find in the tax collector, who crouched in a shadowy corner of the temple where he was barely noticeable. And not having the boldness even to lift up his eyes and look towards heaven, he murmured, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:9-14)

The truly righteous recognize their constant need of God’s grace. They seek to live in daily dependence on him. And this is what we see in Jesus, who said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” And again, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 4:34; 6:38)

We call Jesus righteous in a unique sense, though, because he did what no other human being has ever done: he lived a life of perfect, uninterrupted communion with his Father. Jesus is the true King of Righteousness. In him we are able to see all that it means to live in a relationship with God.

King of peace

The second fact about Melchizedek that our passage this morning points us to is that he was King of Salem—and Salem in Hebrew is the same word as shalom, which means “peace”. My Bible dictionary informs me that that word shalom involves a much broader understanding than what we commonly mean by “peace”. It carries with it a notion of “completeness”, “soundness”, “well-being”, “safety”.

So it was that, on the night before they were to face what would be their greatest trial, Jesus could comfort his followers with the words, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

A few days later, as they gathered in fear for their lives behind locked doors, suddenly Jesus was in their midst again with the familiar words, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) And today Jesus comes to us with those same words, “Peace be with you.” Peace as we face tragedy and suffering. Peace as we run into broken relationships and conflict. Peace as we seek to negotiate the storms and setbacks that are an unavoidable part of life in in a fallen world. And in all of those circumstances, Jesus is able not only to give us inner peace. He also empowers us to be makers of peace. After all, peace is one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Yet there is more to it than that—infinitely more! The peace that Jesus gives us in the here and now is only a foreshadowing of the real and lasting peace that he will bring with him in the new creation. This is the peace that we read about in the prophets:

“No more shall there be…
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days…
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
    they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
    and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labour in vain
    or bear children for calamity,
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
    and their descendants with them…
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
    the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
    and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:20-25)

That is a picture that never ceases to amaze me! (And what a stunning contrast it is to the images that we see in the news daily right now of bombed-out buildings and desperate refugees fleeing for safety in Ukraine!)

Yes, Jesus does bring us peace as we lay our troubles before him. But the real peace he came to bring is the shalom of the new heaven and the new earth, when all creation will thrive as it hasn’t since the Garden of Eden, in the light of his unending glory. And it is the vision of that peace that calls and arouses us to be makers of peace in the here and now.

Our eternal high priest

Thirdly, Melchizedek was a high priest. Abraham recognized this when he gave him a tenth of all that he had. We don’t know what kind of sacrifices Melchizedek offered in his high priestly role. But we do know the sacrifice that Jesus offered for us in his own life’s blood poured out for us on the cross.

Words are not sufficient to describe what Jesus accomplished for you and for me on that first Good Friday. The closest I can find are from my Anglican Prayer Book when it speaks about what Jesus has done for us through his death as “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”.

The Letter to the Hebrews will have a good deal more to teach us about Jesus’ eternal priesthood in the succeeding chapters—and I don’t want to steal from what preachers might be led to say in the Sundays that follow.

Yet allow me to say that, unlike Abraham’s response to Melchizedek, we can’t be satisfied with giving just a tenth. Jesus demands our all. As he said to his first disciples, he says to you and to me, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) The apostle Paul said much the same thing a generation later when he wrote to the believers in Rome: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1)

Switch now for a moment to the twentieth century, to 1937, when the Nazi party had all of Germany in its oppressive grip. A young Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat down to put together a study on the Sermon on the Mount. He could not have known that eight years later he would die as a martyr to Hitler’s brutal régime. Nor could he have known how prophetic his words would be when wrote, “The cross is laid on every Christian… When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”[1]

As we focus our thoughts this morning upon Jesus, the King of righteousness, the King of Peace and our Great High Priest, the only response that enters my mind comes to me in the words of the hymn writer Isaac Watts:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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[1]     The Cost of Discipleship